Gadigal Country/Sydney

Laws that curtailed civil liberties during the “extraordinary” and “temporary” conditions of the APEC protests last year in Sydney are likely to be made permanent, according to the March 12 Sydney Morning Herald.

Three hundred delegates voted unanimously to take industrial action in response to NSW government changes to staffing procedures in public schools at a March 8 NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF) state council meeting.

On March 12, 100 people joined a community assembly at the Sydney desalination plant site to protest against the sacking of a Maritime Union of Australia divers’ delegate for raising health and safety issues. It was also to protest the failure of Construction Diving Services (a subsidiary of Dempsey Industries) to negotiate a collective agreement with 14 divers on the site. Apart from MUA members, delegations from the Fire Brigades Employees Union and the Rail Tram and Bus Union attended.

Fourteen divers at the Sydney desalination plant being built at Port Botany went on strike this week over safety concerns and demanding a union collective agreement walking off the job on Monday March 3. They are employed by Construction Diving Services (whose parent company is Dempsey Industries).

Any day now the findings of the special Consultative Reference Committee (CRC), set up by the NSW government to “test the impacts” of its plans to privatise its electricity generation and retailing assets, will become public.

Journalist and documentary filmmaker spoke at a public forum on March 7. Attended by 200 people, the forum was hosted by Pilger’s high-school friend, actor Jack Thompson, at his pub in the Blue Mountains town of Katoomba

SYDNEY — The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) organised a community rally outside the Sombreros Mexican restaurant in the beachside suburb of Cronulla on March 7. The rally was to protest the sacking of chef Basilo Reyes for taking time off to have a cancer removed.

The April 11-13 Climate Change/Social Change conference being organised in Sydney by Green Left Weekly aims to promote recognition that radical social change is necessary to solve the global climate crisis. This is a crisis that at threatens to make the Earth uninhabitable for the vast majority of humans and other species.

Journalist and documentary filmmaker spoke at a public forum on March 7. Attended by 200 people, the forum was hosted by Pilger’s high-school friend, actor Jack Thompson, at his pub in the Blue Mountains town of Katoomba

The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) organised a community rally outside the Sombreros Mexican restaurant in the beachside suburb of Cronulla on March 7. The rally was to protest the sacking of chef Basilo Reyes for taking time off to have a cancer removed.

Kathy Black, a convener of US Labor Against the War (USLAW), told a union reception in Sydney on February 29 that she is proud that the organisation has brought workers into the anti-war movement, remarking that “this was the first time that labour has been organised against a foreign invasion and occupation”.

The campaign against the privatisation of NSW electricity took an important step forward with a February 26 protest outside parliament. Power workers in Bega and Port Macquarie struck in support.