Naarm/Melbourne

World Refugee Day will be marked in Melbourne by a rally and march to demand justice for all refugees and the scrapping of the horrific new detention centre being built on Christmas Island.

A new report on the effects of the cluster bombs used against Lebanon by Israel during its July-August invasion last year was launched at the Northcote Town Hall on May 29. Around 100 people attended, including members of the Lebanese community, politicians, local councilors and activists.

On May 31, 300 people packed the Wesley Uniting Church in Melbourne’s CBD for a public meeting organised by the LinkUp Melbourne campaign for the city’s train and tram systems to be put back under public ownership when the contracts with the current private operators expires in November.

Dave Noonan, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union’s construction division national secretary, has slammed the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) for “intimidating and bullying” workers.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and Electrical Trades Union (ETU) have established an ongoing protest embassy outside the front office of Toyota's Altona assembly plant to protest the dismissal of AMWU delegate Tony Carvalho. Carvalho was dismissed for allegedly bullying two employees who are currently on stress leave. The charges from the two complainants were drafted by a prominent law firm and were directed at Toyota. But Toyota management suspended Carvalho during an investigation, and ultimately sacked him on May 3.

“Australian Tamils demand protection not persecution” was the theme of a gathering of more than 500 members of the Tamil community outside the Victorian parliament on May 22.

John Howard was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for his “friendship and commitment” to Israel at a gala dinner at Melbourne’s Crown Casino on May 20. The award, by the Zionist Federation of Australia, the State Zionist Council of Victoria and the World Zionist Organisation, includes the “John Howard Negev Forest”, which will be planted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) over an ethnically-cleansed Bedouin village.

The Victorian Labor Party has gone on a propaganda offensive against the Greens, accusing them of selling out on nuclear issues and taking away Victorians’ right to protest against nuclear reactors. Large posters have been put up and pamphlets will be sent to households in the four lower-house seats where the Greens pose the most direct challenge to the ALP.

A group of construction workers in Somerton have proved that it is possible to get off an individual contract (Australian Workplace Agreement — AWA) and onto award rates and an enterprise agreement.

In 1974 hundreds of people crowded into a room in the Carlton Pram Factory and hatched a plan to build a media outlet that would tell the stories of those neglected, marginalised and ignored by the mainstream media of the day. Two years later 3CR began transmitting the voices of trade unions, the working class, the Indigenous community, youth and students, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, peace and social justice activists, greenies, socialists, anarchists, lovers of jazz and nostalgia music, feminists, queers and people with disabilities.

At its May 15 meeting, Geelong Trades Hall Council passed a motion declaring that “GTHC is opposed to any laws that fetter and/or criminalise union activity and workers’ rights under International Labour Organisation conventions to organise and take action to advance or defend our economic and social conditions. To this end we call on the Victorian Trades Hall Council to organise a mass delegates’ meeting to discuss how we can best help the ACTU [Australian Council of Trade Unions] defend its own industrial relations policy and thus the rights of all workers.”

Two blockades halted logging in high conservation value native forests two hours east of Melbourne on May 8, Friends of the Earth reported.