The ecological achievements of Cuba in the last two decades have been well documented. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s was the trigger for ending the unsustainable, industrial agriculture that Cuba had practised for decades.
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.
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.
“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.
In May, visiting US ecologist Bill McKibben spoke at a packed forum at the University of Sydney. He put a compelling case for emergency action on climate change. In short, we must act now and act decisively. Otherwise the planet will become uninhabitable.
We would have loved for them to be bigger, but the June 13 national climate rallies were an unmistakable step forward for the climate action movement. More than 11,000 rallied nationally, making them the largest climate actions yet in the era of PM Kevin Rudd.
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