The Howard governments changes to electoral legislation, passed last year, will mean a large portion of young people who are of voting age will be left off the electoral roll for the November 24 federal election. This legislation an obvious move to bar certain voters from the political process affects mainly those who are statistically more likely to vote against the government, such as the young, homeless people, house-renters and those who speak English as a second language.
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In August 2005 Workers Radio Sydney emerged on to the Sydney breakfast radio scene. In the two years since the first broadcast, the shows producer and presenter, Craig Bulley, has established a dedicated and growing audience who tune in between 6am and 9am weekday mornings for a hearty breakfast of music and politics. The show has become a listeners hub for unionists, activists and community campaigners, as well as the many concerned Australian workers and their families who rely on the show for information about the attacks on their rights and conditions under the Howard government and its Work Choices regime.
On October 16, events in more than 150 countries marked World Food Day, which commemorates the founding of the UNs Food and Agriculture Organisation, with the theme of the right to food.
Victorias nurses are fighting three enemies: the state Labor government, the hospital administrations, and the federal Coalition government.
Tasmanian high school, college and university students are planning to walk out of class on November 1 to protest federal environment minister Malcom Turnbull’s approval of the Gunns’ pulp mill.
After winning a stunning 82% of the vote in the April 14 referendum for a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution, Ecuadors left-wing president Rafael Correa scored his third major victory in a year on September 30 with his party, Country Alliance, winning 70% of the votes for the new assembly.
Fractures have emerged in Respect the Unity Coalition, a group formed in January 2004 by an alliance that drew together expelled Labour MP George Galloway (now Respects sole MP), the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and anti-war activists. On August 23, Galloway issued a letter to Respects National Council titled It was the best of times, it was the worst of times criticising the groups lack of organisation and custom of anathematisation in the organisation which is deeply unhealthy and has been the ruin of many a left-wing group before us.
Victorias nurses are fighting three enemies: the state Labor government, the hospital administrations, and the federal Coalition government.
US President George Bush has opposed US Senate legislation to fund health care for the nuclear-test-affected Marshallese. Sixty-seven US nuclear bombs were detonated in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958.
Ali Beg Humayun was threatened with deportation by the immigration department (DIAC) on October 8. Humayun, a queer Pakistani man, has been locked up for over two-and-a-half years in the Villawood detention centre and is currently appealing a Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) decision not to grant him refugee status.
On October 12, PM John Howard announced his plan to hold a referendum to alter the preamble to the Australian constitution to include an acknowledgment of the original inhabitants of Australia. This is a departure from Howard’s historic position against “symbolic” gestures of reconciliation — a position that in the past has earned him the ire of Indigenous groups, who in 2000 literally turned their backs on Howard when he refused to apologise for previous governments’ complicity in the horrendous policies that led to the Stolen Generations.
The Socialist Alliance’s anti-war campaign coordinator, Pip Hinman, has offered her condolences to the family of trooper David Pearce, recently killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan’s Oruzgan province.
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