News

When I am out selling Green Left Weekly on the streets, I am often asked: “Where does the money go?” I have to tell people that it just goes to producing the next issue of the paper. The cover price is not nearly enough to make such a profit that we would have to decide what to do with it. In fact, GLW would never have survived 25 years without huge ongoing efforts in appealing for donations and organising fundraisers to raise the additional money needed over what we get through sales and subscriptions.

The 267 asylum seekers facing deportation to Nauru and Manus Island by the Australian government could go to New Zealand if they are found to be refugees, the country's Prime Minister John Key said on February 15. Among those facing deportation are 37 babies born in Australia to asylum seeker parents, and another 54 children, some of whom are attending school. A High Court decision this month ruled Australia's offshore processing regime was legal.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull presents himself as a leader who is different to former prime minister Tony Abbott in substance as well as style. But on the issues that most marked Abbott's tenure — his head-in-the-sand attitude to climate change and his "stop the boats" approach to asylum seekers — there have been no changes.

Whether it is welfare or wages, the income of youth and students seems to be under attack from the government and big business sectors. From the beginning of this year, commencing students will no longer receive the start-up scholarship of $1025, paid in two instalments over the year. New students now have the option of applying for a start-up loan of the same amount, which, similarly to the HECS debt, will be repaid to the Australian Tax Office once their income reaches a certain level.

Unions for Refugees released this statement of solidarity with the stand taken by doctors and nurses at Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in Brisbane staff on February 12. * * * Unions for Refugees would like to congratulate the stand taken by doctors and nurses at the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in Brisbane in support of 12-month-old Baby Asha. We encourage every unionist to extend their solidarity to them.

Activists unfurl banner off eastern freeway overpass in Melbourne

Five climate guardian angels were arrested by police on February 9 while blockading the road to Santos' Leewood wastewater facility in the Pilliga forest near Narrabri in north-west New South Wales.

Join the February 20 #TheseCutsAreKillingUs rallies against the Turnbull government's cuts to Medicare.

Love Makes a Way, a national movement of Christians concerned about refugee rights, protested outside Immigration Minister Peter Dutton's electorate office on February 10. The protest is a part of some 20 events to take place around the country over the next two weeks.

Thousands of people came out around Australia in cities and regional centres as part of the growing #letthemstay movement, aimed at preventing the removal of 267 asylum seekers, including 37 babies, from the Australian mainland to detention in Nauru.

TJ Hickey was a young Aboriginal man, just 17 years old. On February 14, 2004, TJ died as a consequence of a Redfern police pursuit.

After two decades of failing to secure a nuclear waste dump site in South Australia and the Northern Territory through a top down approach, early last year the federal government initiated a voluntary nomination process calling on landholders to put forward their land for assessment. A shortlist of six was released after 28 sites were nominated around Australia: Hill End in NSW; Omanama in Queensland; Hale in the Northern Territory; Cortlinye and Pinkawillinie in the Kimba region of South Australia; and Barndioota station in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia.