Five hundred people attended an anti-pulp mill public meeting in Launceston on June 10. It was organised by the Wilderness Society to pressure Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett into ensuring that no more public funds are used to support Gunns’ proposed Tamar Valley pulp mill or its pipeline.
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Noel Washington, vice-president of the Victorian branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), is to appear before the Geelong Magistrates Court on August 8 for refusing to attend a compulsory Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) hearing.
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On June 12, the South Australian-based manufacturing company Clipsal announced it would sack 200 permanent workers and close its Nurioopta plant based in the Barossa Valley. The company indicated that there would likely be unspecified flow on job cuts in its labour hire workforce.
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Bill Zhang, a Chinese refugee, killed himself after his forcible deportation from Australia, according to a June 16 ABC report. Zhang spent two years in Australias Villawood refugee prison.
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In a blow to the Northern Territory intervention policy, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) announced on June 15 that it will pull out of recruiting medical staff for the program, which it argued the government was dramatically underfunding.
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Growing concern about climate change has led to the formation of dozens of local community climate action groups across Victoria. Many of these are among the 45 endorsees of the July 5 Climate Emergency rally, at which Greens Senator Bob Brown will speak.
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At the end of May, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) logged all but three universities with a bold set of claims.
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The Rudd Labor government has abolished the hated temporary protection visas (TPVs) that left refugees in limbo for years despite having their refugee status confirmed, and it has scrapped the Pacific solution the shipping of asylum seekers to prison camps on Nauru and Manus Island. However, the bulk of the Howard governments refugee policies remain in place.
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Thirty people attended the June 17 meeting of Wollongong Against Corruption (WAC), which has spearheaded the anti-corruption campaign in Wollongong since its local council was sacked in March.
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More than 160 people were captivated by new film about health care in Cuba, Salud, which was screened by the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society on June 14.
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Contaminated wells, dying marine life and crops being destroyed by extreme weather are just a few of the challenges facing the 11,000 residents of Tuvalu, a Pacific nation that is the second smallest in the world.
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On June 21, protest actions were held around Australia on the first anniversary of the federal governments intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, demanding an immediate end to the racist invasion of Aboriginal land that it entails.