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Refugee Action Coalition released on January 16. *** Manus Island detention centre is engulfed in the largest protests in a year, as more asylum seekers join the hunger strike. Sudanese asylum seekers in Mike Compound joined the hunger strike protest late on January 15. There are now around 300 on hunger strike in Mike Compound alone, and around 170 in Foxtrot.
Fee deregulation will be resurrected this year. This gives education activists that general zombie-slayer feeling any sane human gets from fighting a piece of legislation you thought you had killed already. Last year, fee deregulation was booted out of the Senate, with student boots doing most of the kicking. But it doesn鈥檛 want to die and is set to return to parliament, presumably with enough amendments to appeal to the biggest fence sitters.
The rate of Aboriginal children removed from their families has increased each year since Kevin Rudd said sorry to the Stolen Generations, and more and more Aboriginal children are being placed with non-Indigenous carers, a new report into Indigenous disadvantage has revealed. In 2008, Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to the victims of past policies of forced removal that led to the Stolen Generations, promising that the 鈥渋njustices of the past will never, never happen again鈥.
1. A GLOBAL CALL FOR CLIMATE ACTION Last year, more than ever before, people stood up to demand action from world leaders to address the climate crisis. On September 21, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of New York to insist on the need for stronger climate policy and more renewable energy. 2. EUROPE BANS PESTICIDES LINKED TO BEE COLLAPSE
Below is a Charter of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Rights was adopted by the in 2013. * * * Introduction
January 26 marks Invasion Day and the ongoing fight for Aboriginal rights. Join rallies and events in your city. Check for details. Australian roots band Blue King Brown has released their new video which profiles freedom for West Papua. Watch the video and get involved in the campaign.
The national conveners released this statement on January 9. * * * The Socialist Alliance condemns the massacre of journalists, cartoonists and others at and around the offices of the Paris-based publication Charlie Hebdo. However offensive anyone may have found some of the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo, this act of brutal violence is not justified.
On January 5, with most of the country still in holiday mode, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman called on the acting governor (even the governor was still on holidays) to issue writs for a state election on January 31. The Liberal National Party (LNP) won government three years ago in a landslide against the Labor government鈥檚 privatisation of public assets, reducing the ALP to a rump of seven seats (now increased to nine after two byelection victories).
麻豆传媒 Weekly鈥檚 Chris Peterson spoke with Jacob Rumbiak, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of West Papua -- a government-in-exile of the Papuan terrritory occupied by Indonesia since the 1960s. Its new foreign affairs office is in Melbourne. Rumbiak is one of five officials of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua, a new consultation body set up at a conference in Vanuatu in December.
A rally was held in Melbourne on January 16 to support refugees protesting in Wickham Point detention centre near Darwin and Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea. Many of the asylum seekers are on a hunger strike and it is feared that a 33-year-old Iranian asylum seeker may have only days to live. The man, known as 鈥淢artin鈥, was on hunger strike for 53 days until December 21. He resumed the hunger strike on December 27, and has entered a critical stage. He may have already suffered permanent organ damage.
A bushfire that swept through the Adelaide Hills in early January has destroyed 27 homes, ravaged the local environment and killed many pets and animals. Large smoke plumes were visible from the Adelaide CBD and several Adelaide suburbs were evacuated. It is similar to other severe fires, such as in the Blue Mountains in NSW last year and the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in 2009, which climate scientists say will occur more frequently.
Joseph Elu, chair of the Torres Strait Regional Authority, told Radio National鈥檚 PM on January 5 that . 鈥淎 couple of our islands, the tide rises over the sea walls of the beachfront and it flows under the houses and out the other end ... They鈥檙e predicting that in 100 years, then they鈥檒l go under.鈥