The August 8 announcement of the Reserve Bank board’s decision to raise official interest rates by a further 0.25% focused renewed media attention on the non-affordability of housing. The interest rate rise — the fifth since the 2004 election and the ninth since 2002 — increased mortgage repayments for home owners with average mortgages by $50 a week, placing extra pressure on already stretched budgets.
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“The only way this war will end is if we end it” — this was the central point of a talk by Matt Howard to an audience of around 100 people at the University of Sydney on August 14. Howard, a former soldier and a member of the US-based group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), was in Sydney as part of a national speaking tour.
The Howard government’s legislation for its “emergency” military-police intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory was rushed through the House of Representatives on August 7. MHRs were given less than 24 hours to read the 500-odd pages of legislation before being asked to vote on it.
East Timor: Beyond Independence
Edited by Damien Kingsbury and Michael Leach
Monash University Press, 2007
302pages, $36.95
Edited by Damien Kingsbury and Michael Leach
Monash University Press, 2007
302pages, $36.95
According to a survey conducted by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) 15 months ago, eight Australians are killed every week on the job and a further 44 die due to work related illnesses and diseases. This is one-third higher than the number of people who die on the nationÂ’s roads. More than 15 serious injuries occur on the job every hour.
On August 8, I attended a noisy demonstration by trade unionists in Malaysia who were demanding that the government bring in a minimum wage of 900 ringgit (A$300) a month. I had come to the picket with a group of some of the country’s lowest-paid workers — rubber-plantation workers whose ancestors had been brought from India generations ago by the former British colonial rulers as indentured labourers.
Environmentalists around the country are gearing up to protest the world’s biggest climate criminals — US President George Bush and PM John Howard — who will be pushing their environmentally disastrous agenda at the September 8-9 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney.
Shakedown: AustraliaÂ’s grab for Timor oil
By Paul Cleary
Allen & Unwin, 2007
336 pages, $29.95
By Paul Cleary
Allen & Unwin, 2007
336 pages, $29.95
On August 2, the High Court of Australia upheld the constitutional validity of a control order on Jack Thomas.
Rachel Evans, a well-known campaigner for refugee, workersÂ’ and queer rights, was preselected as the Socialist Alliance candidate for the federal seat of Parramatta at a meeting of the Sydney West branch on August 7.
Showing them the red card
"I want America to go out. Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but out. I wish the American people didn't invade Iraq and, hopefully, it will be over soon." — Iraqi soccer team captain Younis Mahmoud, speaking
“If you can’t stand up and say what you feel and believe, then you’re a slave. And I ain’t no slave”, said one of the building workers prosecuted by the Howard government for withdrawing labour after the unfair dismissal of his shop steward.
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