Issue 1228

News

The investigation into the death of 36-year-old Wiradjuri woman Rebecca Maher concluded that the police were at fault, but stopped short of sentencing those responsible.

Up to 2000 waterfront workers at DP World container terminals across Australia have gone on strike to oppose the multinational company’s attacks on working conditions.

Since its opening mid-last year, Melbourne’s safe injecting room in North Richmond has received significant media attention, not all of it positive.

South Korean company KEPCO is proposing to open up a mine that would have drastic impacts on local agriculture and water and the iconic natural and cultural heritage of the region, including Aboriginal sacred sites.

Friend and comrade John Ellis, who died suddenly on June 15, was a life-long social justice activist and an active unionist.

The Retail and Fast Food Workers Union organised a protest on July 6 to demand that penalty rates be reinstated. Penalty rates were cut for the second time in early July. Meanwhile federal MPs gave themselves a pay rise.

Hundreds of Stop Adani activists rallied in Sydney and Brisbane on July 5.

The Maritime Union of Australia Sydney Branch voted to support the global student strike on September 20.

The Socialist Alliance is encouraging members and supporters to put motions to their trade unions and other community-based organisations to help build the September 20 student climate strike.

School Strike 4 Climate released the following statement on July 3.

Analysis

Australia remains a world leader in cruelty towards refugees, writes Zebedee Parkes

No sooner had the government won re-election when its own actions once again showed politics is, after all, fundamental to how you live, writes David Bass.

The 46th Parliament of Australia opened on July 2 to finance minister Mathias Cormann waving about the Tax Relief So Working Australians Keep More of Their Money Bill. One might be forgiven for translating the legislation’s title to “progressively robbing the poor to give to the rich”.

It is supposedly in our name that the PM would send Australians to kill and die in Iran. A war there would almost certainly result in a catastrophe that would compound and eclipse the regional destabilisation caused by the US and Australia during the invasion of Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan, writes Hector Ramage.

When you find it hard to promote US-Australia war games, try the old "this will boost the local economy" line as Queensland tourism boss Daniel Gschwind did when he welcomed the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan for the biannual month-long war games.

World

Since the liberation of the last of the ISIS-occupied territory this year, the self-administered areas of northern and eastern Syria set up by the liberation forces have enjoyed secure and stable conditions. However, they have been denied representation in the international negotiations to resolve the Syrian crisis, write Ismet Tashtan and Peter Boyle.

So intense is Unidas Podemos’ desire to sit around the cabinet table with Spain's social democratic government that leader Pablo Iglesias managed to convince Together We Can, the Catalan coalition in which UP participates, to abandon its main policy — a negotiated referendum as condition for supporting a PSOE-led administration, writes Dick Nichols.

The Venezuelan government has disputed the findings of a UN human rights report that failed to include testimonies from victims of violent opposition protests in 2014 and 2017 and paid scant attention to the impact of US sanctions.

In many regions of the world, water is becoming a scarce commodity that is bought, sold and fought over.

Recent developments in the United States have catapulted revelations of cruelty towards immigrants into the mainstream media, writes Barry Sheppard.

Culture

Climate and Capitalism editor Ian Angus looks at five new books of interest to ecosocialists.

In A Natural Battleground, Bobbie Oliver, historian and author of the award-winning The Workshops — A history of the Midland Government Workshops, documents the ongoing attempts to preserve Western Australia's Government Railway workshops site.

Jake Johnson takes a look at how the US women’s football (soccer) team was driven by their struggle for equal pay, and used their Cup win to escalate the fight.