On October 6, BHP Billiton and the South Australian Department for Correctional Services announced a new agreement allowing the company to employ prisoners from Port Augusta at Olympic Dam — the world’s biggest uranium mine.
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In 2004, the Coalition government, with Labor support, banned marriage for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. This year, the Greens introduced the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill to federal parliament, to try to overturn the ban.
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Freddo Frog charge A 12-year-old Aboriginal boy in living in Northam in regional Western Australia was charged with stealing a Freddo Frog chocolate. He was told he would face court over this matter. The worse part of this story is that he did
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The Australian Human Rights Commission has condemned income management — a key plank of the Northern Territory intervention — as racist, in a report released on November 13.
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The brutal nature of the Rudd Labor government’s “Indonesian solution” to deal with asylum seekers was revealed on November 15 when the Indonesian coastguard fired upon a boat carrying 61 Afghan asylum seekers headed towards Australia. Two of the passengers were shot and injured.
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Were it not so outrageous, it could almost be funny. A 12-year-old Aboriginal boy was brought before a Western Australian court on a charge of receiving stolen goods. He had accepted a chocolate Freddo Frog worth 70 cents from a friend who had allegedly stolen it.
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Adelaide's Central Bus Station is an austere but pleasing building built recently near the middle of town. No longer merely for coach travellers, the structure is now to be Adelaide's version of the New Orleans Superdome — a place of public refuge from what threatens, in time, to be another full-scale natural catastrophe.
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On November 12, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released labour force figures for October that showed unemployment had increased by 11,100 to 690,000 people. At the same time, monthly aggregate hours worked fell by 1.9 million hours (to 1521.1 million hours) from September.
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Could the government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) get any worse? The unfortunate answer is yes. It can, it has already and it’s likely to get worse still before parliament ends for the year.
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Most people reading or hearing the news story last week about the 12-year-old Aboriginal boy who was taken to court in Western Australia (WA) and charged with receiving stolen goods — a 70 cent chocolate Freddo — would have thought this was a sick joke.
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Earlier this year, South African track athlete Caster Semenya was vilified in the international media for allegedly having both male and female biological characteristics. People with such characteristics are known as “intersex”. Green Left Weekly’s Farida Iqbal spoke to Gina Wilson from the Organisation Intersex International (OII) about Semenya and intersex politics.
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Well known author and environmentalist Clive Hamilton recently announced he will stand for the Australian Greens in the December 5 by-election for the seat of Higgins in Melbourne.