Analysis

Employment in the Latrobe Valley in Victoria is heavily dependent on brown coal for electricity generation.

Adelaide is Australia’s festival city. Its arts festival is currently in swing. Polite debate, aesthetics and high-octane wine are putting the world to rights. With one exception. Adelaide is where Rupert Murdoch began his empire.

In the past year in Indonesia, almost 3000 asylum seekers have been stopped from heading to Australia, the Herald Sun said on March 23. The Australian government does not care what happens to these people, who are often detained in horrific conditions or deported back to unsafe countries.

The inquest into the fatal boat explosion involving Afghan asylum seekers and the Australian navy in April 2009 has ended with appalling conclusions. Despite evidence suggesting the five deaths and extensive injuries could have been avoided if defence personnel had operated differently, the refugees received sole blame and may face criminal charges.

For the 2009 climate summit, I wrote a short article titled “Looking back — moving forward: ten lessons for the climate movement”. It attempted to articulate some of the challenges and opportunities for the community climate movement after two years of rapid growth in scope and capacity.

Every week, dedicated Green Left Weekly supporters hit the streets to present the news and ideas excluded from the mainstream media. These ideas help us better understand the world around us and expose the lies and distortions of the corporate elite.

In the Christmas Island detention centre's Alpha Compound — a maximum security-style section holding refugees from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka — Tamil refugees are desperately appealing to the Australian government not to send them back to Sri Lanka.

Three hundred climate activists participated in Australia’s second national Climate Action Summit in Canberra on March 13-15, marking an important step forward for the grassroots climate movement in this country.

On March 15, opposition leader Tony Abbott said the shadow cabinet would support the federal ALP government’s extension of “income management” to more welfare recipients in the Northern Territory — not just those living in targeted Aboriginal communities.

Green Left Weekly’s Niko Leka spoke with Professor Louise Newman Friday, chair of the Detention Expert Health Advisory Group (DEHAG) following her recent visit to immigration facilities on Christmas Island.

Journalists at the ABC have come under strong pressure from the organisation’s chairperson to give more weight to the views of climate change deniers.

Hearings in the ongoing coronial inquest into the November 2004 death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee, a member of the Indigenous community on Palm Island, were held on the island and in Townsville from March 8-12.