Australian News

On Wednesday March 11, members of the United Services Union (USU)at Liverpool City Council will stop work to discuss management’s attacks on members’ working conditions. The stop work is to take place in Bigge Park in the centre of Liverpool from 10am.

The NSW government’s “Fit for the Future” process is requiring councils in Sydney to show significant cost savings or be amalgamated. Council’s senior management has used this process as a justification for mounting an attack on the conditions of its employees across the board.

Thousands of people rallied around the country on March 4 to protest against the federal government’s anti-worker laws.

Organised by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the rallies protested against a range of government policies including cuts to wages and conditions, the deregulation of university fees, cuts to the ABC, and slashing unemployment benefits.

Rough sleepers in Sydney are under attack from the NSW government, with many being moved on from their usual sleeping places at the same time as funding for refuges is being cut.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on February 11 that people sleeping in tents at Wentworth Park were evicted after complaints from local residents. Tents and some belongings were removed by council workers and placed in storage.

GREEK ELECTIONS REPORT BACK

GLW correspondent Dick Nichols reported from Athens during the Greek elections and will speak on SYRIZA and the fight against austerity.

Cairns: Saturday March 14, 2pm, Yungaburra Pub. Phone Jonathan 0437 790 306.

Perth: Wednesday March 18, 12.30pm Hosted by Murdoch University Resistance club. Murdoch University. Phone Gavin 0451 919 680.

Perth: Thursday March 19, 6pm, Perth Activist Centre, 15/509 Aberdeen St. $6/$4 conc. Phone 9218 9608 or email perth@socialist-alliance.org.

The ABC’s Four Corners recently exposed the practice of live baiting in the multi-billion dollar greyhound racing industry.

It showed greyhound trainers strapping piglets, possums and other animals to mechanical lures and encouraging the dogs to chase them and then maul them while still alive. The trainers say “blooding” the greyhounds helps the dogs run faster.

The suffering inflicted on the bait animals is horrific, but “blooding” is just one part of this notoriously corrupt industry.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions says the federal government has cut 8000 public sector jobs since coming to power and plans to slash another 8000 more.

Now the government is making a pay offer to public servants that the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) says is, in effect, a pay cut.

The government’s offer of a 3.25% pay rise over three years to employees in the Department of Human Services (DHS) is below the inflation rate — 1.7% according to Trading Economics.

A crowd of up to 80 people rallied on the steps of Western Australian parliament house on February 25 to demand justice for the family of Miss Dhu.

Dhu was a 22-year-old Aboriginal woman who died in police custody on August 4 last year. She was imprisoned in Port Hedland for non-payment of fines.

In the past three years, the Australian government has recovered more than $41 million that had been fraudulently claimed by private employment agencies.

These for-profit employment agencies were found to have submitted forged and doctored records and lodged inflated fee claims. One source, a former agency employee, told ABC’s Four Corners that they had seen “thousands” of jobseeker records modified by the agency to support suspicious claims against the taxpayer.

Legal experts have criticised new child protection laws pushed through Northern Territory parliament on February 18 for not including safeguards to protect Aboriginal culture and risking a repeat of the damage done to the Stolen Generations.

The new legislation allows children who are removed from their parents by the Department of Children and Families to be placed on Permanent Care Orders, which would mean that their carers would have control over most decisions to do with the child, free from judicial or DCF review.

The Refugee Action Collective held a public meeting in Melbourne on February 23 to discuss the situation in Sri Lanka after the January 8 presidential election, at which Maithripala Sirisena defeated incumbent president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Trevor Grant, the author of Sri Lanka’s Secrets: how the Rajapaksa regime gets away with murder, told the meeting that Sirisena had been a member of Rajapaksa’s cabinet for 10 years.

He was acting defence minister in May 2009, in the final days of the war, when the slaughter of Tamils by the Sri Lankan armed forces was at its height.

The other night the phone rang.

I picked it up and a recorded voice said something like “The NSW Premier Mike Baird isn’t going to lease the state’s electricity assets. He’s not going to sell them. He is going to create jobs. Don’t be fooled.”

Indeed, I thought.

This happened on the same day that the Hunter Valley’s unemployment rate topped 10% and set a 10-year record.

The link between unemployment and privatisation is so obvious that Baird can’t say the “P” word.
Gladys Berejiklian, Baird’s Minister for the Hunter, is also coy about the “P” word.

A major victory has been won by ANZ workers and the Finance Sector Union (FSU) against ANZ bank.

On February 16 ANZ’s proposed changes to the enterprise bargaining agreement were rejected by 64% of union members. This victory for ANZ staff came on the same day that ANZ announced a new CEO for its Australian operations.

“Thousands of staff have said NO to a broken pay model, clawbacks on job security, hours of work and penalty rates,” said National Secretary of the FSU Fiona Jordan.

Hundreds of people started a week-long walk through Sydney’s western suburbs on February 21 to highlight the risk coal seam gas poses to drinking water.
Beginning at Cataract Dam the route will continue for 160 kilometres through Camden, Campbelltown, Liverpool, Fairfield, Prospect, Parramatta, Auburn, Ryde and Gladesville before finishing at Parliament House in Sydney.
More than 10 community groups came together to organise the walk, including the Western Sydney Environment Network, Stop CSG Macarthur, Parramatta Climate Action Network and the Nature Conservation Council of NSW.