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#151; A special convention of Western Australian Civil Service Association delegates voted unanimously on October 17 to serve a claim for a 23% wage increase over three years on the WA government. The claim, known as GA4, would begin with a 9% rise in February 2008, when the current general agreement 3 expires.

When PM John Howard tried, unsuccessfully, to ban the use of the “worm” — the audience’s reaction graph in the only debate Howard’s agreed to have with Labor leader Kevin Rudd in this election campaign — Rudd protested with a scripted joke.

The NSW Teachers Federation will hold a public forum on October 31 at the Parramatta Town Hall with ACTU president Sharan Burrow as the guest speaker. In a media release announcing the forum, Jenny Diamond, the union’s acting assistant general secretary (schools), said it would be “final salvo for public education before the federal election”.

GLW #727 reported that 120 people marched in Cairns in solidarity with Burma on October 3. The protest took place on October 4.

In August 2005 Workers Radio Sydney emerged on to the Sydney breakfast radio scene. In the two years since the first broadcast, the show’s producer and presenter, Craig Bulley, has established a dedicated and growing audience who tune in between 6am and 9am weekday mornings for a hearty breakfast of music and politics. The show has become a listener’s hub for unionists, activists and community campaigners, as well as the many concerned Australian workers and their families who rely on the show for information about the attacks on their rights and conditions under the Howard government and its Work Choices regime.