News

In a Brisbane court on May 25, Palm Island resident Lex Wotton was allowed to withdraw his guilty plea in relation to riot charges, after Judge Phil Nase found that Wotton had been asked to plead illegally.

“A social movement is essential for changing government and opposition policies to halt the climate crisis”, Dr Mark Diesendorf told a May 22 public meeting at the University of NSW to launch his book Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy. Diesendorf told the audience of around 200 people that individual and household solutions are not sufficient.

On May 23, Sydney’s Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) issued a call for support for a Chinese asylum seeker at Villawood detention centre who has been on hunger strike for 57 days. There are reports that the man was transferred to hospital from Villawood’s medical centre on May 22.

“Australian Tamils demand protection not persecution” was the theme of a gathering of more than 500 members of the Tamil community outside the Victorian parliament on May 22.

Big performer “Allan Moss is worth 446 construction workers, 669 graduate teachers, 335 GPs or 108 prime ministers. The head of Macquarie Bank, who was paid $33.49 million last year, is worth 747 times the average Australian worker, who was paid $862 a week. It would take Mr Moss just three hours to earn that worker’s yearly income of about $45,000… But Mr Moss only gets paid so handsomely if he performs. Virtually all of his pay is tied to the bank’s profit performance, and his day-to-day salary is just $670,819 a year.” — Sydney Morning Herald, May 16.

The Victorian Labor Party has gone on a propaganda offensive against the Greens, accusing them of selling out on nuclear issues and taking away Victorians’ right to protest against nuclear reactors. Large posters have been put up and pamphlets will be sent to households in the four lower-house seats where the Greens pose the most direct challenge to the ALP.

On May 17, a candlelight vigil was held in in Taylor Square to mark International Day Against Homophobia. The vigil was organised by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) Network of Amnesty International and Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) and called for the immediate release of Ali Humayun, a gay refugee from Pakistan who has been held in the Villawood immigration detention centre for more than two years.

A report released on May 14 by the Federation of Community Legal Centres of Victoria, accused police of using excessive and unwarranted force against protesters and bystanders during the November 17-19 G20 summit in Melbourne of international finance ministers.

A group of construction workers in Somerton have proved that it is possible to get off an individual contract (Australian Workplace Agreement — AWA) and onto award rates and an enterprise agreement.

Holding placards stating “Save the pool” and “Uniting Care doesn’t care”, hydrotherapy patients, many of them elderly people and in wheelchairs, gathered outside Uniting Care Health in Rosalie on May 17 to oppose the proposed closure of the Wesley Hydrotherapy Centre.

Activists from climate-action groups, environment collectives at the University of Queensland and Griffith University, Friends of the Earth, the Queensland Nuclear Free Alliance, Resistance and the Socialist Alliance are coming together to organise a “Stop Global Warming” rally in the week of World Environment Day (June 5).

On May 29, an unpredictable drama will begin. Attorney-General Philip Ruddock will try to overcome a series of embarrassing blunders by the entire Australian chain of command at the joint Australia-US Pine Gap spy base in the Northern Territory, and four activists will face trial in Alice Springs for entering a prohibited site.