On October 3, immigration minister Kevin Andrews justified cutting the number of African refugees accepted into Australia using racism, alleging that African refugees were not adjusting too well to Australian society.
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Two public screenings of Constructing Fear have been held in Brisbane the first on September 19 to an enthusiastic crowd of 200 people at the University of Queensland organised by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU). The film exposes the role of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the anti-union taskforce set up by the Howard government following the recommendations of the Cole Royal Commission.
The first comprehensive research study on how Australian working life is being transformed under Work Choices reveals that Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs individual contracts) are eating away at workers wages, conditions and job security.
On September 19, 100 print and maintenance workers at printing company PMPs Wacol site south-west of Brisbane took protected industrial action for 48 hours in a bid to bring the company to the negotiating table for a new enterprise bargaining agreement. The workers were supported by their union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), which formed a peaceful picket line at the workplace entrance.
The Youth Affairs Council of Victoria (YACV) is calling on the Victorian government to consider lowering the voting age, following the tabling of a report in the ACT parliament recommending 16- and 17-year-olds in the territory be given the vote.
The federal environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has given government approval to the construction of the Gunns pulp mill in the Tasmanian Tamar Valley, planned to be the biggest pulp mill in the world. The decision, announced on October 4, attached an extra the 24 conditions to the approval, on top of 24 conditions previously imposed.
Prostitution
In an opinion piece in the October 1 Melbourne Age ("Helping women make choices on prostitution") feminist academic Leslie Cannold makes some clumsy attempts to morally justify why it's a "good idea" to allow "brothels to operate in a
As we passed by the Tintaya open-pit copper mine, I was unprepared for the scene of utter desolation. The fully laden hired lorry was heading back to Arequipa from the highland town of Yauri, where my companions had purchased 20 head of ganado (cattle) earlier that morning. The cattle market had seemed impressive enough to my untutored eyes, but it was nothing like the old days, they informed me.
A statement by federal ALP leader Kevin Rudd that a Labor government would seek to have Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged with inciting genocide attracted front-page coverage in the October 3 Australian and ridicule from foreign minister Alexander Downer.
Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, led by socialist President Hugo Chavez, has captured the imagination of people around the world and sparked widespread commentary on the nature of the process of social change under way in the oil-rich South American nation.
Forty years after his assassination, Ernesto “Che” Guevara remains ubiquitous. His image is familiar to everyone. Taken by Alberto Korda, the famous photo of Che shows a young revolutionary looking into the middle-distance with an expression of intense, steely determination. The image has come to symbolise the struggle for Third Wold independence, and is synonymous with the Cuban Revolution, which overthrew a US-backed dictator to institutionalise people’s power.
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