News

On April 2 the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation and Oxfam Australia published Close the Gap, a report highlighting the shameful state of Indigenous health in Australia. The report ranked Australia as the worst at improving the health of indigenous people compared with other wealthy nations.

MELBOURNE — Chanting ‘No nukes! No war! This is what we’re fighting for!’, more than 3000 people, including representatives of 80 different organisations, took part in the Palm Sunday peace parade on April 1. Dubbed Nuclear Fools Day, it was a protest against the expansion of uranium mining and proposals for nuclear energy. It also sent a strong message to the ALP, which looks set to scrap its ‘no new mines’ policy at its national conference later this month. Speakers included Cam Walker from Friends of the Earth, Bill Williams from the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation Foundation, Democrat Senator Lyn Allison and Greens Senator Bob Brown.

While NSW police minister David Campbell has inspected the new APEC command in Sydney — in which the state government is wasting millions of dollars — anti-war, environmental and workers’ rights activists are preparing to send their message to US President George Bush, PM John Howard and other APEC leaders in Sydney in early September.

“There is no future for oil-dependent agriculture”, well-known Columban priest and Philippines-based anti-GMO campaigner Brian Gore told the WA launch of Say No to GMO (genetically modified organisms) on April 5.

At this year’s national ALP conference, to be held in Sydney from April 27, delegates will determine whether or not to ditch Labor’s current policy of not supporting any new uranium mines (adopted in 1998). The current policy will almost certainly be overturned.

More than 50 people protested on April 12 against the Australian government’s decision to send 300 extra troops to Afghanistan. The speakout was called at short notice by the Stop the War Coalition. Activists pointed out that the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan are part of the same “war on terror”, are both motivated by lies, and are both wars of occupation in which innocent people are being killed for US corporate interests.

Supporters of the Venezuelan and Cuban revolutions assembled on April 11 at the Iberoamerican square to commemorate the failure of the April 2002 US-backed coup against the government of Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chavez.

Declaring that there “is the distinct possibility of casualties and that should be understood and prepared for by the Australian public”, PM John Howard announced on April 10 that an Australian military task force spearheaded by 300 Special Air Services troops would be deployed to Afghanistan’s south-central Oruzgan province.

In Papua New Guinea, 97% customary land ownership by the Indigenous people is recognised by the constitution. However, a powerful coalition is seeking to overturn this. At a forum hosted by AidWatch and supported by the Research Initiative on International Activism UTS, Sylvia Mulung and Howard Sindana, community organisers from the Bismarck Ramu Group in Madang province, explained the struggle being organised against the privatisation of land.

Green Left Weekly is taking a short break. The next issue will be dated April 18.

The CFMEU ACT Rank and File Action Group met on March 14 to discuss the state of the ACT branch of the union. Reports were presented about the CFMEU federal office investigation of the branch, the group’s campaign for a clean and strong union that is accountable to its members and the state of industrial organising in the ACT.

The major parties’ “green” credentials were again put to the test on March 22 when Greens Senator Christine Milne introduced Australia’s first climate change bill. Despite some high profile backing for the bill — which attempted to set legally binding targets for cuts to greenhouse gases — the major parties refused to support it, giving the lie to their concern about climate change.