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Sydney rally says 'Hands off Medicare!'

"No GP Co-payment, Not Now, Not Ever! Hey Hockey, Hands Off Medicare!" was the theme of a rally organised by the Save Medicare Committee in Martin Place on October 23. More than 200 people attended the rally, which was followed by a march to state parliament. Nadine Flood, national secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), told the crowd: “The next stage of the [federal] government's attack on our public health system is the plan to sell off Medicare. The government wants to move the work from the public to the private sector." Flood said 6000 jobs were at risk.

Exposed: corporate tax dodgers hiding $32 trillion in tax havens

Green Left Weekly and ActionAid will be co-sponsoring a Political Economy Society seminar at Sydney University on October 29 to discuss the case for greater international efforts to combat corporate tax avoidance before the G20 summit. Large corporations systematically avoid paying the statutory level of company tax — a low 30% in Australia — by numerous means including siphoning funds to notorious international tax havens.

Ireland: Gov't thrashed in by-elections as huge march protests water charges

Huge crowds demonstrated against water charges on the streets of Dublin's city centre on October 12 as voters delivered a stunning message of “no confidence” to the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government in two by-elections. Traffic in Dublin’s city centre came to a standstill due to the unprecedented scale of the anti-austerity march. About 100,000 people took part in the march, which took one hour and twenty minutes to pass the Spire in O’Connell Street.

West Papua: Journalists to face trial

Thomas Dandois and Valentine Bourrat, two French journalists arrested by Indonesian authorities on August 6 while reporting on West Papua's independence movement, will face trial on October 20, AFP reported on October 14. Despite a petition signed by more than 8800 people, the journalists will go on trial in a local court of West Papua for “abusive use of entry visas”.

Bolivia leads climate change fight

Bolivian President Evo Morales was re-elected for his third term on October 12 with more than 60% of the vote.

Melbourne councillor says heatwaves should be treated as emergencies

Heatwaves are still not considered an emergency by state governments, but they should be. There was a 24% increase in the number of deaths during the four day heatwave in Victoria in January. An additional 167 people died in the week of the heatwave when the temperature was above 41 degrees for four consecutive days in Melbourne and more than 45 degrees in other parts of the state. In 2009, there were an additional 374 deaths during the heatwave in the week before the Black Saturday bushfires.