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On September 17, the Uber Bar in Brisbane announced a new policy of refusing entry to high-profile sports players. According to the owner, Jim Davies, the ban was imposed following numerous “incidents” widely reported in the media.
University of Queensland (UQ) women’s collective members discovered racist, sexist and homophobic messages covering the Women’s Room on the morning of September 17.
Newspaper articles sometimes tell so much of the truth that they prompt raids by the Australian Federal Police.
“I’m a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention”, affirmed US President George W. Bush, in his September 24 television speech to promote the biggest corporate bailout plan since the Great Depression. “I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business.”
Speaking from within the belly of the beast, Bolivia’s indigenous President Evo Morales announced at the 63rd United Nations General Assembly that the world today is paying witness to a “fight between rich and poor, between socialism and capitalism”.
“Save the Tamil children in Sri Lanka”; “Cricket Australia — don’t play cricket in the Tamil killing field”; “Mr Rudd <197< condemn Sri Lanka for breaking the peace accords”. These were some of the messages on placards and banners held at a picket of PM Kevin Rudd’s Morningside office on September 23.
Outraged by illegal and unsafe development on the Illawarra escarpment, more than 50 local residents piled into their community hall on September 21 for a meeting organised by Corrimal Action for Rehabilitation of our Escarpment.
The “new racist regime” in Australia — also “called the Rudd government” — was condemned by Aboriginal activists at a Redfern rally held on September 27, before the release of a federal government review into the “intervention” into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory and other parts of Australia.
Former foreign minister in Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government of 1979-1990, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, gave the United Nations Security Council a blast in his opening address to the new annual session of the UN General Assembly on September 16.
Members of a range of unions protested outside the RACV club on September 25, where the Victorian WorkCover Authority (VWA) announced its end of year financial and operational results. The protest was called by the Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC), which is concerned about changes to WorkCover proposed in the Hanks review.
To lobby or not to lobby? Fortunately for the Australian union movement our forebears in the union leaderships didn’t spend much time trying to answer this question. Campaigns were more direct and more successful than today’s so-called strategies of “boxing smart” and “keeping your powder dry”.
Green Left Weekly is taking a break. The next issue will be dated October 15.