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.
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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.
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.
Let me be clear: I am not happy, as such, that Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won Israel's March 17 elections.
Netanyahu is a blood-soaked killer. He should be put on trial for his many crimes, from the relentless theft of Palestinian land to last summer鈥檚 massacre in Gaza 鈥 and I yearn to see that day.
"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.
After nearly four months of protesting, students have helped defeat the Higher Education Reform Bill for the second time.
However, Education Minister Christopher Pyne has promised that he 鈥渨on鈥檛 give up鈥, indicating that the bill will be put before the Senate once again, with further concessions to crossbenchers.
Members of the NSW Education Action Network (EAN), locked themselves onto the door of the office of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Sydney, Micheal Spence, on March 16 to pressure him to come out against the bill. As it stands, Spence still supports the bill.
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.
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.
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.
Friends of the Earth released this statement on March 13.
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A judge has ruled that the environmental group Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) has a right to voice concerns over potential harm to bees from a neonicotinoid pesticide, Thiacloprid.
The judge in the Duesseldorf Regional Court revoked a previous injunction in favour of BAYER CropScience. Thiacloprid is used on crops such as oilseed rape and apples and is sold to the public in garden bug-killing products.
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