On March 12 the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) lodged a submission to the Fair Pay Commission calling for a $26 a week pay increase for workers covered by awards — a 4.9% increase for workers paid the minimum wage (currently $522.12 a week).
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Katarina Pujiastuti, a political activist in Jakarta, reports growing queues for petrol, massive electricity blackouts, and industry fuel shortages plaguing oil-rich Indonesia.
On March 7 a successful community assembly of up to 150 union and community activists shut down Qantas valet parking operations at Melbourne Airport.
On March 8, a group of 16 Indigenous women and children were thrown out of the Haven Inn backpackers accommodation, after tourists complained to management that their presence made them feel “scared”.
Labor’s new Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008, tabled in federal parliament on February 13, will most likely come in to effect early April. The bill is the first in a raft of legislation to be introduced to parliament and is promoted by the federal government as the first step in the dismantling of Work Choices.
The following article is abridged from a speech to the February 24 Victorian state conference of the Socialist Alliance by Geelong Trades Hall Council secretary and alliance member Tim Gooden.
Campaign group Your Water Your Say (YWYS) has warned that Victorian state government policy will see the state “swimming in water but drowning in water bills” by 2014 if the proposed $3.1 billion desalination plant goes ahead at Wonthaggi.
The profit-driven, multi-billion-dollar treatment of depression has been exposed as little less than a fraud. The selective publication of trials has meant that large corporations have been able to make misleading claims for their drugs.
February 28 marked a further deepening of the political crisis and polarisation in Bolivia, when the national congress, in the middle of a blockade by a section of Bolivia’s main social movements, approved a law to hold two national referendums on May 4.
The Melbourne Palestine Network held a CBD protest on March 12 against the continuing blockade of Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestine. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd moved a motion on the same day in Federal parliament in support of the 60th
On March 17, 1968 British actor Vanessa Redgrave, having addressed a huge anti-Vietnam War protest in London’s Trafalgar Square, visited the US embassy in Grosvenor Square to deliver a protest letter. She was accompanied by thousands of protestors chanting “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, we will fight and we will win!”
Laws that curtailed civil liberties during the “extraordinary” and “temporary” conditions of the APEC protests last year in Sydney are likely to be made permanent, according to the March 12 Sydney Morning Herald.
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