please consider downloading, copying & distributing to RTBU members urgently as ballot opens on 27/11/06 and closes  18/12/06

KEN MASON FOR RTBU (RAIL, TRAM & BUS UNION) NATIONAL SECRETARY

A Dynamic “Grassroots Energizer” To Turn The Tide!

Not Another Deskbound Fat Cat, Lost In Backroom ALP Politicking!

BACKGROUND

Background: Employed for almost a decade in the public sector and prior to this I conducted my own business for 12 years. Previously for 15 years I was employed as an accountant with a large American public company.

PERSPECTIVES

During my many years on the job, I have acquired intimate knowledge of the worsening conditions which the existing RTBU officials in league with the ALP bosses have imposed on the grassroots, such as tight running times, discriminatory and savage cuts in rosters, inadequate wage rises, the skulduggery and “smoke & mirrors” of the enterprise bargaining con tricks, the invasion of our privacy via video cameras. Whilst currently, the existing RTBU officials have refused to organize serious industrial action on short staffing in the CityRail station network in NSW. A hard hitting industrial campaign would have achieved immediate and favourable results. However, strangely enough in Sept. 1999 the officials called a snap massive 24 hour NSW wide rail strike on the issue of Customer Service Management which involved  restructuring the CityRail station network for its carve up into franchises to be sold to the Government’s business mates. This industrial action effectively halted its implementation. Yet, they denounced as “illegal” similar “wildcat” action by City Rail Drivers For Affirmative Action involving a “work to rule” style campaign in early 2004 which won large bonuses! The officials have also completely caved in to privatisation and even helped sell it to members, such as in the case of Freight Rail Corp, now Patricks owned Pacific National! In Victoria during the 1990’s, the officials also rolled over before massive privatisation of public transport by the Kennett Govt. Where was the nationally organised campaign of industrial resistance?

Over 30 people participated in the Nov 18 Sydney solidarity action with the Brisbane rally demanding justice for Mulrinji - the Aboriginal person killed by Senior Seargent Chris Hurley two years ago while in police custody on Palm Island. Hundreds rallied in Brisbane. Solidarity activists in Melbourne planned to take their solidarity to the G20 protests. There was a nationally co-ordinated one minute silence at 12 noon Brisbane time (1pm in Sydney).

Jakalene Xtreme, Socialist Alliance candidate for the NSW upper house, played a prominent role at the Sydney rally which demanded that justice be done in this case. Activists collected 12 pages of petitions in one and a half hours demanding that: criminal charges be laid against Senior Seargent Chris Hurley; the coroners recommendations in the Mulrinji case be implemented; that the recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody be implemented and that measures be taken to address problems of employment, housing, health care & education on Palm Island and in other indigenous communities. 

EngageMedia.org is a website distributing video about social and environmental justice issues in Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific. It's a space for critical documentary, fiction, artistic and experimental works that challenge the one-way communication of the mainstream media.

EngageMedia aims to demystify and provide access to new video distribution technologies, create an online archive of independent video productions using Creative Commons licenses and form a peer network of video makers, educators and screening organisations.

EngageMedia has just launched it's beta and is open for your contributions. Get sharing! It's a place to upload your work or download video to watch, share, re-distribute and screen in your community.

The website will be open to independent media covering the g20 meeting in Melbourne, we encourage you to edit your videos and post them to EngageMedia. The site is moderated, please view our editorial policy.

In general we welcome contributions that give context to the actions and issues of our times, in a variety of styles and genres, whether it's documentary, fiction, experimental or as yet un-categorisable.

Our key focus is to present video that promotes social change. We want to promote work that challenges corporate dominance and government arrogance, that exposes the people and mechanisms behind environmental destruction or human rights abuses. We want to build media that questions how the world works.

Press release 9 November 2006


The Australia West Papua Association spokesperson Joe Collins expressed grave concerns at the  new security treaty with Indonesia.

AWPA is concerned that  there is too much secrecy surrounding  this security treaty. We do not know the full  terms of this agreement or what the government is committing us to.

AWPA is particularly concerned that the treaty contains clauses that commits us to suppress Papuan independence supporters and activists What does
this actually mean? And in conducting joint border protection patrols with Indonesia do we turn back West Papuan asylum seekers fleeing persecution?

Greens MP and justice spokesperson Lee Rhiannon has called for the reinstatement of the only ex-prisoner on the Department of Corrective Services’ Women's Advisory Committee (WAC) Kat Armstrong.

“The Department of Corrective Services removed Ms Armstrong from the WAC just after she started advocating on behalf of women prisoners concerned about changes to visiting times at Emu Plains Prison,” Ms Rhiannon said.

“Ms Armstrong has spent nearly ten years in and out NSW prisons. Since she was released in 2003, Ms Armstrong has turned her life around and provided inspiration to other women prisoners to stop their criminal activities.

Dear Catalyst Member,

We are writing to tell you, urgently, that Catalyst needs to stop our internet hosting within a month. If you, or your group have a website, email list, web domain name, or cat email address with us, you will need to make other arrangements as soon as humanly possible. Your absolute deadline for moving your site, list, email accounts and/or domain name hosting needs to be 15th of November 2006.

Unfortunately we can't avoid this, because if we don't make some radical changes now Catalyst could come to a grinding halt rather than making a graceful transition. You are welcome to join us in Catalyst's next incarnation with a focus on the community building aspects of our project. Catalyst was set up over ten years ago as an anarchist community web activist project, at a time when it was much harder to access the internet. But times have changed and now that there is an Internet Service Provider on every corner, we are going back to our roots, supporting grassroots networking and mutual aid.

On Sunday 15th October gardeners from Redfern created a new community garden in their local park. The garden has started as a small plot, ajoining a pre-existing garden bed in the park next to Abercrombie and Shepherd streets. The new community garden space has been planted with potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, rocket and a variety of different herbs for community consumption.

Guerilla Gardeners plant fruit and vegetables in public spaces, challenging assumptions of private ownership, providing a local source of organic food, and building community. The new garden in Redfern has already created new friendships, with lots of locals stopping to admire the space, and to join in. The garden will be cared for by a group of volunteers, who are on a weekly watering roster.

South Coast speed cameras are being targetted by a group similar to one operating in the U.K. which has destroyed cameras with bombs and by burning them.

Congratulations to whoever stuffed up these two cameras, one in North Wollongong which was blocked using metal drink cans and one on the F6 which was shot at with a gun.

The people have had enough: these cursed bits of technology are there only to fill government coffers. They don't stop road deaths, they don't stop people speeding. You lose points off your licence and even if you take it to court and win, the RTA still will not remove those points.

Australian Values: RIP Peter George Norman

Less the show ponies like Steve Irwin and Peter Brock.

I demand John Howard and Steve Bracks grant a state funeral for a greater man.

 Peter George Norman (15 June 1942 - 3 October 2006) was an Australian
track star best known for winning the silver medal in the 200 metres at
the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. His time of 20.06 seconds
still stands as the Australian record.
The gold and bronze medalists were Americans Tommie Smith and John
Carlos, respectively. On the medal podium, during the playing of "The
Star-Spangled Banner", Smith and Carlos, both African Americans,
famously joined in a black power salute.
What is less known is that Norman, a Caucasian, donned a badge on the
podium in support of their cause, the Olympic Project for Human Rights
(OPHR). It was also Norman who suggested that Smith and Carlos share
the black gloves used in their salute, after Carlos had forgotten his
pair. Norman died of a heart attack on October 3, 2006 in Melbourne,
Australia at the age of 64.

Party goers this afternoon were surprised to get a rare insight into the thinking of Federal Liberal Party members. When quized on her thoughts on climate change, the Hon. Bronwyn Bishop MP gave attendees a frank summary:

"Al Gore is all piss and wind"..."the world's been getting hotter for the last thousand years, so what?"

It's an interesting stand point for a party that prides itself on economic management and a business friendly governance. In an era when not only their constuents but also their funders are deeply concerned about the impacts of climate change, it's surprising that they can be so dismisive. 

Let's ignore the  humanitarian and ecological impacts of climate change and focus soley on the financial impacts. Recent UK reports such as the Chrichton Report note damages for UK businesses could increase to between GBP5.5bn and GBP42bn each year by 2080.

Reinsurance giant Swiss Re has been calculating the effect of climate change on its business for more than 10 years. The company employs three climatologists, including a paleontologist to study ice cores, which shed light on historical weather patterns.

You don't have to go far to find our own governments reports on the financial impacts of climate change (they're only as far away as Google). The insurance industry has recently reported that it is building processes to factor in climate change risk and mitigation actions in clients insurance policies.

The costs of insurance rises alone are going to hit individuals and businesses in the hip pocket well before the real impacts of climate change do. What action are our great economical captains in the Liberal Party going to do? According to Bronwyn, they're just going to ignore the problem.

In December '05, six anti-war activist friends made the 3,000 km long trek through the Austalian Outback to the secret Pine Gap NSA Base near Alice Springs in the Northern Terrirory. They transported themselves in a van converted to run on recyled fish and chip oil. They had written to a number outback fish and chip shops and asked them to save them their used oil, some did! The six also wrote to the Australian Minister of Defence Phillip Ruddock and told him they were going to carry out a citizen's inspection of the joint facility hi tech base providing targetting information for U.S. bombing raids in Iraq. The Defense Minister wrote back threatening seven years imprisonment if they carried out the inspection. They also wrote to the head of Alice Springs police and informed him they would inspect the base on December 9th. 2005. In response police, both Commonwealth and State, were mobilised from several states, to secure the base and stop the six accessing one of the most secure military sites in Australia.

John Howard and Industry want to expand the Nuclear Industry in Oz. Protest his report November 14

Stand up for a Nuclear Free Australia

On June 6 John Howard appointed a task force to review uranium mining, processing and nuclear energy in Australia headed by ex Telstra CEO Ziggy Switkowski. The inquiry would seem to be little more than a Trojan horse for the Government and Industry.

The Howard Government is raising the sceptre of nuclear power plants and generating fear in the community. This is simply political game playing. Ian Lowe, emeritus professor of science at Griffith University and president of the Australian Conservation Foundation stated in a recent interview that he suspects that "when the inquiry concludes that Nuclear power plants will only happen if there were massive government subsidies, people will be so relieved that we aren’t having nuclear power stations that they will be more accepting of an expansion of uranium exports, and possibly more accepting of the argument that we should put public money into enriching uranium on the grounds that this produces a value-added product. Then, of course, the government will run the argument, as they have sotto voce for a few years, that as a massive uranium exporter we have a moral responsibility to accept the waste back".