Aboriginal people and their supporters took to the streets on National Sorry Day on May 26 to protest against government departments taking Aboriginal children from their families. Actions took place in 15 towns and cities around the country.
The rally in Sydney was organised by Grandmothers Against Removals, Indigenous Social Justice Association and the Stop The Intervention Collective Sydney.
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The Australian government鈥檚 review of the February violence on Manus Island leaves critical questions unanswered and does not call for the detention camp to be closed.
Robert Cornall鈥檚 107-page administrative review, released on May 26, includes a detailed account of 23-year-old Reza Berati鈥檚 death and identifies a Salvation Army employee as instigating the attack.
With right-wing parties gaining footholds throughout the world, Colombia followed suit with the far-right party, Democratic Centre (CD) winning with a narrow lead in the first round of the presidential elections on May 25. CD won just under 30% of the vote.
The election presented Colombians with a five-party choice, ranging from the leftist Alternative Democratic Pole (Polo) with Clara Lopez to the CD's Oscar Ivan Zuluaga and his major rival, incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos from the Social Party of National Unity.
Memo to concern trolls Annabel Crabb and Howard-era minister Amanda Vanstone: take your own advice and stop being selfish thugs and bullies. And if Fairfax journalist Crabb is going to criticise student protests for being 鈥渙utdated鈥, she should drop the 1950s style housewife persona.
In a May 23 Sydney Morning Herald article, Crabb said she was 鈥渃oncerned鈥 that thousands of students taking part in a recent national day of action against increased university fees were going about things the wrong way. Take notice students of Australia. Activism, you鈥檙e doing it wrong.
An Aboriginal tent embassy was set up on May 26 to reclaim the historic Redfern Block.
Veteran Aboriginal activist Jenny Munro says the Block is Aboriginal land and the Aboriginal Housing Company was wrong to clear the Aboriginal residents out of it and open it to greedy developers.
The tent embassy is steadily growing in size and the call is out for solidarity. Drop in, show your solidarity and see what you can do to help. An "Abbott-proof fence" is going to be built on the site, embassy activists said.
Photos by Peter Boyle.
Doug Jordan, a long-time socialist and union militant, who transformed himself in later life into an innovative labour historian, died on May 19 in Melbourne at the age of 63. Doug passed away after a hard struggle with cancer.
In recent years, Doug was a community activist, especially with the campaign to defend public housing, and co-presented the 3CR program City Limits on Wednesday mornings for 14 years.
The demand of tens of thousands of people who marched through the streets in cities around Australia on May 18 was clear. They want the federal government鈥檚 killer budget blocked.
They want Labor, the Greens and independents to band together in the Senate to block the major bills implementing the attacks on Medicare, education and welfare.
They want the supply/appropriation bills (the three bills that authorise the funds from treasury required by the government to carry on its day-to-day business) to be blocked, thereby forcing the government to go to a new election.
"This country can afford a universal healthcare system that provides access to quality health care for everyone," Judith Kiejda, assistant general secretary of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSW NMWA), told a forum at the University of Technology Sydney on May 27.
The forum, organised by the Save Medicare Campaign, heard Kiejda and Professor Bill Mitchell, director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) at Newcastle University, addressed the topic, "No to Abbott-Care. Hands Off Medicare."
The Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was set up in January last year, after decades of campaigning by victims.
Led by Justice Peter McClellan, the first public hearings began in April last year and apply only to children sexually abused up to the age of 18. It does not include physical or emotional abuse.
Repealing the carbon tax, abolishing the department of climate change, and getting rid of the Clean Energy Fund were the top three wishes in 鈥75 radical ideas to transform Australia鈥, released by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) in 2012. Number six was to repeal the Renewable Energy Target (RET).
In the recent federal budget, the Coalition government is aiming to do all four.
On the evening of May 23, the United States suffered another massacre of the type that has become all too familiar.
Elliot Rodger, a 22-year old student at the University of California campus in Santa Barbara went on a killing spree that left seven dead, including himself.
He left a video and a manifesto that made clear his motive was hatred of women.
Tom Raue and other activists at the University of Sydney have been banned from campus for being involved in protests against foreign minister Julie Bishop.
Raue has been arbitrarily singled out for disciplinary action. Raue works on campus, and this ban might mean he loses his job.
On May 28, about 100 students and staff attended a protest to defend these students. Student demands are simple and were slipped under Sydney University vice-chancellor Michael Spence's door.
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