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Workers at Autoliv, a manufacturer of automotive safety equipment in Melbourne, took industrial action in early September for better wages and conditions. The second stoppage ever for the workers delivered an early finish each week of one hour and five minutes; redundancy payments; payout of all sick leave if workers leave the company; and a pay increase of 4.2% over two years, up from 2%.
On September 2, 40 people attended a public forum organised by Refugee Action Collective (RAC) Queensland on the treatment of asylum seekers under the Rudd Labor government.
The campaign for the September 21-25 University of Queensland (UQ) student elections has begun. Resistance organiser Dominic Hale is running for environment officer with Flynn Rush from the UQ Greens on the broad-left ticket, Change.
Sixty people protested outside the closed Solar Systems factory in Abbotsford on September 18. The factory closed a week earlier when Solar Systems went into receivership due to its major investor, TRUenergy, withdrawing its investment.
With the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission's Interim Report tabled last month, it is now up to various state governments and the federal government to respond quickly to save lives when the next catastrophic fires happen.
After two years of controversy, community hostility and political debate, the Queensland government has finally provided the federal environment department with a draft set of conditions under which it believes the planned Traveston Dam can proceed.
Britain-based risk analysts Maplecroft confirmed that Australia is the world’s worst polluter per capita in a September 9 report.
Workers at the Campbell's Soup factory at Shepparton in Victoria have delivered a setback to the federal Labor government's plan to apply individual contracts by stealth.
Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is the name of a World Bank sponsored carbon offset program. The idea is to pay owners of forests in the global South to stop deforestation as a way of reducing carbon emissions.
In 1978, John Reid, chair of James Hardie Industries, boasted: “Every time you walk into an office building, a home, a factory; every time you put your foot on the brake, ride in a train … the chances are that a product from the James Hardie group of companies has a part in it”.
The NSW state government is introducing police powers similar to those during the APEC meeting in Sydney in 2007.
A Colombian human rights group has accused the Australia Federal Police (AFP) of illegally interrogating political prisoner Liliany Obando in a Bogata jail.