Ten years ago, on August 13 2004, the John Howard government, with the support of the Labor Party, passed legislation that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
Queer people did not have the right to marry before the legislation was passed, but the new definition was brought in to close any loopholes and make it explicit that the Coalition government did not support civil rights for gay and lesbian people.
1020
Former prime minister Bob Hawke is urging Australia to become the world's nuclear waste dump. But he has little hope of succeeding.
A dove
that flew off
just after the fall of Afghan Buddha
Didn’t have enough
Unoccupied airspace
Unoccupied skies
To flap its wings to restart the heart beats gone numb
Of zillions resting in
Graves
Segregated apart as
For the occupant and by the ccupied.
The names on the tombstones
of the graves of the occupied
Could later become undecipherable,
Though they
Far outnumber that of the occupants.
Hope the dead never wake up,
to scrutinize their underrepresented statistics,
to check the word limit of reports from Gaza,
Students and staff at the University of Wollongong (UOW) held a forum on August 7 to discuss the impact the higher education cuts proposed by the federal government would have on the university.
The forum was organised by UOW Uncut, a new group of staff and students who are campaigning against the funding cuts.
The anger was palpable among the 60 people who attended the forum, chaired by UOW National Tertiary Education Union branch president Joanne Buckskin, and addressed by NTEU NSW secretary Genevieve Kelly, staff member Alexander Brown, and student Ben Kohler.
The 157 Tamil refugees who refused “a very good” deal to be deported to India now face the orchestrated despair of detention on Nauru.
The refugees were delivered to Nauru on August 2 without the knowledge of their lawyers and reportedly showing “clear signs of manhandling and trauma”. Human rights lawyer George Newhouse said he had “not had the opportunity to inform our clients of their rights and options.
In the same week that employment minister Eric Abetz announced the government would expand Work for the Dole to all job seekers under 50 and that job seekers would have to apply for double the number of jobs than previously, billionaire miner Andrew Forrest released his own recommendations for welfare reform — some of the most punitive ever proposed.
The largest coalmine ever built in Australia, and one of the biggest in the world, received final approval from the federal environment minister Greg Hunt on July 28.
The Carmichael coalmine in central Queensland, owned by Indian company Adani, is forecast to produce 60 million tonnes of coal a year over the next 60 years. This dwarfs Australia’s current largest mine, which produces 20 million tonnes a year.
SYRIZA member and journalist Afrodity Giannakis spoke in Melbourne on July 22 on Greek socialists' struggle to clear a new path out of the wilderness of austerity.
SYRIZA is Greece's largest left-wing party. Giannakis described Greece as "a society stripped of democratic illusions, where workers are compelled to labour for months on the promise of future wages while shipowners evade taxes through tailored loopholes.
The serious financial fraud that surfaced in the scandal-ridden Health Services Union (HSU) provided the federal government with a handy excuse to establish the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption.
Although the commission has powers wide enough to inquire into all unions, the HSU is one of five organisations specifically mentioned in its terms of reference alongside the Australian Workers Union, Communications Electrical Plumbing Union, Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union, and the Transport Workers Union.
The Lock the Gate Alliance released this statement on August 7.
***
About 30 farmers and residents of villages in the Gloucester Valley held a protest vigil on August 7 at the site where AGL plans to frack for coal seam gas on farmland in the area, vowing to begin a sustained campaign of peaceful direct action to stop the work after the NSW government failed to act on long-standing community concerns about the impacts of the project.
“Everybody needs to be part of Team Australia,” said Prime Minister Tony Abbott, raising one very big question: which prick gave Abbott a DVD player and a copy of the South Park makers’ joke film Team America?
Coz that kinda shit is not funny. Seriously, this guy makes laws. Don’t go fucking around with hilarious practical jokes like this, coz next thing you know it will be a real government program.
As, indeed, it already is.
About 1000 people marched from parliament house to Victoria Square in Adelaide on August 2, to show opposition to the proposal to turn farmlands into gaslands.
The rally and march, organised to show the danger to South Australia’s food bowl, water and tourism, was jointly organised by the Limestone Coast Protection Alliance, Stop Invasive Mining Group — Eyre Peninsula, and the Yorke Peninsula Landowners Group.
It had a strong rural focus, with people travelling from all over rural and urban South Australia to attend.
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