Ben Courtice, Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Gellibrand, launched his election campaign on July 31 outside the Maribyrnong Detention centre. Courtice told Green Left Weekly the Socialist Alliance calls for an immediate end to mandatory detention and off shore processing. It also supports an increase to the currently low refugee intake to a minimum of 20.000 per year .
Margarita Windisch
Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s July 5 announcement that she would solve the refugee crisis by being tougher on refugees did what former PM John Howard failed to do in his 11 years of conservative rule. She has made former One Nation MP Pauline Hanson feel at home.
Hanson announced she wasn’t emigrating to Britain, as planned, saying she was in “total agreement” with Gillard’s plan to “sweep political correctness from the debate”, the Australian said on July 6.
Gillard’s main proposals cast refugees as a problem to be solved — and blame the refugees for that problem.
On December 16, the Victorian state government passed the Summary Offences and Control of Weapons Acts Amendment Bill 2009.
Results of the recent elections for branch council and senior officer positions in the Australian Education Union Victoria branch were released on October 29. The incumbent union leadership was challenged by the Teachers Alliance, a rank and file group of AEU members that campaigns for an active and democratic union.
A November 18 report by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth) titled Building on Our Strengths confirmed that the experience of racism has serious health implications for Indigenous and migrant communities in Australia.
At first, the flow of people fleeing horrors like the Sri Lankan government’s concentration camps for Tamils and Afghanistan’s killing fields didn’t test the capacity of the Christmas Island detention centre
The Building and Construction Industry Improvement Amendment (Transition to Fair Work) Bill 2009 is scheduled for Senate debate on October 26. The bill would change the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 (BCII Act). This would affect the building and construction industry’s watchdog, the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).
On October 30, construction worker Ark Tribe will go to court in Adelaide. Workers will take solidarity protest actions across the country to show support for their fellow worker. Tribe has been unjustly targeted by the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).
Every three years the Australian Education Union (AEU), which covers teachers and other eduction workers in government schools, holds elections for all union representatives in the four sectors (early childhood, primary, secondary and TAFE). The elections include all senior officer positions and the AEU state branch council.
“If you don’t give a shit, that’s what you get”, was a favourite chant of striking Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) city campus staff at their picket lines on September 16.
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