News

Protesters gathered in Melbourne on August 8 to urge the replacement Hazelwood Power Station with renewable energy. Australia's dirtiest power station, Hazelwood is owned by Engie France and Mitsui Japan. According to the OECD it is one of the world's most polluting power stations, both in terms of the toxic cocktail of chemicals it daily emits and its carbon emissions. Hazelwood is also Australia's least efficient power station and a major consumer of water: 1.31 megalitres of water is consumed per gigawatt hour of power generated.

As AGL announced a $400 million loss on August 10, anti-gas protesters assembled outside its headquarters to demand it close its Camden coal seam gas (CSG) project in south-west Sydney.

A sea of blue Allied Health Professionals burst onto the streets in the latest job walkout in a year-long industry dispute. As part of the Code Blue action, 600 physiotherapists and radiographers, occupational therapists, speech pathologists and social planners walked off the job, holding up inflatable dinosaurs that parodied the Jurassic career structures last updated, bizarrely, in 1966.

On August 4 the family of Ms Dhu and their supporters marked the second anniversary of her death in police custody in South Headland with a rally outside Perth's Central Law Courts. Ms Dhu's family is calling for an independent investigation into her death, as well as demanding the release of CCTV footage that shows her last hours alive in custody. Ms Dhu, who was 22 years old at the time, had been detained for the non-payment of fines amounting to $3622, but died within two days of being taken into custody.

Liverpool Plains' farmers are celebrating the New South Wales state government's decision, on August 11, to buy back BHP Billiton's Caroona coalmine licence for $220 million. This comes after a struggle that began in 2008, when farmer Tim Duddy and the local community began a blockade that put a spanner in BHP Billiton's efforts to start drilling operations on his family's Rossmar Park property.

WWF Australia bought and retired a $100,000 shark fishing licence on the Great Barrier Reef last month. They called for donations to cover the cost and so much was donated — from more than 30 countries — that they are now looking to purchase a second licence. WWF-Australia conservation director Gilly Llewellyn said: “People see our idea as a practical way to save sharks and prevent dugongs, turtles and dolphins being killed as bycatch.”

On Tuesday August 16, the University of Sydney will experience the most exquisite celebration of love as the Rainbow Campus campaign unites rainbow couples to show Australia what it is missing.

Justice for Palestine Brisbane activists branded former Queensland premier Peter Beattie a hypocrite on July 27 as they crashed a lunch at the Hilton Hotel at which he was the keynote speaker.

Architects, artists and community activists have condemned the NSW state government's plan to demolish the iconic Sirius apartment building in the historic Rocks area of inner Sydney, with one artist, Del Kathryn Barton, calling the move a "cultural tragedy".

Apex Energy, in a joint venture with Ormil Energy (later Magnum Gas and Power), obtained a licence in 2011 to explore for coal seam gas (CSG) in the Illawarra, south of Sydney. Almost immediately a group of concerned locals came together to stop the project — and Stop CSG Illawarra was formed. Five years later, as Apex Energy exits the scene, rather anti-climactically, it is apparent the community has won and the environment and greater Sydney's drinking water are safe from this threat.

Vital nesting trees for Australia's critically endangered Swift parrot in a forest at Buckland in southern Tasmania, have been illegally logged. They were caught in the act by researcher Dejan Stojanovic from the Australian National University, who said: “There was two cars worth of blokes standing around the base of one of my nest trees ... This site is one of the most important locations for Swift parrots on mainland Tasmania. “Since 2010, of the 18 nest trees that I've been monitoring with motion-activated cameras, 10 have been cut down.

The powerful conservative Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (SDA) — the biggest right-wing union affiliated to the Labor Party — has passed a resolution declaring it will adopt a neutral stand on equal marriage.