News

  • Green senators challenge budget plans

    Green senators challenge budget plans Greens (WA) senators Dee Margetts and Christabel Chamarette have released an alternative analysis of the economy, challenging many of the government's basis assumptions informing the May budget plans. The

  • 'Cynical' retreat on old-growth forests

    "Those with a conscience in the ALP will find it hard to defend the indefensible", was how WA Green Senator Dee Margetts summed up the federal government's forests package, announced on March 30. Margetts told Green Left Weekly

  • 60 speakers for Brisbane gathering

    BRISBANE — Brisbane's Campaigning for Democratic Socialism conference, over the Easter weekend, is shaping up to be the largest such gathering ever held here. The conference is organised by the Democratic Socialist Party and the

  • Twenty-four arrested in M2 blockade

    Twenty-four arrested in M2 blockadeSYDNEY — At 6am on March 29, police dispersed the "civil disobedience" blockade of the M2 Tollway, near Macquarie University in Epping, which had been costing the Abigroup-Obayashi

  • Loose cannons

    Duty calls "Cabinet members should be more deeply involved in issues, and some of them might care to stay in Australia and do some work. It's been hard to find them in Australia this year." — Federal Labor backbencher Peter Cleeland, MP for

  • NSW elections a blow to the major parties

    SYDNEY — The people of NSW gave a decisive thumbs down to "politics as usual" in the state election on March 25. The 1.5% swing away from the Liberal-National Coalition, the fact that the ALP just managed to limp over the

  • Unionists blockade Tarkine road

    Unionists from unions covering the community, health and education sectors participated in a blockade of the Heemskirk Link Road on March 24, calling upon the government to stop the environmentally destructive development.

  • Melbourne conference a major left event

    MELBOURNE — The Marxist educational conference, "Campaigning for democratic socialism", to be held here over Easter, is shaping up as a major event on the city's left calendar. To be held at the Lincoln Institute (625 Swanston

  • Australia blocks progress at greenhouse conference

    Reports of a giant breakaway iceberg and a new 64-kilometre crack in the Larsen ice shelf in the Antarctic peninsula — dramatic indicators of warmer weather — seem to have had little or no impact on the major greenhouse gas culprits at the world climate conference in Berlin. Australia and the United States are leading the charge against strict controls of greenhouse gas emissions in the two-week conference, which began on March 28.

  • Contamination fears at ADI St Marys

    SYDNEY — Watching the decontamination process at the Australian Defence Industries (ADI) site at St Marys is like trying to understand, while digging up a serial killer s victims, how it ever could have

  • Green leaders speak in Sydney

    SYDNEY — Tasmanian Greens leader Christine Milne and Australian Conservation Foundation director Tricia Caswell were guest speakers at a public lecture organised by the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University

  • Having a say isn't easy

    Having a say isn't easyThe lengths to which politicians will go to make it as difficult as possible for people to express their will at the polling booth was revealed in all its absurdity during the NSW state elections.