Australian Greens leader Richard Di Natale has pledged to introduce a private senator’s bill by the end of the year for a “sugar tax” which he estimates would claw $500 million from the country’s shopping list each year.
The legislation which Di Natale has hailed as an “obesity prevention strategy”, has raised ire among his own ranks who have labelled the policy a “captain’s call”.
On November 23, a 13-year-old student of Aspley State High School in Brisbane took his own life after experiencing severe bullying, including physical assault, over his sexuality.
Tyrone Unsworth had suffered from homophobic bullying for years and was hospitalised a month earlier with severe injuries after he was violently assaulted with a fence paling.
In a continuation of the rancid rape culture spewing from Australian university and high school campuses, a national grouping of young men identified with the Facebook page “Yeah the Boys”, which boasts half a million likes, is spitting chunks onto social media.
The page is receiving attention now because members of the group scheduled a “male-only” meet-up at Sydney's Coogee Beach. While the anonymous ‘Yeah the Boys’ page admins sought to distance themselves from the event, within hours thousands of the page’s followers had jumped behind it.
There is growing resistance to President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to detain and deport millions of people from the United States, Democracy Now! reported on November 22.
Mayors from New York to Chicago to Seattle say they will refuse to cooperate even as Trump promises to cut funds from so-called sanctuary cities. Meanwhile, the movement is growing for “sanctuary campuses”.
The Kensington Legal Centre (KLC) is running a police accountability program to try to raise awareness about racial profiling and police harassment after numerous young people have been harassed by Victoria Police.
This program, which has been running for some time, began when a group of young teenagers approached KLC after being harassed by Victoria Police.
The young men report being stopped while doing everyday things.
The Young Workers Centre at Victorian Trades Hall released a new petition on Facebook on November 17 calling on burger restaurant chain Grill’d to “Stop the scam”.
A Grill’d employee has come forward, accusing the chain of using traineeships as an excuse to pay lower wages. Employees are being signed up to hospitality certificates, but the business refuses to schedule regular training sessions.
The feminist movement has been sent into a spin following the election of Donald “Grab her by the pussy” Trump in the US. While the consensus is that the election of Trump is a disaster for women, the debates around the would-be benefits of Hillary Clinton remain fierce.
People took to the streets in major cities, and high school students walked out of class to reject Donald Trump's election as president of the US.
There are 105,000 homeless people in Australia. In NSW and Victoria there has been a 20% increase in the rate of homelessness in the past decade. This shows that homelessness is a structural issue, one that charity is not capable of fixing.
The current homelessness services are incredibly scarce and designed to fail anyone in need of accommodation.
Close to 100 students and youth were arrested on Parliament Hill on October 24 for their participation in what organisers described as “the largest act of youth-led climate civil disobedience in Canadian history.”
Protesters targeted the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will rule to accept or reject this year.
Students at universities across South Africa have been demonstrating for the complete removal of university fees for poor students.
They are pushing for the realisation of the demands raised by the #FeesMustFall campaign last year. This was the largest wave of protests since the fall of Apartheid and drew tens of thousands of students into the streets.
Do you feel safe while you are at work? Do you think your bosses care about your physical and mental wellbeing?
The growing reality seems to be that more and more bosses do not care about the wellbeing of workers, and the larger the business the worse it seems to get.