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PERTH — Protests were held outside Woodside Petroleum’s office on January 22 and 25 against Woodside’s Pluto gas project on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. Protesters highlighted that if work proceeds on the unique heritage site, it will result in the destruction of a large number of Aboriginal rock carvings. The protests were called by the recently initiated Friends of Australian Rock Art.

Activists will descend on parliament house in Canberra on February 6 to demand that politicians do more to secure David Hicks’ release from the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

At a meeting in Brazil on April 26, 2006, plans moved ahead between Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil for a major transcontinental oil pipeline. The pipeline would be 10,000 kilometres long and would link the four countries plus Paraguay and Uruguay.

Annette Peardon was nine years old when she and her brother were forcibly removed from their family on Cape Barren Island. They spent their youth in a series of foster homes and institutions around Tasmania. Last November, Tasmania’s parliament passed the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Children Bill 2006, the country’s first compensation law. Green Left Weekly’s Susan Austin spoke with Peardon about the significance of this law, and her struggle for justice.