On August 4, theatrical pre-dawn raids in Melbourne by more than 400 Victorian, NSW and federal police and ASIO agents — including paramilitary units armed with sub-machineguns — launched Australia’s latest terrorism scare.
Analysis
The largest demonstrations for same-sex marriage in Australia’s history took place on August 1. A 3000-strong rally marched on the national ALP conference in Sydney. Four thousand took to the streets in Melbourne. Record crowds mobilised in other cities.
On August 4, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released figures that showed housing prices across Australia’s capital cities rose by 4.2% over the three months ending in June. The rapid increase has worried the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) enough for it to warn of a threat of a housing bubble.
The Australian and US government’s have proposed carbon trading schemes as a response to the threat of climate change. How to respond has been hotly debated in the climate action movements of both countries. Green Left Weekly has campaigned strongly for the Rudd government’s carbon trading scheme to be rejected as a false response to the climate emergency. Below, Ilan Salbe puts an alternative view.
We face a climate crisis and something needs to change. The world’s resources are finite, as is the amount of destruction humans can do to this planet if we are to survive. As such, there is a debate in the environment movement about whether or not curbing population is an essential part of the solution.
“We've had the gun at our head.” This is what William Tilmouth, Tangentyere Council CEO, said in response to Aboriginal affairs minister Jenny Macklin's triumphant July 29 announcement that the council had agreed to lease Alice Springs town camps to the federal government for 40 years in exchange for $135 million in housing upgrades
“The system here in Victoria for delivering quality training to both domestic students and international students is working very, very well”, Jacinta Allan, Victorian skills and workplace participation minister told ABC Stateline on July 24 in response to criticisms of Australia’s international education market.
Five Filipino workers holding 457 visas, who were employed at a Fletcher International abattoir near Albany, were made redundant and given 10 weeks’ entitlement pay on June 2.
Former Queensland Labor cabinet minister Gordon Nuttall was sentenced to seven years jail on July 17. He was found guilty of corruptly receiving secret payments from two Queensland businessmen.
To win the battle to stop climate change, climate activists in Queensland have an important part to play. The Queensland ALP government is a strong backer of Australia’s biggest polluters.
Construction giant John Holland was the first employer to lodge an application with Labor’s new Fair Work Australia industrial umpire. It asked FWA to rule on which union has coverage at its controversial West Gate Bridge site in Melbourne.
If the rhetoric of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission’s report on Australia’s health system is taken at face value, health care in Australia will get an impressive overhaul courtesy of the federal government.
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