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Sonia Kruger criticised the idea of scholarships for LGBTQI high school students on August 1 and even went so far as to refer to the scholarship program as “reverse discrimination”. Her comments were in response to the Australian Business and Community Network (ABCN) Scholarship Foundation targeting high school students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual transsexual, queer and/or intersex (LGBTQI) for financial and mentoring scholarships. These comments came after other recent controversial comments from the TV host that Australia should stop all Muslim immigration.
Architects, artists and community activists have condemned the NSW state government's plan to demolish the iconic Sirius apartment building in the historic Rocks area of inner Sydney, with one artist, Del Kathryn Barton, calling the move a "cultural tragedy".
Justice for Palestine Brisbane activists branded former Queensland premier Peter Beattie a hypocrite on July 27 as they crashed a lunch at the Hilton Hotel at which he was the keynote speaker.
Supporters of equal marriage rights will again take to the streets in Sydney and Melbourne on August 13. The date marks 12 years since the John Howard government — with Labor support — passed laws banning equal marriage. In the past 12 years, thousands have mobilised across the country demanding an end to the ban.
Activists evaded eviction from vacant houses and apartments in Parkville on August 3. The homes had been acquired for the East West Link, a project axed under community pressure by the incoming Labor government in 2014, with a promise to use the properties for public housing.
New South Wales Labor MP Noreen Hay, who has held the seat of Wollongong since 2003, is resigning from state parliament effective from September 1. Hay was the Labor Party's whip until May when Opposition Leader Luke Foley threatened to resign unless she stood down, after a senior staff member in her Wollongong electorate office was charged with electoral fraud.
About 400 people attended a public open-day at the iconic Tarwyn Park property in the beautiful Bylong Valley in the Upper Hunter on July 31. It was the day that Peter Andrews, the 76- year-old founder and expert in Natural Sequence Farming (NSF), relinquished ownership of the property. Korean state-owned mining company KEPCO assumed ownership of the property at midnight on August 1. But Andrews has vowed to stay on to fight for the land's protection.
The shocking abuse suffered by children in Darwin's Don Dale detention centre revealed by the ABC's Four Corners on July 25 has angered wide layers of the community. It has also prompted a nationwide demand to take immediate action against the perpetrators and ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again in the juvenile detention system. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's decision to call a narrowly focused royal commission into Northern Territory youth detention centres has been met with justifiable scepticism and criticism.
As industrial action by Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) maintenance workers in Abbotsford enters its ninth week support continues to grow. The company is refusing to back down from its decision to sack workers and then offer to rehire them with a 65% pay cut. The dispute started on June 10 when 55 fitters, electricians and maintenance workers were told they would be sacked, only to then be “invited” to re-apply for their jobs through a third-party contractor, Catalyst Recruitment.

Footage aired last week of children being abused in a Northern Territory prison sent shockwaves around the nation. These images forced us to grapple with the problem as if it were breaking news, despite the fact that so many people knew so much about it for so long. Nevertheless, a royal commission is being established, and although many would like to see a wider scope, accountability for abuses of this nature must be the ultimate result.

Veteran gay rights campaigner Rodney Croome has quit as national director of Australian Marriage Equality (AME), which he founded in 2004, to lobby MPs to block the equal marriage plebiscite. Croome said those who believe a plebiscite is inevitable are “lacking political imagination” and declared blocking it could force a free vote in parliament on the issue. He said there was “no split in the movement” but rather “a spectrum of different approaches to a very difficult situation”.
In May, the Northern Territory government granted a major water licence for a cattle station near Pine Creek, west of Kakadu National Park, to use almost 14 million megalitres of water a year to irrigate crops.