News

“No powerlines through koala habitat”, was the main slogan of a protest rally of people from the Logan area, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast outside the Queensland parliament on October 7. The protesters had gathered to present a 2000-strong petition opposing electricity company, Energex, plans to upgrade powerline infrastructure near their homes. Veto Energex Towers Organisation (VETO) spokesperson Laurie Koranski said they did not believe the impacts of the plan had been fully investigated. VETO has already lobbied successfully to have some powerlines placed underground.

In a tragedy that occurs far too often, Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old gay university student, committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in New Jersey on September 22.

Police violence has come under the spotlight once again, as it tends to do every six months or so. Sometimes it is when two or more incidents occur together, or it is when the media have decided that the last story about misbehaving police has been forgotten, and now is the time for a new one.

One hundred activists protested on the steps of the Victorian parliament on October 6 to demand the Victorian desalination plant at Wonthaggi be scrapped. Stephen Cannon of Watershed Victoria, which organised the protest, said the Brumby government had provided no reliable costing of the project. Cannon said users could be paying six times the cost of ordinary water if the project went ahead. The project would line the pockets of corporations for generations at the expense of the people of Melbourne.

Almost 600 people poured into the town hall in Melbourne’s north-eastern suburb of Ivanhoe on October 6 to discuss the Victorian Labor government’s proposal to build a freeway across the Banyule Flats and the Yarra Corridor. The government intends to build the North-East Link to join the Western Ring Road to the Eastlink tollway. The lack of public transport in the area was shown by the fact that the only way most people could get to the meeting was by driving, causing a small traffic jam outside.

Three hundred people attended a launch of author and activist Tariq Ali's new book, From Bush to Obama — Change We Can Believe In? on October 6. Ali said Obama’s election campaign had raised people's hopes and mobilised US youth, but people were now disillusioned and angry. He said Obama was a “master of bullshit”. Obama’s rhetoric sounded different, but fundamentally continued the policies of the Bush regime.

About 25 people attended an October 5 Green Left Weekly forum on "The Fight for Refugee Rights". Paul McKinnon, convenor of the Refugee Action Collective, said: “While the refugee rights movement is still not up to the strength it was three years ago, the achievement of the earlier movement didn't disappear. There is a large reservoir of largely passive support for asylum seekers, which needs to be mobilised.”

On September 15, Socialist Alliance member Margaret Gleeson was awarded the prize of delegate of the year by the Queensland state conference of the Australian Services Union (ASU). She will now be put forward as the Queensland nominee for ASU National Delegate of the Year, to be decided at the union's national conference in November. See nomination below.

October 15 is Wear It Purple Day. Please make and wear a purple armband to show support for queer teens at risk of suicide. For young Australians, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents. There is evidence that 30% of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender teens in Australia attempt suicide. This is a shocking statistic and a disgraceful state of affairs.

As the rescue of 33 miners trapped 700 metres underground at the San Jose mine in Copiapo, Chile, was drawing closer, concerns were being raised about Chilean miners’ rights. After the August 5 cave-in that trapped the workers, mining company San Esteban sacked more than 200 other miners, refusing to pay their wages and entitlements. The miners union in Chile is demanding the government pay the workers’ wages if the company won’t.

About 500 South-East Queensland health workers walked off the job and rallied in front of State Parliament on October 7, protesting against the Bligh government's offer of annual pay increases of only 2.5% a year for three years. The unions are demanding increases totalling 12.5% over the three-year period. Queensland Public Sector Union general secretary Alex Scott said Queensland Health could return to "the bad old days" if workers were forced to leave the system over pay.

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has vowed to fight the imposition of a “sub-standard” enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) after a majority of general staff voted in favour of the agreement in a September 29-October 1 poll. The agreement fails to meet award protections that limit the use of fixed-term employment, allowing for further deregulation of the workforce. It also reduces flexibility on annual leave entitlements and allows for forced redeployment within the university.