Students protest fee hike
SYDNEY — On August 5, 100 students protested against the Sydney University Senate's decision last month to approve a 30% across-the-board tuition fee increases, even though legislation that would allow such a fee hike has not been passed by the federal parliament.
The university senate's meeting was held in barricaded building guarded by 60 police officers.
The Sydney University Education Action Group meets at 1pm every Tuesday. Contact Karol on 0410 544 396 to get involved.
Brunswick medicare forum
MELBOURNE — On August 6, 25 people attended a Medicare forum in Brunswick sponsored by the local Greens branch.
Labor MP Kelvin Thomson spoke about Labor's commitment to raise bulk-billing rebates for GPs. When questioned about the private health fund tax rebate, which Labor voted for when the Howard government introduced it, he said Labor had not yet decided whether to support calls for its abolition.
Socialist Alliance representative David Glanz, while supporting an increase in the bulk-billing rebate to doctors, spoke of the need to make community health centres with salaried doctors "the norm rather than the exception".
Democrats' senator Lyn Allison said her party had not adopted a final position on the government's planned legislation, but expressed disagreement with some aspects of the government's policy.
Greens representative Richard di Natale said his party favoured abolishing the private health care rebate, giving a modest increase in the bulk billing rebate to GPs and expanding community health centres.
Palestine forum
SYDNEY — Dr Rita Giacaman from the Public and Community Health Program at Birzeit University, in Ramallah, Palestine, addressed 70 people at an August 6 public forum organised by the Palestine Human Rights Campaign at the University of Technology Sydney.
"We are told that mothers push their sons to be suicide bombers — the reverse is true. Mothers lock their sons in the bathroom, trying to keep them away from politics, but they can't", Giacaman said.
While not supportive of suicide bombings, Giacaman urged people to question why they were happening. "Suicide is an individual act of shame — these are collective acts of opposition."
However, Giacaman stated that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, far from being hurt from these bombings, "is happy with them — they give him another chance to attack" the Palestinian people.
Tarkine film night
MELBOURNE — On August 5, 250 people attended a Tarkine film night at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology organised by the Melbourne Tarkine Action Group. Two documentaries on the forest and the struggle to save it were screened.
The Tarkine, located in northeastern Tasmania, has the largest tract of undisturbed temperate rainforest in Australia, and the second largest in the world. It is home to more than 40 rare and endangered species, including the world's tallest flowering plants.
Free Guantanamo prisoners!
ADELAIDE — Fifty people attended a "birthday party" on the steps of Parliament House on August 7 to protest the detention, in appalling conditions, of David Hicks, Mamdouh Habib and other prisoners held by the US at its naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The protest was addressed by Kay Bilney from the Fair Go for David campaign, Labor MP Martin Evans and the Australian Democrats' leader, Senator Andrew Bartlett.
'Why do people hate America?'
SYDNEY — On August 6, 150 people crammed a small UNSW lecture room to hear Pakistan-born, British writer Ziauddin Sardar outline the themes in his best-selling book Why do people hate America?, co-authored by Merryl Wyn Davies.
Sardar argued that hatred of the US among Muslims in the Third World stems from the US support for Israel's occupation of Palestine. However, he also noted that the hostility to the US is broader than this. "For example, every country in Latin America has suffered from United States intervention or invasion."
From Green Left Weekly, August 13, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.