On February 6, 400 people converged on the lawns outside the national parliament building in Canberra to protest of the continued detention of Australian citizen David Hicks at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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“We have just spent the most exciting year of our lives residing in Venezuela. It’s the heartland of the most important radical political upheaval of our time, and centre of the project for socialism in the 21st century”, enthused Jim McIlroy who, along with Coral Wynter, spent 2006 in Caracas reporting on the Bolivarian revolution for Green Left Weekly.
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The action was in response to threats by federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock to have the governor-general disallow proposed ACT legislation on same-sex civil unions. In June 2006, the federal government disallowed an ACT bill on civil unions because it could have “undermined” the “institution of marriage”.
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On February 2, ABC News Online reported the laying off of 110 workers by Melbourne carpet manufacturer Feltex. A spokesperson for Godfrey Hirst, which took over Feltex late last year, said the workers jobs would go with the closure of the Feltex factories in Tottenham and Braybrook in Melbournes west. This vindicated workers and unionists who had resisted attempts by Godfrey Hirst to take away their redundancy entitlements, Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union media officer Tommy Clarke told Green Left Weekly.
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Only makes imperial sense "[Following] American Ambassador to Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad's statement that 'Turkey should refrain from interfering in the domestic affairs of Iraq', [Turkish] Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: 'So the United
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Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Greg Combet expressed great pride in the role played by trade unions and union members in achieving justice for the victims of James Hardies asbestos products.
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Due to mistakes introduced during the sub-editing of Lynda Hansen’s obituary for Phil Perrier (GLW #697), he was wrongly described as a “Queensland Aboriginal activist”, rather than a “Queensland Aboriginal rights activist”, and the concluding section of the eulogy made by Sam Watson at the February 2 “Sorry” ceremony were mistakenly attributed to Bernie Neville.
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Anti-nuclear campaigners from the Medical Association for Prevention of War, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth, the Australian Student Environment Network and campaign groups in all mainland states were among the 30 people who attended a national strategy meeting on February 3-4 in the Blue Mountains.
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Fifty people heard leading Queensland Aboriginal activist Sam Watson announce at a February 7 public meeting held in the Sydney inner-west suburb of Leichhardt that Queensland Police Sergeant Chris Hurley was formally charged on February 5 with manslaughter and assault occasioning bodily harm for the 2004 death in custody of Palm Island Aborigine Mulrunji Doomadgee.
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The February 6 Sydney Daily Telegraph reported that Australians yet to establish a view on the Venezuelan president will have the opportunity to do so in person if the organisers of an online petition inviting him to visit get their way.
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Seven-hundred people crammed into the Melbourne City Conference Centre on February 8 to hear radical journalist and film-maker John Pilgers call for mass action against the invasion of Iraq the paramount war crime against humanity from which all other war crimes follow.
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The queer rights activists of Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) believe that Peter Jensen, the Anglican archbishop of Sydney, should condemn a highly oppressive anti-gay law being introduced in Nigeria that is being backed by the Anglican Church in that country.