THE WALPIRI people of Yuendumu, 300 kms north west of Alice Springs, have been at the forefront of the fightback against the NT intervention.

NSW TEACHERS will continue rolling industrial action unless the New South Wales government sits down and negotiates on proposed changes to the school staffing and transfer system.

CONTINUOUSLY SINCE its election, the Rudd government has tried to convince us of the urgent necessity of reducing inflation. Why is it so worried?

IN MAY, around 1500 Qantas aircraft engineers took strike action in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne over a pay claim. They took this action despite rumours of 100 strike breakers being offered $100,000 for six months work in their place.

IN EARLY May, the Rudd government threatened to overturn the proposed civil unions bill for same-sex couples in the ACT, breaking a key election promise not to block the legislation and surprising many who expected progressive queer rights legislation from Labor.

THE VICTORIAN Law Reform Commission has just delivered its report on reforming abortion law in the state. As is the case in all states and territories, abortion in Victoria is currently illegal.

AT THE end of May, Immigration minister Chris Evans announced a long awaited review of the cases of long term detainees. But the results fell far short of what the detainees and refugee supporters expected from the new Labor government-32 granted visas, 24 to be deported and another 17 yet to be determined.

IN MANY ways, the gatherings in Camden, on Sydney’s outskirts, opposing the construction of an Islamic school, resembled the Cronulla riots minus the booze.

SINCE COMING to power late last year, the Rudd Government has been unabashed in continuing the Howard Government’s “anti-terror” campaign. Not only has the Rudd government made it clear that it has absolutely no intention of reviewing or repealing the “anti-terror” laws introduced under Howard, the Government has continued to pursue criminal charges against the Muslim men from Melbourne and Sydney arrested under these laws. They have severely limited the powers of the inquiry into the detention-without-charge and deportation of the Queensland doctor, Mohamed Haneef, on false allegations of “providing support” for a terrorist act.

IN JULY hundreds of people will converge in Newcastle in a week long camp, with the aim of drawing attention to Australia’s contribution to climate change and rejuvenating the wider campaign for climate action.

The death toll from China’s earthquake has risen to 65,000, with over 23,000 people still missing. Such a powerful quake might be expected to claim many lives. But a similar earthquake in Japan in 1995 under Kobe, a city of 1.5 million, killed only a tenth of the expected Chinese toll.

ON MAY 6, the US-backed “March 14 coalition”, who controlled the Lebanese government, took a new initiative aimed at weakening the power of Hezbollah, which led the successful resistance against Israeli invasion in 2006.

ON MAY 4 the Department of Santa Cruz in Bolivia held an autonomy vote. Autonomy would give them more tax revenue powers and the right to create their own security forces. Santa Cruz holds the majority of the country’s natural resources and massive agri-business stands to lose much planned reforms.

WORKERS IN Britain woke up with a big shock after council elections on 1 May, as the Tories pushed Labour into third position.

A delegation from Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory who are campaigning against the intervention travelled to Sydney for the Aboriginal Rights Conference in late May. Below Solidarity reprints what two of them told the conference.

More than 100 people came from all corners of the country to Redfern, Sydney for the Aboriginal Rights Coalition “Black and White, Unite and Fight” conference on 23, 24, 25 May. The conference has put the campaign on stronger footing to build opposition to the intervention. A public meeting on the Friday night attracted over 160 people.

Measures that could genuinely tackle rising carbon emissions are being held back by the desire of individual countries not to harm their economy’s global competitiveness, writes Shannon Price.

Mark Gillespie looks at the Queensland rail strike of 1948, when the Communist Party led workers in a vicious battle with a state Labor government determined to keep down wages.

Iron Man

Underbelly

Rogue Economics

Time for an end to ‘wage restraint’

“I FIND them absolutely revolting… Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff-frankly, I don’t think there are any-just allow kids to be kids.” This was Kevin Rudd’s assessment of photographer Bill Henson’s latest exhibition.

Robert Nicholas explains the realities of Rudd’s “withdrawal” from the occupation of Iraq and the new US bid for ongoing control of the region.

IS RUDD’S honeymoon coming to an end? Recent weeks have seen him blunder over fuel prices, his Howardesque moralism over Bill Henson and brewing battles with unions over pay disputes and the rollback of Workchoices.

THE CAMPAIGN against electricity privatisation has reached a critical stage in NSW.