Boat turn-backs. Offshore Detention. Refusal to settle groups of refugees in Australia. This triad is the 10-year-long contemporary White Australia policy of governments, Labor and Coalition. Jonathan Strauss聽argues for the need to step聽up the pressure.
Kevin Rudd
Thousands of refugee rights activists, in more than 20 protests around the country, filled streets chanting 鈥淪ix years too long, bring them here鈥 on July 20.
A group of activists from Grandmothers Against Removals (GMAR) and the Socialist Alliance gathered in front of NSW Parliament on February 9 to protest on the 10th anniversary of the national apology from former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
If the National Broadband Network (NBN) is becoming a 鈥渃alamitous train wreck鈥, as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull claimed on October 23, then the fault lies with him.
He was the minister for communications in the Tony Abbott Coalition government who, in 2013, oversaw the disastrous decision to fundamentally change the NBN from Labor鈥檚 fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) model to a technologically obsolete fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) system. At the time, Abbott apparently wanted to 鈥渒ill the NBN鈥 entirely.
Born in 1872 to a wealthy land-owning family, Alexandra Kollontai was raised in both Russia and Finland, acquiring an early fluency in languages which served her well in her later revolutionary work. She began her political work in 1894, when she was a new mother, by teaching evening classes for workers in St Petersburg.
Through that activity she was drawn into public and clandestine work with the Political Red Cross, an organisation set up to help political prisoners. In 1895, she read August Bebel鈥檚 Woman and Socialism, which had a major influence on her ideas about the emancipation of women.
On July 19, 2013, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stood beside Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O鈥橬eill and said in a classical Rudd pretentious drone: 鈥淵ou won鈥檛 be settled in Australia. You鈥檒l be sent to Nauru or Papua New Guinea for reprocessing and resettlement.鈥
Effective immediately, everyone who came by boat seeking asylum would never be given protection in Australia.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has bowed to objections by the Coalition鈥檚 right wing and declined to support former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd for the role of Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Turnbull said he made a 鈥渃onsidered judgement鈥 to not back Rudd because he was not suited to the role. Turnbull鈥檚 nomination is a necessary prerequisite for the bid, so his verdict essentially ends Rudd鈥檚 campaign.
Recently Facebook reminded me of a 鈥渕emory鈥 of an article I posted three years ago. I had said that I was doing the happy dance because we were making progress and were finally being heard.
Hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander grandmothers from across the country converged on Parliament House in Canberra on February 11, to demand an end to the high child removal rate of Aboriginal children.
Most of the elders participating in the protest were members of the Stolen Generation themselves, snatched from their families as children as part of official government policy.
Today, they say, the removals continue unabated, continuing to tear families apart, denying Aboriginal children their culture and creating a new generation of lost children.
Tony Abbott received a much-deserved roasting on the opening night of the Sydney Fringe Comedy festival on September 1.
Unfortunately no actual fire was involved, but the prime minister 鈥 played disturbingly well by Jonas Holt (whose Abbott impersonation has featured on Weekend Sunrise and the At Home With Tones webseries) 鈥 was subjected to an amusing grilling.
After the ALP caucus deposed Julia Gillard in June this year, her recycled replacement, Kevin Rudd, thanked them by making sure that they wouldn鈥檛 get the chance to sack him a second time.
In what many of them saw as an ambush, he proposed to a surprised caucus that, in future, Labor leaders should be elected by ballot of both the caucus and the party鈥檚 rank-and-file members. It would not be open to caucus to depose any leader again unless 75% of them decided that he or she had 鈥渂rought the party into disrepute.鈥
Verbal Reality Volume 2
Provocalz
Coming October 2013
www.provocalz.bigcartel.com
Rapper Provocalz has dedicated a song to Australia's Liberal and Labor parties on his new album - but it won't be music to their ears.
On his track "Liberals or Labor", the Indigenous emcee suggests the two big parties are so contemptuous of voters that some, like him, might consider swapping their ballots for bullets:
Liberals or Labor, they both leave us to rot
So it's criminal behaviour, politicians get shot
Pop pop pop pop!
It's that real hip-hop, hip-hop
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