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The vice-president of Geelong Trades Hall, Christine Couzens, has been awarded the Jenny George Award for the advancement of women in unions. Couzens was presented with the award by Australian Council of Trade Unions president Sharan Burrow on March 7.
In the run-up to the NSW elections both major parties are claiming to be able to run the economy better. But the release of the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ December quarter figures on March 7, which revealed that NSW is not technically in a recession, is likely to help the state ALP government’s lead over Peter Debnam’s Liberals on March 24.
On March 8 at the Brisbane Activist Centre, 30 people attended a forum to discuss the Aboriginal movement in Australia and indigenous struggles in Bolivia and Venezuela. Sam Watson, Aboriginal rights activist and Socialist Alliance member, spoke about recent developments over the Palm Island killing of Mulrunji and how the case has galvanised the whole of Aboriginal Australia. He said it has renewed activism within the community and made Aboriginal people aware of the broader support for their struggle.
Political fervour, passion and a fighting spirit marked the “Fighting racism in the NSW state election” forum held by the Socialist Alliance Parramatta branch on March 6.
Women's day Happy Women's Day, health minister Abbott. Just a reminder that undermining the independent choices of women has alienated nearly half the voting population. And, as a parent of an autistic child, whose expensive therapy is not
Several NSW unions have decided to endorse the March 17 Sydney rally against the war in Iraq, organised by the Stop the War Coalition. They are the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA); the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union; the NSW Fire Brigade Employees Union; and the National Tertiary Education Union.
The organisers of the Latin American and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum, “Fighting and organising globally against neoliberalism”, are calling on all activists, organisations and communities who are committed to building a better world to join together in Melbourne on October 11-14.
Some 40 Sydney University students held a speak-out outside the army recruitment stall during orientation week on February 28, drawing attention to campus anti-war sentiment. Sydney University anti-war activists passionately poured their knowledge of the war’s criminality into the megaphone and the action was a spectacle of peaceful dissent.
Commenting on the natural disaster that has left large swathes of Bolivia’s lowland east underwater after months of flooding, and much of the Andean region covered in ice, in late February Bolivian President Evo Morales called for a global debate on the effects of climate change and environmental destruction on poor nations.
During May-June this year, Queensland’s Shoalwater Bay will host tens of thousands of Australian and US troops engaged live-fire, large-scale military exercises that will pose grave risks for the environment and people’s health. The Shoalwater Military Training Area (SWMTA) is located inside the Great Barrier Reef National Park.
The situation remains tense in East Timor’s capital, Dili, in the wake of the Australian Defence Force-led operation on March 4 to capture renegade East Timorese army officer Major Alfredo Reinado.
Every week since February 3, around 60 people have gathered outside the office of federal Liberal MP Kerry Bartlett to call for Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks to be brought home. The initiator of the vigils, Kevin Hardwick, told Green Left Weekly that the vigils would continue until the Hicks issue is resolved.