News

Less than 12 months after its re-election, the NSW Labor government is in a poll slump — Premier Morris Iemma has a public approval rating of just 34%, according to a Nielsen poll released on February 26 (the Coalition’s Barry O’Farrell managed just 27%). The government has been rocked by scandals involving dodgy deals with developers, new hospitals unfit for patients, and faulty equipment delaying the opening of new rail lines.

On February 28, thousands of members of State School Teachers Union of the Western Australia (SSTUWA) defied an order by the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) to attend stop-work meetings. The meetings were part of the union’s campaign to win a new public schools enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA).

More than 500 Fire Brigade Employee Union members turned out for a mass meeting on February 22 to discuss the progress of their campaign for a decent wage increase. Five hundred on-duty members voted by fax. The NSW government’s offer of a 4% pay rise with loss of conditions was rejected by a vote of 1025 to two, with 25 abstentions. A further motion endorsing the union’s log of claims including a wage rise of between $218 and $354 over three years was approved by a similar margin.

Western Australian public sector agencies will be closed by rolling stoppages if the state Labor government fails to deliver a significantly improved pay offer before the expiry of the current collective agreement on February 25.

Four anti-war protesters who broke into the US-Australian Pine Gap spy base near Alice Springs in December 2005, had their convictions quashed by the Northern Territory Court of Criminal Appeal in Darwin on February 22.

We all know the scale of the threat posed by global warming and the short time in which we have to take meaningful action to prevent potentially catastrophic consequences. This makes the issue of global warming and how to combat it arguably the most urgent question facing humanity today.

One-hundred-and-seventy Qantas valet parking staff nationally are affected by a company’s last-ditch effort to move workers onto five-year fixed-term Australian Workplace Agreements (individual contracts) before changes to industrial relations legislation abolishing AWAs come into effect.

The federal Labor government has sought to play down the call made by its chief climate change policy adviser for it to go well beyond its target of a 60% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In an interim report released on February 21, Professor Ross Garnaut said that by 2050 global carbon dioxide emissions would need to be reduced to 90% of 2000 levels if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided.

A February 22 meeting between Western Australian prisons minister Margaret Quirk, Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Dennis Eggington and WA Deaths in Custody Watch Committee chairperson Marc Newhouse resulted in some ministerial promises of reforms following the the death in custody of an Aboriginal elder on January 27.

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) is urging Premier Mike Rann's South Australian government not to agree to a proposal from General Atomics (GA) to increase the size of the Beverly uranium mine from 16 km² to more than 100 km², warning of potential radioactive pollution.

Students Against the Pulp Mill are holding their first forum on March 1 as a way for young people around Tasmania to organise opposition to the Tamar Valley pulp mill.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) is holding a series of forums across the country to get feedback from delegates about the direction that the union is taking. The first was held in Melbourne on February 19, attracting more than 300 delegates from the metals, print, food and T&S divisions from across Victoria.