Prime Minister Scott Morrison has closed down federal parliament, ostensibly for health reasons, and placed corporate CEOs at the helm of his new National COVID-19 Coordination Commission. Paul Gregoire takes aim at this blatant power grab.
David Shoebridge
While there are serious flaws in Inside the Greens, author Paddy Manning is too good a journalist to suppress vital information. Some of it is explosive.
For instance, during the recent conflicts in the Australian Greens between The Greens NSW and Bob Brown devotees, some in the later camp pushed for the wholesale expulsion of the former.
That was not the only example of such blow-up-the-ship thinking.
Another stolen generation looks certain to be created in New South Wales after the state Coalition government passed an adoption law that makes it easier for foster parents to adopt a child who they have had under care for less than two years.
Activists took to the streets against new anti-protest laws which could make it illegal to try and stop government-inspired destruction.
Another fundamental liberty of the people of New South Wales took a hit on July 1.
On that day a new regulation under the Crown Land Management Act 2016 took effect, granting the NSW government wide powers to disperse or ban protests, rallies and virtually any public gathering across about half of all land across the state.
The powers apply on any Crown Land — land owned by the state government, including town squares, parks, roads, beaches, community halls and more.
Charges brought against the so-called “Wollar Three” under New South Wales’ controversial anti-protest laws were dismissed by a Mudgee magistrate on June 5. However, the laws remain a threat to the right to protest.
About 700 members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and other unions gathered at Sydney Town Hall on May 29, and marched to the offices of the Fair Work Commission (FWC) where a lively rally was held calling for an end to laws limiting the right to strike.
The action was organised around demands for the right to organise, right to strike and right to live.
There were mixed results in the recent Greens NSW Legislative Council preselections. But, that in itself represents a revival in the fortunes of the more radical (or red-ish) Greens who have suffered a series of losses in such ballots over the past two years. Those losses were welcome news to the self-styled “mainstream progressives” (or centrists) who lead the Australian Greens and have long chaffed at the presence of Corbyn-like elements in the Greens NSW. Now, writes former convenor of NSW Greens Hall Greenland, that losing trend is over.
In April, NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge launched a Greens Manifesto in which he sets out a political vision that he says is in tune with the party’s founding four key platform points. Green Left Weekly’s Pip Hinman caught up with Shoebridge on April 18 to ask about the thinking behind the document.
There was a 6% swing against the Liberal Party in the Inner West Council (IWC) election in Sydney on September 9.
This was a common pattern, reflected in other local elections also conducted then for councils that were forcibly amalgamated by the NSW Liberal government last year.
IWC is the product of the forced amalgamation of the former Ashfield, Marrickville and Leichhardt Council.
About 200 people rallied at Town Hall Square to protest the federal government's proposed new citizenship laws. The new laws extend the residential waiting period for citizenship and raise the standard of the English-language test.
“Richard Di Natale, I am a member of Left Renewal and I hope you can hear this because the Greens are my party too,” a woman said to great applause at a meeting of Left Renewal (LR) on January 25.
More than 100 people, including from Newcastle and Wollongong, came to the first public meeting of LR, an anti-capitalist grouping within The Greens, to hear about its aims and objectives.
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