by Spirit of Eureka - Victoria

This article was a leaflet distributed in support of weekend workers

Workers’ penalty rates today have been won by past generations of workers and unionists after long, hard and bitter struggles. They are part of our livelihood, our way of life and must be vigorously defended.

Millions of workers and their families rely on penalty rates to pay for rent/mortgages, education and health expenses, power bills and transport to get to and from work.

Penalties compensate for working weekends, overtime and shift work, for missing out on rest and time with family and friends.

Read more: Defend Penalty Rates! Fight for our Living Standards!

by Prof Tim Anderson

The key Australian founding myth was that no civilised people occupied this island-continent before British colonisation. From that piece of fiction the rights of more than 400 indigenous peoples, their ownership of land and their very existence could be ignored. They could be treated as if they did not exist.

Based on that central myth (eventually put into a legal doctrine called ‘terra nullius’) grew an ugly garden of racist practice: the ethnic-cleansing of Australia’s fertile river valleys; the colonisation and enslavement of the Pacific Islands peoples; the ‘White Australia Policy’; racialised immigration; engagement in a string of overseas imperial wars; and unique forms of physical and cultural genocide, which included concentration camps and stealing indigenous children from their families.

Read more: How Australia’s colonial history helps shape its racist approach to Syria

From the TPP-Unions and Community Roundtable Coalition

On March 23 a public rally to protest the TPP was held outside the RACV Club in Melbourne where the retiring Minister for Trade, Andrew Robb, was delivering a breakfast speech on the TPP -  how he and the government sold out Australia's working people, the environment and little that's left of our sovereignty, to US multinational corporations.  Andrew Robb is now vigorously working overtime for the multinational corporations lobbying the US Senate to pass the TPP.  He has been rewarded for his treachery by the same corporations and their lackeys in government, who drew up the TPP.

The rally was organised by the TPP-Unions and Community Roundtable Coalition.  The following is a report from the group on the rally outside the RACV Club and the unfolding events inside the building.

Read more: Trans Pacific Partnership and Democracy for Whom?

Jay Weatherill, Premier of South Australia announced during the Adelaide (Mad March) Festival season his government would repeal part of the Nuclear Waste Storage Facility (Prohibition) Act 2000.

The Premier argued the repeal was required to allow consultations with the South Australian community over the Nuclear Royal Commission’s findings. However this measure is a cynical attempt to carry out a pro-nuclear waste dump public relations campaign, funded of course by taxpayers.

Read more: Nuclear Jay opens the fiery gates of nuclear hades for South Australia