In the lead up to the ALP National Conference next month, marriage equality is shaping up to be the biggest test yet to Prime Minister Julia Gillard鈥檚 leadership.
Gillard has moved from her position that she would override a pro-equality decision at the conference, to hinting she will allow Labor MPs a conscience vote.
However, she now also holds the dubious honour of being the only remaining Labor leader supporting the marriage ban.
903
Before the first Australian occupations following the example of Occupy Wall Street began on October 15, even some of the activists involved wondered if it would work. After all, this was the 鈥渓ucky country鈥 that escaped the global financial crisis.
But thousands of mostly young people rocked up to launch Occupy Melbourne in City Square, and a further 1000 launched Occupy Sydney in Martin Place in the heart of the city鈥檚 financial district. Hundreds launched Occupy Brisbane in Post Office Square.
Hundreds took to the streets of Hobart for the Inaugural Pride Parade on November 5 as part of the TasPride Festival. This was the first parade held since Tasmania was the final state to decriminalise homosexuality in 1997.
Tasmanian Aboriginal lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex members also marched.
Speakers at the rally afterwards at Parliament House included Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group spokesperson Rodney Croome, Outright Youth coordinator Joshua Brown, Community Services Minister Cassy O鈥機onnor and Coming Out Proud president Julian Punch.
Veteran Brisbane activist Gary McLennan spoke at an Occupy Brisbane rally on November 5. An abridged version of his speech is below.
* * *
Friends, I want to thank you sincerely for the invitation to speak to you today. It remains for me a badge of honour, a great honour, that I鈥檝e been asked twice to speak to the Occupy Brisbane movement.
I said when I first spoke to you that your movement represented the best hope for the kind of world that I wanted my grandchildren to grow up in.
I believed that then and I still believe it now.
The global Occupy movement has focused the spotlight on the 1% versus the 99%. Who are the 1%? In the United States, the 400 richest individuals have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million. A similar picture applies in all the large capitalist countries.
Economy owned by the 1%
Just four days after about 10,000 people circled the White House to protest a proposed 2700-kilometre tar sands oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, the Obama government announced it will postpone a decision on whether it will go ahead until 2013. Radical author and activist Naomi Klein addressed an October 10 public meeting at New York鈥檚 New School University, where she spoke about the Keystone XL pipeline.
鈥淎 map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at鈥, Oscar Wilde, 鈥渇or it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.鈥
The strengthening links between unions and the US Occupy movement will be expressed in mobilisations across the US on November 17.
Despite Fair Work Australia putting in place an injunction banning National Union of Workers (NUW) officials from taking part in the Baiada poultry workers鈥 picket line, workers and community supporters were able to hold off an attempt by riot police to break the picket late on November 11.
People concerned about coal seam gas (CSG) will deliver a petition signed by more than 15,000 NSW residents to Premier Barry O'Farrell on November 22.
The NSW-wide petition, initiated by Stop CSG Illawarra, calls for an immediate moratorium on all CSG projects, a Royal commission into the full impacts of CSG and an immediate ban on fracking.
Stop CSG Illawarra member Chris Williams said: "Premier O'Farrell has pledged that any petition with over 10,000 signatures will trigger a debate in parliament.
On November 4, Israeli warships in international waters attacked and boarded the two vessels and Saoirse that were trying to deliver medical aid the besieged territory of Gaza.
Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore made clear at a Sydney City Council meeting on November 6 that she supported the 鈥減rinciples鈥 of the Occupy movement but did not support Occupy Sydney.
Greens councillor Irene Doutney put a motion to investigate the dawn police raid on the group in Martin Place and help find Occupy a site for the protest.
But Moore replied that she had to 鈥渂alance the rights of residents, visitors, workers and others to have access to the public domain鈥.
- Previous page
- Page 3
- Next page