Workers across Australia are working longer hours, for less pay and with more job insecurity. These are the findings of a report released on October 29 and prepared by the Workplace Research Centre at the University of Sydney.
Analysis
Concern about the threat of climate change and environmental destruction has probably never been higher. Opinion polls consistently show that a big majority of Australians support serious action on climate change and a move away from an economy based on the burning of fossil fuels for energy.
“We’re a listening government”, said Verity Firth, the NSW education minister and Labor MP for the now marginal seat of Balmain, when announcing the abandonment of the plan for a takeover by Sydney University of Callan Park in the heart of her electorate.
Given the Earth’s atmosphere and its oceans are a closely interlinked natural complex, steeply rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are having dramatic impacts on the seas as well.
The following statement was written by Bree Blakeman (Djawulanganing) on behalf of the Gumatj clan nation, MataMata Homeland, North-East Arnhem Land.
On October 24, Palm Island community leader Lex Wotton was found guilty of “riot with destruction” in a trial where police were accused by the defence counsel of “lying through their teeth”. Wotton is due to be sentenced on November 7.
On September 29, Harry Nelson, former Yuendumu (Northern Territory) council president, presented Indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin with a statement, written in Warlpiri and English, signed by 236 residents. Macklin was in the community to officially open a new pool, the funding of which predates the NT intervention. An abridged version of the statement is reprinted below.
A new documentary, A Well-Founded Fear, to be broadcast on SBS on November 19, documents the deaths of nine Afghan refugees who were returned to Afghanistan after having their asylum applications rejected.
In early September, residents of the Brookland Greens estate, about 50 kilometres south-east of Melbourne, were advised by the Country Fire Authority that methane from the landfill nearby had reached potentially explosive levels and they should get out of there as soon as they could. No emergency housing was offered to them.
The world is going through difficult times and right now there seems no end to the downward spiral of the global economy. Fears of economic depression on the scale of the 1930s are widespread.
Turan Ertekin, an activist in the Turkish community and Socialist Alliance member, came to Australia in 1980.
The October 23 acquittal of Jack Thomas from a terrorism charge highlights what is wrong with Australia’s anti-terror laws and the way they are being applied.
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