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Indigenous Affairs Minster Jenny Macklin announced on January 30 that the federal government will make a formal apology to the stolen generations — the 13,000 Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their parents as part of a government policy of assimilation — on February 13, the day after the first sitting of the new parliament. Despite calls by Aboriginal groups to include a compensation plan, PM Kevin Rudd’s government has continued to rule out any national compensation fund to go with the apology.

On December 4, US President George Bush was delighted to announce that the US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (dubbed “PeruFTA”) had finally cleared the Congress. Since late 2005, when PeruFTA was approved by Peru, the Bush administration has campaigned relentlessly to secure the free trade deal’s endorsement by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.

An October 17 National Union of Students (NUS) report on the impact of the Howard government’s “voluntary student unionism” legislation argued that VSU has failed to deliver “self-sustaining student organisations just able to survive off voluntary memberships, investments and trading operations”. It documented a series of job losses and closures of student associations’ campaigning departments as a result of VSU robbing them of funding.

Lust, Caution
Directed by Ang Lee
Written by Eileen Chang (story); James Schamus & Hui-Ling Wang (screenplay)
With Tony Leung, Tang Wei & Joan Chen
In cinemas