The results of the 2017 City of Greater Geelong Council elections have been declared, with Greens candidate Sarah Mansfield being elected in Brownbill Ward.
Mansfield won more than 17% of the primary vote. Her election was aided by a strong preference flow from residents who voted for Socialist Alliance (SA) candidates Sue Bull and Sarah Hathway.
Judge Carmen Lamela of Spain’s National High Court — direct descendant of the fascist Franco-era Court of Public Order — took the war of the Spanish state against the Catalan pro-independence government to a new level of judicial violence on November 2.
The Socialist Alliance is running in the November 25 Queensland state elections to help build an anti-capitalist alternative to the two-party system. We are also supporting the re-election of progressive independent MP Rob Pyne in Cairns and calling for a vote for the Greens in other seats.
A concerted campaign to stop Gloucester Resources Limited’s open-cut coalmine on agricultural land in Gloucester has been rewarded. The NSW Department of Planning and the Environment recommended on October 23 that GRL’s Rocky Hill mine not be given approval.
New Zealand Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, who says capitalism has been a “blatant failure”, became the country’s new, and youngest ever, prime minister on October 19.
Asked a few days after becoming PM if capitalism had failed New Zealanders, 37-year-old Ardern responded: “If you have hundreds of thousands of children living in homes without enough to survive, that’s a blatant failure. What else could you describe it as?”
Victoria became the first state to have a Renewable Energy Target (RET) written into law on October 20. The Victorian RET has been set at 25% renewable energy by 2020, and 40% by 2025.
Writing in the October 28 New York Times, conservative columnist David Brooks said the preceding week was “when Donald Trump and Steve Bannon solidified their grip on the Republican Party and America’s national government”.
Brooks speaks for the Republican establishment — and sorely deplores this development.
Victoria is set to trial a safe injecting room, where users will be able to inject their drug of choice in a medically supervised safe space. The trial will run for at least two years, followed by a review.
It will be the first injecting room in Victoria and the second in Australia, after an injecting room was established in Kings Cross, Sydney, in 2001.
The Che Guevara stamp produced by the Irish republic’s postal service (An Post) has sold out its initial 120,000 print run. The stamp was released to mark the 50th anniversary of the Latin American freedom fighter’s murder on October 9, 1967 by CIA-backed Bolivian state.
The announcement confounds right-wing critics, who opposed the stamp. An Post has described the demand for the €1 stamp — using Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick’s image of the revolutionary icon — as “unprecedented”.
After a concerted campaign by staff, trade unions and the community, the NSW government announced on October 27 that Shellharbour Hospital in the Illawarra will remain in public hands.
The campaign forced the government to cancel its proposed public-private partnership (PPP) plan and instead proceed with a $251 million redevelopment of the hospital on its current site.
It is an understatement to say that relations between the US and North Korea are very tense.
The US government continues to threaten to further tighten economic sanctions on North Korea, and launch a military attack to destroy the country’s missiles and nuclear weapons infrastructure. For its part, the North says it will respond to any attack with its own strikes against US bases in the region and even the US itself.
International students in New South Wales face higher cost of living expenses than their counterparts in other states. This is one of the reasons students at Western Sydney University (WSU) have decided to launch a campaign calling on the state government to grant them public transport concessions.
“New South Wales is the only state where international students do not have the same rights as domestic students and cannot access the same facilities,” Daniele Fulvi told Green Left Weekly.