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SWAZILAND: Commonwealth ignores violent attacks against peaceful Swazis

BY JABULANE MATSEBULA The Commonwealth went ahead with the Global 2003 Smart Partnership International Dialogue (SPID) conference in Swaziland on August 12-16. In deciding to hold the conference, the Commonwealth showed total disregard for the

Asylum seekers' deportation delayed

BY SARAH STEPHEN According to refugee supporters who are in regular contact with asylum seekers in the Baxter detention centre, on August 22 there were a number of suicide attempts following news that more than a dozen Iranian asylum seekers faced

News briefs

Joh's claim for compensation 'a joke' BRISBANE — National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services secretariat chairman Frank Guivarra has labelled former Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's claim for damages for "pain and

Tampa 2 years on: Restoring justice to asylum seeker policy

BY MARY CROCK Australia has had a strange love-hate relationship with refugees for as long as anyone can remember. We have accepted more than 650,000 refugees as migrants since World War II, as part of the "planned" program pursued to build

ALP winds-up Walk Against War Coalition

BY PIP HINMAN SYDNEY — After trying for months to split the Walk Against the War Coalition (WAWC), the ALP finally managed to get its way on August 18. At a special meeting of the coalition, attended by close to 100 people, the ALP mustered the

'Dry zone' laws are racist

BY EMMA MURPHY ADELAIDE — The August 13 City Messenger ran a front-page article that supported abandoning "dry zone" by-laws in the South Australian capital's city centre. In the article, the Catholic Church's vicar-general Monsignor David

Community scepticism at local pool advisory group

BY TONY ILTIS MELBOURNE — Residents of the western suburb of Sunshine who have been campaigning for nine years to have a local outdoor pool reopened have reacted with scepticism to the setting up of a 25-member advisory group to be headed by

Theatre beyond the factory walls

BY REBECCA CONROY SYDNEY — What do Indonesian factory workers making theatre in their spare time have in common with radical TV producers working out of a shack in Marrickville? In February, a rag-tag crew of community TV producers will be

Save the Tarkine

BY ALEX MILNE The Tarkine is the largest unprotected wilderness area in Tasmania, covering some 377,000 hectares of the state's northwest. It is a beautiful and dramatic region, with wild rivers, deep gorges and vast rainforests. Here, some of the

NTEU rally protests attack on higher education

BY MARCUS PABIAN MELBOURNE — On August 21, 300 members of he National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) were joined by delegates to the ACTU congress in a protest rally against the Howard government's proposed changes to university funding which

AMWU organiser sacked by fax

BY MARCE CAMERON BRISBANE — On August 19, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union organiser Maggie May came to work and found a fax on her chair from AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron telling her that she would no longer be working for the

ACTU congress fails to break from lobbyist strategy

BY SUE BOLTON MELBOURNE — The ACTU executive's choice of guest speakers at the peak union body's 2003 congress, held August 18-21, left a bitter taste in the mouths of many unionists. On the second day, Qantas board "chairman" Margaret Jackson