What’s the difference between a liberation movement and a terrorist organisation?
Analysis
On May 5, Victorian Premier John Brumby announced that a deal had been struck with the Australian Education Union that would end the unions 16-month-long industrial campaign. Victorian state school teachers had campaigned to secure better working conditions and pay rises and to reduce contract teaching.
The Rudd government has asked the Productivity Commission to examine the economic, productive and social benefits of introducing a national paid maternity leave scheme. The Commission has heard submissions from a range of unions, business and community groups, and is due to release its report in February, 2009.
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 Australias 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 cant be beaten unless an international prisoners dilemma gets resolved.
Professor Ross Garnaut’s draft review of climate change policy options for the Australian government was released on July 4, with climate change minister Penny Wong due to release a green paper canvassing policy options on July 16. Garnaut’s report looks at the “costs” and “benefits” of mitigating drastic climate change through a carbon polluting trading scheme. It suggests tax cuts and “welfare reform” to compensate low-income households, which will be hit hard by energy price rises.
In Scandinavian folklore, a troll is a bogeyman. In the jargon of the Internet, it is someone who posts false and provocative information.
On June 21, Indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin announced that her government would begin to end funding for infrastructure to remote Northern Territory (NT) Aboriginal communities that she deemed were economically unviable. This is the Rudd Labor governments first major attack on Aboriginal land rights since taking power.
According to the official website for World Youth Day (WYD), Sydney will look different from APEC. Really? With 600-plus areas now officially declared areas, not to mention proscribed airspace throughout July, and officials with the right to decide who is annoying and who isnt, it doesnt seem very different. If anything, its worse.
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