ADELAIDE — More than 2000 public sector workers filled the Festival Theatre for a mass meeting on May 12 in reply to the state government's planned public sector cutbacks. The meeting unanimously adopted a motion for "an ongoing political, industrial and community campaign to maintain government services, protect members jobs and conditions, and to ensure that any changes to members employment arrangements or conditions only occur in an enterprise bargaining framework that provides proper protections".
- The experiences of the elections in Namibia provide important lessons for the upcoming process in South Africa, Joe Kaapanda told a Politics in the Pub on May 12. The former SWAPO representative in the Asia-Pacific region described some of the tactics used by the South African government to prevent SWAPO winning a two-thirds majority in the Namibian elections.
BRISBANE — 50 protesters lined the entrance to the quarterly gathering of the State Labor Council on May 15, calling on the Goss government to repeal Queensland's abortion laws. The protest, supported by the Women's Abortion Campaign and Children By Choice, drew a response from Lord Mayor Jim Soorley, who shouted "I support women's rights". One wonders if that means he will break the ban on stalls in the mall for this cause.
MELBOURNE — A rally organised by People Against Rape in Bosnia and Croatia drew several hundred people to the Treasury Gardens on Mother's Day, May 9. The protesters, most of Bosnian and Croatian background, voiced their anger at the situation in Bosnia and demanded more action from the Australian government to help bring justice to the rape victims and all other victims of the war.
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