The silence around jobs in the NSW election is deafening.
Newcastle has been losing 200 jobs a year from the sale of state assets and the casualisation and retrenchment of state employees.
Up to 8000 workers in jobs such as fitters, boilermakers, welders, riggers and trades assistants in ship building and rail manufacture are also under threat.
Both major parties are focusing on other issues instead of the Hunter region鈥檚 jobs.
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Two groups of Tamils walked from Glen Waverley and Sunshine to the Melbourne CBD on March 15 to 鈥渁lert Australians to war crimes and genocide in Sri Lanka鈥.
The walkers converged in front of the State Library, where a rally was held.
The Campaign for Tamil Justice organised the walk to coincide with a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The UNHRC meeting had been expected to hear a report on Sri Lanka by the UN human rights commissioner, but this has been delayed for at least six months.
Emergency summits of the Organisation of American States (OAS), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Bolivarian Alliance of Our Americas (ALBA) have rejected US attacks on Venezuela and offered the South American nation support.
reported that a large majority of delegates at an emergency OAS meeting expressed concern about US President Barack Obama's March 9 鈥渆xecutive order鈥 declaring Venezuela a threat and 鈥渘ational emergency鈥.
Imagine visiting your mum or dad, in an aged care facility, and finding that they had been left to deal with severe pain because there was no registered nurse on duty who could give them morphine.
This is a real prospect facing thousands of families in NSW if the state government changes the law requiring at least one registered nurse (RN) to be employed at nursing homes at all times. It would leave up to 48,500 vulnerable, high-needs nursing home residents, at risk in an already stretched healthcare system.
"No West Connex: Public transport is the answer," was the theme of a public forum sponsored by 麻豆传媒 Weekly on March 17 at the Sydney CBD Resistance Centre. Up to 30 people gathered to hear Sue Bolton, Socialist Alliance councillor from Moreland, Melbourne, and Chris Elenor, No WestCONnex activist, discuss issues surrounding the huge toll road projects being pushed in Australia's major cities.
The Western Australian government has introduced new legislation aimed at criminalising protesters.
Police minister Lisa Harvey said the proposed amendments to the Criminal Code are specifically aimed at protesters who use devices like thumb locks. However, the bill criminalises 鈥減resumed鈥 intent to commit a crime and 鈥減ossessing a thing for the purpose of preventing lawful activity鈥 during peaceful protests.
Once again the world's poorest people are suffering the effects of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions which they played no role in producing. On March 13, Cyclone Pam ripped through the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, an archipelago of 82 islands, 65 of which are inhabited.
This NSW election, like the Victorian and Queensland polls before it, hinges on growing public opposition to Tony Abbott鈥檚 federal government and the neoliberal policies implemented by Labor and Coalition state governments.
The sell-off of public assets and services, cuts to the public sector, unsustainable development, mining and unprecedented handouts and tax cuts to corporate interests and the super rich are now standard practice, and people have had enough.
Amid so much bad news about so many species of wildlife in danger of extinction, it is encouraging that there are finally some good stories about endangered wild animals.
There has been good news regarding rhinoceros conservation in India. The Indian state of Assam鈥檚 environmental ministry recently revealed that the population of Indian one-horned rhinoceros in the state had grown by 27% since 2006, hitting a high of 2544 animals. The Indian government has a goal of 3000 rhinos by 2020. There were only about 200 Indian rhinos in the early 1990s.
I visited Athens recently as part of a solidarity delegation from the British party Left Unity. On January 25, the day before radical left party SYRIZA鈥檚 election victory, two of us were fortunate enough to take part in a tour of some of the self-organising structures in Athens supported by the Solidarity for All network.
The latest buzzword the government is tossing around to try to scare people into supporting its grossly unfair budget is 鈥渋ntergenerational theft鈥. It recently released an Intergenerational Report, which looks at the budget over the next 40 years to back up this campaign.
The report says that in the future we will all live much longer and spend more of our lives in retirement. There will be a lower proportion of working people whose taxes pay for pensions and health care, so 鈥渨e鈥 have to start paying for it now.
On March 11 around 90, mainly young people gathered outside parliament house to raise awareness about housing affordability in Sydney.
Many carried furniture, signs and banners about youth homelessness directed at NSW Premier Mike Baird. Signs asked if protesters could move into parliament house with Mike Baird, as there are no affordable housing options in Sydney.
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