Analysis

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.

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.

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.
Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma released the Our Future in Our Hands report to the National Press Club on August 27. It outlined a proposed structure for a new national body to represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Since April this year, a young Cairns couple has faced a nightmare.
Federal resources minister Martin Ferguson responded to the disastrous August 21 oil spill off the north-west coast of Australia by proposing to set up a new investigative body. The September 7 announcement claimed the new body would have the power to investigate such oil spillages and to “stop it happening again”.
On September 8, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) notified the families of the five journalists killed in 1975 at Balibo in East Timor that it had begun an investigation into the killings.
The following call for support was released on August 24 by Richard Downs, spokesperson of the Alyawarr people of the Northern Territory, who have walked off their community of Ampilatwatja in protest against the federal government’s NT intervention. Visit www.interventionwalkoff.wordpress.com for more information.
The October 17 Fremantle local government elections will take place in the wake of the May by-election that resulted in the historic victory of Greens candidate Adele Carles.
In June, a raft of new legislation was presented to parliament to in effect, outlaw homebirth midwifery in Australia. Indemnity insurance would be a legal requirement for medical practitioners, under a new national registration and accreditation scheme.
In early September, as federal parliamentarians debated whether to end the repulsive government policy of charging refugees for the costs of their own imprisonment in detention centres, damning revelations emerged that Australian navy personnel prevented badly burnt refugees from climbing onto rescue boats.