One month after Turkey鈥檚 June 7 parliamentary elections, the country still does not have a government. Ahmet Davutoglu of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) remains caretaker prime minister.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains the dominant figure in the AKP and is manoeuvring to retain his party鈥檚 leading position. The president is supposed to be an impartial figure above party politics but Erdogan pays scant regard to such constitutional niceties.
The elections were marked by two significant and related developments.
1060
Q&A to become more watchable
On July 6, the homophobic, climate change-denying minister of agriculture, Senator Barnaby Joyce, was due to appear on the ABC's Q&A program. However, the night before, he announced he would not be appearing because Prime Minister Tony Abbott had ordered all government ministers to boycott the program in response to the June 22 episode in which Liberal MP Steve Ciobo had to deal with a question he didn't approve of from the audience.
A in Victoria made some wild claims about oxytocin and female sexuality.
The booklet, entitled Science and Facts, was used as part of a Christian sex education program at the public school. The program is run by Epic Youth, part of the Pentecostal megachurch 鈥淐ityLife鈥.
The ACTU highlighting one impact of the federal government鈥檚 .
The government鈥檚 strategy to boost Aboriginal workforce participation in remote communities means that Northern Australian businesses will be able to exploit free Aboriginal labour.
Geelong Trades Hall election wins for Socialist Alliance members
Geelong Trades Hall Secretary Tim Gooden was re-elected for another five-year term at the Trades and Labour Council meeting on July 7. Gooden, a member of the Socialist Alliance, was re-elected unopposed.
Socialist Alliance member Jacki Kriz, from the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Association, was elected President.
Earlier this year it looked as if Labor4Refugees鈥 amendments to the Labor Party鈥檚 platform that specifically reject boat turnbacks might win enough votes from the ALP left and the Catholic right to get through at the ALP national conference in late July.
However, the Labor leadership is committed to a policy of deterring asylum seekers and is working to prevent any policy change at the conference.
Up to 10,000 people attended the March for Jobs, Justice, and the Climate in Toronto on July 5, climate action group 350.org said.
The mass march came ahead of the Climate Summit of Americas, held in the city over July 7-9.
Opponents of the Stage 3 expansion of the Acland coalmine in the Darling Downs in Queensland have called on the Palaszczuk government to make good on its campaign promises and reject the application by New Hope Coal. This comes in the wake of revelations that the mining company New Hope Group, would receive about 77% of royalties, while the state would get only 7%.
From his late teens, Bill Shorten would tell anyone who listened that his ambition was to be Labor prime minister, following in the footsteps of his heroes Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. But first of all he had to find a faction because, in the Labor Party, it is the factions who have the power to select MPs, premiers and prime ministers.
On July 4, federal environment minister Greg Hunt approved the Shenhua Watermark coalmine in the Liverpool Plains in north-west NSW.
It will turn 35 square km of prime agricultural land into a giant hole, contaminate aquifers and, as the July 8 Sydney Morning Herald said, 鈥渋s expected to destroy 789 hectares of an endangered ecological community, much of it box-gum woodland, and 148 hectares of other woods鈥.
The mine will also destroy 800 hectares of koala habitat, condemning the local koala population to extinction.
"Some people think [the WestConnex tollway] can't be stopped. I am not one of those," Dr Michelle Zeibots told an anti-WestConnex rally of around 200 people in Goddard Park, Concord, on July 4. Zeibots, a transport planning expert, was one of a number of speakers at the rally, with the theme: "WestConnex Independence Day: Save Our City".
"The [NSW state] government can't even present a business case for this project. More than $15 billion of public money is being spent on a private road, rather than on public transport.
The Queensland government has announced plans to open the first training prison of its kind because of critical jail overcrowding across the state.
The government鈥檚 $145 million plan is to recommission the old Borallon Correctional Centre, west of Ipswich, and turn it into an "earn or learn" facility, catering specifically for inmates who are 18 to 30 years old.
There has been a 30% rise in prisoner numbers since 2012 and every male prison in the state is now overcrowded. The new prison will house about 500 prisoners.
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