Four thousand Gold Coast workers rallied on November 30, in one of the biggest protests ever seen in the city. Even threatening grey skies didn’t lessen the turn-out. However, threatening business owners and bosses did cause the numbers to dwindle as 9am approached and many were forced to leave for work.
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A significant ruling in the Federal Court on November 28 upheld the right of workers to use their leave as they see fit. The ruling prevents public sector organisations from issuing blanket bans on when employees can, or cannot, take leave.
Despite generally being smaller in number compared to last year’s November anti-Work Choices protests, many of the November 30 city-wide rallies were as lively.
Still 'staying the course'
"I supported our involvement [in the US war against Vietnam] at the time and I don't intend to recant that. I mean, I didn't hold any position of authority then, but I supported the reasons for Australia's involvement
Sunday, November 26th, 2006
Friends,
Tomorrow marks the day that we will have been in Iraq longer than we were in all of World War II.
As annual negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol were about to begin on November 7 in Nairobi, Kenya, Senator Ian Campbell, federal environment minister, claimed that the Kyoto signatories had agreed that a new agreement was necessary as the old agreement was not working. Campbell asserted that Australia would be going to Nairobi to begin negotiations on a “New Kyoto”.
“Reproductive rights embrace certain human rights that are already recognised in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus documents. These rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health.
Activists from Sydney-based Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) went to Melbourne to form a queer bloc for the November 18-19 G20 protests. The bloc called for money for AIDS care not war.
Nationalism is a central component of the ideological glue that holds capitalist society together, and just about all capitalist governments are happy to beat a nationalist drum. However the Howard government has been particularly noted for its efforts in this regard, not least in its championing of “Australian values”. They’ve been flogging the term for a decade but in recent months there’s been a bit of a “values” frenzy, with the added spectacle of Labor making an ill-conceived attempt to compete in the “values” stakes.
Commissioned by the British government, the October 2006 Stern report on global warming was greeted sceptically by PM John Howard, and lauded by the ALP and green organisations. But does the Stern report go far enough, or is it an unholy compromise between the science of climate change and the economics of responding to global warming while trying not to rock the foundations of capitalÂ’s global order?
If greenhouse gas emissions continue to spiral, scientists predict ecological disaster: melting ice sheets, erratic and destructive weather patterns and increasing desertification. All this will turn hundreds of millions of people into refugees.
On November 20, a meeting initiated by the NSW Greens marked Transgender Remembrance Day. Below is an abridged presentation by Rachel Evans, co-convener of Community Action Against Homophobia, National Union of Students female queer officer and NSW Socialist Alliance upper-house candidate.
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