Huge demonstrations of the anti-austerity M-15 movement in 97 Spanish cities and towns brought at least 250,000 people onto the streets on June 19.
This vast and peaceful turnout marked a new phase in the rising struggle against the austerity policies of the country’s “parties of government” ― the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), the People’s Party (PP) and the Catalan nationalist Convergence and Union (CiU) ― as well as against the recently adopted Euro stability pact.
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Unions Tasmania President Roz Madsen gave the speech below at a large June 16 rally outside the Tasmanian parliament — the day Tasmanian premier Lara Giddings announced a harsh new budget.
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Not so long ago, politicians and political parties were fairly predictable. People entered politics on one side or the other, based on a set of values they held personally and then they pursued outcomes designed to fulfill those values.
I was 12 years old when for the first time in my life I became a citizen of a country — Australia. Before that, I was a stateless Palestinian refugee.
There were two laments my parents always repeated whenever they spoke of their place of origin Palestine: if only we could have stayed and if only we could return.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in 2009 there were more than 10 million refugees around the world in need of assistance.
Contrary to the popular belief that Australian citizens hold absolute rights to freedom and privacy, Australia continues to evolve toward a “big brother”-like society as the government strengthens the powers of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
With the support of the opposition, the government expanded ASIO’s powers to share information from wiretaps and computer access with other agencies. The expansion came with the Telecommunications Interception and Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Act, passed in March.
Britain’s public sector unions are set to unleash a wave of strikes starting on June 30 in response to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government’s attack on workers’ pensions.
Unions have called a national day of action for June 30. Nearly 1 million public sector workers will strike for 24 hours.
Community Voice, a united ticket of the left and progressive community in Wollongong, was formed on June 18 after a thorough discussion focussed on putting local council back in the hands of the community.
More than 40 people attended including, Reverend Gordon Bradbery, who nearly won the seat of Wollongong in the recent NSW election; Dr Munir Hussain, chairperson of the Omar Mosque; leading members of progressive parties the Greens and the Socialist Alliance; independent and community activists; trade unionists and other activists.
This article is based on a June 24 statement released by Socialist Alliance members in Tasmania.
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Socialist Alliance members were outraged by the harsh, neoliberal budget handed down by the Tasmanian Labor-Greens government on June 16.
The budget slashes $1.4 billion from the public sector over the next four years, including a $100 million cut to health within the next financial year and the closure of 20 schools.
At least 1700 full-time equivalent jobs will be scrapped, including 100 police jobs.
The lawyer who won access for refugees to Australia’s courts last year has gone to the High Court again to prevent a family being split up by the federal government’s “Malaysia swap”.
About 120 people attended the Pitt St Uniting Church on June 18 for the launch of Refugee Week, which was the themed “Freedom from Fear”.
Five women singers from Sierra Leone in traditional dress and headgear opened the event, which was hosted by the Refugee Council of Australia and NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors.
The chairperson, SBS Dateline’s Yalda Hakim, who is also a former refugee from Afghanistan, said she had just returned from Tunisia where 100,000 foreign workers are crossing the border to escape the fighting in Libya.
The federal Labor government put a new law before the Senate on June 14 to set up a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory.
The same day, opponents of the radioactive waste dump plan gathered outside Parliament House in Canberra to protest.
Federal resources minister Martin Ferguson has said the government’s preferred site is Muckaty station, 100 kilometres north of Tennant Creek. The proposed bill also gives the government the go-ahead to set up dumps elsewhere in the NT.
More than 100,000 people have been displaced and countless numbers killed in the north Sudanese government’s latest offensive in the region bordering south Sudan.
South Sudan is set to formalise its secession on July 9 after a near-unanimous vote for independence in the January referendum.
Over three nights last week, hundreds of thousands of people watched something very rare: a Reality TV show that actually showed some reality.
Australia’s public SBS television station showed a special three-episode program called Go Back To Where You Came From about the experience of six Australians (with widely varying views about refugees and asylum seekers) as they are sent on a 25-day trip to trace, in reverse, the routes that refugees have taken to reach Australia.
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