More than 4000 teachers, school support staff, parents and students rallied outside the South Australian parliament on June 14. The rally, called by the Australian Education Union (AEU), protested the 聯efficiency dividends聰 announced in the recent state budget, which will result in funding cuts of $50,000-$100,000 to most schools.
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The University of Western Sydney聮s Board of Trustees has officially proposed closing UWS聮s Blacktown Nirimba campus by 2009. The university administration claims that the closure is due to a decline in student numbers (not surprising since the administration has cut most degrees at the campus) and financial constraints (despite a $36 million surplus in 2006). According to a June 16 report on ABC聮s Stateline, Blacktown has one of Australia聮s fastest growing populations.
The right to strike is always agreed in principle. 聯We won聮t remove the right to strike聰, the Work Choices ads said. Employers agree 聴 subject to restrictions to protect their class interests. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) policy is for the workers聮 right to withdraw labour without sanctions.
The Tasmanian state Labor government has rejected a claim by public sector nurses to bring their pay and conditions in line with their mainland counterparts.
Prime Minister John Howard announced on June 21 a plan to take control of some 60 Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, supposedly to tackle a child sex abuse crisis in those communities. It is a plan that severely limits and in some instances eradicates the democratic and land rights of all Aboriginal people in remote NT communities.
Proposed laws introduced into the NSW parliament mean that the greater Sydney area will become a police state for two weeks around the APEC summit. The APEC Meeting (Policing Powers) Bill 2007 is expected to be passed without significant amendments.
聯I聮m taking control聰, said Johnny Howard, with a contrived quiver of righteousness in his voice. His face was set into a familiar pastiche of horror and disgust at the degraded behaviour of lesser beings. He also conveyed a weariness 聴 the weariness of shouldering the 聯white man聮s burden聰.
Michael Bozic, a barrister with the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, said on June 20 that the new powers being given to police during the APEC summit would make the conservative former premiers Robert Askin and Joh Bjelke-Petersen proud. Askin, NSW鈥檚 Liberal premier from 1965 to 1975, was famously quoted in 1966 demanding that the convoy accompanying visiting US President Lyndon Johnson 鈥渞ide over the bastards鈥 鈥 anti-Vietnam War protesters.
'Speciesism'
Richard Bulmer (GLW #713) presents a well-reasoned case against capitalist livestock meat production on environmental grounds, but in doing so he makes what I believe to be two errors.
Firstly, it is inappropriate to use words like
In a June 19 joint press conference in Washington with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, US President George Bush said: 聯It聮s interesting that extremists attack democracies around the Middle East, whether it be the Iraq democracy, the Lebanese democracy, or a potential Palestinian democracy.聰 He was referring specifically to the popularly elected Hamas-led government of the Palestinian people taking action in Gaza to prevent a bloody coup by their defeated rivals, Fatah, which since the January 2006 elections has been armed, funded and trained by Israel and the US.
The June 11 edition of ABC TV聮s Four Corners confirmed what Australian former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib has claimed since his January 2005 release without charge: that the Australian authorities were complicit in his abduction and torture.
Addressing Palestinians for the first time since he declared a state of emergency a week earlier, in a nationallly televised speech on June 21, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas denounced Hamas鈥 leaders as 鈥渕urderous terrorists鈥 who had carried out a 鈥渃oup鈥 in the Gaza Strip.
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