News

On November 21, up to 10,000 Victorian teachers went on strike, travelling from around the state to fill the Vodafone Arena in Melbourne. Around 150 schools were closed as a result of the industrial action. The teachers are calling for a 10% per annum pay rise over the next three years.

Three members of Iraq’s Olympic soccer team and one of the team’s assistant coaches announced their intention to apply for asylum in Australia after an international game in Gosford on November 17. They are currently on three-month temporary visas as athletes, and as such are not being sought by the immigration department.

A struggle to reignite, restore and respect Aboriginal community control is being waged in Fitzroy, a place of historical significance to the contemporary Indigenous rights movement.

Twenty-year-old Lismore resident Ben Cooper was awarded a “Kids in Community” award in June, for his work as a queer activist in the community. Cooper organised two equality rallies in Lismore for the same-sex marriage National Days of Action and is the founder of Lismore Activists for Same Sex Equality (LASSE). LASSE has recently been involved in a campaign against Regeneration, a Lismore Baptist church group that aims to “convert” young gays to heterosexuality.

“These are the worst days in Pakistan’s history”, Ali Khan, a student from Pakistan, told a rally in Burke Street Mall on November 15. The rally was called by Australia Asia Worker Links and the Socialist Alliance to protest the state of emergency imposed by Pakistan’s Army Chief of Staff and president, Pervez Musharraf.

Brewery workers at the Foster’s Yatala plant, near Beenleigh south of Brisbane, are continuing their campaign for a union collective agreement. The workers — members of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union — are holding pickets outside the brewery gates from 1-5pm on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, as well as some night-time pickets.

At a 100-strong October 26 Your Rights at Work election forum, Sue Cory, Greens candidate for the federal seat of Leichhardt, spelt out her party’s policies supporting the rights of workers to organise and take industrial action, in contrast to those of the ALP, which would maintain the existing anti-worker laws introduced by the Howard government.

Resistance has been actively challenging PM John Howard’s agenda at every step along the way — from protesting his racist attacks on refugees and Muslims to leading student walkouts against the Iraq invasion in 2003 and the introduction of Work Choices in 2006. A defeat for the Howard government on November 24 will be a victory for all the movements that have defended workers’ rights and the environment and stood up to his pro-war policies.

Community concern over the Victorian state government’s plan for a $3.1 billion desalination plant at Wonthaggi is growing following reports that the Labor government is forcibly acquiring properties around the proposed site. The local community and environmentalists have opposed the proposal as being environmentally damaging and the wrong solution to tackle water shortages.

On November 17, thousands of people, including five busloads of people who came down from Launceston, rallied in Hobart’s Franklin Square against Gunns Ltd’s proposed $1.8 billion pulp mill in the Tamar Valley.

Supporters of the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN) gathered in Brisbane Square on November 16 to provide information to passers-by about December’s constitutional referendum in Venezuela, and to demand, “US hands of Venezuela!”

There is no time to waste in the fight against climate change. The national Walk Against Warming (WAW) protests on November 10-11 mobilised thousands of people. In most major cities they were joined by sizeable “youth blocs”.