In the lead up to the ALP National Conference next month, marriage equality is shaping up to be the biggest test yet to Prime Minister Julia Gillard鈥檚 leadership.
Gillard has moved from her position that she would override a pro-equality decision at the conference, to hinting she will allow Labor MPs a conscience vote.
However, she now also holds the dubious honour of being the only remaining Labor leader supporting the marriage ban.
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The government has undermined the right to a fair trial of up to 350 mostly Indonesian people now facing charges of 鈥減eople smuggling鈥 in Australian courts. It has done so by introducing hastily drafted, retrospective amendments to the Migration Act.
The People Smuggling Deterrence Bill 2011 was passed in the lower house November 1, supported by Labor and the Coalition. If carried by the Senate, it will amend the migration act to make it an offence to bring a person to Australia with 鈥渘o valid visa鈥.
Greens MP Adam Bandt and independent MP Rob Oakeshott spoke against the bill.
Before the first Australian occupations following the example of Occupy Wall Street began on October 15, even some of the activists involved wondered if it would work. After all, this was the 鈥渓ucky country鈥 that escaped the global financial crisis.
But thousands of mostly young people rocked up to launch Occupy Melbourne in City Square, and a further 1000 launched Occupy Sydney in Martin Place in the heart of the city鈥檚 financial district. Hundreds launched Occupy Brisbane in Post Office Square.
Hundreds took to the streets of Hobart for the Inaugural Pride Parade on November 5 as part of the TasPride Festival. This was the first parade held since Tasmania was the final state to decriminalise homosexuality in 1997.
Tasmanian Aboriginal lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex members also marched.
Speakers at the rally afterwards at Parliament House included Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group spokesperson Rodney Croome, Outright Youth coordinator Joshua Brown, Community Services Minister Cassy O鈥機onnor and Coming Out Proud president Julian Punch.
Veteran Brisbane activist Gary McLennan spoke at an Occupy Brisbane rally on November 5. An abridged version of his speech is below.
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Friends, I want to thank you sincerely for the invitation to speak to you today. It remains for me a badge of honour, a great honour, that I鈥檝e been asked twice to speak to the Occupy Brisbane movement.
I said when I first spoke to you that your movement represented the best hope for the kind of world that I wanted my grandchildren to grow up in.
I believed that then and I still believe it now.
Just four days after about 10,000 people circled the White House to protest a proposed 2700-kilometre tar sands oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, the Obama government announced it will postpone a decision on whether it will go ahead until 2013. Radical author and activist Naomi Klein addressed an October 10 public meeting at New York鈥檚 New School University, where she spoke about the Keystone XL pipeline.
鈥淎 map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at鈥, Oscar Wilde, 鈥渇or it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.鈥
The strengthening links between unions and the US Occupy movement will be expressed in mobilisations across the US on November 17.
Despite Fair Work Australia putting in place an injunction banning National Union of Workers (NUW) officials from taking part in the Baiada poultry workers鈥 picket line, workers and community supporters were able to hold off an attempt by riot police to break the picket late on November 11.
Over October 19-20 there was a general strike in Greece. The overwhelming majority of Greek workers took part in the strike with dynamic demonstrations and other forms of action. In that way, Greek people expressed their anger and despair over the devastating measures carried out in Greece in the past year and a half.
The relentless, vicious austerity measures have been imposed by the PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) government and the 鈥渢roika鈥 of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Union.
People concerned about coal seam gas (CSG) will deliver a petition signed by more than 15,000 NSW residents to Premier Barry O'Farrell on November 22.
The NSW-wide petition, initiated by Stop CSG Illawarra, calls for an immediate moratorium on all CSG projects, a Royal commission into the full impacts of CSG and an immediate ban on fracking.
Stop CSG Illawarra member Chris Williams said: "Premier O'Farrell has pledged that any petition with over 10,000 signatures will trigger a debate in parliament.
News International chief executive James Murdoch and his billionaire father Rupert were accused of running a mafia-style empire on November 10.
Labour MP Tom Watson made the allegation during James Murdoch鈥檚 second appearance before the Commons culture, media and sport committee over the phone hacking scandal.
During lively exchanges Watson asked Murdoch: 鈥淵ou鈥檙e familiar with the mafia?
鈥淎re you familiar with the word omerta, the culture of silence around the mafia? Do you accept that applies to the Murdoch empire?鈥
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