I was dismayed to discover that Australia’s Minister for Social Services is turning to New Zealand for inspiration in his latest approach to welfare.
On September 20 Christian Porter announced the ‘Australian Priority Investment Approach’. This draws on work New Zealand’s right-wing National government has done since 2011 on using actuarial estimates of fiscal liability to underpin an extensive program of punitive and pauperising reforms.
Hobart City Council has joined eight other Australian councils in pledging to end its involvement with any company profiting from abusive practices towards people seeking asylum.
The pledge states that the council will no longer do business with companies, such as Wilson Security and Ferrovial’s Broadspectrum, that take up contracts in Australia’s immigration detention camps.
A poll of 1000 people by Essential Research has found 49% of respondents supported a blanket ban on Muslim immigration to Australia, 40% opposed the ban and 11% were not sure.
Young people aged 18–24 were the most likely to oppose a ban on Muslim immigration. Fifty-eight per cent of young people opposed a ban, compared with 28% who supported it.
At its from September 17 to 23, 51 delegates representing various Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) factions across Colombia unanimously reaffirmed their support for the nation’s historic peace deal.
The deal negotiated between FARC representatives and the Colombian government is aimed at ending the more than 50 years of violence that has wracked the South American nation.
Both professional and volunteer firefighters have spoken against the federal government's proposed new law aimed at blocking the implementation of the Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) enterprise agreement.
A year in politics changes everything.
When Jeremy Corbyn won the British Labour Party leadership election in September 2015 with about 60% of the vote, the puzzle was how on Earth could a socialist have taken power.
The left, weaker than ever, had never wielded significant power in the Labour Party. This year, the surprise will be if he does not win the leadership elections this month by a significant margin similar to last year’s landslide.
Dominic Wykanak read out this moving tribute by Debbie Small to her daughter Rebecca MaherÌýwho died in police custody in July, at a rally against Black deaths in custody at Blacktown on September 17.
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It has been two months since a young Wiradjuri woman Rebecca Maher died within hours of being placed in a Maitland police cell.
ÌýThere is money to be made in farming, but not by the farmers.
The terms of trade for farmers continually declines and farmers are forced off the land. Governments and international bodies advocate further deregulation and trade liberalisation and greater use of technology. But these policies have undoubtedly failed in their stated aims of increasing food security and rural prosperity. The beneficiaries have been only agribusiness corporations.
Fossil fuel divestment is gathering pace around Australia and the world. More and more individuals and organisations are pulling their investment assets out of companies involved with the exploration, extraction, production or financing of fossil fuels.
Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics
By Richard Seymour
Verso, 2016
paperback, 256 pages
If ever a book was born under a lucky star, it surely was Richard Seymour’s Corbyn.
No sooner had the English socialist blogger and author’s book about the British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn been published in May than the anti-Corbyn coup pushed it into the best sellers list.
Mobilisations are facing growing levels of police repression. Paris, September 15.
More than 170,000 workers and students joined more than 110 protests across France on September 15 against new labour laws that dramatically deregulate France’s labour code.
Thousands of protesters marched through Brussels on September 20 to demand the European Union abandon planned trans-Atlantic free trade deals they say will worsen labour conditions and allow big business to challenge governments.
It came just days after tens of thousands rallied against such deals on September 17 in other European cities, mainly in Germany.