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Professor Ross Garnaut’s draft review of climate change policy options for the Australian government was released on July 4, with climate change minister Penny Wong due to release a green paper canvassing policy options on July 16. Garnaut’s report looks at the “costs” and “benefits” of mitigating drastic climate change through a carbon polluting trading scheme. It suggests tax cuts and “welfare reform” to compensate low-income households, which will be hit hard by energy price rises.

On June 21, Indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin announced that her government would begin to end funding for infrastructure to remote Northern Territory (NT) Aboriginal communities that she deemed were “economically unviable”. This is the Rudd Labor government’s first major attack on Aboriginal land rights since taking power.

Truck drivers are planning a national strike if demands for changes to new transport reforms are not met by the federal government. Drivers from NSW, Victoria and Queensland will take action from midnight on July 27.

The June 3 Apache Energy gas facility explosion on Veranus Island, 100 kilometres west of the port of Dampier in WA, is the latest in a long history of social irresponsibility in the global oil and gas industry.

At its state council meeting on June 11, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) strengthened its environmental policy, and pledged to support to the revolutionary process unfolding in Venezuela.