[The following is a statement from the national executive of the Socialist Alliance.]
Analysis
In addition to being the home of Bollywood, the Indian city of Mumbai can boast having Asias biggest slum, Dharavi. One million residents are crammed into a square mile of low-rise wood, concrete and rusted iron, reported the December 19 Economist.
In the lead up to the February 12 Indigenous rights convergence in Canberra, Green Left Weekly gathered statements from Indigenous activists around Australia. At the fore of people’s minds was the Northern Territory intervention, PM Kevin Rudd’s scheduled apology to the Stolen Generations and the issue of compensating those affected by that policy.
Bruce Trevorrow, 50, was the first of the Stolen Generations to succeed in recieving compensation from a state government. His case is an argument for why PM Kevin Rudd should establish a national compensation scheme for the tens of thousands or so members of the Stolen Generations.
Although it stated at the last state election in 2006 that it would not go ahead with the construction of a desalination plant, the Victorian Labor government is now pushing for a desalination plant at Wonthaggi, on the South Gippsland coast. Before the environmental impact statement has even been completed, test drilling and compulsory land acquisitions have begun at the proposed site.
Indigenous Affairs Minster Jenny Macklin announced on January 30 that the federal government will make a formal apology to the stolen generations the 13,000 Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their parents as part of a government policy of assimilation on February 13, the day after the first sitting of the new parliament. Despite calls by Aboriginal groups to include a compensation plan, PM Kevin Rudds government has continued to rule out any national compensation fund to go with the apology.
The Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN) is organising a 2008 May Day solidarity brigade to Venezuela for trade unionists and all other people interested in seeing first-hand the unfolding revolution in that country.
Four years ago, 17-year-old Aboriginal teenage Thomas TJ Hickey was impaled on a metal-spiked fence in Sydneys inner-city Waterloo suburb after his bicycle was rammed by a police vehicle. Proper medical practices were not followed by the police and TJ died in hospital the next day, February 15. If proper practices had been followed, TJ would probably be alive today.
A key aspect of PM Kevin Rudds IR agenda is the creation of a national industrial relations system that would cover all private sector employees.
Australia’s new Labor government is in denial on the seriousness of climate change. That much is shown by its inadequate target of reducing the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 60% by 2050. But more on that later.
Amid audible gasps of relief, on December 15 the US delegation to the United Nations climate change conference in Bali signalled that Washington would be part of the Bali Roadmap for combatting global warming. With the US on board, a two-year process of discussion would begin hopefully to culminate in the adoption of a new pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012.
Although 80% of current revenue from BHP Billitons Olympic Dam mine in South Australia comes from minerals other than uranium, recent drilling has shown that the site is home to the largest ore body of uranium in the world.
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