“The Time Has Come for Full Disclosure”: Former Senator Rex Patrick on the Timor-Leste Files
Former Senator Rex Patrick was standing outside Room 5.3 of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on 28 July, while proceedings were taking place inside, as, despite his having initiated the case being heard, he wasn’t permitted to enter due to the secrecy...
Sex Work as Work Is a Feminist Issue, Says Rights Activist Julie Bates AO
Writer/director Victoria Midwinter Pitt’s I’m With Her continues play to sell-out audiences around the country. The piece explores the journeys of resistance taken by eight pioneering women in patriarchal Australia through a #MeToo lens. Amongst the voices of the women that...
“Changing the National Debate”: Senator David Shoebridge on the Greens Agenda
The 47th Australian parliament sat for the first time on Tuesday. This saw the Albanese government taking the reins in the two chambers, the composition of which has dramatically changed since the country took to the polling booths in late...
Collaery Prosecution Dropped, But Politicians Remain Unaccountable for Bugging Timor Cabinet
In December 2013, ACT barrister Bernard Collaery was at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague set to represent Timor-Leste against Australia, when ASIO raided his Canberra home, along with that of former spy Witness K, who was about to...
“Racism Writ Large”: An Interview with Close Don Dale Now’s John B Lawrence SC
Right now, Don Dale Youth Detention Centre continues to operate. Despite a Royal Commission recommending its immediate closure five years ago, the notorious prison for children is crowded, incarcerating kids as young as 10, applies the use of isolation and self-harm...
Opposition to Santos Gas in the Pilliga Is the Largest Ever Seen, Say Gomeroi Women
The Gomeroi people voted overwhelmingly against Santos’ proposed Narrabri gas project at a meeting in Tamworth on 25 March. The Australian fossil fuel company has been negotiating with the Gomeroi Nation going back a decade, and this rejection was to an...
Good Luck if Government Thinks It’s Shutting Down Climate Action, Says Father of Gaoled Activist
Blockade Australia activists Max Curmi and Tim Neville have just served three weeks in Parklea Prison, not because they’ve been convicted of a crime but as they were refused bail, despite being nonviolent climate defenders posing no real harm to...
“Tibetan Sovereignty Hasn’t Been Ceded”: An Interview With Greens Senator Janet Rice
The 8th World Parliamentarians Conference on Tibet took place two weeks ago. Organised by the Tibetan government-in-exile, the meeting involved politicians discussing the need for greater global coordination around the issue of China’s seventy-year occupation of Tibet. Following a ground invasion in...
“The Most Oppressive Industrial Laws in the Developed World”: Interview With MUA’s Paul Keating
NSW employment relations minister Damien Tudehope passed a motion on the 23 June, outlining that his government will be introducing a bill to increase the maximum penalties applying to industrial action taken in spite of the Industrial Relations Commission having deemed...
“This Litany of Horrors Degrades Our Whole Nation”: PJLU’s Fabia Claridge on Refugee Policy
Newly minted PM Anthony Albanese was part of a 2015 attempt to ensure that a future Labor government would reverse the Operation Sovereign Borders policy of turning back asylum seeker and refugee boats. Albanese’s first act in office, however, was to facilitate...
