Coalmine workers employed by the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) in central Queensland's Bowen Basin are standing firm in the face of escalating attacks by their employer. In the latest round, BHP has announced the closure of its Norwich Park coalmine, south-east of Dysart. The move is clearly aimed at putting pressure on the mineworkers to settle their longstanding industrial dispute.
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Liam Flenady has been endorsed as the of former ALP Queensland premier Anna Bligh. Flenady released the statement below on April 11.
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Within two weeks of taking office, Premier Campbell Newman and his Liberal National Party (LNP) government show signs of returning to the bad old days of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen regime.
Warren Mundine, a member and former National President of the ALP, and , has been . Unfortunately he turns a blind eye to the industry's crude racism, a problem that ought to be core business for the Indigenous Dialogue Group.
Sam Castro from recently sat down with Christine Assange to talk about her son Julian, WikiLeaks' editor-in-chief, his fight against extradition to Sweden and why fighting for Julian鈥檚 freedom is actually part of a much bigger fight to defend democracy in Australia.
A farmer-led coalition that involves stop coal and coal seam gas (CSG) groups, online protest group GetUp!, a peak wine industry body, a thoroughbred horse association, and even the Country Women's Association, will coordinate a mass protest at NSW parliament on May 1.
The protest coalition is furious that the Barry O'Farrell government鈥檚 recently released Strategic Regional Land Use Policy fails to meet a pre-election promise to protect key land and water resources from the coal and CSG industries. The draft policy fails protect any area of NSW from coal and CSG interests.
A high-energy, loud and prominent rally marched through Adelaide鈥檚 central shopping mall on March 31 to show support for victims of extreme climate-change related weather events and demand real climate action. The event was Adelaide鈥檚 second annual 鈥淢arch for Survival鈥.
The march ended with a mock arrest of the state energy minister Tom Koutsantonis for 鈥渃limate crimes鈥. The charges included ignoring the urgency of the climate science and failing to support plans for solar thermal technology in Port Augusta.
In article after article, book after book, scientists and environmentalists have exposed the devastating effects of constant economic expansion on the global environment. The drive to produce ever more 鈥渟tuff鈥 is filling our rivers with poison and our air with climate-changing gases. The oceans are dying, species are dying out at unprecedented rates, water is running short, and soil is eroding much faster than it can be replaced.
But the growth machine pushes on.
About 215,000 public service workers struck on March 27 as a warning to their employers a day before talks between the public sector union and the bosses.
Two weeks earlier, 130,000 took part in the first round of strikes. The award being negotiated by the United Services Union (known as ver.di) covers more than 2 million public service workers from national to local level.
Ver.di is Germany's second biggest union, with a membership of about 2.1 million people.
There is a country blessed with enormous natural resources whose head of state is a monarch who resides thousands of miles away from its shores.
Every time Her Majesty comes to her dominion she lays flowers in the Cenotaph, visits schools where children wave flags that carry in one of their corners a symbol of a colonial past and talks to her subjects in civic centres.
During her stay she is dutifully escorted by her representative in the host country and its political, economic and military classes.
鈥淭he Tsolakoglou Occupation government has literally crushed my prospects for survival, so far based on a decent pension, which I alone (without supplementation from the State) financed over 35 years.鈥 That was how the suicide note left by 77-year-old retired pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas began. It likened the current government to the collaborationist regime during the German occupation in World War II, led by Georgios Tsolakoglou. He was arrested and tried for his role.
Picture this scene 鈥 late April 1986, a group of a dozen builders labourers on a cold Melbourne morning. The time is about 7.30am. They were picketing a building site where they鈥檇 been sacked for refusing to resign from their union, the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF), which had recently been 鈥渄eregistered鈥 鈥 a nice term for outlawed under Bob Hawke鈥檚 ALP federal government. The ALP premiers of New South Wales and Victoria, Neville Wran and John Cain, joined Hawke鈥檚 drive to outlaw the BLF.
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