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Rallies were held in cities around Australia on August 30 to demand the extradition to Chile of former Pinochet regime secret police agent Adriana Rivas. This follows revelations shown on SBS last year about her involvement in repression of political prisoners as a member of the National Intelligence Agency of Chile during 1976-77.

The University of New South Wales acting vice chancellor Iain Martin cancelled a Town Hall meeting on September 3, organised to brief staff on the University’s response to proposed fee deregulation. UNSW students had planned to protest their exclusion from the meeting. In cancelling the meeting, Martin told staff: “We have been advised this morning by police and security that the meeting was being targeted by protest groups, which we understand were predominately external to UNSW. Our advice is that the intention was to disrupt the Town Hall.”

Two representatives from Irish republican party Sinn Fein toured Australia from August to September 7, speaking to hundreds of people at public meetings about the campaign for Irish reunification. Sinn Fein vice-president and member of the Dail (Irish parliament) Mary Lou McDonald and Sinn Fein MP for Mid-Ulster in Ireland's north Francie Molloy, spoke in support of the campaign to end partition and unite the six counties still claimed by Britain with the 26 counties that make up the southern state in a democratic republic.

Medicare is 30 years old and is the scheme that publicly funds Australia’s universal health care system. Medicare has always generated political conflict. From 1972 to 1984 Australia became the first developed country to introduce a universal health care system (under Gough Whitlam), then discard it (under Malcolm Fraser). In those 12 years Australia tried, on five separate occasions, to balance public and private insurance schemes. Finally, in 1984, the Bob Hawke government reintroduced a universal health care system, Medicare.

24-YEAR-OLD ASYLUM SEEKER DECLARED BRAIN DEAD DETAINEES ACCUSE IMHS The Refugee Action Coalition released the statement below today. *** A 24 year-old Iranian asylum seeker, Hamid Kehazaei, who was urgently medivacced from Manus Island to Brisbane on Wednesday, August 27 has been declared "brain dead". By the time Hamid was medivacced to Brisbane, he was suffering septicaemia, from an infection spreading from a cut foot, and went directly into intensive care in the Mater hospital. He had sought medical attention for days on Manus Island for the pain and the infection.