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Two Geelong council workers who were sacked on July 24 for accepting free steak sandwiches from a Geelong club owner have been reinstated. The victory followed an escalation in the two-week-old dispute, when the Australian Services Union (ASU) members walked off the job on August 10.

PERTH — Twenty “billionaires for coal” and their supporters held a mock rally on the steps of Woodside Plaza on August 11, as parliament resumed for the session that was to vote on the Rudd government's proposed emissions trading scheme.

MELBOURNE — When the Portuguese left East Timor in 1975, ending 450 years of colonial rule, the country was annexed by Indonesia. The East Timorese wanted independence and a resistance movement grew, which operated from the rugged, mountainous interior of the country.
National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) members at the University of New South Wales will vote on the next steps in protracted enterprise bargaining negotiations with the university’s management.

Below is an abridged version of a speech by Greens NSW parliamentarian John Kaye at an anti-privatisation forum held at Parramatta Town Hall on July 16.

On August 6, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released labour force figures for July that showed unemployment remained steady at 5.8%. However, while the total number of people employed stayed stable, full-time jobs fell by 16,000 while part-time employment rose by 48,200.
Environment minister Peter Garrett announced on August 10 that $9 million will be spent on rescuing 100 Aboriginal languages. However, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre condemned the plan as “cynical and false”.
MELBOURNE — August 15 marked 47 years since the US, Australia, the Netherlands and the United Nations made the New York Agreement, allowing West Papua to be invaded by Indonesia.
A 200-strong public meeting that claimed to support the Palestine-Israel peace process was organised by right-wing union leader Paul Howes at the ALP conference in Sydney on July 30.
Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, The End of Civilization Simon and Schuster, 2009566 pages, $26.99 (pb)
South American presidents have expressed deep concerns over a United States plan to increase its military presence in Colombia. They voiced their fears at a Union of South American Nations (Unasur) summit in Quito, Ecuador on August 10.
CANBERRA— “ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for Latin America) is the most rapidly growing regional development in the world today”, Dr Tim Anderson, senior lecturer in political economy at the University of Sydney, told a forum at the Australian National University on August 12.