Five thousand people attended the vibrant Climate Emergency Rally in Melbourne on June 5. Grassroots environment activists and groups came from all over Victoria to protest numerous environmentally destructive projects currently underway or proposed, demanding action instead be focused on renewable energy and public transport.
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Professor Ross Garnaut鈥檚 draft review of climate change policy options for the Australian government was released on July 4, with climate change minister Penny Wong due to release a green paper canvassing policy options on July 16. Garnaut鈥檚 report looks at the 鈥渃osts鈥 and 鈥渂enefits鈥 of mitigating drastic climate change through a carbon polluting trading scheme. It suggests tax cuts and 鈥渨elfare reform鈥 to compensate low-income households, which will be hit hard by energy price rises.
The following statement has been issued by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union.
On June 21, Indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin announced that her government would begin to end funding for infrastructure to remote Northern Territory (NT) Aboriginal communities that she deemed were 聯economically unviable聰. This is the Rudd Labor government聮s first major attack on Aboriginal land rights since taking power.
Around 80 people demonstrated under the banner of the National front for Indonesian Workers Struggle (FNPBI) outside the headquarters of ExxonMobil and the national parliament building to demand that the government cancel the increase in the price of fuel.
Employees and Australian Workers Union (AWU) members at CSR聮s Yarraville sugar refinery are in dispute with management over a log of claims for their enterprise bargaining agreement.
Each year 80,000 abortions are performed in Australia, with one in three women having a termination at some stage in their lives.
There have been nationwide protests against the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government聮s decision to raise the prices of petrol, diesel and cooking gas.
On June 26, NSW Nurses Association branches voted in favour of the pay and conditions offer and classification review offer made by the NSW health department. The first 3.9% pay rise will happen in early July. There are some improvements to conditions; notably, part-timers can choose to increase their contracted hours to the average actually worked over the preceding 12 months.
The June 3 Apache Energy gas facility explosion on Veranus Island, 100 kilometres west of the port of Dampier in WA, is the latest in a long history of social irresponsibility in the global oil and gas industry.
Two weeks ago, I presented a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, with the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.
Truck drivers are planning a national strike if demands for changes to new transport reforms are not met by the federal government. Drivers from NSW, Victoria and Queensland will take action from midnight on July 27.
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