Rallies and other events took place around Australia on March 8-10 to mark International Women's Day. Pictured is Brisbane's rally. In Melbourne, around 300 people gathered on March 8 for a rally initiated by the Victorian Trades Hall Council under the theme of "women and work". Delegations from a wide range of unions and community groups protested the Howard government's vicious anti-union and anti-worker laws, which are having a disproportionately negative impact on women.
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In the run-up to the NSW elections both major parties are claiming to be able to run the economy better. But the release of the Australian Bureau of Statistics December quarter figures on March 7, which revealed that NSW is not technically in a recession, is likely to help the state ALP governments lead over Peter Debnams Liberals on March 24.
A spirited demonstration of 200 people marched to state parliament on March 9 to protest the poisoning of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is imprisoned in Turkey. Waving Kurdish and Australian flags and holding pictures of Ocalan, the founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the protesters chanted “Freedom for Ocalan, long live Kurdistan” and called for an end to the war in Kurdistan.
On March 7, 60 people joined with three comfort women survivors Jan Ruff OHerne AO, Hsie Mei Wu and Gil Won Ok, from Australia, Taiwan and Korea outside the Japanese Consulate in Martin Place.
Adelaide backpacker David Hicks will be arraigned before an illegally constituted military tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp on March 20 and face the retrospective and ill-defined charge of “material support for terrorism”.
The vice-president of Geelong Trades Hall, Christine Couzens, has been awarded the Jenny George Award for the advancement of women in unions. Couzens was presented with the award by Australian Council of Trade Unions president Sharan Burrow on March 7.
In Green Left Weekly #693 (http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/693/36019), we published an article broadly in favour of George Monbiot’s call for carbon rationing. Below, Gar Lipow critiques this as a strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Lipow is an Olympia-based environmental activist and can be contacted at garlpublic@comcast.net.
A tiny group dominates Australian politics and Labor leader Kevin Rudd recently met them. He knows very well that the key to Labors electoral success later this year is an accommodation with the Australian oligarchy.
PM John Howard and US President George Bush are in trouble over their war on terror. Two things help illustrate why this is the case, and how we can hasten them both into the dustbin of history.
One of Resistances main campaigns is to strengthen the movement across Australia to end the occupation of Iraq. As well as building the biggest possible protests on March 17-18, the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we are helping to organise contingents from around the country to join the mass convergence in Sydney when US President George Bush comes to the APEC meeting in September.
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