Analysis

If you are thinking of challenging a mining development in the courts, be prepared to go through the financial wringer. You might think you have an open-and-shut case, that the federal government has shirked its responsibilities under environmental legislation. But if the finding goes against you, the government and the mining industry will see you bankrupt.

The immigration department ordered 22 asylum seekers be taken to Sydney’s Silverwater jail after protests in Villawood detention centre last Easter. But the department did not keep a complete record and failed to follow its own procedures or visit the detainees within the 24 hours required. On the advice of federal police, the Iranian and Kurdish asylum seekers were forced out of Villawood in the early hours of April 22 last year, accused of being the “ring leaders” of the spate of protests that took place over the Easter weekend.

This article is republished from Overland magazine. * * * Anzac Day celebrates forgetting. Its revival, the transformation of a ceremony nearly extinct in the 1980s into today’s turbocharged festival, coincides with the excision from national consciousness of the most important aspects of the Great War.

Queensland climate activist David White gives six reasons why he will not tune in to the ABC show I Can Change Your Mind About Climate. * * * 1. It is well and truly past the time for debating whether or not anthropogenic [human-caused] climate change is occurring. 2. Continuing to debate the issue gives the contrarians’ [deniers] viewpoint a validity and respectability that it should not have. It just encourages those with delusions and paranoia to continue to promote their fantasies.

The Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network released the statement below on April 24. * * * A 10-year-old year old Vietnamese asylum seeker has provided a community visitor from the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN) with a letter pleading for help. The 10-year-old girl arrived in Australia by boat in March 2011 and has been detained in three different centres located in three different states since arriving in Australia.

Green Left Weekly's Rachel Evans spoke to Damien Cahill, vice-president of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) at the University of Sydney about the campaign against staff and other cuts. Cahill is a senior lecturer in the Political Economy department at the university. What level of cuts to teaching staff is Sydney University trying to make?

Right now, there is an opportunity to slash Australia’s carbon emissions by 5 million tonnes a year in one stroke. The city of Port Augusta in South Australia has all the right conditions to make it Australia’s first baseload renewable energy hub. The two coal-fired power stations at Port Augusta are getting old. Industry experts say they may be forced to close as soon as 2015.

A Labor MP, escort services, huge salary packages, allegations of nepotism and police probes have all been connected to the ongoing Health Services Union (HSU) scandal. The scandal involves allegations against top HSU officials, who are claimed to have misused union funds paid by union members such as ambulance drivers, nurses and health support workers.

In recent weeks, a boat with more than 120 refugees was forced back to Indonesia under Australian orders, 10 Falun Gong members from China docked at Darwin’s wharves and another boat made several distress calls to Australia before vanishing. The first boat was on its way to Christmas Island when it began taking on water. A Singapore-flagged ship rescued the 120 Afghan and Iranian refugees onboard and took them back to Merak, Indonesia.

Over the past few years it appears that debate and conflict about climate policy has dominated Australian politics. But the appearance is different to the reality. There is no serious debate between the two big parties about climate change. A serious debate would be grounded in the climate science, which says we must move to a zero carbon economy at emergency speed.

In his notorious April 11 speech, “The End of the Age of Entitlement”, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey said that if the Liberal-Nationals were elected to federal government they would slash Australia's already battered welfare system. “The Age of Entitlement is over,” Hockey said with a sly smirk. “We should not take this as cause for despair. What we have seen is that the market is mandating policy changes that common sense and years of lectures from small government advocates have failed to achieve.”

The Socialist Alliance released the statement below on April 20. * * * In the space of a few days, 350 Toyota workers, including some who have spent decades working for the company, have been axed in appalling scenes at the Altona plant, west of Melbourne.