Socialist Alliance’s Sue Bolton spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Dave Holmes about her work as an elected socialist local councillor in Moreland, a municipality in Melbourne.
This is the fourth in a series of interviews with Bolton. You can find the whole interview at links.org.au.
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Marriage Equality has come to Ireland through a popular referendum. The result was hailed by the May 23 New York Times as placing Ireland “at the vanguard of social change”.
This will be surprising to many, considering Ireland is a country in which transgender status is not recognised by the state, abortion is illegal, gay couples are denied access to surrogacy, unmarried couples cannot adopt, and homosexuality was decriminalised as recently as 1994.
Last week, the Gippsland environment group Goongerah Environment Centre (GEC) was shortlisted for the prestigious United Nations World Environment Day Awards in the Habitat Restoration and Biodiversity category.
The announcement came as the Victorian government was threatening to prosecute GEC volunteers for exposing an illegal rainforest logging operation.
The federal government wants to allow burning native forest waste to qualify for renewable energy subsidies under the Renewable Energy Target (RET).
They reached a compromise with Labor early this month for a renewable energy target of 33 gigawatt hours (GWh).
However, negotiations have since broken down due to the federal government’s fine print inclusion of burning native forest biomass in furnaces and the retention of two-yearly reviews of the RET.
On May 19, the federal government’s Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption released a 116-page discussion paper recommending a swathe of new attacks on union rights.
The proposals give the clearest indication so far of the likely outcome of the expensive inquisition into the union movement when the commission releases its findings in December.
The document presents little more than a sweeping wish list of restrictions on the rights of union officials and the ability of unions to carry out their work to benefit members.
Celebrations and street parties broke out across Ireland after the success of the May 22 referendum to legalise same-sex marriages.
“Same-sex couples could be married in Ireland by the end of the year after a referendum described as a 'social revolution' solidly backed equal rights,” the Morning Star said on May 25.
Exorbitant gas and electricity bills are threatening Victorian living standards.
The Essential Services Commission (ESC) of Victoria reported that more than 34,000 households were disconnected from essential utilities in 2013/14.
The residential electricity disconnection rate increased this year to 1.47 disconnections per 100 customers, a 36% increase on the 1.07 disconnections in 2012/13.
The ESC also reported an increase in the gas disconnection rate to 1.33 disconnections per 100 customers, a 42% increase on the rate in 2012/13.
A 59-year-old Aboriginal man died in Darwin on May 21 while being held under controversial new “paperless arrest laws”. These laws give police the powers to arrest people for summary offences — such as “obscenity”, undue noise, offensive language — and hold them for up to four hours at a time.
In NSW, a program that has been proved to prevent Aboriginal deaths in custody has lost funding under the federal government’s ironically named Indigenous Advancement Strategy.
Celebrating referendum victory in Dublin. Photo: An Phoblacht.
As most of Ireland celebrates marriage equality – passed overwhelmingly in a May 22 referendum - the six counties in its north carved off and still claimed by Britain remain excluded.
Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism
Edited by Miranda Kiraly & Meagan Tyler
Published by Connor Court, 2015
With Miley Cyrus declaring herself “one of the biggest feminists in the world”, and Beyonce performing at the 2014 MTV Music Awards in front of a huge illuminated sign that read “Feminist”, it would appear that feminism has gone mainstream.
The township of Camberwell in the Hunter Valley and Camberwell coalmine in the background.
Early this month, Beyond Zero Emissions published a report called Fossil Economy, which highlighted the potential economic risks to Australia because of its heavy dependence on fossil fuel exports.
A new enterprise bargaining agreement reached by the Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees’ Association (SDA) is set to leave thousands of low-paid workers worse off, according to detailed analysis conducted by union official Josh Cullinan, the May 24 Sydney Morning Herald said.
“Cullinan, who works for the National Tertiary Education Union, did the analysis in a personal capacity, estimated Coles could be saving more than $20 million a year in wages by underpaying its staff.
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