Green Left Fighting Fund

When the Olympic Games begin, the news headlines will be swamped with stories of new world records in this or that sporting field. We will be whipped into a frenzy about it. There will be discussions all around the world about how the record was broken, about the ferocious competition to produce record-breaking athletes, about performance-inducing drugs. Meanwhile, much more significant world records will barely rate a mention in the media.

In the wake of the shooting outside Parramatta police station — which left Curtis Cheng, a civilian police employee, and 15-year-old schoolboy Farhad Jabar dead — Parramatta mosque chairperson Neil El-Kadomia told the Daily Telegraph he was preparing to advise his congregation that “if you don’t like Australia, you should leave.” Australia's new, more silver-tongued PM raced to echo this sentiment, as did the no-serious-opposition leader Bill Shorten.

The abrupt arrival of this year's bush fire season should be taken as another warning of the urgency of tackling the climate change crisis. The El Nino phenomenon of severe droughts and flooding rains that will make this a more dangerous summer has been a part of longstanding weather patterns on the Australian continent. But research has shown that El Nino will double in frequency and severity as global warming increases.

Tony Abbott’s government is gearing up for another budget, and much has been made about how to raise revenue and what to cut. The government has toned down its previous rhetoric about a budget emergency, which appears to have disappeared despite the government failing to pass most of last year’s budget measures, but it still looks as if they will make the most disadvantaged pay while keeping things sweet for their mates in the big end of town.

It seems you can’t turn around these days without having at least one of your senses assaulted by some form of advertising. It seems that is not about to change any time soon. In fact, judging by the amount of money that will be spent on advertising this year, things are about to get a lot worse.

Recently released data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows that the pay gap between men and women is the highest it has been since records began in 1994. On average, women earn 18.8% less than men for full-time work. The average full-time weekly earnings for men is $1587.50 while for women it is $298 less. The gap had been closing, and decreased to around 15% in 2005 but has since surpassed its 1994 level. One factor is that male-dominated industries pay more than female-dominated industries. Miners, who are 85% male, earn more than social workers, who are 77% female.

On February 11, the Australian Human Rights Commission’s (AHRC) report The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention, was tabled in parliament. The report looked at the effect on children of being locked up in detention centres in Australia and Christmas Island but not Nauru. The report reveals that 34% of the children have mental health disorders so severe they need psychiatric support. This compares to 2% in the general population.

There has been plenty of analysis and navel gazing from the mainstream media in the wash-up from the Queensland elections. While some looked at the personalities, others looked for someone or something to blame. One commentator, Tom Elliott writing in the Herald Sun, laid the blame for the state of the political system on voters and suggested what he called "a benign dictatorship".

Green Left Weekly is now in full colour. The new colour look adds to the attractiveness of Australia's premiere weekly socialist newspaper. It is an important step forward as we seek to further expand our distribution, in a period when the need for progressive alternative sources of news and commentary in this country is more critical than ever. With the ABC and SBS under attack, and the domination of the Murdochracy in Australia's mass media increasing, it is crucial that people support the alternative media, especially Green Left Weekly.

While GLW was on its break over the New Year period, the news came that a snap election is to be held in Greece on January 25. GLW has been regularly reporting on the situation in Greece in recent years — the imposition of vicious austerity measures by the European Union and the Greek government and the rising popularity of the left-wing coalition SYRIZA. As the election approaches, polls put SYRIZA in the lead. It is likely to win, though may have to enter a coalition in order to form government.

We can count on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to add insult to injury. In front of the world at the G20 Summit in Brisbane, he arrogantly regurgitated the racist colonial fiction — repudiated in law by the High Court in the famous Mabo case in 1992 — that Australia was an empty land before the European colonial invasion.

Conservative Murdoch mouthpiece Janet Albrechtsen and former deputy Liberal Party leader Neil Brown have been appointed as new members of the panel that oversees appointments to the ABC and SBS boards. The appointments by the Tony Abbott government come after the announcement of serious funding cuts to both public broadcasters in the May federal budget. The cuts were passed in parliament with the support of Labor and the Greens.