Massive “counter-terrorism” raids in Melbourne last week have further stirred up racism against Muslims and immigrants.

The failure of the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) to pass the Senate in August was no bad thing. The Greens were right to label it as “locking in failure”.

Current debates occurring within the Sydney University Environment Collective reflect the tensions in the wider climate movement.

Climate change campaigners are organising to protest at Hazelwood power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley to highlight the need to transition from coal to renewable energy.  

Instability and opportunism have dominated the last few months in NT politics, with a merry-go-round of Ministers causing headache for Chief Minister Paul Henderson.

The Stop the Intervention Collective in Sydney organised a strong lobby of the national ALP conference on Thursday July 30. About 150 people turned out to the lunchtime rally.

The cracks in the NT Intervention project can be clearly seen in the pages of the Intervention’s urger—The Australian newspaper. The Weekend Australian August 15-16 devoted seven pages to exposing the plight of desperately poor Aboriginal people still waiting for a single house after two years under the Intervention.
The Australian hopes that by loudly condemning the bureaucratic failures of the Intervention, they can inject some credibility back into the project.
But they and Minister Jenny Macklin are on the back foot.
Firstly there is the mounting pressure on Aboriginal politicians and leaders from their constituents whose lives are wrecked by Intervention policies.
NT Aboriginal leader, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, used his speech at Arnhem Land’s Garma Festival to break from his previous support for the Intervention. A new regional council also declared its opposition to the Intervention.
Secondly, anti-Intervention campaigners have managed to turn Macklin’s threatened takeover of the Alice Springs town camps into a nightmare for the federal government.

Pro-Intervention forces splinter
On August 4 NT Indigenous Affairs Minister Alison Anderson brought the NT government to the brink of collapse. It was completely opportunistic, but Anderson, an ardent Intervention supporter and advocate of the neoliberal fantasy of Aboriginal home-ownership, was pushed to resign by the dramatic exposure that the $680 million Strategic Indigenous Housing Program (SIHIP) had not built even one house in two years.
Under SIHIP, funding is denied for any but the 20 government-nominated “viable” Aboriginal communities in remote Australia. Even then housing is only promised to communities which sign 40-80 year leases. It is straight out blackmail.
But, Tennant Creek residents discovered, signing a lease does not mean houses. The community has now been told that the most they will get is refurbishment of some existing houses.
The Australian is calling for new crack teams of bureaucrats from Canberra to “crash through” the red tape of the NT government. But the real solution is to immediately pay locally controlled organisations to build the kind of housing the communities need.
On the opening day of the ALP National Conference on July 30, the anti-Intervention campaign published a statement in The Australian opposing the takeover of the Alice Springs town camps and defending the Tangentyere Council.
The campaign raised $10,000 to publish the statement which was supported by a range of prominent individuals including Pat Dodson and Ian Thorpe, and organisations such as ANTaR, Unions SA and the CFMEU.
The statement coincided with a strident lobby held outside the ALP conference organised by the Stop the Intervention Collective.
The previous day, Macklin had tried to regain some initiative for the Intervention by (erroneously) claiming that Tangentyere Council had signed a 40-year lease. Rather than a media coup, however, her announcement led to an avalanche of media reports condemning the takeover as an act of government blackmail.
In another blow to Macklin, 13 town camp residents have gained a temporary Federal Court injunction to halt the takeover. The final court hearing, on August 28, may find that Macklin has not consulted adequately and must give residents another 60-days notice before takeover. This would be another blow to the credibility of the Intervention, but it will not be a knock out punch. Macklin could still try to gain control of the camps before her planned reinstatement of the Racial Discrimination Act.
However, the lies, the discrimination and racism at the heart of the Intervention are becoming more obvious.
Macklin may re-instate the Racial Discrimination Act, but the reality of the Intervention has already been exposed. And more legal wrangles will give the government more headaches.
Meanwhile the walk-off protest at Ampilatwatja (see box) has given a new focus for opposition to the Intervention.
By Jean Parker

The month old protest camp at Ampilatwatja is still going strong.

A march by hundreds of workers to a union fringe event on the Labor conference’s second day was one of the few brights spots where there was some challenge to Rudd’s conservative agenda.

The ALP national conference was expected to be a tight ship. But one issue that showed possibility of provoking some real debate was gay marriage rights.

Almost three years after the protests against the Melbourne meeting of the Group of 20 nations, Sunil Menon, Timothy Davis-Frank and Sina Brown-Davis have had some major victories against the Crown.

The popularity of Queensland’s Bligh Labor government remains at rock bottom. Not only has Bligh alienated working class voters with her decision to privatise $15 billion worth of public assets, but there is a real stench of corruption around the government.

Unions and community groups are continuing to resist Bligh’s plan to privatise $15 billion worth of public assets. More than 200 unionists including many from the nearby railway workshops rallied outside the Ipswich office of Transport Minister Rachel Nolan in late July.

Despite heavy state repression Iran’s democracy movement remains defiant. Following President Ahmadinejad’s confirmation ceremony in early August thousands took to the streets again and clashed with security forces.

South African workers have staged mass protests and strikes over the past two months in a challenge to the new African National Congress (ANC) government.

At the end of July Private Benjamin Ranaudo became the eleventh Australian soldier to die in Afghanistan.

Peter Garrett’s collapse into conservatism has been not just quick, but abject. The Environment Minister’s credibility is not in tatters—it has evaporated completely. David Glanz looks at what happened

The years after 1969 in Italy showed the potential for mass radicalisation of the working class within western capitalism, argues Judy McVey

James Goodman, of the School of Social Inquiry at UTS, situates Rudd’s philosophy historically, arguing that his pricincipal goal is marketisation and that he fails to answer the problems of neo-liberalism

Ben Spies-Butcher, lecturer in economic and political sociology at Macquarie Uni, examines what Rudd’s supposed end of neo-liberalism means for the government’s commitment to the welfare state

Solidarity’s Ian Rintoul explains how Rudd’s new essay shows that he accepts the ‘Third way’ model of accomodating to capitalism

As Queensland teachers geared up for a state-wide strike, Queensland’s Labor Government has used the state’s industrial laws to drive the wage dispute into the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission. 

Melbourne University NTEU members are in a battle with the University of Melbourne to stop a proposed 220 job attrition.

Review: The frock-coated communist By Tristram Hunt
Allen Lane $59.95

Review:Climate action By Mark Diesendorf
UNSW Press, $34.95

As racist attacks on Indian students continue, a scandal has erupted over the wider discrimination faced by international students in securing a decent education and accessing rights given to domestic students.