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Premier Anna Bligh’s push to privatise Queensland’s public assets is just how former National Party premier Joh Bjelke Petersen ruled Queensland said state secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, Peter Simpson.

Green Left Weekly will be taking a one week break. This means the next issue will be dated June 17.

Canberra residents picketed the Minerals Council of Australia’s National Conference on May 28. The protest, organised by Climate Action Canberra, condemned the Rudd government’s free permits to Australia’s biggest polluters, worth $16 billion.

More than 120 people packed into a seminar “Media complicity: reporting Gaza and Sri Lanka 2009” on May 27 at the University of Technology.

Mamdouh Habib, illegally detained in Guantanamo Bay and then cleared of all terror charges has, since returning to Australia in 2005, faced systematic harassment from security agencies and the NSW Police.

The threat of climate change means that for the first time humanity is faced with the very real possibility of extinction. The root cause of the ecological crisis is capitalism’s drive to maximise immediate profits above all else.

The Australian government and coal industry’s push for so-called “clean coal” technology is justified on the grounds that if we can keep burning and selling coal, but in a “sustainable” way, many Australian jobs will be saved. This is pure propaganda.

Scientific agreement on the need for drastic action to combat climate change has prompted the search for ways to ease humanity’s increasing burden on the planet, including consideration of population growth and consumption habits.

As the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) appears less and less likely to get through the Senate , the Australian Greens say now it is time for real action on jobs creation and climate change.

Local residents held a rally on May 23 to stop trucks entering the Tullamarine toxic dump site in Melbourne’s west. Two days later they picketed to again stop trucks from entering the landfill site.

In a time of climate crisis, logic dictates we should be cutting carbon pollution and ending our reliance on burning coal for energy. Yet the opposite is happening in Australia.

We all know about the government and big business’s so-called “solutions” to the climate change crisis: “clean” coal, carbon trading schemes, etc. But what are some real world solutions to the climate crisis and what real action is being taken?