News

Around 200 people joined a “Walk for Peace and Unity in Zimbabwe” on June 8, organised by the group Australians Supporting Zimbabwe. Gathering at the Peace Pagoda at South Bank, they walked along the Brisbane River bank to Davies Park for an information session and BBQ.

Young people today are angry: there are major and urgent problems in our society including global food shortages, a rise in oil prices — which will send millions into greater poverty — and the build-up of greenhouse gas emissions.

As Green Left Weekly goes to print, public school teachers in South Australia are planning to strike on June 17. It will be the first all-day stopwork the SA Australian Education Union (AEU) has called in over ten years.

Who says Australians are too laid back, lazy and spend most of their time holidaying? This myth has been shattered with the findings of a global survey conducted by online travel company Expedia, which revealed that of all study participants Australians were the least likely to take their annual leave entitlements.

A morning rally of 50 in City Place on World Environment Day, June 5, demanded action for sustainable transport. Renee Lees from Cairns Action for Sustainable Transport (CAST) pointed out that the current Cairns transport plan proposes only that a minimum of 10% of passenger travel should be by public transport by 2036.

While the increasing censorship of art made headlines with the police raid and confiscation of Bill Henson’s work in Sydney, this is far from a stand-alone case of political interference in art.

Anticipating a report scheduled to be released by the office of federal resources minister Martin Ferguson in about a month, NT Labor Senator Trish Crossin told the ABC on June 10 that the Northern Territory could be home to a nuclear waste dump.

CSIRO staff took protest action in Melbourne and Geelong on June 13 over stalled enterprise bargaining agreement negotiations. The CSIRO Staff Association is part of the Community and Public Sector Union.

A group of Japanese consumer representatives currently visiting Western Australia have been assured by Labor Premier Alan Carpenter that the state’s current moratorium genetically modified (GM) organisms will not be removed. The assurance was made during parliamentary question time on June 11.

A report released on June 5 by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) calls for massive job cuts and fair hikes to make Sydney train services more “efficient”. The report recommends cuts amounting to $480 million a year, the June 6 Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Key NSW public sector workers — firefighters, teachers and nurses — are to negotiate new agreements this year and are fighting a tough campaign for fair wages as they face attacks from an anti-worker state Labor government.

Mining giant Xstrata has been condemned by environmental campaigners for its failure to release 1999 data quantifying the impacts of mining operations on lead levels in the Mount Isa area.