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On October 31, some 70 Wollongong TAFE teachers stopped work in support of students facing massive fee increases. The stopwork meeting condemned both federal and state governments for under-funding TAFE and shifting the cost of quality vocational education onto students. The teachers also expressed disgust at the Howard government for finding a “lazy” $2 billion to support the duplication of TAFE with the new Australian Technical Colleges (ATCs).

On October 27, the NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF) state council unanimously voted to “call upon Unions NSW to organise a Day of Union and Community Action to repeal all of Work Choices” for May 1 next year and to make it “the first of an ongoing series of actions to force the incoming federal government to repeal the anti-worker legislation in its entirety”.

A report in the October 29 Brisbane Courier Mail signalled that the Queensland state Labor government may finally legislate to decriminalise abortion. But not immediately — perhaps in 18 months time, well after the federal elections are over. Labor MP for Aspley, Bonny Barry, has been reported as preparing a private member’s bill to remove abortion from the criminal code. Premier Anna Bligh has said she will support it, but has no intention of introducing a bill.

On October 30, a Federal Court judge fined the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) $30,000. The fine was for discriminating against union members when it advised Australian Public Service agencies to refuse leave to employees who planned to take part in the November 2005 Australian Council of Trade Unions national protest against Work Choices.

On November 1, 50 people rallied in Hyde Park to protest the Australian Federal Police’s (AFP) role in training the Burmese police force. The rally was called by the Australian Coalition for Democracy in Burma.

The Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) has conducted mass meetings around Tasmania to vote on whether to accept the state Labor government’s offer of a 3.5% annual pay rise over the next three years or step-up industrial action.

PM John Howard is running low on stocks for a fear campaign to propel him back into office for a fifth time. In 1998, Howard gave just enough support to Pauline Hanson’s racist fear campaign against Asian migrants and Aboriginal people to to get him over the line in spite of promising to bring in the unpopular GST. In 2001, the fear campaign was generated by the Tampa refugees, with Howard defiantly claiming, “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. In 2004, it was the threat of rising interest rates under Labor — oops, can’t use that one again Johnnie!

A divided Sydney City Council on October 29 renewed News Corps’ contentious newspaper distribution license with the Lord Mayor Clover Moore's Community Independent Team split down the middle.

@9point non = SYDNEY — The November 2 Reclaim the Night rally, attended by 50 people, in Hyde Park demanded that the federal government increase funding to women’s refuge services by 40% and provide funding to assist women and children to stay in their homes once the violent offender is removed.

Assistant state secretary of the Western Australian branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), Joe McDonald, was expelled from the Australian Labor Party on October 26, on the recommendation of Labor leader Kevin Rudd. Earlier this year Rudd had failed to have the militant unionist expelled, and the ALP had stated that it would await the outcome of McDonald’s six charges for “trespass” on Perth building sites before making a decision.

The movement to oppose genetically modified crops and foods in Australia received international support for its campaign with the October tour of the Consumers’ Union of Japan (CUJ).

Twenty-one years ago Jackie Kriz, an Australian Nurses Federation job representative, took part in Victoria’s landmark nurses’ dispute of 1986. As a young Geelong nurse she remembers the long campaign where nurses went from being professionals who would never strike to industrial campaigners.