There was some good news in the federal election. Ten Coalition members lost their seats in the July 2 federal election.
Jamie Briggs lost the seat of Mayo with a swing of 16%. Sophie Mirabella lost in Indi again with a further vote decline of 17.5%.
Andrew Nikolic lost in Bass with a decline of 10.8% and Wyatt Roy lost with a swing of 8.4%. Overall the Coalition vote was down 3.5%.
Other Liberal figures who lost support but not their seats included Christopher Pyne, down 9.53%; Tony Abbott, down 9.01%; Peter Dutton, down 5.6%; and Kevin Andrews, down 7.6%.
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While international media floods to cover the killing of police officers in the United States, the deaths of Latinos often go unnoticed. The police killings of Black men Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, which have sparked angry protests, have also justly occupied the news waves, but the death of four Latinos this week slipped by.
Tomas Young's War
Mark Wilkerson
Haymarket Books, 2006
225 pages, US$17.95
Tomas Young never even fired his weapon. He was gravely wounded on his fifth day in Iraq in 2004. What followed was a story of unimaginable grit, courage, love, inspiration — and tragedy.
The 2016 federal election has confirmed the continuing decline of Australia's two-party system. The relative stability that characterised the decades after World War II was shaped by a phase of unprecedented economic growth, record low unemployment and mass home ownership. But that is long gone, in fact it was an aberration. Our system of single member electorates helped paper over the current period of rising economic insecurity, but inevitably politics is catching up.
Domino's Pizza workers are missing out on penalty rates worth at least $32 million a year due to an old deal struck between the company and the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA).
Under a deal struck in 2009, before the introduction of the national award system, which set minimum standards for the fast-food industry, Domino's need not pay workers penalty rates for late-night or weekend shifts.
About 60 anti-uranium protesters set up a bonfire in the middle of the road leading to Olympic Dam, in South Australia, stopping all traffic in and out of the BHP Billiton uranium mine for about 19 hours on July 3.
Olympic Way was also closed for about 90 minutes on July 2 as about 200 demonstrators undertook a funeral procession, carrying a black coffin and baskets of animal bones to the gates of Olympic Dam.
The protest was organised by Desert Liberation Front, which opposes toxic waste dumps in Australia and wants BHP Billiton's uranium mine to be closed within two years.
Public school teachers in Mexico City launched an indefinite strike on July 5, called by leaders of the dissident National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) teachers union to protest the education reforms imposed by President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Nearly 70 staff at eheadspace — the national youth mental health service headspace's round-the-clock telephone and online counselling provider — were told they had just 24 hours to sign on to individual agreements that locked in year-long wage freezes, or they would lose their jobs.
A dispute has been listed in the Fair Work Commission after headspace refused requests to extend the deadline.
"For an iconic healthcare service, they don't treat their staff with any better respect than 7-Eleven or Grill'd," Health and Community Services Union organiser Serena Ho said.
United Firefighters Union (UFU) members handed out leaflets at polling booths in Victorian marginal seats on election day, in an attempt to counter a Liberal scare campaign against a new enterprise agreement for UFU members employed by the Country Fire Authority (CFA).
The Liberals falsely claim that the agreement gives the UFU the power of veto over CFA management decisions, and that it would prevent volunteer firefighters from fighting fires unless seven professional firefighters were present. They claim that the agreement endangers public safety.
Dozens of Gippsland dairy workers have been locked out indefinitely by milk producer Parmalat. When workers arrived at the gates of the Parmalat-owned Longwarry Food Park, east of Melbourne, on July 5, they were met with news of the lockout and closure of the site.
The Longwarry workforce is among the lowest-paid in the dairy industry according to the National Union of Workers, and had been calling for improved conditions in their pay deal to bring them in line with other Parmalat sites.
Jesse Williams used his award acceptance speech to denounce institutional racism and police brutality.
Grey’s Anatomy star Jesse Williams has been attacked for speaking out against racism with an online petition that garnered a paltry 1600 signatures in two days, demanding television network ABC fire the actor.
By contrast a counter-petition in support of the star had received 11,000 signatures by July 4.
Early this month mining giant Rio Tinto sold its mothballed Blair Athol coalmine to a tiny ASX-listed company called TerraCom for $1. Rio Tinto had been trying to sell the mine since it closed in 2012.
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