Gadigal Country/Sydney

Twenty people gathered on June 22 in defence of civil liberties and in solidarity with Joanne Ball, who was facing trial. This was the first trial of an activist arrested during February protests against visiting US Vice-President Dick Cheney. By the end of the day, the prosecution’s case had collapsed and charges were dismissed.

Barry Hemsworth, a Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union member and workplace delegate, was sacked unfairly from his job at Botany Cranes in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in 2006, made possible by the Howard government’s unfair dismissal laws. July 2 will mark the 300th day that Barry has held vigil outside the gates of his former employer with the support of the union movement.

World Refugee Day was marked with a loud protest by the Sudanese community and friends on June 20 in Hyde Park, to call for urgent action over the crisis in Darfur that has left more than 400,000 people dead. Eighty people participated in the rally — organised by the Darfur Action Network (DAN) and Caritas International — including leaders of the Sudanese community in Melbourne.

“Not many people realise that Hawaiians feel that our country is under an occupation”, Terrilee Kekoolani, an organiser with the DMZ Hawaii activist coalition, told a public meeting of 20 people on June 19. She was in Australia to take part in protests against the US-Australian Talisman Sabre war games in Queensland.

The University of Western Sydney’s Board of Trustees has officially proposed closing UWS’s Blacktown Nirimba campus by 2009. The university administration claims that the closure is due to a decline in student numbers (not surprising since the administration has cut most degrees at the campus) and financial constraints (despite a $36 million surplus in 2006). According to a June 16 report on ABC’s Stateline, Blacktown has one of Australia’s fastest growing populations.

On June 20, 30 people attended a public forum to launch a campaign for an August 12 national day of action for same-sex marriage rights. The NDA is being built around three slogans: “Repeal the ban on same-sex marriage”, “Give us civil unions” and “Hands off same-sex adoption”, and so far, rallies are being planned in Sydney, Melbourne, Lismore and Perth.

Michael Bozic, a barrister with the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, said on June 20 that the new powers being given to police during the APEC summit would make the conservative former premiers Robert Askin and Joh Bjelke-Petersen proud. Askin, NSW’s Liberal premier from 1965 to 1975, was famously quoted in 1966 demanding that the convoy accompanying visiting US President Lyndon Johnson “ride over the bastards” — anti-Vietnam War protesters.

Proposed laws introduced into the NSW parliament mean that the greater Sydney area will become a police state for two weeks around the APEC summit. The APEC Meeting (Policing Powers) Bill 2007 is expected to be passed without significant amendments.

Socialist Alliance hosted a discussion on June 12 about standing up to the “police state” laws introduced into the NSW parliament for the period of the September APEC summit. One person arrested in connection with the G20 protests in Melbourne last November told the meeting that police had directed him not to attend the APEC protests. He urged participants not to be intimidated by such tactics.

On June 19, a Federal Court judge refused to throw out a case aimed at obtaining millions of dollars worth of severance pay for workers employed by car parts manufacturer Tristar Suspension and Steering Pty Ltd.

Fifty people demonstrated outside the defence plaza on June 15 to protest the beginning of the Talisman Sabre military exercises at Shoalwater Bay.

On June 16, a group of human rights campaigners and former political prisoners in Chile rallied at the Cowper Wharf in Woolloomooloo to protest the arrival of the Chilean Navy training ship Esmeralda. The ship served as a floating torture prison for political prisoners under General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-90 military regime.