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Farmers are worried that the proposed privatisation of Fremantle Port will lead to a dramatic rise in their freight rates. The 800% rise in rents charged to stevedores by the newly privatised Port of Melbourne would be ringing some alarm bells. Closer to home are the disastrous consequences of the privatisation of Western Australia’s freight rail network via a secret 49-year lease signed in 2000 when Premier Colin Barnett was Minister for Transport.
The demonising of asylum seekers is an elaborate exercise in racist scapegoating designed to distract Australians from the real causes of anxiety and insecurity in their lives. We need to be absolutely uncompromising in our resistance to this toxic agenda.
ARMIDALE Come to a Women in Black silent vigil for peace. Mourning the victims of violence around the world. Saturday July 25 at 10.30am. Old Courthouse in the Mall. BRISBANE Watch a film: Selma. Follows the civil rights movement in the 1960s, with a focus on Martin Luther King Jr. Entry $10/$5 conc. Friday Jul 24 at 6pm. Brisbane Activist Centre, 74b Wickham St, Fortitude Valley. Ph Dom 0431 638 772. MELBOURNE Protest outside the ALP conference on Saturday July 25. Rally for clean energy at 11am. Organised by Getup!
Public sector workers strike against the deal, July 15. In the early hours of July 16, Greek parliament voted to accept the punitive July 12 funding deal put forward by eurozone lenders. The deal included many harsh austerity measures, including large-scale privatisation, that the SYRIZA-led government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had come to office pledging to oppose.
New strikes have hit Greece as anger flares over the latest deal pushed onto Greece by the Troika of European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund. Thousands of public sector workers from the ADEDY union took to the streets on July 15 as part of a general strike calling for the rejection of a raft of new austerity measures being put to the parliament by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
Doctors, nurses and their supporters protested on July 11 and 12 around Australia against the Border Force Act. The protests, organised by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War and Doctors Against the Border Force Act, were held in Darwin, Broome, Coffs Harbour, Adelaide, Bendigo, Melbourne and Sydney. Earlier in the week an open letter from 40 current detention centre workers said they would defy the Border Force Act was published.
"The age of entitlement is over". I'm sure it seemed like a good slogan when it was cooked up, at least to the party room hacks and spin doctors in Tony Abbott’s government. Of course it was only going to be a matter of time before they tripped over their own words: “The age of entitlement is over”.
Public submissions to the NSW Planning Assessment Commission (PAC) over July 12 and 13 were overwhelmingly against a fourth coal terminal (T4) to be located at Kooragang Island, near Newcastle.
More than 150 people, including Reef town locals and traditional owners, gathered outside the Brisbane headquarters of Indian mining corporation Adani on July 16.
The Greek Parliament voted in the early hours of July 16 to back the deal agreed to by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on the tough economic measures demanded by Greece's creditors. The vote came despite street protests and strikes -- and in the face of a statement released the day before by the governing SYRIZA party's central committee against the deal.
As part of Peace Convergence 2015, three “Quaker Grannies for Peace” set up a tea table on July 13, blocking the access road to Queensland's Samuel Hill military base, which is being used for the Talisman Sabre military exercises. They set up a table and chairs and invited soldiers to have tea and cake in order to engage in dialogue with them.
Police in The Hague arrested 42-year-old tourist Mitch Henriquez on June 27. Henriquez, who was born on the Dutch-Caribbean island of Aruba, was visiting the city’s Night at the Park festival. The statement released by the public prosecutor claimed that he told police he had a gun and then resisted arrest. This prompted five police officers to beat Henriquez until he was unconscious.