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Moments of resistance to refugee cruelty

Australia’s refugee policy over the past 25 years has resulted in a detention process best described as “Hell on Earth”.

Mandatory detention was first introduced in May 1992 by the Labor government with the support of the opposition and has been marked with increasing human rights abuses including deliberate medical negligence, sexual assault by guards, self-immolation and murder.

It suffocates people’s hope, as many people have been in detention for more than four years with no certainty of ever being released.

Anti-fascist action at Sydney University

Racist and fascist groups have graffitied Sydney University. In mid-April, a pro-Le Pen group — supporters of the far right candidate in the French presidential elections for the virulently anti-Muslim, anti-refugee National Front — graffitied the campus.

No one can question this government’s commitment to destroying the planet

Say what you will about the members of the Coalition government, but they have principles and they stick to them. In particular, the principle of working to destroy this godforsaken Hellhole of a planet as rapidly as humanly possible.

And so when, amid a growing campaign against Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine in Queensland, Westpac ruled out funding the mega-mine project, federal resources minister Matt Canavan did not hold back.

Will we get the right to choose in NSW?

The decades’ long campaign to take abortion out of the NSW Crimes Act is coming to a head. A Greens bill to do this and enact safe zones around abortion clinics will go to the NSW Parliament on May 11.

Neoliberalism and the struggle for social solidarity

Today’s crisis of the established political parties and the rise of far-right political projects are linked to the long-running capitalist crisis in which neoliberalism is immiserating the working class and small producers.

Santos faces avalanche of opposition to Narrabri gas project

Thousands of submissions are being written across NSW opposing oil and gas giant Santos’s environmental impact statement (EIS) for its Narrabri Gas Project in the Pilliga. Before the May 22 deadline, thousands more will be written.

If the community’s views are heard, Santos’ plan to drill 850 coal seam gas (CSG) wells at 425 sites in and around the Pilliga State Forest near Narrabri — covering an area of about 1000 hectares — will be canned. 

Stop the cashless welfare card banner

Cashless welfare card costs

The federal government is spending up to $18.9 million to trial the cashless welfare card for 1850 people.

Call to stop eviction of public housing tenant in Millers Point

Peter Muller, one of a handful public housing tenants valiantly hanging on to their homes in Millers Point, Sydney, told Green Left Weekly that he has been served with an eviction notice for 9.30am, Tuesday May 9. He's called on supporters of public housing to turn up in numbers at 32 High St, Millers Point.

"After me, all the remaining Milllers Point tenants are ages pensioners," said Muller, an electrician and a proud member of the Electrical Trades Union.

Video by Peter Boyle for Green Left Weekly.

AGL plans to bypass gas

Australia’s largest energy company, AGL Energy, says Australia’s transition away from a coal-powered national grid to renewables will largely bypass gas, and shift straight to wind and solar.

As politicians and the gas lobby talk about the need to guarantee supply of gas, the company founded 180 years ago as the Australian Gas Light Company, says the combination of wind and solar and battery storage is already cheaper than new gas generators.

New campaign to repower NSW with clean energy

A new campaign to “Repower NSW with clean energy” was launched on April 19, organised by the NSW Nature Conservation Council (NCC).

Professor Lesley Hughes, from Macquarie University told the crowd that human-induced climate change over the past 50 years meant the “Earth is warming 170 times faster now than in the past 7000 years”.

Ambitious conference to discuss support for Rojava

“The Rojava Revolution in Northern Syria: An experiment in radical democracy, feminism and ecology” is the title of a conference to be held here over June 30 and July 1.

A joint project of the Australians for Kurdistan solidarity group and the Kurdish Democratic Community Centre (formerly the Kurdish Association of Victoria), the event aims to spread knowledge about the Rojava Revolution and build support for it.

High Court challenge to Tasmania’s draconian anti-protest laws

Former Greens leader Bob Brown and Hobart nurse Jessica Hoyt began a landmark High Court challenge to Tasmania's draconian anti-protest laws on May 2. The 2014 legislation allows police to stop protests before they even begin on business premises and access areas.

The two were arrested for peaceably protesting against the logging of the Lapoinya State Forest near Burnie on Tasmania’s north-west coast in January last year. Police dropped the charges against Brown and Hoyt after they began their High Court challenge.