Analysis

Labor governments at state and federal levels are persisting with two unpopular proposals for education in remote Aboriginal schools — the scrapping of bilingual education and the linking of welfare payments to school attendance — despite opposition from communities and educators.

A number of Climate Action Groups (CAGs) in NSW held a series of actions at federal MP offices on March 27.
In its latest Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, released in 2009, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has called on the federal government to suspend the operations of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) and comply with ILO recommendations.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, in Washington last week to meet US President Barack Obama, made clear the ALP government’s support for the US’s wars overseas. The Australia-US war alliance is as strong as ever, he declared.
One hundred people gathered on March 17 at the Wollongong City Diggers Club to celebrate the life of NSW Public Service Association (PSA) activist Anne Meehan who passed away on March 12 after a long illness.
The federal ALP government, in league with employer organisations and conservative economists, wants workers — in particular the lowest paid and most vulnerable — to pay for the economic downturn.
Biochar production has been the object of considerable research and experimentation in Australia.
On March 20, former federal court judge Marcus Einfeld was sentenced to three years jail, with a non-parole period of two years, for trying to get out of a speeding fine.
Two reviews present the Rudd government with opportunities to readjust the policy settings of post-secondary education and determine its future funding arrangements.
The tiny Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives will become carbon-neutral within 10 years. This was the pledge made by Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed on March 15. The low-lying country will be among the first in the world to be inundated by rising sea levels caused by human-induced climate change. The highest point in the chain of 1200 islands and coral atolls is just 1.8 metres above sea-level.
In the late evening of March 15, the NSW correctional services department used management personnel to transfer 107 prisoners from the Cessnock jail in preparation for its privatisation.
Australian agriculture both contributes to climate change and is adversely affected by it. Any campaign in to force urgent government action on climate change has to include a demand for the radical transformation of rural land use and farming systems to be ecologically sustainable.