Fifty protesters, and a larger-than life Nemo, protested outside Westpac's Sydney office on November 9.
Organised by Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC), the protesters handed more than 15,000 postcards to the bank calling on it not to fund the massive coalmining expansion at Galilee Basin, which would lead to the Great Barrier Reef being dredged to facilitate coal transport. The reef was put on the World Heritage List in 1981.
1033
In the 2010 Victorian elections the Greens scored about 30% of the vote in each of the Labor-held inner-city seats of Brunswick, Richmond and Melbourne.
They are campaigning hard to break into the Legislative Assembly in all three in the November 29 election. A poll reported in the November 7 Age predicted Greens wins in Richmond and Melbourne, but was not conducted in Brunswick.
Tim Read, a medical doctor and researcher, is the Greens candidate for Brunswick. He believes that parliament should stand up to big business.
More than 200 people marched through Gloucester on November 8 to protest against AGL’s bid to drill for coal seam gas (CSG). Bernadette Smith joined a contingent from Sydney and reports from the blockade campsite.
***
Over November 7 to 9, I camped with the Gloucester Protectors as part of a Sydney support contingent. Arriving on Friday afternoon we were met at the train station by a Gloucester Protector and taken to the Gloucester Protection Camp, only a five-minute drive away.
In keeping with its crusade to privatise every public activity it can get away with, the Australian government has outsourced the management of an Ebola treatment hospital in Sierra Leone to private provider Aspen Medical.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced on November 5 that the government would allocate $20 million to operate a British-built facility in the West African country over the next eight months.
The Great Artesian Basin is one of the world’s largest underground water reservoirs. It is the only source of water for towns and farms across almost a quarter of Australia, from far north Queensland to northern South Australia.
On November 7, the NSW Great Artesian Basin Advisory Group received a scientific report commissioned by the Artesian Bore Water Users Association (ABWUA). The report found that the reservoir’s recharge area is about a third as large as previously thought — covering less than 10% of the basin’s 1.7 million square kilometres.
Stephen Jolly, the Socialist Party candidate for Richmond, is a high profile activist with electoral runs on the board.
He came to prominence with the campaign to reopen Richmond Secondary College in the early 1990s, and has been on the frontlines of many campaigns in Melbourne’s inner north since, including recent efforts to stop the East West Link and to defend public housing.
Supporters of women's reproductive rights gathered outside NSW Parliament on November 13. The push to amend the NSW Crimes Act to grant a foetus personhood rights is likely to collapse after a controversial Private Member’s Bill failed to be debated in the Legislative Council.
Labor and Coalition candidates avoided participating in a climate change election forum held on November 12 in the marginal Labor/Greens seat of Northcote.
Last week local climate group, Darebin Climate Action Now (DCAN) held a mock climate forum outside Northcote Town Hall, with empty chairs for Labor and Liberal candidates. DCAN members held a banner: “Who is dodging climate debate?”
As one Liberal Party insider Sunday Age recently: “The last thing the Coalition wants to do is to draw attention to environment policy, because there isn’t one."
The Victorian Coalition government looks set to go down in an ignominious defeat at the November 29 state election.
Several recent polls have given Labor a healthy lead of about 56% to 44% in two-party preferred terms.
The Coalition was narrowly elected — to everyone’s surprise (including their own) — in 2010, and thus look like being the first one-term government in Victoria since 1955.
Next year will see the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the charter of rights that the barons of old England forced King John to sign when they cornered him at Runnymede-on-Thames in 1215.
While we may doubt that the barons intended that the rights they sought should apply to ordinary folk, Magna Carta nevertheless effectively introduced the legal concept of the presumption of innocence — the principle that an accused person is innocent until found guilty beyond reasonable doubt by a jury.
This statement was released on November 12 by Socialist Alliance candidate for Pascoe Vale, Sean Brocklehurst, and Socialist Alliance candidate for Geelong, Sarah Hathway, in the November 29 Victorian elections.
* * *
Ford, General Motors Holden and Toyota all plan to close their vehicle manufacturing operations in Australia over the next two or three years. Tens of thousands of workers will lose their jobs in car factories and in factories making car components.
One of the more important promises that Prime Minister Tony Abbott made in September last year was to create jobs at a rate of 200,000 a year. But the scorecard for the first year is just 105,500.
The official Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) October national unemployment figure remained the same as in September at 6.2%. However, in the ACT, which usually has the lowest unemployment rate in the country at less than 4%, this has increased over the last four months to 5.4%. This is a direct result of the federal government’s sacking of public sector workers.
- Previous page
- Page 3
- Next page