In February 2016, I wrote an article for Green Left Weekly about that year’s Closing the Gap speech, with the headline “PM’s Closing the Gap speech — more Turnbullshit”. Aptly named I thought. But two years later nothing has changed.
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A group of activists from Grandmothers Against Removals (GMAR) and the Socialist Alliance gathered in front of NSW Parliament on February 9 to protest on the 10th anniversary of the national apology from former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
The longest running industrial dispute in Western Australia’s coalmining history ended on February 14 when, after 180 days of protected industrial action, maintenance workers at Griffin Coal returned to work. Workers voted on February 9 to accept a new enterprise agreement that gave them back their family friendly rosters, a liveable wage and entitlements.
The United Firefighters Union (UFU) is planning to rally outside Victoria’s state parliament house as part of a campaign against deceptive behaviour by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) board.
Hawkesbury Council in Sydney's far north-west voted at its January 30 meeting to reject an offer by NSW Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) to leave a "viewing platform" made from a section of the historic Windsor Bridge when the proposed Windsor Bridge Replacement Project has been completed.
Fourteen long years after young TJ Hickey was chased to his death in Waterloo, his family and the Indigenous Social Justice Association (ISJA) organised a moving rally in Waterloo, along the fence line where the young Kamilaroi man was killed.
Eighty people rallied in Dandenong, an outer Melbourne suburb, on February 11 against the planned deportation of Santharuban, a former member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who sought asylum in Australia after the defeat of the LTTE in 2009.
The LTTE fought for an independent Tamil homeland in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka. Former members of the movement continue to be "disappeared, detained, tortured, and harassed by the Sri Lankan security forces", according to a statement by the Tamil Refugee Council (TRC), which organised the rally.
Members of the Oakey Coal Action Alliance (OCAA) gathered in Acland on February 14 for the Queensland environment department’s decision on the environmental authority for New Hope Coal’s proposed Acland Stage 3 project.
Expecting the worst — that the department would reject the recommendation of the Land Court — local farmers and community members were overjoyed at the decision by Queensland’s Environment and Science Department to reject New Acland’s environmental authority amendment for the Stage 3 coalmine expansion.
Faten Ahmed was a 26-year-old with a rare form of cancer. She died in August while awaiting an Israeli permit to travel for chemotherapy and radiotherapy not available in the Gaza Strip, which has been subjected to a crippling Israeli siege since 2007.
She had previously missed eight hospital appointments after Israeli “security approval” was delayed or denied, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Ahmed was one of five women who died from cancer in that month alone while waiting for Israeli permission that never came.
Norwegian parliamentarian Bjornar Moxnes has officially nominated the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights for a Nobel Peace Prize. The leader of the left-wing Red Party explained that the BDS “should be supported without reservation by all democratically-minded people and states”.
A man waves over a roughly boarded fence, as a guard walks intimidatingly in front of it. A group of refugee protesters, sweltering in the hot sun in Leonora — a two day drive from Perth into the desert — wave back and yell “azadi”, the Farsi word for freedom.
I am one of the protesters and I am filming the protest.
One week earlier, just before the start of my second year at university, I opened an email from an activist group advertising a “Caravan of Compassion” to Leonora detention centre.
A few days later I was on the bus, barely knowing one other person.
Last year was the year of women’s truth-telling about sexual and domestic violence. It was also the year that 49 Australian women met violent deaths.
In the second month of this year, there has been no respite from the unceasing onslaught of violence against women and the resulting murders.
To study these deaths is to uncover a blunt, chilling fact: the most dangerous place in Australia for a woman to be — and the most dangerous company for her to be in — is at home with her male intimate partner on a Saturday night.
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