The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that of the 46 million pregnancies terminated each year, some 19 million occur outside the legal system. Most of these illegal abortions are unsafe performed by unskilled providers, or in unhygienic conditions, or both. Each year, an estimated 68,000 women die as a consequence of unsafe abortions.
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On June 26, federal education minister Julie Bishop announced a new board to draft a new national Australian history curriculum. Among the draftees are conservative historian Geoffrey Blainey and right-wing commentator Gerard Henderson. This is the Howard government enforcing its own racist ideology on history teaching.
Jasmine Ali was found not guilty on June 26 on charges relating to her involvement in a February 22 protest against US Vice-President Dick Cheney. The same day that she appeared before the court, the NSW government’s APEC Meeting (Policing Powers) Bill passed unamended through the NSW upper house. Ali was the second of two Cheney protesters to win court cases. There are six more trials to take place.
Ninety people crowded into the Redfern Community Centre on June 25 to hear traditional owners, environmentalists and Aboriginal rights activists explain their concern about federal government plans to set up a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. It was the last event of the From the Heart, For the Heartland national speaking tour.
The Killalea State Recreation Park between Shellharbour and Kiama comprises 250 hectares of Crown land on 8km of coastline renowned for its surf beaches.
On June 26, 50 inner-west film fanatics gathered inside the Petersham Bowling Club to revive another 16mm film print from the National Film and Sound Archives a place so far immune from attack in the history wars.
On June 22, 80 people attended a World Refugee Day forum organised by Project Safecom at the Fremantle Navy club entitled “Why the boats must come”.
She stood out at the table crowded by journalists and onlookers who kept entering the room. Her white hat with an intricate band of weaving shadowed her face as she spoke out in the constituent assemblys Vision of the Country commission: I will never forget how they killed our ancestors like Tupac Katari [an indigenous rebel leader], the way indigenous people have been treated like fleas, discriminated, excluded. That is why we are here, to call for profound change. We need a state that is plural, made up of many nations. But you, the slaves of multinationals, want no change at all.
During the last year the global warming debate has reached a turning point. Due to the media hype surrounding Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, followed by a new assessment by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the climate sceptics have suffered a major defeat.
Renowned left-wing author Tariq Ali told a packed public lecture at the Seymour Centre on June 26 that claims that we had reached the end of history had been well and truly disproven by the revolutions now sweeping Latin America.
The gay and lesbian community in Cairns is planning the inaugural Tropical Pride Festival, to be launched on September 16 at the Tanks Arts Centre from noon, with music from 5-9pm.
After several days of intensive, sometimes heated, discussions and membership consultations, public-service unions voted on June 28 to end their national strike and accept the South African governments settlement offer. The strike, which began on June 1, was the longest and largest public-sector strike in South Africas history, with more than 700,000 workers on strike and another 300,000, for whom it was illegal to strike, taking part in militant marches, pickets and other forms of protest.
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