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Greens MP Jamie Parker gave this speech at the Sydney rally for World Kobane Day on November 1. * * * I'm here in solidarity with the people of Kobane and with all Kurds. I have spoken about the YPG and YPJ before, but now I also want to speak about the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). In this country there is only one party in the parliament, the Australian Greens, which fully supports the unbanning of the PKK. The PKK is not a terrorist organisation and we have stood against its banning since 2005, when the government first sought to list the PKK as a terrorist organisation.

Members of an Australia Palestine Advocacy Network study tour in front of the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank in January last year. Photo from APAN.org.au.

Paediatricians and health workers and researchers in Darwin gathered at the Royal Darwin Hospital campus on October 29 to make a public statement that "Detention Harms Children". The protest followed the weekly Paediatric Grand Round meeting that focused on the impact of trauma on refugee and asylum seeker children. Staff from Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne and Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in Brisbane have held similar protests in recent weeks.

The Western Sydney University (WSU) Resistance club has been successful in electing one of its members onto the editorial board of the university's student magazine, Cruwsible. WSU students had the chance to vote from October 12 to 23 for six editor positions for 2016 as part of the student elections held on campus. Resistance members Philip Craig and myself nominated for the editor roles. While Philip unfortunately missed out by a small margin, I was voted in as the sixth editor.

Reza, an asylum seeker who had been living in the community on a bridging visa, took his life at the Brisbane airport on October 29. According to friends, he feared being deported back to Iran. “He was scared to stay here”, a friend of the 26-year-old Iranian told the Guardian Australia. He had grown worried that he was being followed and that he would be taken into detention, the friend added. The friend said Reza called him early on October 25 and said: “I am tired. Always police and people follow me. I want to kill myself. Tell my family.”

Around two thousand people rallied in Sydney on October 11 in support of refugees. The protest was called by the Refugee Action Coalition and came in the wake of claims of mistreatment and sexual abuse against refugee women on Nauru and Manus Island.

Norrie has spent a lot of time in the offices of the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages (BDM). When Norrie went on October 28, it was for love and equality. Norrie is sex non-specific — neither man nor woman. Five years ago, Norrie went to the office to get them to change zie's (the pronoun for a person of non-specific sex) birth certificate to read “sex: non-specific”. BDM complied, but the New South Wales state government appealed. It took four years and an April 2014 High Court ruling for Norrie to be formally recognised as sex non-specific.

Under pressure from an industrial campaign by the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), the Turnbull government has announced it will lift its cap on wage rises for federal public sector workers from 1.5% to 2%. The government is maintaining its hard line on stripping existing workplace rights and conditions. Only a handful of government agencies have so far this year reached EBA settlements with their workers.

Brisbane See a film at Red Cinema: Disruption. This film looks at the 2014 People’s Climate March in New York. Entry $15/$10 conc. Meal and drinks available. Friday November 6 at 6pm. Brisbane Activist Centre, 74B Wickham St, Fortitude Valley. Phone Angus 0431 935 576. Melbourne

Protesters occupied environment minister Greg Hunt's office in Melbourne on October 30, in protest at his re-approval of Australia's largest new mega coalmine — the Adani-Carmichael mine in Queensland. Protesters hung a banner from the roof with “Greg Hunt: Minister for Coal” emblazoned across it. “It is clear that our Minister for the Environment doesn't stand for the environment at all”, said student activist Sam Dariol.

The long-running dispute between the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and Hutchison Ports is edging closer to settlement. An MUA member at the Port Botany community assembly told Green Left Weekly on October 30 that letters offering voluntary redundancies were being issued by the company that day. MUA members have a week to reply. They said that substantially improved redundancy entitlements, “roughly equivalent to 26 weeks' pay,” are being offered — a big gain on the previous offer of nine weeks' pay for three years of service.

Wollongong activists before their large Reclaim the Night rally on October 29. Two hundred people rallied in Melbourne on October 24 as part of the annual Reclaim the Night march to stop violence against women. Rally speakers spoke in support of the Somali refugee woman known as Abyan and other women who have been sexually assaulted while imprisoned in Nauru detention centre.