Analysis

Ask an average Australian what they might hope the federal government would spend $300 billion on and the answer would hopefully be vast investment in new jobs and services, given we’re heading into recession, and reducing Australia’s climate change impact.
This is an abridged version of the speech given to the Wollongong May Day march on May 2 by Fred Moore.
The federal budget will be presented to parliament by Treasurer Wayne Swan on May 12. While Swan has been officially tight-lipped about its contents, he has already released significant details about the cuts to programs and government jobs the budget will hand down.
Melbourne-based climate activist Pablo Brait sent the letter below to the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) on May 5.
Within 24 hours of the Rudd government’s announcement of new changes to the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, 66 climate action groups signed a statement condemning the decision.
The Kimberley Land Council has made a controversial in-principle agreement with Woodside Petroleum and the federal and WA state governments to develop a liquefied natural gas project at James Price Point near Broome.
For more than 100 years the WA seat of Fremantle has been safe Labor territory. Now, the May 16 state by-election for the seat is tipped to be a neck-and-neck race between ALP candidate Peter Tagliaferri and Adele Carles from the Greens.
Green Left Weekly spoke to Fremantle by-election candidates Adele Carles (WA Greens) and Sam Wainwright (Socialist Alliance) to ask what they hoped to achieve through their election campaigns
The government and most of the mainstream media want Australia to believe we are facing a “surge” of asylum seekers, threatening Australian borders as they arrive in dangerous and non-seaworthy boats.
On April 4, 2008, federal workplace minister Julia Gillard announced a review into occupational health and safety (OH&S) laws. The government said the review was aimed at harmonising OH&S laws across Australia.
The article below is based on an April 30 statement by the Stop the War Coalition Sydney http://www.stopwarcoalition.org.
In an act of peaceful civil disobedience, more than 500 Tamils occupied George Street in Sydney’s CBD for more than an hour. The May 1 action protested the genocide being carried out by the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil people in the north and east of the country.