News

After three days of relentless raids by WA police and Perth City Council rangers on the Matagarup Refugee Camp, participants responded with a night protest at parliament.

Activists from the Homeless Persons Union (HPU) began occupying vacant properties in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood on March 30 in a protest at the lack of public housing.

The Socialist Alliance released this statement on March 30. * * * Ken Canning, lead Senate candidate for Socialist Alliance in the federal election described the Daily Telegraph's condemnation of the University of NSW's Diversity Toolkit — guidelines for appropriate language to describe Indigenous history — as “the usual type of Neanderthal reporting”. “News.com slams the term 'invasion' when referring to James Cook's arrival in 1770. “Does the Daily Telegraph seriously think Aboriginal people laid out the red carpet for him?

Asylum seekers on Nauru have been protesting their long-term detention every day since March 20. Good Friday marked 1000 days in detention with no refugee determination for some asylum seekers.

Refugee Action Coalition released this statement on March 29. * * * Meetings in the Manus Island detention centre compounds on March 29 have revealed a series of moves by Australian and PNG Immigration to resolve the detention and resettlement issue before the Supreme Court challenge to the Manus Island detention centre, scheduled for the end of April.

Tony Shepherd is the former chair of Abbott's National Audit Commission, former president of the Business Council of Australia, a right-wing lobby group that represents some of the biggest corporations in Australia and a former member of the board of directors of Transfield, the company that profits from the misery of asylum seeks locked up in Australia's offshore refugee detention camps. Apart from that he has been an over-paid fat cat for conservative governments. Shepherd is the embodiment of the greed and evil of corporate rich.

About 800 people gathered at the Irish Memorial at the Waverley Cemetery in Sydney's eastern suburbs on March 27 over two events to commemorate the centenary of Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising against British rule. The first commemoration was organised by the James Connolly Association (JCA) and the second by the Irish National Association (INA), which maintains the cemetery’s famous memorial to martyrs of Ireland’s freedom struggle.

Charges of assault against Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) organiser Justin Steele have been dropped by Queensland police after the complaint against him was withdrawn. This is the fifth time a construction union official has had criminal charges made by the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption taskforce dropped. Federal police alleged Steele struck a female builder-developer’s arm and pushed her shoulder during a standoff at a South Brisbane site in May last year. The charges against him were dropped on March 23.

Greek Islanders who have been on the frontline of the refugee crisis have been nominated for the Nobel peace prize.

Hundreds attended the Kurdish New Year celebrations — Newroz — in Sydney and Melbourne on March 26 and 27 respectively. In Sydney, several hundred gathered in Blacktown to hear from community representatives and musicians.

British Fidelity, the last Australian-crewed oil tanker serving the Australian coast, has been removed from service by petroleum giant BP. British Fidelity had transported petroleum from Kwinana in South Australia to Devenport and Hobart in Tasmania. The crew received a letter from the ship manager, ASP, stating that BP had terminated the contract for the British Fidelity. This came after the crew had raised objections to sailing to Singapore.

Victorian paramedics are to receive a pay rise of up to $18,000 as part of a $54 million wage upgrade, after the state government accepted the role has become more difficult and complex in the past decade. This month the Fair Work Commission heard evidence about the increase in skills and responsibilities paramedics have required over the past decade and found that "these changes constitute a significant net addition to work requirements".