Pip Hinman

Anti-fascist campaigner and Australian citizen Jock Palfreeman was unexpectedly granted parole on September 19 after serving 11 years of a 20-year sentence on trumped-up charges. He was last denied parole on July 17.

Anti-choice state MPs are seeking to add as many caveats as possible to a bill that seeks to decriminalise abortion in New South Wales and which has the support of medical, legal and feminist organisations.

 

While estimates of the size of the Climate Strike in Australia vary, one thing is certain: many generations want real action to deal with climate change — and they want it now.

“Any law that places half the population at risk of criminality simply because of their biology is a ridiculous and unsupportable law”, Jane Caro told a pro-choice rally on September 14 in Sydney’s Hyde Park.

Gill Boehringer, an honorary senior research fellow at Macquarie University, has been studying the Murray-Darling Basin crisis and believes that the New South Wales government’s reluctance to assist affected Indigenous communities is connected to their dispossession, discrimination and exploitation.

Catastrophic fires in New South Wales and Queensland have come early in the fire season, which usually starts in October. Climate scientists and frontline fire fighters agree: they are a consequence of climate change.

Supporters of the right to choose are pulling out all stops against the religious right’s attempts to derail a broadly sponsored abortion decriminalisation bill before New South Wales parliament.

The September 20 global Climate Strike is gaining unprecedented support, including from unlikely quarters, including tech companies, university administrations and even the big four banks, writes Pip Hinman.

UN Secretary General António Guterres wants only those countries that can show “concrete, realistic plans” for reducing their carbon emissions to come the the UN climate summit in September. But you can be sure the recalcitrants, such as Australia, will be there.

Those opposing the move to treat abortion as a health matter rather than a crime have made their views known — loudly.  The NSW Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill 2019, a long-overdue reform, was passed by the Legislative Council, 26 to 15. A major pro-choice rally is being organised for September 15, two days days before amendments will be debated.

Remember when Donald Trump campaigned for office in 2016 on getting the United States out of “endless wars”? He did, in part, to distinguish himself from the pro-war Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton.

Now, Trump and his band of hawks are pushing for a new war, most likely with Iran.

Australia’s bullying behaviour was in full view again at the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in Tuvalu, as it ignored pleas to take climate change seriously.