More than 55 people met at the University of Technology, Sydney on May 28 discuss the upcoming Stop Bush! demonstrations, which will be held during the September APEC summit in Sydney. The meeting was a promising sign that people believe APEC is an important opportunity to build the campaigns that can challenge Prime Minister John Howard and US President George Bushs neoliberal agenda.
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KURANDA More than 100 people took part in a march and festival to mark Recognition Day on May 27. The march was organised by the Kuranda Womens Group. Speakers at the festival opening included Judi Enoch, secretary of the Ngoonbi Cooperative Society, Terry OShane and other local Indigenous activists and elders. They highlighted the need to be conscious of Indigenous peoples history of struggle and the sharp attacks on their rights and living conditions in the decade the Howard government has been in power.
A June 1 student conference held at Sydney University resolved to make George Bush’s visit to Australia and the September APEC summit in Sydney a focus for the anti-war and environment campaigns on campus.
On May 30, an Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network forum heard from Adam Leeman and Federico Fuentes, two participants in this years May Day brigade to revolutionary Venezuela.
The following letter, signed by a range of prominent figures in Britain, calls for respect for the Venezuelan governments decision not to renew RCTVs broadcasting licence. Signatories to the letter, which appeared in the British Guardian on May 26, include Tony Benn, John Pilger, Tariq Ali, Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter and various MPs and trade union and student leaders.
Environmental activists, excluded from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperations May 27-30 energy summit, erected a large inflatable cooling tower outside the fenced-off security zone surrounding Darwins Parliament House. Energy ministers from the US, Australia and the Pacific rim failed to come up with any solutions to the global warming crisis, reaffirming instead the dominant role of fossil fuels in future energy supplies.
On May 31, a picket of 50 people organised by Solidarity Unity protested outside the offices of Mighty River Power, which supplies electricity to Mercury Energy, the company responsible for the death of an Auckland woman on May 29.
The Canadian-owned Barrick Gold Corporation, the worlds largest gold producer, is exploring, building and operating huge, open-pit goldmines on nearly every continent on the planet.
Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change
By Clive Hamilton
Black Inc. Agenda, 2007.
266 pages, $29.95 (pb)
By Clive Hamilton
Black Inc. Agenda, 2007.
266 pages, $29.95 (pb)
The union movement must take urgent action to end the ALPs backflips on industrial relations.
May 31 marked the first day of a court challenge launched by the Wilderness Society (TWS) against the federal government, which TWS claims has broken its own environmental laws. According to TWS, federal environment minister Malcolm Turnbull acted illegally by allowing a proposed billion-dollar Gunns Ltd pulp mill in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley to escape proper assessment by the independent Resource Planning and Development Commission.
Therese Rein has done very nicely under the Coalition government — particularly since its 1996 decision to privatise the Commonwealth Employment Service and set up a private Job Network to steamroll the unemployed into often underpaid and unrewarding jobs. From humble beginnings in Brisbane in 1989, Rein has built up an international employment business with an annual turnover of $175 million. She should be a poster child for the benefits of the Coalition’s privatisation drive for business, except that she is also the wife of federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd.
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