Steve O'Brien, Socialist Alliance candidate for the byelection in the NSW state seat of Newcastle, slammed the NSW government’s decision to close the heavy rail line to Newcastle at Broadmeadow, cutting the city centre from rail traffic from December 26. "This move is wrong and completely unacceptable for the people of Newcastle," O'Brien said. O'Brien was speaking at the campaign launch at the Rail Sheds, Newcastle East Foreshore Park, on October 12. The by-election will be held on October 25.
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Hundreds of Kurds gathered in a Turkish border town on October 7 for the funerals of four women killed fighting the Islamic State (IS) group. Across the border, a Kurdish female militia is playing a leading role in defending Kobani (also known as Kobane).
About 1000 people rallied in Melbourne for refugee rights on October 11. The date marked the one year anniversary of Operation Sovereign Borders.
About 300 protesters from the Kurdish community, marching to defend Kobani, joined the rally.
Former detainee Reza Yarahmadi spoke against Temporary Protection Visas. He said: "You know what TPV stands for? I call it Toilet Paper Visa. It is not worth more than that."
Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney condemned Operation Sovereign Borders. She said: "It is steeped in such lies, a crisis that does not exist."
Ever since the foundation of modern Turkey in 1923, the country’s Kurdish population has endured severe discrimination and national oppression.
The nationalist officers around Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the victor of Gallipoli who led the struggle to establish Turkey's republic, were ruthless Turkish chauvinists. They saw the large Kurdish minority as a “problem” to be dealt with.
The decision to deny 11-month-old Ferouz Myuddin a protection visa precedes a plan by Tony Abbott’s government to retrospectively deny all babies born to asylum seekers the right to seek refugee status.
An amendment bill containing extensive changes to the Migration Act was tabled by the federal government last month. The bill would remove most references to the refugee convention and legalise boat turnarounds.
The Coalition government also wants all babies born to asylum seekers who arrived by boat after August 13, 2012 to be declared “unauthorised maritime arrivals”.
The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) on October 13 gained Fair Work Australia authorisation for a ballot of members on protected industrial action in support of a fairer agreement in the federal Department of Human Services. The electronic ballot will start in late October for the 15,000 CPSU members in Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support.
Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance released this statement on October 16.
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Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance supports the struggle in Kobani against the Islamic State for a number of reasons.
Kobani, is part of an emerging progressive autonomous region called Rojava where people of all ethnicities and religious beliefs are equal and where women are leading the way forward.
Now I know things seem pretty bleak in this country right now, but we must remember there is always hope. After all, in 1967, an Australian prime minister entirely disappeared without any warning after he went swimming — and Tony Abbott loves to swim!
So don't give in to despair — it might happen again. The key thing is to not lose all hope.
When the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption was set up by the federal government, it was widely seen as a political witch hunt intended to smear the union movement with guilt by association to the scandals that had emerged in the Health Services Union (HSU).
With a bit of good fortune and a lot of spin-doctoring it would also provide the Coalition with handy ammunition against the ALP at the next federal election, likely to be held in late 2016 — a contrived “ticking Tampa”.
NSW ALP Senator John Faulkner, luminary of the Labor left, has been complaining of the structural flaws in the party for decades. Despite being a long-time beneficiary of the party’s factionalism, almost 10 years ago he was writing of the “shared venality” of party apparatchiks that led it back beyond factionalism. “It is feudalism, and it is killing the ALP.” Last week he was at it again in his address to the “Light on the Hill Society” at Revesby Workers Club in western Sydney.
University of Sydney professor Barry Spurr has been suspended following a protest at the university on October 17.
Students and staff rallied to express their disgust over reports from New Matilda the professor had vilified minority groups in emails to his colleagues by using terms such as “abos, mussies, chinky-poos” and referred to a woman as a “worthless slut”.
As I watched the slick military-supplied “news” clip of the first Australian Super Hornet mission over Iraq — where the two warplanes dropped not a single bomb on an IS target — I wondered how much that abortive mission cost the supposedly budget-strapped government and certainly budget-slapped Australian public.
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