News

On February 2, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib launched his NSW state election campaign in the western Sydney seat of Auburn. The seat is currently held by the ALP’s Barbara Perry.

The Socialist Alliance will launch its campaign for the NSW election with a rally and concert on February 24.

Isn’t it great to begin the new year of struggle with a victory! The January 26 announcement that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley will be charged with the manslaughter on Palm Island in 2004 of Mulrunji, a young Indigenous man, was a historic victory. This will be the first time in Queensland history (and only the second time in Australian history) that a police officer is to be charged in relation to an Aboriginal death in custody.

Thirty workers at Tristar Steering and Suspension in Marrickville are still fighting for redundancy entitlements provided for under a longstanding enterprise agreement (EA), which expired in September. The workers have been idle since production shifted overseas in July, while the company has used PM John Howard’s Work Choices legislation to save money by not paying the workers their due.

“It must never again be the case that a death in custody, of Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal persons, will not lead to rigorous and accountable investigations and a comprehensive coronial inquiry.”

“The Socialist Alliance welcomes the decision of Bryce Gaudry to stand as an independent for the seat of Newcastle in the NSW state election on March 24”, alliance spokesperson Steve O’Brien said on January 31.

“Celebrate what’s great” was the official theme of this year’s Australia Day, January 26. But for Aboriginal Australians, what was worth celebrating on the day that marks the brutal British invasion of their land was the decision to charge the police officer Chris Hurley with the manslaughter of Mulrunji Doomadgee.

On January 26, more than 500 people marched through Melbourne to mark Invasion Day and to call for an end to black deaths in custody and for justice for Mulrunji, who died in the Palm Island police station in November, 2004. Rally chair Brianna Pike announced at the protest that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley would be charged with Mulrunji’s manslaughter.

Unions are increasingly concerned over Airline Partners Australia’s (APA) proposed $11.1 billion takeover bid for Qantas. The buy-out, by the Macquarie Bank-led private equity consortium, has yet to be formally submitted, though the Qantas board of directors has unanimously agreed to the $5.60 a share bid.

Greens MP Lee Rhiannon slammed the police operation at the Big Day Out, saying that the use of sniffer dogs against recreational drug users had put people’s health in danger.

A major victory has been won by the Aboriginal movement in Australia. The Queensland attorney-general’s department has decided that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley will be charged with manslaughter over the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee. Mulrunji, an Aboriginal man, died in police custody on Palm Island in 2004.

A “freedom ride” from Sydney to Canberra will be held on March 25 to mark the 10th anniversary of the Howard government’s overturning of the Northern Territory’s voluntary euthanasia law, the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act (ROTI).