News
-
Indian mining giant Adani has announced that it is ready to self-fund a scaled-down coalmine and rail project in Queensland’s Galilee Basin. The company said that construction on the mine would begin next year.
-
The Western Australian Labor government announced it is opening up 5.2 million hectares — an area roughly the size of 75% of Tasmania — to potential fracking operations on November 27.
-
The NSW Coalition government's privatisation of the Northern Beaches Hospital on the city's upper North Shore has created a crisis situation with the cancellation of elective surgery and doctors threatening to strike over staff shortages and lack of vital medical supplies.
-
Another stolen generation looks certain to be created in New South Wales after the state Coalition government passed an adoption law that makes it easier for foster parents to adopt a child who they have had under care for less than two years.
-
The Northern Territory Labor government was swept into power in 2016 promising a moratorium on horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. However, with the lifting of the moratorium in April, the NT government is now moving to open up 51% of the Territory to the risky and highly controversial practice.
-
Inaction on global warming is heating not only the planet, but also the mood of residents who visited Labor MPs offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
-
Hundreds of primary and secondary students went on strike and protested at Parliament House on November 28 calling for serious action on climate change. This was followed by thousands of students taking to the streets of about 30 cities and towns across Australia as part of the Student Strike 4 Climate Action on November 30.
-
Members of Sydney's Kurdish community marched through the city on November 18 to demand freedom for Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been held in solitary confinement in a Turkish prison since 1999.
-
Teachers, education support staff and even some principals walked off government and private schools across Victoria and assembled at the State Library on November 20, in support of refugees currently being detained on Manus Island and Nauru. A similar protest was held in Brisbane that same day.
-
Analysis
-
For a party only launched in May, Victorian Socialists achieved some exceptional results in the November 24 state elections.
-
Twelve months ago socialists from several different groups and backgrounds came together to see if they could get the first socialist elected to an Australian parliament in more 70 years.
-
While the final results of Victoria’s November 24 state elections are yet to be announced, Labor looks set to go from 47 to 52 seats in the state’s Legislative Assembly, after receiving a primary vote of 43%.
-
Humans experience the brutality of capitalism in wars, harsh working conditions and widespread poverty caused by a class-based society. Every minute a child dies a preventable death.
Capitalism has also been waging a war on animals.
-
As young people threw themselves into the Student Strike 4 Climate Action and made an impassioned plea to preserve life on Earth, one of Australia’s most polluting industries was working behind the scenes to have the federal government hide the truth of its carbon emissions.
-
"CBA: We put profit ahead of people", was the headline emblazoned on the front page of the November 20 Sydney Morning Herald. The paper was reporting on the first day of the final round of hearings of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, in which the CEOs of the Big Four banks were being grilled about the banking scandals that have outraged the Australian community over the past year.
-
The Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) was formed in late 2016 as a response to growing dissatisfaction among retail workers with the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA). The Labor right-controlled SDA is notorious for negotiating enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) that contain below award wages and eroding the rights and conditions of workers.
-
As recently as last year, the gig economy’s “independent contractor” business model seemed like an unstoppable force. It started with Uber, but soon spread to food delivery and before long was entering new sectors, such as freight, logistics and healthcare.
