Gadigal Country/Sydney

A snap rally was held outside NSW parliament house on February 22 to protest a bill proposed by Premier Barry O’Farrell to lift the 26-year moratorium on uranium exploration in NSW. The Nature Conservation Council and Beyond Nuclear Initiative organised the rally. The moratorium on nuclear exploration in NSW began as a bipartisan agreement between Liberal and Labor parties after an investigation found that the effects of mining would be too dangerous.

Last year, students of Political Economy at the University of Sydney stood up to threats to merge their department into either a politics or straight economics department. They protested because they believed in the value of learning alternative economics, refused to accept cuts in staff or subjects and believed students have the right to have a say in the institution at which they choose to study.

Community feeling was strong in Erskineville as residents gathered to oppose overdevelopment in their neighbourhood on February 22. The Friends of Erskineville (FoE) called the meeting in their local town hall in response to City of Sydney plans to allow nine-storey towers in the Ashmore Estate area, bordering Alexandria.

More than 400 people crowded into a lecture theatre at the University of Technology on February 17 to attend a public forum, “Don’t shoot the messenger: WikiLeaks, Assange and Democracy”.   Speakers at the forum included socialist historian Humphrey McQueen, Greens Senator Scott Ludlum, London-based human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Christine Assange, the mother of Julian Assange.  

On February 14, hundreds of Aboriginal people, many young ones, and non-Aboriginal people gathered at the fence where 17-year-old TJ Hickey was fatally wounded in Waterloo in February 2004. A police vehicle driven by a Redfern officer rammed TJ’s bike. He was impaled on the fence and died in hospital the next day. There has been a corrupt coronial inquest, and a cover-up by the NSW government and Redfern police, and continuous protests. But eight years later there is still no justice for the young Aboriginal man and his family.

At the beginning of the year, Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH), the Sydney-based grassroots lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) campaign organisation, elected three new office-bearers. CAAH initiated national days of action for marriage rights rallies in 2006, has played a key role in equal marriage and queer refugee rights campaigning, and has supported trans and intersex rights struggles and mobilisations.

About 150 people attended a February 13 forum “Smuggled to Freedom” to hear SBS sports commentator Les Murray tell his family’s story of trying to escape political persecution in Hungary in 1956. He recently returned to find “Julius”, the so-called people smuggler who helped them cross the border to Austria. He said Julius was an unrecognised hero who helped countless families, despite the risk of the death penalty. “We demonise people who don’t deserve it,” Murray said. “My smuggler was no demon.”

Campaign group 100% Renewable Energy's key message for this year is “Let’s build big solar”. On its website, the group says: “In 2012, [we’ll] be focussing our efforts on finally doing what Australia should already be doing — building big solar!”   100% Renewable Energy ran a packed two-day activist training “Boot Camp" in Port Hacking, New South Wales, over the weekend of February 11 and 12. The Boot Camp attracted about 120 members of community and climate action groups from around the country.  

The Support Assange and WikiLeaks coalition released the statement below on February 14. * * * Linda Pearson, spokesperson for the Support Assange & WikiLeaks Coalition, announced today that Jennifer Robinson, Julian Assange’s principal lawyer, will attend a public forum at 6pm on Friday, 17 February at the University of Technology, Sydney.

“We can’t eat money, we need to save our future food,” seventh generation farmer Tim Duddy told a packed forum on February 6. Organised by the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance, the forum examined the impacts of coal and coal seam gas (CSG) activity on farming regions that make up Australia’s food bowl.

Renewing Sydney’s train fleet is far too important a matter to be left to the “free” market. On February 6 the NSW government announced it was going to pay $175 million in 2018 to bail out the failed Reliance Rail syndicate that has been contracted to build and maintain the new Waratah commuter trains for Sydney’s CityRail network. It's another failed Public Private Partnership (PPP), meaning more public money is poured into the coffers of financiers and speculators.

As the last appeal hearing on Julian Assange's extradition to Sweden began in London, a group of supporters in Sydney begin a vigil at the Sydney Town Hall. Speakers at the vigil included pro-WikiLeaks activist Jann Dark and NSW Greens MLC John Kaye.