News

On April 15, 200 people attended a public meeting entitled “Putting the terror laws on trial” at the Kaleide Theatre, RMIT. The meeting was jointly sponsored by the Civil Rights Defence campaign group and Amnesty International.

As news headlines report riots and food shortages in Third World nations, during March and April more than 5000 people on Australia’s eastern seaboard were able to hear the inspiring story of Cuba’s survival when faced with starvation and its transition to ecological sustainability.

A snap protest was held outside the Sydney office of World Wide Fund for Nature on April 16 after WWF announced it was joining forces with the Climate Institute, the Australian Coal Association and the mining and energy division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union to push the federal government to make “clean” coal the centrepiece of its climate change abatement plan.

NASA’s chief climate scientist, Dr James Hansen, wrote an open letter to Kevin Rudd on March 27 urging him to halt the construction of new coal-fired power stations. He also demanded that Rudd implement the Garnaut report’s recommendations.

Tasmanian deputy premier Steve Kons resigned in disgrace on April 9 following the eruption of a new political scandal for Premier Paul Lennon’s Labor government related to its support for Gunns Ltd’s planned Tamar Valley pulp mill.

Australia’s military “would contain a careful mix of capabilities that could in extremis rip an arm off any major Asian power that sought to attack Australia”, said Professor Ross Babbage of the Kokoda Foundation in a private lecture to Australian Defence Force officials according to a March 25 AAP report.

Around 30 adults and children gathered outside Midland Centrelink on April 14 to demand the end of welfare quarantining in the Northern Territory.

Adverse financial conditions “The financial market crisis that erupted in August 2007 has developed into the largest financial shock since the Great Depression… Adverse financial conditions are likely to have a continuing negative impact on activity in the United States… The United States remains plagued by profound errors in risk management.” — From the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook survey, released April 9.

More than 300 people took part in three days of invigorating discussion at the Climate Change — Social change conference on April 11-13 hosted by Green Left Weekly.

On April 9, some 700 workers employed at the Port Melbourne-based Boeing subsidiary Hawker de Havilland went on strike. They were protesting against the company’s April 7 sacking of an Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) member without going through the agreed dispute-settlement procedure. The HDH plant makes parts for Boeing’s new 787 airliner.

“The intervention is an apartheid system. It’s an abuse of our human rights — but we blackfellas are used to that”, Mutitjulu elder Vince Forrester told a meeting of 130 people in Redfern on April 12.

Following the first Fossil Fools’ Day actions, it’s a good time to look at how the day came together nationally and how we can make the next Fossil Fools’ Day — and all future actions of the environment movement — even more successful.