Magan-djin/Brisbane

On July 29, Queensland University of Technology staged a protest on QUT’s “open day” to symbolically “lay to rest” the school of humanities and human services, and mark “the death of critical thinking and freedom of speech” at QUT.

Around 50 workers from the Fosters brewery at Yatala, south of Brisbane, and their supporters rallied outside the Carlton United Brewery (CUB) head office in Fortitude Valley on July 27 in support of their campaign for a union agreement. The protesters held up placards and waved to passing traffic, who honked their support.

Three-hundred people packed Griffith University’s Multi-Faith Centre on July 22 for an emergency community forum in support of Mohamed Haneef and democratic rights.

On July 20, 80 people rallied outside the Brisbane immigration department offices to protest against the detention of Indian doctor Mohamed Haneef. The rally was called by the Stop the War Collective.

On July 18, six students were arrested on the Garden’s Point campus of the Queensland University of Technology when 20 police brutally attacked a peaceful protest outside the University Council, which was meeting to pass the final decision to shut down QUT’s humanities and human services faculty.

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) academic Dr Gary MacLennan told a public meeting on July 18 that “ordinary people think laughing at the disabled is wrong … only in a university is it seen as otherwise”.

Some 80 people packed the Resistance Centre on July 1 for a Latin America solidarity conference organised by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN), Australia Solidarity with Latin America (ASLA) and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) committee.

In an unexpected backdown, the Queensland University of Technology agreed in the Federal Court on July 12 to continue paying the salaries of the two lecturers who were suspended after they criticised a documentary titled Laughing at the Disabled: Creating Comedy that Confronts, Offends and Entertains, produced by QUT PhD student Michael Noonan.

A gathering of 150 unionists and political activists stood outside the Queensland ALP conference held at Brisbane’s Exhibition and Convention Centre on June 30. Organised by the state branches of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and the Electrical Trades Union, the protest called on the ALP to maintain the promise made at the ALP national conference to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). After the national conference, Labor’s industrial relations spokesperson Julia Gillard announced that a Labor government would keep the ABCC until 2010.

“Governments will only act when they are forced to by social movements”, Dr Mark Diesendorf told around 150 people at the Queensland University of Technology on June 28. “In the USA and Australia, these social movements around climate change are growing, and involving a broader sector of the community.”

Up to 1000 activists descended on the town of Yeppoon on the central Queensland coast for the June 22-24 weekend of action against Operation Talisman Sabre — joint US-Australia war games.

Dr Gary MacLennan, a long-time socialist activist and lecturer in creative industries at the Queensland University of Technology, was suspended for six months without pay on June 6. He, along with a colleague, Dr John Hookham, was charged with misconduct following the publication of an article in the Australian that criticised a PhD film project that mocked the disabled. Students and staff launched a support campaign for the two suspended lecturers which has linked up with a struggle against QUT’s decision to close down the school of humanities and human services.