The South Australian government has produced an “anti-binge drinking” ad that targets young women. It features a young woman slumped in a dodgy club toilet while someone else points her finger accusingly.
The tagline reads: “Drink too much, you’re asking for trouble.”
Journalist Catherine Deveney described the ad on Twitter as amounting to government-funded “slut-shaming”.
Analysis
How would you feel if you woke up to the breakfast radio news announcing that Green Left Weekly had just published its last issue?
The left in Spain had that experience on February 24, when we learned that this would be the last day the progressive daily Publico appeared on the country’s newsstands (the online version continues).
With international condemnation of Australia’s approach to asylum seekers and the intervention in the Northern Territory, Prime Minister Julia Gillard may not be well known for her support for human rights. Still she agreed to the Greens’ request for recognition of Indigenous peoples in the Australian constitution.
There is a growing disconnect between the official rosy picture of the Australian economy and mounting public anxiety about job insecurity. The latest official unemployment rate (January 2012) was steady at 5.2% and Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson insists there is no reason to worry. Australians, he said, should shake off their misplaced “boom with gloom” attitude.
Twice daily outside almost every Victorian public hospital there are nurses protesting and waving banners in a spirited display of defiance.
The NSW department of planning released a set of new guidelines for wind farm developments in December last year. The department is seeking submissions from the public commenting on the new guidelines until March 14.
The new guidelines include the most stringent noise regulation in the world, with turbine noise not allowed to exceed 35 decibels. The limit is 50 decibels or more in much of Europe, and 40 decibels elsewhere in Australia.
Self described “advocate for women and girls” Melinda Tankard Reist recently launched a defamation claim against blogger Jennifer Wilson for saying Reist is a Baptist. Wilson’s article, on her blog No Place for Sheep, criticised Reist’s anti-abortion stance.
Dave Kerin from the new community group Enough has helped run a daily picket outside Telstra’s Collins St office in Melbourne for the past three weeks. The picket is a protest against Telstra’s decision to send hundreds of jobs offshore.
The Socialist Alliance Queensland released the statement below on March 2.
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The three Socialist Alliance candidates in the March 24 Queensland state election, two of who are former Labor Party members disgusted at Labor's betrayals of public interests, have called for a new trade union and community campaign to reverse the privatisations of the major parties.
What with the whole Rudd debacle, sparked by the whole Gillard debacle, Labor has been staggering from one crisis to the next. Time for some fresh and bold thinking!
Infectious Diseases Physician Trent Yarwood released the open letter below to Coalition immigration spokesperson Scott Morrison on February 28.
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Dear Mr Morrison,
I am writing to you regarding your press release dated February 27, 2012, entitled “Typhoid cases on latest boats highlight the risk of Labor’s border failures”.
The Socialist Alliance NSW released the statement below on February 29.
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The Socialist Alliance NSW condemns the latest step in the attacks on NSW public sector workers and their unions, announced by Premier Barry O’Farrell on February 23.
O’Farrell used question time to announce that he intends to introduce a bill to NSW parliament on March 6, which will increase penalties for industrial action in defiance of Industrial Relation Commission orders, or “wildcat strikes”.
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