A new documentary film Radical Wollongong, produced by Green Left TV, will premiere in Wollongong in early May, followed by screenings in other cities and regional centres.
The film features activist participants from Wollongong's radical history of strikes and community rallies, from miners’ struggles to Aboriginal justice and environmental protection.
Co-producer John Rainford gives some background to how the Communist Party of Australia grew quickly during the depression.
***
1004
NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell implemented a six-month freeze on processing new applications for coal seam gas (CSG) exploration licences on March 26. At the same time, the minister for resources and energy, Anthony Roberts, announced that the licence application fee would increase from $1000, set by the ALP state government in 2002, to $50,000. Roberts had earlier refused five CSG exploration licence applications sought by Grainger Energy which, covered 43,000 square kilometres of land in the Riverina.
The Great Barrier Reef is almost certainly going to suffer permanent damage due to coral bleaching if countries do not act to reduce carbon emissions, the Fifth Assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said on March 31.
A lead author of the report, Chris Field, told the ABC’s 7.30: “Warm water coral reefs are one of the world's ecosystems that's most threatened and especially threatened by the combination of a warming climate and acidification of the ocean waters.”
A defiant protest of public housing advocates gathered in Sydney on March 27. The rally of 150 people, organised by Hands off Glebe, marched from Hyde Park to New South Wales Parliament to demand $330 million in repairs that the state government is behind in paying.
It also rallied to stop the proposed sell-off of Millers Point near Sydney's waterfront and other inner-city public housing properties.
The issues about maintenance and lack of supply have been simmering. The announcement to sell off Millers Point poured salt into a festering wound.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced that the number of registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon had gone over 1 million. Half of these are children and most live in dire poverty.
"The influx of a million refugees would be massive in any country. For Lebanon, a small nation beset by internal difficulties, the impact is staggering," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres in an April 3 statement.
In yet another parliamentary coup, new austerity measures were passed through parliament, albeit by a narrow majority, on March 30.
The bill contained three articles, which seem to give the final blow to the remaining worker and pension rights, the country’s economy and public ownership of land and services.
As the bill was passed, protesters outside parliament were beaten, tear-gassed and detained by special police squads.
An historic High Court case on April 2 granted Norrie, a Redfern resident and activist, non-sex specific status. Norrie had been granted “sex: non-specific” status by the NSW Registrar of Births Deaths and Marriages in 2010, but, under the reign of ALP Premier Kristina Keneally, reversed its decision.
It's been a four year long legal and political battle, with two legal challenges by Norrie proving unsuccessful, but a third in May last year proved successful in the NSW Court of Appeal.
Chanting "Julie Bishop you can't hide — you support genocide", supporters of human rights in Sri Lanka gathered outside the foreign affairs minister's electorate office in Subiaco on March 29.
The protest was in response to the Australian government's public opposition to the independent inquiry into Sri Lanka's human rights record adopted by the UN Human Rights Committee meeting in Geneva on March 27.
The Super A-Mart workers in Somerton have now been locked out of their workplace for three weeks. Management has refused the workers’ demands to raise wage rates to the industry average of $24 an hour, improve health and safety standards, start monthly rostered days off, and allow casual workers to become permanent.
In response to the lockout, the workers, members of the National Union of Workers (NUW), have initiated an indefinite strike and 24-hour picket at the Super A-Mart warehouse complex in Somerton.
A group of refugee rights activists staged an eight-hour blockade outside Villawood Immigration Detention Centre on April 3 to try to stop buses forcibly relocating refugees to Curtin Detention Centre in remote WA. Eight protesters, including Green Left Weekly's live blogger Rachel Evans (scroll down to see her photos from the action) were arrested.
The Australian Tax Office (ATO) said it is taking part in a “global crackdown” on tax cheats. The project is aimed at recovering billions in tax revenue held in bank accounts in offshore tax havens.
It is part of what is said to be a "global war" against tax evasion following recent work by the OECD and G20 finance ministers on automatic exchanges of tax information.
In an address to the Tax Institute on March 29, tax commissioner Chris Jordan set out the terms of Australia’s involvement with a tax office disclosure initiative called Project DO IT.
Michael Williamson, former national president of the Labor Party and the Health Services Union (HSU), was sentenced in the NSW District Court on March 28 to seven- and-a-half years in jail with a non-parole period of five years for defrauding union members.
The sentencing judge described Williamson’s dishonesty as “a parasitic plundering of union funds for pure greed”.
- Previous page
- Page 2
- Next page