A wave of rallies and marches commemorating World Refugee Week swept across the country in the past week. On June 20, people rallied in Melbourne, coming from across the city and regional areas. Given the rain, organisers were happy with the turnout of 2000 people. It was the biggest protest in support of refugees for several years. Tamil refugee Arun Mylvaganam described his experiences escaping Sri Lanka and traveling to Australia, where he spent three months in detention. He was only 13 at the time and had no family members with him.
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Following the New Way Summit on Aboriginal rights in Canberra in January, a second summit will be held in Melbourne over July 1-4.
Convenor of the Victorian New Way Aboriginal Summit, Socialist Alliance member Sharon Firebrace, told 麻豆传媒 Weekly: 鈥淲e expect a lot of people will attend to learn that the New Way grassroots movement is a true opposition to what the federal government is dishing up to us in their shameful charade of establishing the First Nation Congress of Australia.鈥
News from Thailand is alarming: hundreds of people detained for violations of the emergency decree, including children, injured people chained to their hospital beds and several assassinations of local leaders of the pro-democracy Red Shirt movement.
The country is moving deeper into an authoritarian and military regime. The elite are even considering postponing elections for six years, thus giving Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva the possibility of leading the country for ten years against the will of most Thai citizens.
June 21 marked the third anniversary of the Howard government鈥檚 鈥渘ational emergency鈥 intervention in 73 prescribed Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, the so-called Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER).
On June 5, New South Wales Teachers Federation state council voted to initiate a 鈥淪top the Privatisation鈥 forum to organise against the state government鈥檚 privatisation plans for the public sector.
The forum will invite participation from the Public Sector Association (PSA), Fire Brigade Employees Union (FBEU) and other public sector unions. After the forum, the federation will initiate a public sector delegates meeting to discuss and organise a public sector-wide response to the privatisation agenda.
It is with great sadness that 麻豆传媒 Weekly reports the death of human rights activist Rosemarie Waratah Gillespie, 69, who unexpectedly died in Melbourne on June 21 from a stroke. An activist for more than 40 years, she was a human rights lawyer, activist, author, filmmaker, anti-capitalist, Indigenous activist and mother. Waratah lived in Port Kembla and frequently travelled to Sydney to attend meetings at Humanist House, where she was vice president of the Humanist Society. The society was just one of her many passions.
The federal Labor government passed the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform and Reinstatement of the Racial Discrimination Act) bill on June 21 鈥 exactly three years after the Northern Territory intervention was launched by the Howard-Coalition government.
Welfare quarantining:
鈥 Will be extended to include about 20,000 people in the NT, starting from July 1;
鈥 Can be applied to young people on Centrelink payments, people who have been on unemployment or parenting benefits for more than a year, or people referred by family services;
Professor John Mendoza, head advisor to the federal government on mental health, recently resigned his position, citing frustration at government inaction on one of Australia鈥檚 leading causes of death and disability.
The article below is abridged from a letter he sent to members of campaign groups GetUp! explaining his reasons for resigning.
* * *
On June 18, I resigned my position as the head advisor to the government on mental health.
On June 25, ABC News Radio reported 79 occupation soldiers had been killed so far that month, the highest number in any month since the October 2001 US-led invasion.
On June 23, US President Barack Obama sacked the commander of US-led occupation forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal 鈥 but not for the rising body count.
The sacking was in response to a July Rolling Stone article in which McChrystal and his aides regularly refer to civilian leaders of the occupying powers (including Obama) using terms such as 鈥渃lown鈥 and 鈥渇ucking gay鈥.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced on June 22 the formation of a three-member panel to advise him on whether Sri Lanka committed crimes during the last months of its war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Reuters said that day.
On June 1, part-Peruvian US actor and indigenous rights activist Q鈥檕rianka Kilcher was arrested for 鈥渄isorderly conduct鈥 after chaining herself to the White House fence while Peruvian President Alan Garcia met with US President Barack Obama.
Garcia refers to the Amazonian indigenous peoples of his country as barbaric savages. Kilcher had doused her body in black paint, symbolic of the oil killing the Amazon and its people.
NASA climate scientist James Hansen has called them 鈥渇actories of death鈥. British columnist George Monbiot has said 鈥渆verything now hinges鈥 on stopping them. US climate writer Bill McKibben is prepared to be arrested to have them shut down.
But Australian state governments don鈥檛 get it 鈥 they are still enchanted by coal-fired power stations.
Climate campaigners say Australia should urgently replace existing coal-fired power plants with renewable energy, but 12 new 鈥渄eath factories鈥 are slated to be built in Australia over the next few years.
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