On November 29, 50 people attended a forum on Sri Lanka organised by People for Human Rights and Equality, a multi-ethnic group comprising people of Sri Lankan origin living in Australia.
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The shooting of two Aboriginal boys in Townsville on November 25 shows that racism isn’t going away in the North Queensland town. The two boys, aged just 8 and 10, were playing in a park in Wulguru when they were fired upon by a drunken Townsville soldier wielding an air rifle.
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The state of public transport across Australia is not a new story: overcrowded, underfunded, overpriced and infrequent. In the outer suburbs, public transport is completely inadequate, at times, even non-existent.
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Socialist Alliance member and author Terry Townsend launched his new book The Aboriginal Struggle & the Left on December 2 at the Brisbane Activist Centre.
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Pro-choice campaigners took to the streets of South Brisbane on December 2 to send a strong and clear message to the Queensland government that old laws need not die hard.
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Unchecked urban expansion has chewed up large areas of Adelaide’s productive agricultural land for poorly planned and poorly designed housing developments, with no amenities and little or no access to public transport.
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The University of Wollongong (UOW) environment collective increased its activity this year, and established a formidable presence on campus. It is now playing a leading role in promoting grassroots climate action in the Illawarra.
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On November 26, after four months of negotiations, workers at industrial air conditioning manufacturer Buffalo Trident walked off the job indefinitely. The workers are fighting to have income protection and wage increases of 4% in the first year and 5% in the second year included in their enterprise bargaining agreement. Management at Buffalo Trident is ferociously anti-union. Evidence of this is that there have been no new union members at the plant since the introduction of Work Choices.
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A recent study by Foundation for Young Australians has shown that racism permeates Australian schools. Eighty percent of students from a non-Anglo background said they have been the subjected to racial prejudice. Even white Australians feel they have been subject to racism when at schools. In all, more than two-thirds of young people in Australia feel they are the victims of racism while at school. What a disgrace! We should all feel disgusted and ashamed that racism is still an issue we are yet to overcome. It truly is a sad reflection on the world we live in.
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To read the November-December edition of The Flame, an Arabic-language supplement in Green Left Weekly, please click here.
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About 300 supporters from more than 30 groups rallied in Melbourne to call for the Australian government to let refugees into Australia. The rally opened with a motion of support for the 255 Tamil asylum seekers in the Indonesian port of Merak.
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The Story of Cap & Trade (below) is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at the climate talks in Copenhagen. Cap and trade is also variously described as “carbon trading'' and “emissions trading”. In Australia, the federal Labor government is trying to push a variation of this through the Senate called the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”.