August 6, 2010 -- With the help of Socialist Alliance members in the growing Sudanese
community in Australia, Green
Australia
Sam Watson, Socialist Alliance Senate candidate for Queensland. Longstanding leader of the Aboriginal community of Brisbane, campaigner against Black deaths in custody and for Indigenous rights.
On July 24, 2010, Australia's leading socialist newspaper Green Left Weekly spoke to Peter Boyle, national convener of the Socialist Alliance, about the political climate of the 2010 federal election, to be held on August 21.
* * *
Many progressive people are feeling depressed about the federal election. How do you see it?
The Australian Labor Party and the conservative Liberal Party-National Party Coalition are in a “race to the bottom”, as Socialist Alliance lead Queensland Senate candidate and Murri [Indigenous] community leader Sam Watson aptly put it.
By Simon Butler
July 24, 2010 -- Green Left Weekly -- Forget about the climate science and the record high temperatures. Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard has decided she doesn’t need a serious climate change policy to win the August 21 federal election. In its place, she kicked off her election campaign on July 18 with a “sustainable Australia” policy. It promised a future of low population growth, which “preserves our quality of life and respects our environment”.
Opposition leader and climate denier Tony Abbott was quick to say he fully agreed with this vision, but was even more committed to it than Gillard.
From a conservative point of view it makes sense to raise the spectre of overpopulation in this election campaign. Population control is the mother of all political diversion tactics. Population levels explain nothing about social problems. But they can be scapegoated for just about everything, from traffic jams and home prices to grocery bills and climate change.
To read more on the discussion around population, click HERE.
By Graham Matthews
July 24, 2010 -- Green Left Weekly -- In one of her first policy changes after replacing Kevin Rudd as leader of the Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister Julia Gillard dumped Rudd’s idea of a “big Australia”. On June 26, Gillard said “Australia should not hurtle down the track towards a big population”. Instead, she called for a “sustainable population”.
Almost four weeks on, however, Labor’s policy has no details — just lots of rhetoric designed to pander to fears that immigration (particularly asylum seekers) is causing a raft of social problems.
An absract `price on carbon' is the favoured solution of supporters of
business-as-usual. Photo by Lauren Carroll Harris.
By Simon Butler
July 18, 2010 -- Pressure is now bearing down on the Australian climate movement because there has been so little forward progress in the federal government’s climate policy. The pressure is for the movement to accept, support and campaign for weak or inadequate climate policies on the grounds that something is better than nothing.
This is plain from looking at the new, media-driven “consensus” about the need for a “price on carbon”.
Putting a price on carbon is not the best way to deal with climate change, but a growing chorus of media commentators, NGOs and politicians are nonetheless plugging it as the key solution.
Many who advocate a price on carbon would agree that we face a dire climate emergency. The problem is that they are willing to let the emergency response be privatised.
Markets
Photo by Martina Popovich, Green Left Weekly.
By the Socialist Alliance (Australia)
July 2010 -- For years, climate scientists have warned us that we need to act on climate change. Now, science is saying that climate change is taking place more rapidly than everyone previously thought.
The warning signs are obvious. April and May were the world’s hottest months since records began. This year’s Arctic ice sheet melt is taking place at a pace never seen before.
Scientists say carbon pollution has made the world’s oceans more acidic than they have been for at least 20 million years.
There is already too much carbon in the atmosphere. The warming already in the system risks the crossing of various natural “tipping points” that would raise temperatures further and faster.
If these points are crossed, it would bring average temperatures to levels that have not existed for millions of years, and to which today’s nature is simply not adapted.
To download the full Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy
Plan click HERE (8.4MB). You can also download a 16-page synopsis HERE.
Hard copies can be purchased from the Melbourne Energy Institute.
July 14, 2010 -- Don't miss out on this cutting-edge research, which shows how Australia can reach 100% renewable energy within a decade, using technology that is commercially available right now.
* * *
By Pablo Brait and Leigh Ewbank
Beyond Zero Emissions -- In April, the Australian government abandoned the severely flawed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme [a carbon trading scheme], the centrepiece of its national climate policy agenda.
Oleh: Data Brainanta
8 Juli 2010 -- Berdikari -- Aktivis partai Aliansi Sosialis (Socialist Alliance – SA) di Australia menolak rencana PM Julia Gillard untuk membangun pusat pemrosesan suaka regional di Timor Leste.
Kandidat SA dari Perth, Alex Bainbridge, menggambarkan bahwa rencana menampung pencari suaka Australia di Timor Leste bukan didasarkan atas belas kasihan dan keadilan, sebagaimana dikatakan oleh PM tersebut, melainkan untuk mendorong pemenjaraan lebih banyak lagi.
“Kebijakan yang sesungguhnya kita butuhkan adalah yang berdasarkan belas kasihan dan rasa keadilan – yakni menempatkan mereka di tengah-tengah komunitas [masyarakat] Australia,” kata Bainbridge.
“Fakta sederhananya, pemenjaraan adalah pemenjaraan – apakah pemenjaraan itu di Pulau Christmas atau Leonora, Timor Leste atau Nauru,” tambahnya.
July 6, 2010 -- With the help of Socialist Alliance members in the growing Sudanese
community in Australia, Green L
Avustralya İsrail ile var olan ilişkilerini kesmelidir
Socialist Alliance bildirisi 3 Haziran 2010
1985 yılında Fransız Gizli Servisi’nin Auckland Limanı’nda Rainbow Warrior’u bombalamasından bu yana bir devlet tarafından böylesine utanmaz bir uluslararası korsanlık örneğine rastlanmamıştı.