From the left and the right of Labor, progressive MPs, members, unions and voters within the party are fighting back against Prime Minister Julia Gillard鈥檚 homophobic views on marriage. At the same time, huge 91自拍论坛 of Labor鈥檚 support have shifted toward the Greens, or toward more radical, anti-capitalist alternatives.
On November 10, Paul Gibson became the 14th NSW Labor MP to announce he would not contest the March election. He said the ALP had abandoned its platform, and was simply driven by polls rather than principle.
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Tasmanian Greens leader Nick McKim will introduce a bill into state parliament this week in a third attempt to have same-sex marriage legalised in Tasmania.
Labor Premier David Bartlett said he would not support the bill, believing same-sex marriage is a federal rather than a state issue. The latest Galaxy opinion poll showed 62% of Australians support equal marriage rights.
The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome
by ROLAND CHAMBERS
Faber & Faber, 2010,
$24.99
390 pages, (pb)
Arthur Ransome was a popular children's author in England who counted the offspring of A. A. Milne and J. R. R. Tolkien among his millions of devoted young readers.
The Anti-Porn Men Project was recently launched. Anti-Porn Men is a website providing men with information and a platform to explore anti-pornography views and arguments.
Criticisms of porn from moralistic and religious standpoints are nothing new, but the Anti-Porn Men Project isn鈥檛 about moralistic preaching 鈥 it comes from a feminist and pro-sex perspective.
Matthew Wright and Patrick Hearps from Beyond Zero Emissions outlined their plan to switch Australia to 100% renewable stationary energy by 2020 to 150 people in Hobart on November 11. Local speakers Todd Houstein from Sustainable Living Tasmania and Peter Rae from the International Renewable Energy Alliance, spoke about how the plan could apply to Tasmania.
GasLand
A film by director Josh Fox
In Palace cinemas from November 18
www.GasLand.com.au
In September 2006, theatre director and part-time banjo player Josh Fox received an unexpected letter in the mail: a natural gas company offering him $100,000 for permission to explore his family's upstate New York property, in the lush Delaware River Basin area.
A High Court decision concerning the Refugee Status Assessment (RSA) process may undermine the government's offshore processing system.
On November 11, the court upheld a case put by two Tamil asylum seekers, who'd had their claims for asylum rejected.
Known as M61 and M69, the Tamils put the case that they had been denied the right to challenge their rejected claims in court.
The current two-stage RSA "offshore" process discriminates between asylum seekers who arrive by boat, known as "irregular arrivals", and those who arrive by other means, such as by plane.
The federal election result and the surging Green vote have livened up the Victorian election campaign. The latest Newspoll figures show 19% support for the Greens, the and major parties are struggling to work out whether to launch a full-frontal attack or whether that would deliver more votes to the Greens.
The Greens are eating into Labor鈥檚 support base on the left and Labor is worried.
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has voted for further industrial action, as vice-chancellor Fred Hilmer still refuses to negotiate in good faith on improvements to job security, pay and other conditions for staff.
A November 10 NTEU meeting voted for an indefinite ban on processing student results at the end of the second semester.
This is the second time staff have voted to carry out results bans this year. The dispute made headlines in July after management鈥檚 decision to stand down about 70 staff without pay.
Federal Liberal/National Coalition leader Tony Abbott left Normanton, in far north Queensland鈥檚 gulf country, on November 10, having failed to win Aboriginal elders' backing for his bill to repeal Queensland's Wild Rivers legislation.
The existing Wild Rivers legislation aims to protect the wilderness rivers of the tropical north, and provide Aboriginal control of employment and economic development in the region.
Having lived on the farm right next to the Northam army barracks since 1934, Eric Fox has seen a lot of people use the camp (and his farm) over the years.
鈥淭he army used the farm extensively [in the early years of World War Two] as an extension of their training ground鈥, Fox told 91自拍论坛 Weekly.
鈥淟ater in the war, when the Italian prisoners of war were there, they weren鈥檛 very solidly interned 鈥 they walked over the farm as well. That didn鈥檛 worry us. They didn鈥檛 bother us.
A Union and Community Summer School, Winning Our Rights, will be held over December 10-11 at Melbourne Trades Hall.
Most left political traditions will take part in the school, which aims to strengthen unity on issues for which there is agreement.
The approach will be one of problem-solving. To usefully tackle the big challenges confronting the union movement 鈥 such as the fight against anti-union laws and the struggle for a sustainable economy 鈥 it begins by setting out the concrete questions these challenges pose to unions and labour movement activists.
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