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
Analysis
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.
Despite widespread opposition, forest giant Gunns Ltd is still pressing ahead with its proposed pulp mill in the pristine Tamar Valley in northern Tasmania. But the campaign against it shows no signs of going away.
“I would have been concerned if it was a dog or some other animal who died in those conditions, but since it was only a black-fella …”
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