In December last year, minister for employment Eric Abetz and Treasurer Joe Hockey announced the terms of reference for an inquiry into Australia鈥檚 workplace relations framework by the Productivity Commission that was established by John Howard鈥檚 Coalition government in 1998.
In a paper released in January, the Productivity Commission indicated that what was up for grabs were the minimum wage, penalty rates, unfair dismissal laws and the role of unions in collective bargaining.
1049
Environment Victoria released this statement on April 14.
***
Environment Victoria has labelled new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) identifying 2300 job losses in the renewable energy sector in just two years as proof that the Tony Abbott government鈥檚 anti-renewable energy policies are hurting the economy.
The ABS analysis of employment in the renewable energy sector is a first, and comes following a failure of the Abbott government to negotiate an outcome over the Renewable Energy Target (RET).
Federal education minister Christopher Pyne has given $4 million to Danish climate sceptic Bj酶rn Lomborg to set up the Australian Consensus Centre at the University of Western Australia.
Lomborg is a well-known climate policy sceptic and the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, whose funding was cut by the Danish government in 2012.
Danny Nahlliah, Australia First Candidate, Pastor for Catch the Fire Ministries and keynote speaker at the Melbourne Reclaim Australia rally on April 4, rang Tom Elliott on 3AW on April 7 and accused Socialist Alliance of planting neo-Nazis in the Reclaim Australia crowd to make the rallies and participants look bad.
This is an accusation that is even more ridiculous than their other claim that Halal certification funds terrorism.
Community Solidarity Action was launched in Darwin to respond to funding cuts under the federal government's Indigenous Advancement Strategy and to protest against the closure of communities in Western Australia.
The group was launched by community organisations, unions and individuals concerned about or affected by the recent funding announcements and community closures.
The head of the Business Council of Australia (BCA), Catherine Livingstone, has called for a national 鈥渃onversation鈥 about what the federal government and the business community euphemistically call 鈥渆conomic reform鈥.
Ever in thrall to trickle-down economics, they manage to talk in 鈥渄oublespeak鈥, a close relative of the doublethink that George Orwell wrote about in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
As the Galilee Basin project faces legal challenges by Aboriginal and other community groups and international banks refuse to finance it, the environment movement is focusing its campaign on ensuring that the Australian Big 4 banks also withhold finance.
The 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing is nearly upon us and the government decided to kick off commemorating the sacrifice of nearly 9000 Australian soldiers in the failed invasion of Turkey by sending 300 more soldiers to take part in the seemingly endless failed war on Iraq.
This government is sometimes accused of insensitivity, but who could disagree that the best way to remember a disastrous invasion of a country half-way around the world that poses no threat to Australia on behalf of an incompetent foreign power is to repeat the exercise.
Lines of grey muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grasping fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!
鈥 Siegfried Sassoon.
Implausible as it might seem, it was the violent protest of a group of Bosnian high school students that sparked World War I.
Clashes erupted on April 15 at the Wickham Point detention centre in Darwin when refugees resisted attempts to send them back to the Australian-run concentration camp in Nauru where they have suffered serious human rights abuses.
The Palestine Action Group released the following statement on April 9.
* * *
Today, April 9, we remember 67 years since the Deir Yassin massacre. Over 100 Palestinians were murdered, with many children left orphaned. Palestinians soon began to leave their homes after witnessing such atrocities, even before the mass exodus that came with the Nakba.
And still 67 years on, the effects of diaspora are being felt harshly by Palestinians. After being forced to flee their homeland, Palestinians in the Yarmouk refugee camp are under attack yet again.
G眉nter Grass, who was one of Germany鈥檚 most important post-war novelists, died on April 13 at the age of 87 in the town of L眉beck, in northern Germany.
Grass was perhaps most famous for his 1959 book The Tin Drum, a novel that embodied fantastical elements in its critique of Weimar and Nazi Germany. As such, his style bore resemblances to Latin America鈥檚 genre of magical realism. In 1979, the book was turned into an Academy Award winning film by Volker Schl枚ndorff, which won the Oscar for best foreign film.
- Previous page
- Page 3
- Next page