News

At least 100 people attended the Palestine: Global Perspective conference, held at the Victorian State Library on March 29.

Aboriginal legal aid services are to have their funding cut for the 13th year in a row, despite an election promise by the ALP that a federal Labor government would increase their funding, Trevor Christian, the director of the NSW/ACT Aboriginal Legal Aid Service, told the March 31 Sydney Morning Herald.

On April 1, the Sydney May Day Committee voted unanimously to accept a Unions NSW proposal to shift the traditional May Day march and rally from the first Sunday in May to Saturday May 3.

On March 20, Victorian Supreme Court judge Bernard Bongiorno found that the conditions of incarceration and transportation of 12 Melbourne men charged with terrorism-related offences were so harsh that a fair trial could not be guaranteed.

We are taking a break from production to attend the Green Left Weekly Climate Change — Social Change conference (see ad on page 5). The next issue of GLW will be dated April 23.

Printing company SEP Print sacked its work force without notice after the business was put into receivership on March 20. Sixty-five workers occupied the company’s factory in south-eastern Melbourne over Easter in an attempt to secure entitlements the company owes them that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) campaign to secure wage rises for construction workers across the country has attracted fierce criticism from the federal government, which is demanding the union apply “restraint” in order to keep a lid on inflation.

On April 1, 50 Wollongong residents rallied outside the NSW parliament in Macquarie Street, Sydney, to demand an end to corruption in the Labor-dominated Wollongong City Council (WCC). The rally, organised by the resident action group Wollongong Against Corruption (WAC), was addressed by, among others, Greens MP Sylvia Hale and NSW Liberal Party leader Barry O’Farrell.

As part of a global day of action in solidarity with Tibetan protesters, 65 actions took place across Australia on March 31.

At least 100 Indigenous people were arrested in Alice Springs during “military-style” police raids on the evening of April 3, according to an April 4 media release issued jointly by Vince Forrester, an elder of the Mutitjulu community at the base of Uluru, Greg Eatock from the Sydney-based Aboriginal Rights Coalition and Marlene Hodder from the Alice-based Intervention Rollback Working Group.

Fossil Fools’ Day, an international day of action on April 1 around climate change, was marked by protest actions across Australia involving up to 500 young people demanding an end to the use of fossil fuels and an increase in renewable energy sources.

A legal challenge by environmental group Blue Wedges to the federal government’s approval of the dredging of Port Phillip Bay was defeated in the Federal Court on March 28. Blue Wedges’ case was based on the slipshod manner in which environment minister Peter Garrett approved the project on February 6, a week after the giant dredging ship the Queen of the Netherlands arrived in Melbourne on January 29. The ship was commissioned by the Victorian government to dredge a new shipping channel in the bay.