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Murdoch Universiity administration has acted to close down student club stalls in the academic orientation week prior to classes beginning and the clubs and societies "O-day". Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance was one club that set up a small stall on February 17. Campus security were called to remove the stall from campus. Resistance members complied with the request and packed up the stall, settling to hand out leaflets promoting events on campus. Murdoch University then demanded the leafleting stop.
In what the Sydney Morning Herald described as the "darkest night" in Sydney Football Club's history, active supporters of the A-League football (soccer) club ― known as "the Cove" ― staged a walkout during the February 8 match against Adelaide United in protest against heavy-handed security tactics.
The Socialist Alliance released this statement February 19. *** Over the weekend of February 15-16, the socialist youth organisation Resistance merged into the Socialist Alliance of which it was previously an affiliate. Members of the Socialist Alliance aged 26 and under are now part of a new youth wing called “Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance”.
Three years ago, the Museum of Broken Relationships was set up in Zagreb by former lovers Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisi to display items symbolising the end of various personal relationships. This museum is a metaphor for how the nationalists in the countries of the former Yugoslavia view their past ― a broken relationship remembered with mementos and nostalgia, but nothing else. The recent uprisings in Bosnia-Hercegovina are the biggest attempt to rebuild that relationship since sniper fire broke up the Sarajevo demonstration against national divisions in 1992.
After the collapse of Ansett Airlines and National Textiles in 2001 — both of which owed their employees millions of dollars in unpaid entitlements — the then-John Howard government was forced to introduce legislation establishing the General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme, which guaranteed basic entitlements for workers if a company went broke.
It’s impossible to ignore any longer just how cruel and irrational the government’s war on refugees has become after violent attacks in the Manus Island detention centre left one dead and scores injured. The threat of expulsion to Manus Island is particularly terrifying for some asylum seekers given the criminalisation of homosexuality in Papua New Guinea. Amnesty International said last year that staff would be forced to report suspected same-sex activity in the detention centre. PNG can prosecute same-sex people with a penalty of 14 years jail.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently toured drought stricken areas of north-west New South Wales and southern Queensland, promising that his government was close to finalising subsidies to farmers affected by the drought. The National Climate Centre says in the past two years “most of Queensland and New South Wales inland of the Great Dividing Range as well as much of South Australia have received less than 70% of their long-term average rainfall, with a substantial area having received less than half the average for the period.”
From its inception, Green Left Weekly has reported on the fight against discrimination suffered by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community.
The federal Coalition government is conducting a review of Australia's Renewable Energy Target (RET), which aims to have 20% of Australia’s energy produced from renewables by 2020. The recent appointments of prominent climate change deniers and fossil fuel industry heavies make the review panel look more like a lynch mob for renewable energy. Dick Warburton, who will head the review, is on the public record denying climate science.
A fire burning in a coal seam at the Hazelwood coalmine in Victoria's Latrobe Valley caused the local Air Quality Index to reach nearly five times the amount considered “very poor” on February 19. Schools and kindergartens have been closed down in the town of Morwell, which is less than 500 metres from the edge of the mine. Residents have been complaining of headaches and other problems, and many have left the area.
When is it considered legitimate to try to overthrow a democratically-elected government? In Washington, the answer has always been simple: when the US government says it is. Not surprisingly, that is not the way Latin American governments generally see it.
About 150 people rallied outside the home of Sheila Oakley in the Brisbane suburb of Logan on February 15. Oakley was tasered in the eye by police outside her home on February 6. She has been hospitalised and will suffer permanent disability. The rally marched from her home to Logan police station to hand over a petition calling for an urgent investigation into the incident, to be carried out by an independent body including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives.