On October 23, tyre manufacturer Bridgestone Australia announced to a shocked workforce that the Adelaide factory would be closing in April 2010. Six hundred workers will lose their jobs.
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The fatal explosion on board a boat carrying 47 Afghan refugees in April created a storm of controversy in Australian politics and the media.
A protest picket outside the Sydney office of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd demanded an end to the racist NT intervention on October 29. The intervention was initiated by the previous Coalition government and continues under the ALP. It imposes welfare apartheid on NT Aboriginal communities and threatens Indigenous land rights.
While two boat loads of Tamil refugees fleeing Sri Lanka push their case to be admitted into Australia, two reports on Sri Lankan atrocities against Tamils have been released without a word from the Australian media or government.
Every time capitalist politicians play with racist prejudice against asylum seekers, there are violent consequences. I'm not just referring to the threatened forceful disembarkation of the Tamil refugees from the Oceanic Viking, which is outrageous. The bipartisan anti-asylum seeker rhetoric in Canberra is also very likely provoking more racist violence across Australia.
SYDNEY — Leichhardt Council, and Greens mayor Jamie Parker, will host a public meeting on November 7 to show support for Sydney Ferries against a state government proposal to privatise the service.
More than 1500 workplace representatives and union officials attended the annual Victorian Occupational Health & Safety Reps Conference on October 28 in Melbourne.
SYDNEY — "No shooters in national parks", and "Hunters: Our parks and animals are not fair game", were two of the placards carried by 300 people outside the NSW state parliament on October 27.
A lively rally of 1000 people marched through Yarraville Village on October 24, demanding the reinstatement of their local high school. The school serviced the Seddon, Kingsville and Yarraville area.
On October 30,100 people rallied at Victoria’s parliament house against the federal government's failure to support Solar Systems before its administration deadline expired.
The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) — the new name for the Howard government-established Workplace Ombudsman – has launched its first prosecution against a union for “unlawful” industrial action.
A gay Bangladeshi couple have been battling to gain citizenship in Australia for 10 years. The Refugee Review Tribunal knocked back their claims three times, and three times a higher court has overturned the rulings.
SYDNEY — Teachers at the Sydney Institute of TAFE held a wildcat strike on October 29 after the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) ruled teachers must sacrifice work conditions in return for a 12.5% wage rise over three years.
Summer of Blood: The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
By Dan Jones
Harper Press, 2009
238 pages, $49.99 (hb)
Admit it: you’re just a little disturbed when industrialists, fossil-fuel lobbyists and the Liberal and National parties thunder that big, quick cuts to carbon emissions would bankrupt Australian business. Well, aren’t you?
At first, the flow of people fleeing horrors like the Sri Lankan government’s concentration camps for Tamils and Afghanistan’s killing fields didn’t test the capacity of the Christmas Island detention centre
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