Analysis

The Refugee Action Coalition Sydney released the statement below on June 5. * * * The Four Corners’ people smuggling program [“Smuggler’s Paradise”] has only added to the demonisation that surrounds the media and politicians’ portrayal of people smugglers.

The Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney released the statement below on June 1. * * *

Richard Downs, spokesperson for the Eastern Alyawarr people in the Northern Territory, released the statement below on May 24. * * * We the Leaders and Custodians from Ampilatwatja Community Australia give our full support to Yolŋuw Makarr Dhuni (Yolŋu Nations Assembly).

These are interesting times in the uranium sector. The mining companies have had a few wins in the 14 months since the Fukushima disaster, but they've had more losses. Bill Repard, organiser of the Paydirt Uranium Conference held in Adelaide in February, put on a brave face with this claim: The sector's hiccups in the wake of Fukushima are now over with, the global development of new nuclear power stations continues unabated, and the Australian sector has literally commenced a U-turn in every sense.

Traditional owners across Arnhem Land will resist the federal government’s proposed 10-year extension of the Northern Territory intervention by refusing to surrender Aboriginal land through 40 year leases. When the five-year leases imposed by the government’s declared "emergency" end in August this year, the most respected Aboriginal leaders across the Top End will not enter into any new land lease agreements until the draconian and discriminatory Stronger Futures legislation is shelved.

The rhetoric of homophobia is changing in our society. Those on the conservative side of the debate no longer make any mention of the Bible, morality or mental health. Instead, they claim they are motivated by love to oppress gay people. Recently, I sat in the NSW legislative council (in which Reverend Fred Nile, MLC, is the honorary chaplain of the house) and watched the debate on marriage equality.

Private-detention centre operator Serco and the department of immigration have taken steadily more aggressive action to prevent refugees in detention from speaking out about their conditions. They have done this by moving to restrict and curtail visits to detainees, and have banned several individuals.

Guillaume Legault, a leading member of Quebec’s CLASSE student organisation, will join this year's Resistance national conference “A Time of Revolution” over July 20-22 in Adelaide.

How outrageous is this story? Just days after International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde lectured Greek people to pay their taxes or not expect any sympathy from the rest of the world, the British Guardian revealed that her salary of US$467,940 a year, plus US$83,760 in additional allowances, is tax-free. What a bloody hypocrite. Like top United Nations officials and the Queen of England, the IMF chief enjoys tax-free status.

What would Australia look like if Tony Abbott became the next prime minister? The Liberal leader is an outspoken climate denier, a hardliner on locking out refugees, determined to crack down on union and workers’ rights and wants to extend racist and draconian attacks on Aboriginal rights. Yet polls have consistently shown Abbott and the Coalition far ahead of the Julia Gillard Labor government, whose pro-business policies and internal scandals have made it deeply unpopular.

The radical ecologist Murray Bookchin once compared populationism to a phoenix, the mythical bird that periodically burns up and is reborn from its own ashes. No matter how often the “too many people” argument is refuted, it always returns, making the same claim that people are breeding too much and consuming too much, devouring the Earth like a plague of locusts. The latest incarnation of the populationist phoenix is People and the Planet, a report published in April by the leading organisation of Britain’s scientific establishment, the 350-year-old Royal Society.

Bimblebox is an 8000-hectare nature refuge in the Galilee Basin in central-west Queensland. It is an important site of biodiversity and is being used as a site for many long-term research projects in land management. It also lies in the path of what is planned to be Australia’s largest coalmine. Nine huge mines have been proposed for the Galilee Basin. Waratah Coal, owned by billionaire Clive Palmer, has an exploration permit over the entire Bimblebox refuge.