A high court challenge to Australia's offshore processing, on behalf of two Tamil refugees whose asylum claims were refused, has questioned the legality of the refugee processing policy.
The case, heard in Canberra's High Court over August 24-26, occurred amid rising numbers of refugee claims being refused.
Australia imprisons refugees in offshore detention and denies them full right of appeal in Australian courts. Access to legal advice and fair processing is greatly restricted.
The lawyers acting on behalf of the Tamils labelled this practice unlawful and unconstitutional.
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The Copenhagen City Court ruled on September 2 that climate activists Natasha Verco, a 32-year-old activist from Australia, and Noah Weiss, a US student, were innocent of the charges against them.
The two climate activists had been charged for organising 鈥渋llegal activities鈥 during the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December 2009. Verco and Weiss had been accused of planning violence against police, disturbance of public order and vandalism.
The charges could have lead to several years of prison and deportation. But the charges didn鈥檛 stand up in court.
In the lead-up to the 2004 federal election, legislation was passed against marriage rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. The 2004 marriage ban became the catalyst for the development of a powerful protest movement. This movement has won a series of important victories. These include the repeal of 85 pieces of federal legislation discriminating against same-sex couples, but not the repeal of the discriminatory marriage ban. Recognition of civil unions has been won in the ACT, after a five-year struggle.
A 2006 episode of the ABC鈥檚 Lateline program led directly to the greatest human rights abuse in the past half century, said founder and former editor of the National Indigenous Times Chris Graham, at a public forum of 150 people in Sydney on September 3.
The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) slammed the policies of the Northern Territory intervention in a report released on August 27.
In recent weeks, media commentary on the use of illicit drugs by professional sports players has exploded again.
The first cause was the recently retired Australian rules football star and recovering drug addict Ben Cousin鈥檚 documentary Such is Life: The Troubled Times of Ben Cousins. It aired on Channel 7 on August 25 and 26.
The second was the overdose on GHB of Travis Tuck, a player for Australian Football League (AFL) club Hawthorn, on August 27.
On September 13, construction worker Ark Tribe will face Adelaide Magistrates Court yet again.
He is facing six months鈥 jail for failing to attend an interrogation by the construction industry police 鈥 the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), created by former Howard government as part of Work Choices, but left in place by the ALP.
With the symptoms of social and environmental crisis all around us 鈥 runaway climate change, Third World poverty, seemingly endless wars 鈥 it is sometimes easy to feel discouraged about our ability to change 鈥渢he way things are鈥. We can forget that millions of ordinary people have many times over said 鈥渆nough is enough鈥 and come together to take action to change history.
Review by Mat Ward
Fit to Print: Misrepresenting the Middle East
By Joris Luyendijk
Scribe Publications, 250 pages, $29.95
If you've ever felt like shaking your fist in anger at some of the reporting that comes out of the Middle East, this very honest book by a disillusioned Middle East correspondent will make you shake your head in wonder.
Joris Luyendijk says he had no journalistic experience when he was hired by a newspaper in his native Netherlands to report on the Middle East. He was taken on solely because he could speak Arabic.
Local residents in Marrickville are opposing the proposed expansion of Marrickville Metro Shopping Centre. The Metro Watch group has developed a website, held information stalls, collected signatures on petitions, door-knocked the local area, and held protests.
The effectiveness of this local campaign was demonstrated by the fact that a full-page ad promoting the expansion appeared on the second page of the September 2 Inner West Courier.
It is a film that advocates peace, yet the head of the ABC decided it was too controversial to be viewed by the Australian public.
In May, the ABC pulled the plug on an independent film documenting daily life of Palestinians living under Israel鈥檚 military occupation in the West Bank.
Now, thanks to the power of public pressure, the ABC is reconsidering whether to broadcast Inka Stafrace鈥檚 documentary Hope in a Slingshot.
Letters are flying thick and fast to the ABC, asking the broadcaster to air Stafrace鈥檚 film.
In 2007, federal election candidates made much of the seven vultures that were feeding on the carcass of the Howard government as it flailed around shifting further and further to the right.
Those seven vultures were:
鈥 the denial of climate change;
鈥 touting of the war in Iraq;
鈥 Work Choices;
鈥 policy failure on education spending;
鈥 poor vision of infrastructure;
鈥 destruction of research and development; and
鈥 persecution of refugees with the Pacific Solution.
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