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.
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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.
Preliminary arguments have started in the retrial of Jack Thomas at the Supreme Court. The case demonstrates that the Howard government’s “anti-terror” laws can be used to criminalise non-terrorists.
In Papua New Guinea, 97% customary land ownership by the Indigenous people is recognised by the constitution. However, a powerful coalition is seeking to overturn this.
At a forum hosted by AidWatch and supported by the Research Initiative on International Activism UTS, Sylvia Mulung and Howard Sindana, community organisers from the Bismarck Ramu Group in Madang province, explained the struggle being organised against the privatisation of land.
According to a report by the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens Rights, between September 2000 (the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada) and July 2006, 68 pregnant women were forced to give birth at Israeli checkpoints in the Occupied Territories after Israeli soldiers barred them from crossing the road blocks to access hospitals and medical centres. Thirty-four infants and four pregnant women died at these checkpoints.
Last week, right-wing Sydney Radio 2GB shock jock Alan Jones was let off with a ticking-off from Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) for inciting on air the infamous anti-Lebanese bashing spree in Cronulla in 2005.
While the Howard government has succeeded in partially defusing David Hicks’s unjust imprisonment as an election issue, it has still not convinced most people that Hicks’s guilty plea means he is a terrorist.
Supporters of the Venezuelan and Cuban revolutions assembled on April 11 at the Iberoamerican square to commemorate the failure of the April 2002 US-backed coup against the government of Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chavez.
“There is no future for oil-dependent agriculture”, well-known Columban priest and Philippines-based anti-GMO campaigner Brian Gore told the WA launch of Say No to GMO (genetically modified organisms) on April 5.
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