On January 26, more than 500 people marched through Melbourne to mark Invasion Day and to call for an end to black deaths in custody and for justice for Mulrunji, who died in the Palm Island police station in November, 2004. Rally chair Brianna Pike announced at the protest that Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley would be charged with Mulrunji’s manslaughter.
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“Celebrate what’s great” was the official theme of this year’s Australia Day, January 26. But for Aboriginal Australians, what was worth celebrating on the day that marks the brutal British invasion of their land was the decision to charge the police officer Chris Hurley with the manslaughter of Mulrunji Doomadgee.
A freedom ride from Sydney to Canberra will be held on March 25 to mark the 10th anniversary of the Howard governments overturning of the Northern Territorys voluntary euthanasia law, the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act (ROTI).
PERTH Protests were held outside Woodside Petroleums office on January 22 and 25 against Woodsides Pluto gas project on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australias Pilbara region. Protesters highlighted that if work proceeds on the unique heritage site, it will result in the destruction of a large number of Aboriginal rock carvings. The protests were called by the recently initiated Friends of Australian Rock Art.
MELBOURNE — On January 21, Melbourne held its 12th Pride March. Despite rainy weather, 3000 people marched in the parade, with 87 groups represented. Issues raised included calls to repeal the ban on same-sex marriage, to stop violence against
TASMANIA — The Weld Valley in southern Tasmania was the site of a convergence on January 20-21. Activists discussed strategies and planned the next actions in the campaign to save the Styx and Weld valleys from logging. Addressed by Greens Senator Christine Milne, Tasmanian Greens member Tim Morris and Adrian Whitehead from Beyond Zero Emissions, an overriding theme of the convergence was climate change. On January 25, 30 people attended a submission-writing workshop and media conference outside the Department of Primary Industries and Water in Hobart. Their aim was to force the state government to recognise the role of forest conservation in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, something the government avoided in its their draft ‘Climate Change Strategy’.
Activists will descend on parliament house in Canberra on February 6 to demand that politicians do more to secure David Hicks release from the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.
When the NSW police minister condemned magistrate Pat O’Shane two weeks ago for throwing out a case involving spitting at traffic cops, her response was: “There is an election coming up”. The same answer could well be given for the bipartisan barrage of Muslim-bashing from senior NSW politicians in the countdown to the March state election.
At a meeting in Brazil on April 26, 2006, plans moved ahead between Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil for a major transcontinental oil pipeline. The pipeline would be 10,000 kilometres long and would link the four countries plus Paraguay and Uruguay.
Prime Minister John Howard is to face trial in the NSW town of Bellingen on February 10. He is charged with offences including wilful and malicious damage to our national and international interests, aggravated indecent assault upon the working class and conspiring to pervert the course of democracy.
Annette Peardon was nine years old when she and her brother were forcibly removed from their family on Cape Barren Island. They spent their youth in a series of foster homes and institutions around Tasmania. Last November, Tasmania’s parliament passed the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Children Bill 2006, the country’s first compensation law. Green Left Weekly’s Susan Austin spoke with Peardon about the significance of this law, and her struggle for justice.
Greens MP Lee Rhiannon slammed the police operation at the Big Day Out, saying that the use of sniffer dogs against recreational drug users had put peoples health in danger.
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