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May 27 marks the 40th anniversary of the overwhelming victory of the 1967 referendum, in which almost 91% of the Australian people voted to give the federal government the constitutional power to override the brutal, degrading racist laws of the states under which Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were tormented.

Australia’s highest-paid boss, Macquarie Bank chief executive officer Allan Moss, has pocketed a 57% pay rise, now taking home more than double an average worker’s yearly wage for one day at the office. In a day, he earns more than most workers get in a year.

Some 250 people heard from Terry Hicks, father of former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks, at a May 19 public meeting organised by the Stop the War Coalition. The meeting was also addressed by academic Tim Anderson, Omar Merhi (brother of one of the Muslim men being held in Barwon Prison accused of being terrorists) and STWC’s Anna Samson. Responding to a suggestion at a media conference before the meeting that one of Australia’s ‘most notorious criminals’ would soon be coming home from Guantanamo, Terry Hicks commented that one of Australia’s most notorious criminals would soon be ‘dis-elected’.

At its May 15 meeting, Geelong Trades Hall Council passed a motion declaring that “GTHC is opposed to any laws that fetter and/or criminalise union activity and workers’ rights under International Labour Organisation conventions to organise and take action to advance or defend our economic and social conditions. To this end we call on the Victorian Trades Hall Council to organise a mass delegates’ meeting to discuss how we can best help the ACTU [Australian Council of Trade Unions] defend its own industrial relations policy and thus the rights of all workers.”

A new report by leading health experts on behalf of the Municipal Services Project, The Problem of Handwashing and Paying for Water, found that pre-paid water metres have a negative effect on household hygiene, with insufficient handwashing increasing the risk of water-borne diseases and other health problems in poor communities. The report argued: “In a country where poverty is rife, where there is soaring unemployment, where there is a massive housing backlog, and where hunger is a daily reality, it is unrealistic to expect poor people to purchase, in advance, a basic good such as water.” The findings give weight to the legal challenge launched in the High Court in July 2006 by a coalition collection of community organisations and NGOs opposing current water policies — and Soweto residents, which is demanding that Johannesburg Water’s unilateral decision to impose the pre-paid meters be declared unconstitutional and illegal.