About 200 past and present students, teachers, local residents and local traders rallied to save Swinburne University of Technology’s Prahran TAFE campus on August 5. The event was organised by the National Tertiary Education Union and former staff and students.
Former Swinburne executive director of educational development Judy Bissland has worked at the campus for 30 years.
“I am still involved with campus through working with disengaged youth,” she told the crowd. “Funding cuts to TAFE and the vocational sector [are] disastrous. We need to take action to stop cuts or modify cuts.”
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NASA scientist James Hansen was in an August 3 blunt about the future Washington Post article: “When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988, I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet.
The Victorian state government has begun a neoliberal experiment with the Victorian public as its guinea pigs.
After the Jeff Kennett-led Coalition state government in the 1990s privatised electricity, gas, public transport, roads, prisons, prisoner transport and much else, one of the few things left to be privatised is vocational education.
Job losses of 2000 permanent workers have been reported. However, adding all sessional teachers who won't have their contracts renewed, the number who will lose their job tallies to about 10,000, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) says.
About 2500 people rallied in Melbourne for equal marriage rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people on August 11. A mass illegal wedding was held in defiance of the federal marriage ban.
Daniel Fejo is a candidate for the First Nations Political Party running for the seat of Blaine in the August 25 Northern Territory elections. Fejo is a Larrakeyah man and a home and community care worker in the Bagot community. Fejo spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Peter Robson.
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What does the First Nations Political Party say about the proposed nuclear waste dump in the NT?
The list below was posted by independent journalist Juan Cole on his Informed Comment blog.
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1. White terrorists are called “gunmen”. What does that even mean? A person with a gun? Wouldn’t that be, like, everyone in the US? Other terrorists are called, like, “terrorists”.
2. White terrorists are “troubled loners”. Other terrorists are always suspected of being part of a global plot, even when they are obviously troubled loners.
Tasmanian logging company Gunns now doubts its $3 billion pulp mill, planned for the Tamar Valley, will ever be built.
The company told the Australian Securities Exchange on August 6 that its debts were somewhere between $50 million and $150 million. It said the steep decline in the price of woodchips and the high Australian dollar were to blame for its financial woes. Gunns said this meant the “board has been unable to reach a view” that the pulp mill project could go ahead.
The ferries that ply the river west of Sydney Harbour bear the names of Australia's world champion sportswomen. They include the Olympic swimming gold-medalists Dawn Fraser and Shane Gould, and runners Betty Cuthbert and Marjorie Jackson.
The Sea Shepherd boat the Steve Irwin docked in Broome on August 6 to join community protests against the $30 billion gas hub proposed for James Price Point, in Western Australia’s Kimberley region.
Sea Shepherd, a marine conservation organisation, said it undertook the trip “to highlight the significance of the James Price Point marine environment as a habitat and feeding ground for humpback whales, dolphins and turtles”.
Cuba solidarity activists, members of Australia’s Latin American community and leftists from around the country will take part in a two-day conference in Sydney to pay homage to Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.
Video messages of support for Fidel from renowned leftist personalities will be screened alongside a full agenda of talks focused on Castro’s ideas, thoughts and legacy for the 21st century.
Wade Michael Page, a Nazi white supremacist, entered a Sikh temple in a town near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 5 and opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol, killing six and wounding three others.
More than 30,000 Victorian teachers and 40,000 Queensland teachers are set to strike in September and October, in defence of teacher pay and conditions under threat from conservative state governments.
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