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The Queensland government has announced plans to open the first training prison of its kind because of critical jail overcrowding across the state. The government’s $145 million plan is to recommission the old Borallon Correctional Centre, west of Ipswich, and turn it into an "earn or learn" facility, catering specifically for inmates who are 18 to 30 years old. There has been a 30% rise in prisoner numbers since 2012 and every male prison in the state is now overcrowded. The new prison will house about 500 prisoners.

On July 19, Reclaim Australia will lead a coalition of conservative, Christian fundamentalist and fascist organisations in another set of rallies to “defend Australian values” from “Muslim invasion”.

The recent elections in the Maritime Union of Australia made Bob Carnegie secretary of the Queensland branch. Carnegie is a committed socialist who has been a union, social justice and community activist in Queensland since the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era. More recently he risked prison, under the then-Campbell Newman government’s anti-union laws, leading a community campaign in defence of construction workers on the Brisbane Children’s Hospital building site. �鶹��ý Weekly’s Margaret Gleeson spoke to Carnegie about his plans for the union. * * *

As the example of Greece shows, the ruling elites and financiers are more than happy to extract their pound of flesh from working people, no matter the cost. As times get tougher it can make it harder to contribute to the �鶹��ý project. I speak to a lot of �鶹��ý subscribers, particularly those who are renewing, and a common thread is that people are already feeling the pinch and having to watch every dollar carefully.

On July 4, federal environment minister Greg Hunt approved the Shenhua Watermark coalmine in the Liverpool Plains in north-west NSW. It will turn 35 square km of prime agricultural land into a giant hole, contaminate aquifers and, as the July 8 Sydney Morning Herald said, “is expected to destroy 789 hectares of an endangered ecological community, much of it box-gum woodland, and 148 hectares of other woods”. The mine will also destroy 800 hectares of koala habitat, condemning the local koala population to extinction.