The NSW Nationals’ narrow victory in the Upper Hunter byelection has saved the scandal-plagued government of Premier Gladys Berejiklian, writes Stephen O'Brien.
Stephen O'Brien
Following the tragic ammonium nitrate explosion in Beirut, Stephen O'Brien writes that Orica needs to do more than issue reassurances that its stockpile of the explosive on Kooragang Island is safe.
Tony O’Beirne, who passed away last November, demonstrated in a very practical fashion that protecting jobs and the environment are not counterposed.
An abortion rights march was organised by high school students in Newcastle on July 21 wanting the health procedure to be removed from the Crimes Act in NSW.
Hundreds of people gathered on northern Sydney, Central Coast and Hunter beaches to protest the resumption of seismic testing in early May.
In 1996, when I was working in Nicaragua, I attended a conference in El Salvador and met a charismatic former army officer from Venezuela called Hugo Chávez. He explained how he was building an alliance between patriotic military officers and working people and that they were seeking to win the next elections and use the country’s oil wealth to improve the quality of life for the poor.
The inability of the Liberal Party to find candidates for Hunter seats for the March New South Wales state election suggests that even its party faithful recognise that Gladys Berejiklian’s Coalition government is headed for electoral defeat and, probably, a total wipe-out in the Hunter.
The Rank and File Team has re-won the leadership of the NSW Public Service Association.
Stewart Little, an advocate for the Police Association and part-time disability support worker defeated Anne Gardiner who had been elected general secretary in 2012 on the Progressive PSA ticket.
Gardiner abandoned the Progressives caucus shortly after her election and during her tenure focused on internal union reforms and favoured small target and multimedia campaigns around jobs and defending public services.
During the early days of his campaign to be US president, Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders wondered if the crowds that he saw on the street were headed to a baseball game, only to be told: “Actually they are on the way to hear you”.
This story illustrates how the Sanders message of free education, affordable health care, a $15 minimum wage, taxing the mega-rich and support for renewable energy has taken off.
Young Americans — the millennials — facing unpayable student debts, unaffordable health care, low wages and climate change inaction, are flocking to his campaign.
Feminist, resident activist, popular educator, councillor, public transport campaigner, mother, academic, environmentalist and true democrat, Margaret Henry, who passed away late last year in Newcastle, had many sides to her wonderful life.
Newcastle anti-racists are counter-mobilising again against Reclaim Australia, the anti-Muslim group, who are again attempting to establish a support base in the Hunter Region.
The far-right racists are using a proposal by Newcastle's Muslim Association to build a mosque and small funeral parlour in Buchanan, in the Hunter Valley, as a pretext to attack the Muslim Community.
Buchanan is a rural area just outside Kurri Kurri and close to the Hunter Expressway.
Two hundred Public Service Association (PSA) members were joined by people with disabilities, their relatives, friends and other trade unionists in a protest in Newcastle on November 4, as part of a four-hour strike against the privatisation of disability services.
The Baird government is using the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme as a cover to sack 13,000 workers in public disability services and gift state assets to private providers.
Radical solutions to poverty were put forward at a public conversation titled “Pushed to the Margins” held at the Newcastle City Hall on October 21.
The ABC’s Lateline co-presenter Emma Alberici hosted the forum and seemed to be taken aback by economist Professor Bill Mitchell’s simple solutions to poverty.
Asked by Alberici, “What causes unemployment?”, Mitchell responded: “Lack of jobs”.
Mitchell went on to advocate a “job guarantee”, where the government funds job creation through a massive programme of productive public works.
Two thousand activists for free and public education gathered in the Indian city of Bhopal on December 4.
This meeting was the culmination of a month-long series of marches and public meetings organised by the All India Forum for the Right to Education (AIFRTE). This action, under the banner of the All India Struggle for Public Education (AISSY), has been carried out across all of India’s five geographic regions with the aim to raise public consciousness about the assault on public education by pro-market and religious fundamentalist right-wing forces.
A vibrant student march against the federal government’s education cuts hit the streets of Newcastle on August 20.
At least half of the 180 protesters were high school students who had walked out of classes, some in defiance of threats of detention and suspension, to join the protest.
Year 12 student at Hunter School of Performing Arts Marianela O’Brien told Green Left Weekly that she joined the protest because “when Tony Abbot went to uni he had free education so why can’t my generation have the same?”
A long standing activist of anarchist persuasion, Peter had been a lecturer in media studies at the University of Western Sydney (UWS) until his retirement in 2005.
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