On February 1, 100 people gathered outside the State Library of Victoria to protest the Israeli siege of Gaza. The protest was initiated by the Melbourne Palestine Solidarity Network and organised by a wide range of groups including Australians for Palestine, Women for Palestine, Melbourne Stop the War Coalition, Federation of Muslim Students and Youth, Socialist Alliance and Resistance.
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At 6am on January 29, environmental activists from the Bellarine Seastar — an arm of the Blue Wedges Coalition — crammed onto the Point Lonsdale pier, on the western side of the entrance to Port Phillip Bay, to protest the arrival in the bay of the giant Dutch dredging ship, the Queen of the Netherlands.
On January 28, 40 people gathered at Latin America Plaza, outside Central Station, to mark the 155th anniversary of the birth of Cubas national hero, Jose Marti.
Palestinian resistance fighter and founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), George Habash, died on January 26 from a heart attack, aged 81.
A snap vigil in Martin Place on January 31 was called by the General Union of Palestinian Workers and others in the Palestinian community to demand an end to the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Forty people attended the vigil, held near the US consulate. They held candles in solidarity with Gazas 1.5 million residents, deprived of basic living necessities, including electricity, by the siege.
Demanding, impatient, spoiled, bad at communicating allegedly these are the character traits of Generation Y. Originally used in 1993 to describe children born between 1980 and 2000, the label has been featured in the media quite a lot lately.
The campaign to stop the dredging of a new shipping channel in Port Phillip Bay had a partial victory on January 30 when a Federal Court judge ruled that the Blue Wedges environmental cCoalition must be given at least 24 hours’ notice of any plan to begin work on the $969 million project.
Several hundred people participated in a January 26 rally against homophobic violence in Harmony Park, next to the Surry Hills police station. The rally was called after the brutal assault in Oxford Street of Craig Gee and his partner Shane Brennan in December was met with an inadequate police response. Gee was left with a broken leg and serious facial injuries.
An October 17 National Union of Students (NUS) report on the impact of the Howard governments voluntary student unionism legislation argued that VSU has failed to deliver self-sustaining student organisations just able to survive off voluntary memberships, investments and trading operations. It documented a series of job losses and closures of student associations campaigning departments as a result of VSU robbing them of funding.
Although it stated at the last state election in 2006 that it would not go ahead with the construction of a desalination plant, the Victorian Labor government is now pushing for a desalination plant at Wonthaggi, on the South Gippsland coast. Before the environmental impact statement has even been completed, test drilling and compulsory land acquisitions have begun at the proposed site.
More than 40 people gathered at the Katoomba YHA on February 2 to demand that the Labor state governments in NSW and Victoria overturn their decisions to end the ban on the commercial growing of genetically modified (GM) canola. From March this year, NSW farmers can apply to grow GM canola.
A key aspect of PM Kevin Rudds IR agenda is the creation of a national industrial relations system that would cover all private sector employees.
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