NSW Technical and Further Education (TAFE) teachers have continued their industrial campaign against an unfair award imposed by the NSW Industrial Relations Commission (IRC), which would have TAFE teachers work an additional five hours a week, and teach an additional 36 hours a year, with no right to refuse.
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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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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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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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“Fifteen families have dominated Honduras for decades, and they are the ones that carried out the coup. Today we face a very bloody time”, Honduran activist Santiago Reyes told a 40-strong forum on independence organised by the Latin American Social Forum on September 19.
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Following the bigger-than-expected turn-out across Australia for the August 1 national day of action for marriage equality, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activist groups are gearing up for a big year in 2010.
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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.