SYDNEY — On June 9, 100 people rallied in the rain at Town Hall, part of an international week of action to mark the 40th anniversary of the June 1967 war and to demand an end to the Israeli occupation. Protests, public forums and other events also took place in cities around Australia.
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Under pressure to prove his government has answers to the global warming crisis, on June 3 PM John Howard backed the corporate polluter-friendly recommendations of his Task Group on Emissions Trading, set up on December 10.
Forty protesters were met by hundreds of police including members of the riot squad and mounted police as they gathered to picket PM John Howards attendance at a $250-a-head Asia Society function on June 6.
The trial of the “Pine Gap Four” in Alice Springs is continuing with the Crown lawyer arguing that the jury should not be determining the reasonableness of the activists’ actions. Michael Maurice QC argued that, “Engaging in activities to disrupt the implementation of public policy can never be reasonable”.
Since federal ALP leader Kevin Rudd outlined Labor’s “Work Choices lite” on April 17 — promising that a Labor government would maintain the Coalition’s ban on strikes outside of bargaining periods and secret ballots — Labor’s full-scale retreat on industrial relations has continued.
Activists from the Stop Bush Coalition have condemned moves to make NSW into a police state during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in September. The government introduced legislation into NSW parliament on June 7 that will give police extraordinary powers for two weeks around the time of the summit.
The Socialist Alliance supports the Stop Bush Coalition’s call for a mass protest when the world’s biggest war criminal, US President George Bush, attends the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney in September. A mass protest is exactly what the John Howard and NSW governments (and the federal Labor opposition) don’t want - and should get.
At midnight on June 4, around 2800 kitchen staff, orderlies and hospital cleaners were set to be locked out of their workplaces by four contracting companies Spotless, OCS, ISS and Compass in hospitals across New Zealand. However, last-minute negotiations between the Service and Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota (SFWU) and the District Health Board averted the lockout.
Hundreds of Aborigines and community supporters will wear bright yellow wristbands to the Townsville court on June 12. They will be gathering to observe the trial of Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, who has been charged with the manslaughter and assault of Mulrunji Doomadgee on November 19, 2004, on Palm Island.
Global warming, workers rights and opposition to the Iraq war are key campaigns this year, a Socialist Alliance state conference on May 19 decided.
More than 1 million public servants across South Africa have embarked on the largest public sector industrial campaign in the countrys history. On June 1, more than 700,000 workers downed pens and clipboards for an indefinite stoppage, while another 300,000 essential workers, who are prohibited from striking, joined huge nationwide marches, pickets and other protest actions. While the immediate demand is for a significant pay increase, an important undercurrent of the mass action is working-class and poor peoples growing dissatisfaction with the pro-rich policies of the African National Congress (ANC) government.
The corporate owned- and controlled-media’s accounts of recent events in Venezuela give the impression that a new student movement is fighting for their democratic rights against an increasingly autocratic government. This is testimony to the way the corporate media turns reality on its head — making the victim look like the aggressor and vice versa.
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