“I used to go fishing. I used to go to community meetings. I stopped doing that. I am tired because most of the time I am doing overtime.” Gamal Babiker, Cleaner.
Cleaners working for contracting giant Spotless walked from Chadstone to Melbourne’s CBD on March 26 to highlight the brutal workloads that force them to walk the same huge distances in their jobs every single day.
Nicole Hilder
Morning commuters at Laverton and Seaholme stations may have thought they had gone back in time on February 3. Usually the only staff are roving squads of ticket inspectors. Instead, commuters found a uniformed tram conductor riding the trains with them — giving out information on how the public transport system can be improved and made free.
The Socialist Alliance’s candidate in the February 13 Altona district bi-election, Margarita Windisch, has welcomed state transport minister Lynne Kosky’s resignation as overdue. But she says Kosky was just a symptom of a larger problem for Victorians — a negligent Labor government with the wrong priorities.
One quarter of a million people are trapped between a concentration camp and a war zone, said Nish Vivekananthan, a young Tamil speaking on the current situation in Sri Lanka, at a public meeting on February 19 in Footscray.
MELBOURNE The ALP have done a preference deal with the joke candidate for the Maribyrnong council elections. Former mayor and ALP incumbent Michael Clarke has preferenced Garth Bray, an independent.
Women seeking a termination of their pregnancy during the second trimester, and beyond, may be denied access to Medicare funding if Tasmanian Senator Guy Barnett is successful in his bid to axe funding for abortions after the 14th week of pregnancy. Currently, women seeking an abortion are covered under the Medicare scheme up until 26 weeks of pregnancy.
The act of a doctor performing an abortion in Victoria has been listed as a crime in the Crimes Act since 1958.
Twenty-one police cars swarmed on the inner-western suburb of Flemington on November 28 after allegations a teenager of African descent swore at two police cars on patrol.
These are the worst days in Pakistans history, Ali Khan, a student from Pakistan, told a rally in Burke Street Mall on November 15. The rally was called by Australia Asia Worker Links and the Socialist Alliance to protest the state of emergency imposed by Pakistans Army Chief of Staff and president, Pervez Musharraf.
At least 20,000 Victorian unionists defied the federal governments anti-worker laws and risked fines to show their opposition to Work Choices and the Australian Building and Construction Commission on September 26.
Victorias new Labor premier, John Brumby, has asked the Victorian Law Reform Commission to advise on how to reform abortion law. The commissions report is due in March 2008, after the federal election. The move came right before a private members bill was to be put to parliament by ALP member Candy Broad.
Yappera Children’s Services Co-operative, an Indigenous childcare and pre-school centre in Thornbury, faces closure due to the state and federal governments’ refusal to provide the $150,000 required for essential plumbing repairs.