NSW Premier Nathan Rees launched a government “education program” about climate change in May. The “what you can do in your world” program urged householders to cut carbon pollution by using less energy and switching to energy-efficient light bulbs and electrical appliances.
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"It not illegal to seek asylum", NSW Greens MP Sylvia Hale told a rally of about 100 people outside the Department of Immigration offices on November 2.
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John Pilger, recipient of the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize, told a packed Opera House concert hall on November 5 that the time for “looking on from the side” had to end.John Pilger, recipient of the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize, told a packed Opera House concert hall on November 5 that the time for "looking on from the side" had to end. His wide-ranging lecture, "Breaking the Australian Silence", sharply criticised Western governments, and particularly the Australian government, for hypocrisy on war and the racist treatment of asylum seekers and Indigenous people.
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A gay Bangladeshi couple have been battling to gain citizenship in Australia for 10 years. The Refugee Review Tribunal knocked back their claims three times, and three times a higher court has overturned the rulings.
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Watching the terrible plight of the Tamil asylum seekers aboard the Australian customs ship Oceanic Viking last week brought home the depressing continuity in policy and perspective between the previous John Howard Coalition government and Labor rule under PM Kevin Rudd. Australia's razor-wire enclosed refugee detention centres are once again filling up with desperate victims of war and oppression.
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In one of the longest and most expensive criminal trials in Australian history, five Muslim men were convicted in Parramatta Court on October 16 of “conspiring to do an act in preparation for a terrorist act”.
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One hundred people gathered at Parramatta ferry wharf on October 9 to call on the NSW government to abandon plans to privatise Sydney Ferries. The protest was organised by Save Our Sydney Ferries, a coalition of unions and public transport support groups.
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Students at the University of Sydney said the federal government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) is not a solution to climate change at a student general meeting on October 7.
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The Sydney Stop The War Coalition organised a rally and march on October 8 to mark the eigth anniversary of the US-led imperialist war on Afghanistan. The rally demanded the Australian government withdraw all Australian troops from the conflict.
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“The country is weary of the war. What I’m trying to do at this point is to make sure that ... we have got a coherent strategy that can work”, United States President Barack Obama told David Letterman’s Late Show on September 21.
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A rally of 150 people, mainly students, marked the anniversary of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982 on September 25. The event was organised by the cross-campus Students for Palestine group. The protest spilled into a march and covered a few city blocks.
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“Within hours of President [Manuel] Zelaya being seized and expelled by the coup plotters [in June this year], the Honduran people went into the streets to support his return. They have been mobilising ever since to demand the restoration of democracy in my country”, Santiago Reyes, from the Honduran National Resistance Front, told a rally of around 50 people in the Latin American Plaza on September 24.