Carlo Sands comes out strongly in favour of the Queen's Jubilee celebrations, lauding everyone from Tom Jones to Julia Gillard, even putting up his own hand to make a similar sacrifice.
Analysis
On June 7, Australian Education Union (AEU) members — primary and secondary teachers in Victorian government schools — held their first stop-work meeting since 2008. About 25,000 teachers took part in Melbourne and marched to the steps of Victoria’s parliament house.
In 2008, teachers were campaigning for their Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA), which expired at the end of last year. Since then the AEU officials have been unsuccessfully negotiating with Victoria’s Ted Baillieu state government for a new EBA.
The 'scoop' behind two pro-Palestine activists facing court in Perth, Australia. Miranda Wood and Alex Bainbridge were charged with trespass for singing modified Christmas carols in December 2011.
The Refugee Action Coalition Sydney released the statement below on June 5.
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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.
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Richard Downs, spokesperson for the Eastern Alyawarr people in the Northern Territory, released the statement below on May 24.
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We the Leaders and Custodians from Ampilatwatja Community Australia give our full support to Yolŋuw Makarr Dhuni (Yolŋu Nations Assembly).
Politics in this country can sometimes seem like a magic trick aimed at young children. “Look over there! Do you see? Those Boat People are taking all your taxes and your homes and your bread! Look! What an outrage!” And then Gina Rinehart jumps up behind our backs and nicks all our resources.
And that stuff is non-renewable. Once the mining bosses have flogged it off to China to fill their bloated bank account balances, it’s gone for good. We’ll just be left with a bunch of holes in the ground.
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.
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.
In what was an important milestone for the anti-capitalist community in Adelaide, Left Unity held its inaugural AGM on May 26.
The group collected membership fees, elected an executive and established working groups. It also chose a new logo. The AGM culminates several months of careful discussion towards consolidating the organisation.
Left Unity formed in May 2010. Its goal was to unite class-conscious radical left forces through common struggles against the ecological and social evils of our increasingly brutal and irrational economic and political system.
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.
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.
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