The August 8 announcement of the Reserve Bank board’s decision to raise official interest rates by a further 0.25% focused renewed media attention on the non-affordability of housing. The interest rate rise — the fifth since the 2004 election and the ninth since 2002 — increased mortgage repayments for home owners with average mortgages by $50 a week, placing extra pressure on already stretched budgets.
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Rachel Evans, a well-known campaigner for refugee, workersÂ’ and queer rights, was preselected as the Socialist Alliance candidate for the federal seat of Parramatta at a meeting of the Sydney West branch on August 7.
“If you can’t stand up and say what you feel and believe, then you’re a slave. And I ain’t no slave”, said one of the building workers prosecuted by the Howard government for withdrawing labour after the unfair dismissal of his shop steward.
Liliany Obando, an international representative and organiser of the Agricultural Workers Union Federation of Colombia (FENSUAGRO), will be among more than 35 international guests at the Latin American and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum to be held in Melbourne on October 11-14.
Venezuelan charge dÂ’affaires Nelson Davila was the feature speaker at a seminar and film showing co-sponsored by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network and the Australia Cuba Friendship Society on August 11. More than 60 people attended the event, which discussed the gains of the Venezuelan revolution and its impact on the struggle for social justice throughout Latin America.
According to a survey conducted by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) 15 months ago, eight Australians are killed every week on the job and a further 44 die due to work related illnesses and diseases. This is one-third higher than the number of people who die on the nationÂ’s roads. More than 15 serious injuries occur on the job every hour.
A court challenge brought by the Wilderness Society (TWS) against the federal government was rejected on all counts on August 9. TWS alleged that environment minister Malcolm Turnbull had not properly assessed the environmental implications of the proposed Gunns pulp mill development in the Tamar Valley.
“Thousands of government supporters converged on Venezuela’s National Assembly, carrying banners reading ‘Yes to the reform, on the path to 21st Century Socialism’”, the BBC’s website reported on August 16, as Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez announced proposed constitutional reforms to provide a legal framework for the increasingly radical direction of the revolutionary process led by his government. This process aims to create a system of popular power and socialism.
On August 8, I attended a noisy demonstration by trade unionists in Malaysia who were demanding that the government bring in a minimum wage of 900 ringgit (A$300) a month. I had come to the picket with a group of some of the country’s lowest-paid workers — rubber-plantation workers whose ancestors had been brought from India generations ago by the former British colonial rulers as indentured labourers.
On August 2, the High Court of Australia upheld the constitutional validity of a control order on Jack Thomas.
On August 15, 25 of the 43 West Papuan refugees who sought asylum in Australia in 2006 joined a protest outside federal parliament to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1962 New York Agreement — the US-brokered agreement to transfer West Papua from Dutch to Indonesian control that included the guarantee of an “act of free choice” for West Papuans to decide whether to be incorporated into the Republic of Indonesia. However, instead of a genuine act of self-determination being held, a group of hand-picked West Papuan “representatives” were coerced into voting for Indonesian rule.
On August 14, Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister and leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), revealed his minority government’s plans for a referendum on Scottish independence.
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