News

The number of people on the waiting list for public housing in NSW has increased by 3.5% in the past year to almost 60,000. This is forecast to increase to 80,000 in 2016. According to a report last year by the NSW auditor-general, the present figure represents only about half of the people in NSW who actually need housing. The one thing that all policy analysts agree on is that demand will increase.
Aboriginal activists rallied on the steps of parliament house in Perth on November 12 to protest against the Western Australian government’s plan to close 150 remote Aboriginal communities. The rally also condemned the federal government’s plan to cut funding to 180 remote indigenous communities in Western Australia. READ MORE: COLIN BARNETT 'HELL-BENT' ON DESTROYING COMMUNITIES
The G20 barriers were still in place, the interstate police contingents had not left Brisbane, and US President Barack Obama’s “Brisbane” speech calling for protection for the Great Barrier Reef was still resonating when Premier Campbell Newman announced he had brokered a deal with Indian mining company Adani.
An emergency protest was called on November 20 to save Melbourne's Palace Theatre. Dozens of protesters rallied outside the building the same evening to stop it being demolished. The rally was met with resistance by a group of unidentified young men who intimidated and physically attacked protesters.
Stephen Jolly, the Socialist Party candidate for Richmond, is a high profile activist with electoral runs on the board. He came to prominence with the campaign to reopen Richmond Secondary College in the early 1990s, and has been on the frontlines of many campaigns in Melbourne’s inner north since, including recent efforts to stop the East West Link and to defend public housing.
Nineteen demonstrators have been arrested since October 21 in protests against the recent approval of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in Gloucester Valley, New South Wales. Police figures obtained by Green Left Weekly said charges range from trepassing, to individuals locking on to machinery or the buses transporting workers to the site. Fracking is the controversial process of extracting gas from underground coal seams and shale deposits by using high pressure to inject it with a chemical-water mixture.
Sixty people, including activists from Papua New Guinea (PNG) and ABC radio presenter Julie McCrossin, protested outside the federal government's Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit on November 12. The conference featured Liberal MPs Julie Bishop and Greg Hunt speaking to government ministers from the Asia Pacific region.
Labor and Coalition candidates avoided participating in a climate change election forum held on November 12 in the marginal Labor/Greens seat of Northcote. Last week local climate group, Darebin Climate Action Now (DCAN) held a mock climate forum outside Northcote Town Hall, with empty chairs for Labor and Liberal candidates. DCAN members held a banner: “Who is dodging climate debate?” As one Liberal Party insider Sunday Age recently: “The last thing the Coalition wants to do is to draw attention to environment policy, because there isn’t one."
In keeping with its crusade to privatise every public activity it can get away with, the Australian government has outsourced the management of an Ebola treatment hospital in Sierra Leone to private provider Aspen Medical. Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced on November 5 that the government would allocate $20 million to operate a British-built facility in the West African country over the next eight months.
In February, an immigration database containing the identities of almost 10,000 asylum seekers was mistakenly published on the department’s website. An investigation by another government office found the immigration department “breached the Privacy Act by failing to put in place reasonable security safeguards to protect the personal information it held against loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure and against other misuse”. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre released the statement below on November 12 in response to the commissioner’s findings. ***
The Wilderness Sociey put out this media release on November 13. * * * The NSW government’s new policy to offer compensation for those affected by the coal seam gas industry is just a desperate attempt to try to buy support for the toxic industry, the Wilderness Society said today as the government finally released the policy days after leaking it to the media.
This statement was released on November 12 by Socialist Alliance candidate for Pascoe Vale, Sean Brocklehurst, and Socialist Alliance candidate for Geelong, Sarah Hathway, in the November 29 Victorian elections. * * * Ford, General Motors Holden and Toyota all plan to close their vehicle manufacturing operations in Australia over the next two or three years. Tens of thousands of workers will lose their jobs in car factories and in factories making car components.