Ngunnawal/Canberra

A coalition of 300 schools and churches from around Australia have asked that a memorial to the SIEV-X tragedy, currently standing on the Canberra lakeshore in Weston Park, be allowed to remain in place for a further 12 months. The SIEV-X boat sunk in October 2001 while en route to Australia from Indonesia, drowning 353 asylum seekers, many of them children.

#151; On August 8, a new attack on civil liberties was approved by the federal parliament with the passage of amendments to the National Investigative Powers and Witness Protection Act (2006). The amendment bill was pushed through the Senate in 24 hours, with the ALP’s support.

On August 15, 25 of the 43 West Papuan refugees who sought asylum in Australia in 2006 joined a protest outside federal parliament to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1962 New York Agreement — the US-brokered agreement to transfer West Papua from Dutch to Indonesian control that included the guarantee of an “act of free choice” for West Papuans to decide whether to be incorporated into the Republic of Indonesia. However, instead of a genuine act of self-determination being held, a group of hand-picked West Papuan “representatives” were coerced into voting for Indonesian rule.

Representatives of the Australia Cuba Friendship Society, the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network and the FMLN Australia, along with members of the Greens, the Socialist Alliance and the ALP, gathered at the US embassy at lunchtime on May 15 to present a statement criticising the release by the US government of convicted terrorist and mass murderer Luis Posada Carriles and demanding his extradition from the US to Venezuela (see article on page 14). The protest, part of a global day of action in solidarity with Posada’s victims, was addressed by Luisa Espino from the ACFS, ACT Greens MLA Deb Foskey and AVSN national coordinator Lara Pullin.

The Australia-Cuba Friendship Society held its 2007 national consultation in Canberra on April 13-15, attended by some 60 activists from around Australia. The gathering was also attended by Cuba’s consul and consul general in Australia, Nelida Hernandez Carmona and Ifrahim Miranda Leon, as well as representatives of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, vice-president Buenaventura Reyes Acosta and Alicia Corredera Morales.

The CFMEU ACT Rank and File Action Group met on March 14 to discuss the state of the ACT branch of the union. Reports were presented about the CFMEU federal office investigation of the branch, the group’s campaign for a clean and strong union that is accountable to its members and the state of industrial organising in the ACT.

This is an account of an encounter I had with police officers on March 6 outside the federal Parliament House. At about 3.30pm that day, I went there with the intention of standing in the forecourt and holding up a “Bring David Hicks Home!” poster.

On the National Day of Shame — March 26 — more than 100 supporters of voluntary euthanasia from across Australia came together at Parliament House, chanting “Not the church, not the state, let the people decide their fate”. A Freedom Ride from Sydney to Canberra marked the 10th anniversary of the federal government’s overturning of the Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act.

Young people are likely to be hit hard by Work Choices, the Youth Coalition, the peak youth affairs body in the ACT, told the Legislative Assembly’s select committee on working families on March 1.

“For two days now in parliament Treasurer Peter Costello has attacked ALP signatories of our sign-on invitation for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to visit Australia”, Kiraz Janicke from the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network told Green Left Weekly on February 15. “But Costello’s attacks have been both ridiculous and factually inaccurate.”

“Celebrate what’s great” was the official theme of this year’s Australia Day, January 26. But for Aboriginal Australians, what was worth celebrating on the day that marks the brutal British invasion of their land was the decision to charge the police officer Chris Hurley with the manslaughter of Mulrunji Doomadgee.

On December 1, the anniversary of the 1961 raising of the West Papuan flag, 70 people rallied outside the Indonesian embassy in support of West Papuan independence.