Mardi Reardon-Smith gathered at Brisbane’s Musgrave Park with other supporters early on May 16 to support the Brisbane Aboriginal Sovereign Embassy, which was later evicted from the park by more than 200 police officers. Her account of the day is below.
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Analysis
In the week Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he ordered bombing attacks on Yemen, killing a reported 63 people, 28 of them children. When Obama recently announced he supported same-sex marriage, American planes had not long blown 14 Afghan civilians to bits.
In both cases, the mass murder was barely news. What mattered were the cynical vacuities of a political celebrity, the product of a zeitgeist driven by the forces of consumerism and the media with the aim of diverting the struggle for social and economic justice.
Towards a Socialist Australia was adopted as a draft by the 8th National Conference of the Socialist Alliance, held in Sydney, over January 20-22, 2012.
Socialist Alliance also voted to consult with members, supporters and allies in the social movements over the coming months to improve this draft and deepen our collective understanding of the current political climate and the nature of the economic and environmental crises.
In South Australia, where abortion is still legally considered a crime under the Criminal Act, women do not have the legal right to make their own reproductive choices. What we have now is tenuous and limited access to abortions through an underfunded healthcare system.
Now, this access is under attack. Family First MP Robert Brokenshire has introduced into the SA upper house the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration (Registration of Still-Births) Amendment Bill (also known as Jayden’s Law), which will be put to a vote on May 16.
“Right Greece, up against that wall over there. Here, put that blindfold on... what’s that? No you can’t have a last fucking cigarette, you are too broke. You flogged your last pack off to Goldman Sachs.”
If the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was honest, this is how its press releases would read when describing the brutal austerity the “troika” of the IMF, European Union and European Central Bank demands from Greece in return for funds to stop the country going bankrupt.
Supporters of the National Campaign for the Right To Strike initiated the sign-on statement below.
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Australian law has never provided for the unrestricted right to strike. The first Australian industrial law, the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1904, penalised Australian striking workers with fines and jail sentences.
Before that, Australian workers had to comply with the British Master and Servants Act of 1837, which meant that a worker could face jail if they were absent from work for an hour without permission.
Fair Work Australia’s findings into the Health Services Union (HSU) have revealed serious breaches of the union’s rules, as well as federal regulations governing registered organisations.
On the same day that 8000 farmers, environmentalists, the Country Women’s Association and others took part in Australia's biggest rally against coal seam gas (CSG) mining, the NSW mining industry launched a website to “dispel myths” about the industry.
Website creator the Minerals Council of NSW includes the state's biggest mining companies: Anglo American, BHP Billiton, Barrick Gold, Peabody, Rio Tinto, Shenhua and Xstrata.
Over only a few days, more than 1000 families from 60 Australian cities and towns volunteered to host asylum seekers awaiting a protection visa, under a government scheme to release more refugees from detention.
From next month, the Australian Homestay Network, the Red Cross and the federal government will coordinate to place asylum seekers released from detention on bridging visas in Australian households for a six-week stay.
Online campaigner GetUp! made a call-out to its members on May 3 and the Homestay network wrote to its 5000-member base asking for help.
The University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence and the university Senate further displayed their “democratic” views on May 7 by sending riot police to break up protests by more than 500 students and staff.
Protesters disagreed with the flawed plan to carry out budget cuts and retrench staff.
Spence also sent an email to all staff damning the protesters as “outside agitators”, even though the protest was organised by the student-led Education Action Group (EAG) and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).
Is there a surplus or is there not? Does delivering a $1.5 billion surplus in 2012-13 make Wayne Swan a “good economic manager”? Are you a winner and grinner or a loser soon to be driven to the boozer? Blah, blah, blah. Enough, enough already with the budget spins and counterspins.
You want something real to worry about from the budget? Worry about your job if you are lucky enough to still have one, and worry about what will happen to you if you lose it.
In a display of non-partisanship, Marrickville Council put the community first by voting unanimously to lock the gate on coal seam gas (CSG) mining on May 8.
Local stop coal seam gas activists urged councillors to prohibit a private waste disposal and recycling company — Alexandria Landfill — from being allowed to sub-contract its site in St Peters to a CSG miner for exploration and pilot drilling.
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