The abortive leadership spill in the Labor party on March 22 was yet another demonstration of its total political bankruptcy.
Kevin Rudd's leadership ambitions may now be in the dustbin of history but Prime Minister Julia Gillard has won a pyrrhic victory.
The public watched this gross display of principle-free power play in disgust. It seemed to make a government led by Liberal leader Tony Abbott a virtual certainty.
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Having tried absolutely everything they could think of to win the support of voters besides push good polices in favour of working people, there was really nothing for Labor's parliamentary caucus to do except launch yet another leadership spill on March 21.
It might have been a farce that will help worsen Labor's defeat in September, but it did reveal one startling fact: Simon Crean is still in parliament. I know, right?
The Victoria Refugee Action Collective held a forum on March 20 called 鈥淧ersecuted in Sri Lanka, detained in Australia: the plight of Tamil refugees鈥.
Former journalist Trevor Grant said the Australian public has been taught to be fearful of refugees. The language used to speak about them 鈥 including terms such as 鈥渋llegal鈥 and 鈥渂order protection鈥 鈥 is designed to create fear.
Grant, who is active in the Tamil Refugee Council, spoke of the use of torture and rape by Sri Lankan government forces against Tamils.
There has long been support across Australia for sustainable job creation. With new environmental technologies being created at a rapid pace, green jobs have been created in installation and retail 鈥 but what about sustainable manufacturing?
There is now a push for sustainable jobs that consider the future of communities where local jobs are reliant on coal, such as Morwell in Victoria鈥檚 Latrobe Valley.
Northern Territory Chief Minister Terry Mills was replaced by Adam Giles in a sudden leadership coup on March 13, while Mills was in Japan on a trade mission. This shift has led to backdowns from the Country Liberal Party (CLP) on some regressive policies but could pave the way for more attacks in the future.
Crikey鈥檚 Bob Gosford predicted the spill on March 5 and of it.
The mining companies鈥 best friend in the federal Labor government, former resources minister Martin Ferguson, supported a Kevin Rudd comeback and fell on his sword after the Labor leadership spill-that-wasn't.
Ferguson said he was resigning from cabinet and retreating to the backbench on March 22.
He said: 鈥淭he class-war rhetoric that started with the mining dispute of 2010 must cease. It is doing the Labor party no good."
He appealed for Labor to "govern for all Australians" like the Hawke and Keating governments supposedly did.
A protest against racism outside Labor MP Tanya Plibersek's office on March 21 demanded an end to the Northern Territory intervention and its expansion into areas such as Bankstown in south-west Sydney.
Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney (STICS) organised the rally, which highlighted the small but significant steps being taken to bring Aboriginal communities, unions and others together to prevent the spread of these apartheid-like policies.
The protest was held on International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and national Close the Gap day.
When coal seam gas company Metgasco announced on March 13 it had suspended its operations in northern NSW after a long community campaign against it, it was just the latest in a series of setbacks for the CSG industry.
It followed the suspension of an AGL project in Campbelltown in western Sydney after community protests. Another company, Arrow Energy, has withdrawn from NSW and wants to transfer its licence to Dart Energy so it can focus on expanding in central Queensland.
There are at least two truisms in Aboriginal affairs. The first is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I鈥檒l come back to that one. The second is that the road through Aboriginal affairs, while often paved with good intentions, is sometimes paved with bad ones.
I鈥檓 going to assume that when Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin held a gun to the head of Alice Springs town campers and told them that unless they signed over their land for 40 years it would be compulsorily acquired, that her intentions were good.
10 years on from the beginning of the Iraq war, former marine and anti-war activist with Iraq Veterans Against the War, Vince Emanuele, speaks about his background and experiences in Iraq and more.
About 200 people attended a community forum on March 19 to discuss the future of policing at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. It was organised in response to community outrage over violent arrests at this year's parade.
The forum was called by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the AIDS Council of NSW, Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby, Inner City Legal Centre, NSW Police and independent MLC Alex Greenwich.
It is one of the most bitter ironies of this century so far that a war carried out as part of the so-called war on terror turned out to be one of history鈥檚 worst acts of terror.
US NGO since the US-led invasion 10 years ago.
That is a death rate of about one in every 17 or 18 Iraqis. The Iraq genocide 鈥 as we could easily call it 鈥 claimed more lives than the Rwandan genocide.
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