On November 12, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released labour force figures for October that showed unemployment had increased by 11,100 to 690,000 people. At the same time, monthly aggregate hours worked fell by 1.9 million hours (to 1521.1 million hours) from September.
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The following article is from the soon-to-be published, updated What Resistance Stands For. Resistance branches around the country will be launching this exciting new document, and selling it at Walk Against Warming rallies on December 12.
Since the US and Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, the number of Mexicans illegally crossing the border into the US seeking employment has risen to 500,000 a year.
The brutal nature of the Rudd Labor government’s “Indonesian solution” to deal with asylum seekers was revealed on November 15 when the Indonesian coastguard fired upon a boat carrying 61 Afghan asylum seekers headed towards Australia. Two of the passengers were shot and injured.
As reported in Green Left Weekly previously, the ALP New South Wales government has tabled new anti-graffiti laws. The proposed law will punish children caught with spray-paint cans without a “legitimate reason” with up to six months jail.
Portland-based Keppel Prince Engineering, which makes about 40% of Australia’s wind turbine towers, has indicated it may need to lay off 150 staff because of lack of work.
Were it not so outrageous, it could almost be funny. A 12-year-old Aboriginal boy was brought before a Western Australian court on a charge of receiving stolen goods. He had accepted a chocolate Freddo Frog worth 70 cents from a friend who had allegedly stolen it.
In 2004, the Coalition government, with Labor support, banned marriage for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. This year, the Greens introduced the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill to federal parliament, to try to overturn the ban.
For environmentalists, Indigenous rights activists, feminists, socialists and all progressive people, Latin America is a source of hope and inspiration today. The people of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador, among others, are showing that radical social change is possible and a better, more just society can be imagined and built.
On October 6, BHP Billiton and the South Australian Department for Correctional Services announced a new agreement allowing the company to employ prisoners from Port Augusta at Olympic Dam — the world’s biggest uranium mine.
The Socialist Alliance’s seventh National Conference will take place over January 2-5.
Could the government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) get any worse? The unfortunate answer is yes. It can, it has already and it’s likely to get worse still before parliament ends for the year.
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