After Labor Premier Anna Bligh announced on June 2 that Queensland would be selling off $15.4 billion of the states assets, a June 17-18 Galaxy Poll conducted for the Brisbane Courier Mail found that 84% of people opposed the move.
Analysis
The inquest into the death in custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee in November, 2004 will be reopened. In 2006, deputy state coroner Christine Clements found senior sergeant Chris Hurley was responsible for Doomadgees death.
“Some may be disappointed in some parts of this bill”, deputy prime minister and workplace relations minister Julia Gillard told parliament on June 17.
Tasmanian Greens leader Nick McKim introduced a private members bill on May 26. If passed, it will legalise euthanasia in the state.
The NSW budget was handed down on June 16. NSW state treasurer Eric Roozendaal tried to spin it as a beacon of hope for the state.
On June 15, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) raised the rate of its standard variable mortgage by 0.1%. For home buyers with the typical $300,000 mortgage, this means repayments go up by $18 a month.
Citing the dubious need for Queensland to keep its AAA credit rating, on June 2 Premier Anna Bligh announced the state would sell off $15 billion of public assets.
The Business Council of Australia (BCA) representing Australias largest 100 corporations has called for a higher consumption tax and for the company tax to be halved. It did so in a submission to the federal governments review of taxation (the Henry review) made public on June 14
Aboriginal residents living in remote communities in the Northern Territory have condemned the governments consultation about the NT intervention as farcical.
“Tasers are not the ’non-lethal’ weapons the QPS [Queensland Police Service] leadership claims”, former state MP and former police officer Peter Pyke told the media in April. He predicted a Queenslander would die in 2009 from a Taser.
Saharawi refugee and preschool teacher Fetim Sellami is a central character in the Australian documentary Stolen, a film set in the refugee camps in south-west Algeria that have been home to 165,000 Saharawi refugees since their country, Western Sahara, was invaded by Morocco in 1975.
However, when she and her husband, Baba Hocine Mahfoud, attended its June 11 premiere at the Sydney Film Festival, they did not receive red carpet treatment, despite the long distance they had travelled.
The Rudd government will send a 40-member delegation, led by deputy prime minister Julia Gillard, to an “Australia Israel Leadership Forum” in Jerusalem on June 25-26. The government’s decision is yet further confirmation of its desire to outdo the former Howard government in blind support for Israel.
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