Australia and South Pacific
Australia: Sacked Nylex workers rally outside ANZ bank
By our correspondents, July 15, 2009
Sacked workers from the bankrupt manufacturing company Nylex staged a protest outside the ANZ bank in Melbourne’s central business district yesterday to demand full payment of their redundancy and e...
Australia: Court hears criminal charges against West Gate Bridge construction workers
By Patrick O’Connor, July 15, 2009
On July 6 the Melbourne Magistrates Court heard a series of serious criminal charges, relating to industrial action held at the West Gate Bridge project, laid against twelve construction workers.
Australia: Indian students boycott Victorian Labor government’s “Walk for Harmony”
By Patrick O’Connor, July 13, 2009
Indian students boycotted yesterday’s “Walk for Harmony” in central Melbourne after the Victorian Labor government of Premier John Brumby refused to allow them to address the rally.
Australia: Victorian government attempts to pre-empt findings of bushfire investigation
By Margaret Rees, July 11, 2009
In an extraordinary political manoeuvre, Victorian premier John Brumby has moved to pre-empt potentially damaging findings by the state’s royal commission into the February 7 “Black Saturday” bu...
Australia: Former Labor PM Keating denounces Rudd government’s “isolationist” stance on China
By Patrick O’Connor, July 10, 2009
Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating delivered a speech on July 2 in which he criticised the government’s recently released defence policy “White Paper” for implying that Australia could fin...
Australia: Low-wage workers’ pay cut
By Mike Head, July 9, 2009
Australia’s Fair Pay Commission has inflicted a real pay cut on 1.3 million low-paid workers by freezing the minimum wage for the first time in 27 years.
Labor government continues to starve Australian universities
By Carolyn Robinson, July 9, 2009
The Rudd government’s second budget will drive universities even further down the path of market-driven privatisation and commercialisation.
Australia: League tables and democratic rights—a reply to News Ltd
By Laura Tiernan, July 8, 2009
Behind the moral outcry is a definite political agenda. Murdoch’s columnists and lead-writers are helping the Rudd Labor government push through education reforms opposed by virtually the entire tea...
Australia: Jury acquits truck driver over rail crossing disaster
By Will Marshall, July 7, 2009
A Victorian jury last month acquitted a truck driver of 19 criminal charges—11 counts of culpable driving and 8 of negligently causing serious injury—relating to a railway level crossing crash tha...
Australia: West Gate Bridge construction workers charged with criminal offences
By Patrick O’Connor, July 4, 2009
Twelve construction workers have been charged with serious criminal offences relating to industrial action and picketing in April at Melbourne’s West Gate Bridge project.
Australia: Man dies after being tasered by police
By Mathew Benn, July 3, 2009
On June 12 in the small town of Brandon in northern Queensland, 39-year-old Antonio Galeano was tasered up to 28 times by police and died in custody 10 minutes later.
Australia: Labor moves to shut down remote Aboriginal settlements
By Susan Allan, June 27, 2009
The federal and Northern Territory (NT) Labor governments last month unveiled a series of free-market measures that will deepen the poverty and suffering in indigenous communities.
