The streets of downtown Los Angeles became a sea of red shirts stretching for many city blocks on April 7 when at least 20,000 people turned out for one of the largest immigrant rights demonstrations since the big marches last year.
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On April 8, police arrested 14 protesters at the Lake Cowal Gold Mine, 47 kilometres from West Wyalong in central-western NSW. Activists had locked themselves to mining machinery and entered the offices of the mine, in support of demands by the Wiradjuri traditional landowners that the mine cease operations. Some 100 Aboriginal and environmental protesters participated in the action.
A coalition of community groups including Friends of the Earth, the National Union of Students, the Stop the War Coalition, the Australian Student Environment Network, and the Australian Youth Climate Change Coalition have initiated a public lobby outside the ALP national conference beginning on April 27 to support delegates who are standing up to the proposed changes to the ALPs long-standing policy on uranium mining.
On April 13, ABC Radio reported that the ALP state and territory governments would be lobbying the federal government to agree to a goal of a 60% reduction in Australian greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. They suggested that if the Howard government maintained its opposition, the state and territory governments would attempt to reach these goals without them. While opposed to the premiers proposal, even PM John Howard has recently acknowledged that there is a threat from climate change caused by human activity, leaving the greenhouse sceptic argument to the conservative fringe.
In the lead-up to Labors national conference, beginning in Sydney on April 27, WA-based advocacy group Project SafeCom has urged supporters of refugees rights to pressure the ALP leadership to ensure that a government led by Kevin Rudd wont commit the same human rights abuses witnessed during PM John Howards reign (some of which, such as the Tampa affair, were carried out with ALP complicity).
A dispute at Preston Motors has been resolved after an almost five-week-long campaign by workers, the National Union of Workers (NUW), Union Solidarity and other community groups. The companys initial offer of a mere $4 a week pay rise left the workers with little choice but to fight for their rights. A community picket line was established and held tight while the dispute was underway, and the company finally agreed to negotiate with the workers union, the NUW.
On April 2 the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and Oxfam Australia published Close the Gap, a report highlighting the shameful state of Indigenous health in Australia. The report ranked Australia as the worst at improving the health of indigenous people compared with other wealthy nations.
While NSW police minister David Campbell has inspected the new APEC command in Sydney in which the state government is wasting millions of dollars anti-war, environmental and workers rights activists are preparing to send their message to US President George Bush, PM John Howard and other APEC leaders in Sydney in early September.
Following the trial of Tasers among Queenslands Special Emergency Response Team, they are now being introduced to all duty police officers in the Brisbane and south-east police regions, according to a joint statement issued by Queensland police minister Judy Spence and Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson.
Citing low pay, management intimidation and poor safety, metal construction workers at the Coles Myer distribution centre in Somerton resigned their casual employment with labour hire contractor Busicom Solutions on April 11 and set up a 24-hour protest outside the centre.
On April 13, the Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) reported that Yuan Hui Min had been taken from Villawood detention centre to hospital. She is one of ten detainees on hunger strike in protest at the unjust situation of detention. The hunger strikers are calling for an end to forcible deportations, a maximum detention period of six months and for the immediate release of two detainees being held incommunicado.
Indonesian police have named two new suspects in the murder of human rights activist Munir, who died of arsenic poisoning on a Garuda flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam on September 7, 2004.
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