US President Donald Trump sent his vice-president Mike Pence on a beat-the-drums-of-war Asia-Pacific tour and even before Pence got to Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull started talking Trumplish.
He regurgitated Trump's jingoistic riffs with near word-for-word precision: 鈥淎ustralia and Australians first鈥, 鈥淎ustralian values鈥.
The NSW Coalition government鈥檚 decision to lease the 150-year-old Land Titles Registry to a private consortium of Hastings Funds Management and First State Super is "a recipe for disaster" for millions of property owners across the state, the NSW Public Service Association (PSA) said on April 12.
First State is a $59 billion superannuation fund, which developed from a NSW public sector fund. Hastings is owned by Westpac Bank.
KFC, Pizza Hut, Carls Jr and Starbucks workers wenton strike across new Zealand on April 22聽after negotiations broke down over a new collective agreement.
鈥淵esterday Restaurant Brands announced 聽profits of $26 million and they have paid their CEO a million dollar bonus. Tomorrow the workers who actually make and sell their products have to go on strike to get a few cents above the minimum wage鈥 said Unite National Secretary Gerard Hehir said on April 21.聽
Staff at stationery chain Kikki.K will be the first employees covered by an enterprise agreement to directly face cuts as a result of the Fair Work Commission鈥檚 decision to cut weekend penalty rates.
The 550 Kikki.K workers are covered by a new enterprise agreement approved last month.
It has聽a clause that allows it to cut public holiday and Sunday penalty rates without any opportunity to renegotiate when the FWC's cuts to the retail award come into effect.
The deal was struck without the involvement of any union or employee bargaining representatives.
Multinational timber industry giant Carter Holt Harvey has indefinitely locked out about 150 workers who are members of the Electrical Trades Union; Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union; and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union at the company's Myrtleford plyboard manufacturing site.
The lock out began at 2.30am on April 19.
It follows a breakdown in enterprise agreement negotiations between the company and unions.
Unions representing care and support workers are pleased to be jointly announcing with government a proposed equal pay settlement to 55,000 workers across the aged residential, disability and home support sectors.
The proposed settlement is a huge win and will make a real difference in valuing the work of care and support workers and the people they support, workers in the sector say. It is a significant step in addressing gender inequality in New Zealand.
An emergency protest organised by , held as the US Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Sydney on April 21, drew a range of networks concerned about old and new 鈥 possibly 鈥 nuclear wars.
The total cost of building the controversial WestConnex tollway, plus necessary connecting roads, could reach $45 billion, according to an analysis by the Sydney City Council. The council's analysis adds the estimated $29 billion cost of building and widening new and existing roads to support traffic flows from the 33-kilometre project, to the $17 billion cost of WestConnex itself.
The federal government announced on April 13 the Emissions Reduction Fund had spent another $133 million on carbon emissions abatement.
This included聽about $100 million on planting trees to save the equivalent of 8.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
At the same time the states permit land clearing and deforestation that emits millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and is responsible for 8% of Australia鈥檚 emissions.
We're all familiar with the old maxim: 鈥渢he rich get richer while the poor get poorer鈥. It is said as often with resignation as it is as a call to action.
Left unquantified it remains abstract but it is much easier to get worked up when the sheer scale of material inequality is in front of your face. Hence the growing outcry surrounding Oxfam's recent annual reports on global inequality that clearly demonstrate the concentration of world resources in the hands of the 0.1%.
US President Donald Trump鈥檚 threat to unleash a new nuclear war should not be dismissed as the ravings of an unhinged individual. He may be that, but he has also shown that he is prepared to start a new war and ratchet up old ones.
The US鈥檚 missile attack on a Syrian government air base on April 7 and its decision to drop an 11-ton GBU-43/B (or MOAB, Mother Of All Bombs), the world鈥檚 biggest non-nuclear bomb, on Afghanistan on April 13 is proof of that.
As the embers cooled in the debris of US President Donald Trump鈥檚 59 Tomahawk missiles fired at Syria, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ordered an immigration crackdown that includes a new US-style patriot test for those seeking Australian citizenship and the scrapping of 457 foreign worker visas.