As part of a nationwide day of action, more than 1000 people marched on the Victorian parliament on June 8 to fight for state and federal governments to back their claim for increased wages.
The Melbourne rally was one of 17 across the country, organised by the Australian Services Union (ASU), which advocates for workers in the female-dominated community services sector.
The national day of action comes as a response to Fair Work Australia鈥檚 finding that the sector鈥檚 workers were not being payed enough, in part, because most of them are women.
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Opposed to carbon tax
I am a committed greenie, but I was not one of the thousands who rallied on the weekend.
I am opposed to the carbon tax because it hurts the poor and lines the pockets of the rich, without doing anything real for the climate.
Just 10% of this tax is earmarked for funding for renewable energy, with more than this amount (the government is very coy about the exact figure) to be given to the biggest polluters, as 鈥渃ompensation鈥. This is just business as usual 鈥 lots of money for the worst polluters and a few crumbs for renewables.
A bill attacking the rights of NSW public sector workers pushed by the O鈥橣arrell Coalition government are set to pass through the upper house on June 14, with the support of Fred Nile鈥檚 Christian Democrats and the Shooters Party.
It can then be put through the Liberal dominated lower house on June 15.
The anti-union bill is a draconian measure. If passed, it will give the state government the power to unilaterally set the wages and conditions of public sector workers.
Melbourne's largest feminist conference in more than a decade, the Feminist Futures Conference, took place over May 28-29.
The conference was organised by the newly-formed Melbourne Feminist Collective (MFC), a group of mainly young activists who were inspired by a similar conference they attended in Sydney last year.
In the lead-up to the conference, a debate between the radical feminist supporters of Melbourne lecturer Sheila Jeffreys and the sex worker supporters of Elena Jeffreys broke out on the conference blogsite.
Melbourne鈥檚 City of Yarra awarded the volunteer-run climate research group Beyond Zero Emissions its 2011 sustainability award for community action on June 2. BZE鈥檚 Melbourne group office is based in the Yarra council area. The council said: 鈥淏eyond Zero Emissions Inc. (BZE) is an independent, not-for-profit, volunteer-run organisation leading a 鈥榗an do鈥 campaign for climate solutions grounded in commercially available technologies and peer-reviewed research.
Marrickville Mayor Fiona Byrne has received a letter of support from South African anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The letter appears below.
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Dear Mayor Fiona Byrne,
We in South Africa, who both suffered Apartheid and defeated it, have the moral right and responsibility to name and shame institutionalized separation, exclusion, and domination by one ethnic group over others. In my own eyes I have seen how the Palestinians are oppressed, dispossessed and exiled.
鈥 World Environment Day on June 5 was the rally called by an alliance of unions and NGOs like GetUp.
A large number of environmentalists, including the Greens party, rightly rejected the last attempt of the government to set a carbon price, the 鈥淐arbon Pollution Reduction Scheme鈥. It was shonky, riddled with loopholes big enough for a diesel-spewing truck to drive through.
Action outside state parliament called by homeless people of WA, in particular Corey Wilkinson a homeless man who has tried repeatedly to speak to Troy Buswell the housing minster, even chaining himself outside his office and Buswell is refusing to meet with him and any other homeless people.
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