The following Socialist Alliance statement was distributed at the “Switch off Hazelwood” power station protest in Victoria on September 12 and 13.
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Analysis
With seven boatloads of asylum seekers intercepted in September, Australia’s Christmas Island detention centre is fast filling up. It now holds 677 detainees.
More and more people accept that we need emergency action to achieve a safe climate. The Copenhagen Summit in December will be a dramatic opportunity for governments to show whether or not they are prepared to be part of the solution.
The Mt Victoria to Lithgow upgrade of the Great Western Highway was conceived for one election campaign and its life may be extinguished with another. It has caused everything from bemusement to misery and has distracted attention from needier causes.
The problem is obvious to anyone who uses public transport — in Sydney or any other major city in Australia. Public transport networks, designed in the 1940s, are straining to service growing cities.
Eighteen-year-old South African athlete Caster Semenya has done nothing wrong. Yet she has been accused of deceiving the world about her gender. There is nothing wrong with Semenya’s body. Yet her body has been paraded in front of the world by the mass media as if she were a sideshow freak.
Over September 12-13, more than 400 people travelled to the Hazelwood coal-fired power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley to send a clear message: “Switch off Hazelwood, switch on renewables.”
“If you don’t give a shit, that’s what you get”, was a favourite chant of striking Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) city campus staff at their picket lines on September 16.
The following sign-on statement asks people to join and/or support the Climate Camp protests at the Port Augusta power stations in South Australia from September 24 to 27. To add your name visit climatecampsa.org.
Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is the name of a World Bank sponsored carbon offset program. The idea is to pay owners of forests in the global South to stop deforestation as a way of reducing carbon emissions.
On September 2, 40 people attended a public forum organised by Refugee Action Collective (RAC) Queensland on the treatment of asylum seekers under the Rudd Labor government.
With the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission's Interim Report tabled last month, it is now up to various state governments and the federal government to respond quickly to save lives when the next catastrophic fires happen.
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