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Sydney region: Tuesday, March 11, 6pm: Kings Cross ALP branch "Stop the sell-off" community forum. With Mark Diesendorf, Bob Walker and Betty Con Walker. Reg Murphy Hall, cnr Greenknowe Ave and Betty Bay Road, Elizabeth Bay. Ph Catherine 0421 562
More than 500 Fire Brigade Employee Union members turned out for a mass meeting on February 22 to discuss the progress of their campaign for a decent wage increase. Five hundred on-duty members voted by fax. The NSW government’s offer of a 4% pay rise with loss of conditions was rejected by a vote of 1025 to two, with 25 abstentions. A further motion endorsing the union’s log of claims including a wage rise of between $218 and $354 over three years was approved by a similar margin.
There Will Be Blood
Written & directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair
With Daniel Day-Lewis & Paul Dano. Oil!
By Upton Sinclair
Penguin, 1927
560 pages, $24.95 (pb).
ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil corporation, has launched an attack on the government of socialist President Hugo Chavez and the process of social change, known as the Bolivarian revolution, that aims to eradicate poverty and develop Venezuela’s economy along pro-people lines.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) is holding a series of forums across the country to get feedback from delegates about the direction that the union is taking. The first was held in Melbourne on February 19, attracting more than 300 delegates from the metals, print, food and T&S divisions from across Victoria.
While the Venezuelan government of socialist President Hugo Chavez has made headlines for its battle with ExxonMobil, Venezuela is not the only country under attack by the world’s largest oil corporation for refusing to submit to its dictates.
A February 22 meeting between Western Australian prisons minister Margaret Quirk, Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Dennis Eggington and WA Deaths in Custody Watch Committee chairperson Marc Newhouse resulted in some ministerial promises of reforms following the the death in custody of an Aboriginal elder on January 27.
The federal Labor government has sought to play down the call made by its chief climate change policy adviser for it to go well beyond its target of a 60% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In an interim report released on February 21, Professor Ross Garnaut said that by 2050 global carbon dioxide emissions would need to be reduced to 90% of 2000 levels if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided.
In recent weeks, external and internal pressure against Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, as the process of change led by socialist President Hugo Chavez is known, has intensified dramatically.
Parliamentarians are grossly overpaid. A backbencher gets paid more than twice median income, and that’s before adding allowances, generous superannuation, free air travel for life, etc. The PM gets double that: $330,356 (before expenses and perks). Last year, and the year before, the pollies awarded themselves a 7% pay rise while average wages rose 3.8%, putting the recently announced parliamentarians’ one-year salary freeze into perspective.
On February 1 the Bolivian government introduced its “dignity pension” — a pension payment for those over 60 years-old that is a first of its kind in Bolivia.
A report released on February 18 in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health found massive deficiencies in Aboriginal housing in Australia, and located this as a key cause of Aboriginal disadvantage and poor health. The study was conducted over seven years and looked at over 4000 residences in 132 Aboriginal communities.