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.
Analysis
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.
If Australia were a democracy and governments had no choice but to carry out the will of the majority, we’d be well on our way to a 100% renewable power grid.
Recent polling organised by climate action groups around the country found that 94% of 12,000 people polled said they wanted big solar power stations built in Australia. And 93% of those polled said the government should invest public money to make that happen.
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.
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.
Victorian TAFE teacher and student Tashara Roberts released the open letter below on May 29.
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Dear Mr Baillieu,
I would like to tell you my story. I am of English, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent. I had an abusive childhood; my parents divorced when I was about 12 years old and we had moved around a lot until I was about 15. I went to 5 different primary schools and 2 different high schools.
The open letter below was released on May 29.
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There have been many public statements made about WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange that are factually inaccurate.
For example, Prime Minister Julia Gillard: "It's illegal." Attorney General Nicola Roxon: "He fled Sweden" and the media generally: "Assange is charged/facing charges" (in relation to Swedish sex allegations).
The Sydney Stop the War Coalition released the statement below on May 29.
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Foreign minister Bob Carr’s decision on May 29 to expel the Syrian Charge d’Affairs is lock step with NATO countries doing the same. It can only be read as the Australian government condoning steps towards overt foreign military intervention in Syria.
Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam released the statement below on May 31.
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Around the country today we’re coming together to demand action from the Australian government to protect an Australian citizen from prosecution and from persecution.
Yesterday’s verdict in the UK Supreme Court provides for another delay, another fortnight of legal limbo. It is another two weeks in which the important work of this publishing organisation stays on hold.
Who really runs this country? The announcement by the federal government that it has struck its first Enterprise Migration Agreement with the world's richest woman Gina Rinehart reveals just how eager our governments are to serve the mining millionaires.
Youth unemployment in Kwinana, in suburban Perth, is at 26.4%. So why the skills shortage?
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