Analysis

On July 3 a funeral was held for Bruce Trevorrow, who passed away peacefully on June 20 after being admitted to intensive care in Sale, south-western Victoria, and suffering a heart attack from which he did not recover. He was surrounded by family members and his wife Veronica.
The fact that the NSW Labor government’s World Youth Day laws — which would have made “annoying” Catholic pilgrims during WYD activities a crime punishable by fines of up to $5500 — was a failed attempt to silence criticisms of the Catholic Church was brought home when WYD organiser Bishop Anthony Fisher effectively dismissed criticism of the church’s handling of cases of child sexual abuse by clergy.
Whatever the final detail of the federal government’s carbon emissions trading scheme — the framework of which is contained in the green paper released by climate change minister Penny Wong on July 16 — there’s one thing we can be sure of: it won’t be of much use in cutting Australia’s carbon emissions.
The following letter was presented by Sam Watson on behalf of Brisbane’s Aboriginal Rights Coalition to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd during a protest outside Rudd’s electorate office on July 14.
Following an extended industrial campaign by the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union for better wages and conditions including smaller class sizes, Victorian Premier John Brumby announced on May 5 that an agreement had been reached with the union. The deal, which was later ratified by union members, awarded vastly different pay rates to different groups of teachers and failed to address the key issues raised in the teachers’ campaign. The following is a response by AEU member and Teachers Alliance supporter Peter Curtis.
On July 14, the Victorian police moved in to remove a group of protesters from public land near the site of the proposed $3.1 billion desalination plant in Wonthaggi.
Soon after Australian government adviser Professor Ross Garnaut presented his draft climate change review on July 4, world leaders gathered in a Japanese mountain resort for an expanded version of the annual G8 summit meeting.
PM Kevin Rudd’s “education revolution”, a sad misuse of the word “revolution”, continues to starve public schools of funds. Meanwhile, wealthy private schools are given so much federal money they don’t know what to with it other than bank it or build Olympic-sized gymnasiums.
While the historic elections for a constituent assembly were held in April — a product of the pro-democracy uprising that has ended Nepal’s monarchy and created a republic — Nepal is still yet to have a new government sworn in.
Arctic sea ice reached a record minimum in the Northern summer of 2007, prompting the revision of scientists’ predictions of how quickly it will melt away altogether in response to global warming — perhaps as early as 2010-13, rather than the hundred years later estimated in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.
Some unionists are angry that despite all the warnings about the climate emergency and Australia’s high per capita greenhouse gas emissions, the Victorian ALP government has given the go-ahead to a $750 million 400 megawatt brown coal power station in the Latrobe Valley.
Right at the beginning of his draft report on climate change, Professor Ross Garnaut points out that global warming can’t be beaten unless an international “prisoner’s dilemma” gets resolved.