We meet on the 3rd Tuesday of each month at the Alexandria Town Hall at 6:30pm to discuss issues, activities, policies and elections relating to our district. We usually dine together informally afterwards.
Greens MP Lee Rhiannon says Cabinet documents leaked to the Greens show the NSW government is failing dismally to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets set out in the State Plan (Sydney Morning Herald, page 6).Read more...
The publication of the draft report of the Garnaut Climate Change Review is the beginning of the end for the climate denial policies of NSW Treasurer Michael Costa and Premier Morris Iemma, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.Read more...
What a fine to-do when a Lord Mayor condones her chauffeur’s illegal parking while presiding over a council that last year used undercover rangers to catch and fine parents for parking illegally when dropping their children at school.Read more...
Greens MP and youth spokesperson Lee Rhiannon says the Iemma government must rapidly adjust down its planned $139 million expenditure on World Youth Day, with the hotel industry today warning that bookings are well below what was initially forecast because of low pilgrim numbers.Read more...
Irene Doutney - Greens Candidate for City of Sydney Council
Frank Sartor says he doesn't want black faces in Redfern. I say save the Block and help the Aboriginal Housing Corporation build decent and appropriate housing for Aboriginal families in the Block.
The new North Everleigh project will be a bastion of whiteness overshadowing the historic meeting place that has become the Block. We need to ensure that the Block remains blackfella land and isn't blocked by Sartor's grand plan for our area.
An original Mardi Gras 78er is hoping to be elected to Sydney City Council this year.
Greens member Irene Doutney hopes to be the second of two Greens candidates elected to the Council when electors go to the polls in September.Read more...
HUNDREDS of people marched through Hong Kong today in an annual event to remember victims of China's 1989 crushing of the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square.Read more...
REFORMS to let gay couples inherit each other's federal pensions or superannuation could be delayed until after their proposed July 1 start date as the Coalition moves to refer the issue to a Senate inquiry.Read more...
For near 200 years, government in this country, state and federal, considered "full-blood" Aborigines no better than vermin. The "Aboriginal problem", so-called, was confined mostly to what to do about mixed-blood children fathered by white Australians. Mixed-race numbers were increasing as rapidly as full-bloods were vanishing. Which is why, from 1890 to the early 1960s, generations of part-white children were forcibly removed, in all states, from their Aboriginal mothers.Read more...
Greens MP and women's spokesperson Lee Rhiannon said today that Premier Morris Iemma's plan to upgrade domestic violence services was in tatters following his government's decision to abolish 24 anti-domestic violence workers" positions.Read more...
Friday, 25 January 2008, Crikey
Australian Greens Climate Change Spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne
The Productivity Commission's clear attempt this morning to influence the outcome of the Garnaut Review may be couched in detached and academic language, but its implications are profound.Read more...
Ask Australians to nominate a central value of our society and they are likely to mention one or another variant of the "fair go". This principle has motivated some of our finest social achievements in the past and it is the hope of many that it will be the cornerstone of an era of renewed interest in social justice.Read more...
Greens MP and industrial relations spokesperson Lee Rhiannon has called on Premier Morris Iemma to dump his governments 2.5 per cent pay rise plan for public sector workers and grant NSW fire-fighters a rise of not less than 4 per cent.Read more...
Fishermen in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. Overfishing has depleted once-bountiful African waters. (Candace Feit for The New York Times)
By Sharon Lafraniere
International Herald Tribune Monday, January 14, 2008
KAYAR, Senegal: Ale Nodye, the son and grandson of fishermen in this northern Senegalese village, said that for the past six years he netted barely enough fish to buy fuel for his boat. So he jumped at the chance for a new beginning. He volunteered to captain a wooden canoe full of 87 Africans to the Canary Islands in the hopes of making their way illegally to Europe.Read more...
Stop work meetings of electricity industry workers in the Hunter and the formation of a new campaign group within the Greens are the beginnings of a mass movement that will make it increasingly difficult for the Iemma government to privatise the electricity industry, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.Read more...
The Australian Greens today congratulated Foreign Minister Stephen Smith for vetoing the previous government's decision to sell uranium to India, a country which has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.Read more...
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today.Read more...
Joshua Dowling, The Sydney Morning Herald, 15/01/08
Holden parent company General Motors has declared at the 2008 Detroit motor show that electric cars are the way of the future because of dwindling oil supplies, writes JOSHUA DOWLING.Read more...
It's interesting to compare figures from the home of the drug war to those of a country where you can buy cannabis over the counter: So why do we follow the example of the US?Read more...
Greens MP and transport spokesperson Lee Rhiannon today rejected the NRMA's criticism of public money being spent on cycling lanes and has again called for five per cent of the RTA's budget to be allocated on a safe, integrated cycle network.Read more...
Far Eastern Economic Review, December 2007
by David Bandurski
When some of the world’s top technology companies, including Yahoo!, Intel, Nokia and Ericsson, formed the Beijing Association of Online Media three years ago, the group seemed to be a typical trade association, sponsoring social activities and facilitating networking. Even when its activities widened last year to include "self-policing" the Internet, it seemed to be benign, targeting content that "contradicts social morality and Chinese traditional virtues," i.e. pornography. The message was that the companies were providing a public service in spaces used by Chinese teens, not helping the government maintain political control.Read more...
By a vote of eight to two, Sydney City Council has added fuel to the fire of the Howard Government’s cross-media laws by imposing a profusion of charges and red tape upon the distribution of newspapers on our streets. The State Labor party was split on the decision to introduce the legislation. Only Labor’s Verity Firth and Deputy Lord Mayor Chris Harris of the Greens opposed the new measures for Distribution Applications.Read more...
Hu Jia was arrested in his dining room, two days after Christmas
What began as sparsely attended press conference announcing Lakota sovereignty has grown into an international roar of freedom inspiring people on every continent and sparking excitement and discussion in homes, tribal councils, schools, and on internet blogs and message boards.Read more...
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, less than two weeks before a fraught general election, has dashed western hopes for a peaceful transition to democracy in Pakistan. The murder of the 54-year-old former prime minister, the first woman elected to lead a post-colonial Muslim state, leaves the country’s largest political party without a leader and deprives the US of its best hope of providing a civilian façade to the unpopular rule of President Pervez Musharraf.Read more...
"No man is an island. entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." (John Donne)Read more...
At the southern end of the Japanese island of Honshu is a small fishing village where community-based coastal whaling took place from the late 1600s to the early 1900s. Today, more than 100 years since the whaling ended there, the island is scattered with monuments dedicated to the spirits of whales caught in the region. Associated rituals and festivities continue, including daily prayers for the spirits of whales and dolphins by two elderly nuns.Read more...
And today Rick Ness is a happy man. Newmont Minahasa Raya (a subsidiary of Denver-based gold-mining giant Newmont, where Ness was formerly president) was cleared of pollution and environmental damage charges related to Buyat Bay in Indonesia. Back in April Ness and the company were acquitted of all criminal charges (and in 2006, Newmont settled a civil suit brought by the Indonesian government on charges of environmental pollution).Read more...
Australian Greens climate change spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, today called on the Rudd Government to move decisively at home to begin cutting emissions and not take the equivocating Bali path which helped water down agreement. A first strong and sensible step would be to adopt the Greens energy efficiency policy, EASI.Read more...
NSW Greens MP, Sylvia Hale has delivered a dissenting report following the parliamentary inquiry into the Home Building Service insurance scheme. In her report Ms Hale has called for the current NSW scheme to be scrapped and replaced with a new scheme owned and operated by the state government and based on the successful Queensland model.Read more...
Greens MP and youth spokesperson Lee Rhiannon has criticised the NSW government for an excessive law and order approach to World Youth Day.Read more...
All on Merit ... former department secretary Peter Boxall.
Photo: Edwina Pickles
Debra Jopson and Adele Horin
SMH, December 10, 2007
AUSTRALIA'S poorest people have been pursued in an unprecedented and aggressive legal campaign over welfare payments - and the workplace relations department is under fire for running up lawyers' bills chasing small amounts of money or cases so weak they never reach court.Read more...
By pushing ahead with plans to privatise the NSW electricity industry and build a new coal-fired power station at Monday's special caucus meeting, the NSW Labor government will be undermining its chances of being re-elected in 2011, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye.Read more...
Greens MP and health spokesperson Lee Rhiannon is seeking to amend new liquor laws, due for debate in the NSW Upper House today. The amendments will limit small bars to 120 people, restrict the number of small bar licences someone can hold to ten and have the NSW Ombudsman review the impact of the new laws.Read more...
Shooters Party MP Roy Smith has stymied a parliamentary inquiry into the proposed major overhaul of the planning laws.
Mr Smith voted with government members to stop a parliamentary committee inquiring into the effectiveness of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act and the implications of the government’s proposals for local councils and communities.Read more...
By MARK D. DRAPEAU
New York Times : December 4, 2007
LAST week the United Nations warned of a potential epidemic of deadly cholera in Baghdad, noting that there had been more than 101 cases. This was hardly a surprise: cholera, caused by a bacterium that produces severe diarrhea, broke out in Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, in August and has now spread to at least half of Iraq’s 18 provinces. At least 30,000 Iraqis have displayed cholera-like symptoms and more than 2,500 cases have been confirmed in Kirkuk alone.Read more...
Greens MP and health spokesperson Lee Rhiannon is seeking to amend new liquor laws, due for debate in the NSW Upper House today. The amendments will limit small bars to 120 people, restrict the number of small bar licences someone can hold to ten and have the NSW Ombudsman review the impact of the new laws.Read more...
Bitter harvest … Greenpeace activists stage a protest outside Parliament.
Photo: James Alcock
AN EXEMPTION-PROOF moratorium on genetically modified food crops would continue until 2011 in NSW under amendments the Greens want made to a State Government bill that will allow farmers to start growing GM canola next year.Read more...
Philippines President Gloria Arroyo shakes hands with Philippine Military Chief General Hermogenes Esperon
On March 14, 2007 the Philippines topped the charts. Unfortunately, this was not a contest that the nation had aspired to win. The Philippines came out on top (or depending on your perspective, the bottom) of a perception survey, conducted by Political & Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC), which ranked it as the most corrupt among thirteen nations in Asia. The survey polled expatriates in the Philippines who, when asked “How big is the problem of corruption in terms of being a feature influencing the overall business environment?” gave it a 9.40 (out of 10). Indonesia and Thailand tied for the second most corrupt at 8.03.Read more...
Greens MP and transport spokesperson Lee Rhiannon has called on the NSW government to scrap its plans to build the M4 East and other city motorways following today's report on the under performing Lane Cove Tunnel (today's Sydney Morning Herald, page 1).Read more...
WASHINGTON (AP) - Two transgender members of the Human Rights Campaign quit Tuesday, saying the group's support of an employment nondiscrimination bill that excluded transgender workers put them "in an untenable position.''Read more...
Media Release from NSW Greens MPs 27 November 2007
NSW Greens MPs today offer their sincere condolences to Bernie Banton’s family and pay tribute to one of the most inspiring modern day campaigners for social justice and corporate responsibility.Read more...
The prospect of twenty seven months of construction noise and dozens of trucks per day on your street would make the most stoic of residents unhappy. And when your street is one of the quietest and most beautiful tree lined avenues in inner Sydney (pictured), unhappy doesnât even begin to describe it. Such was the [...]
At a Council meeting on the 15th of March, the Lord Mayor moved a mayoral minute (delivered to councillors 25 minutes before the meeting), which was supported Clover Moore Party âindependentsâ and the Liberal Councillor, to abandon plans to build a skate park at the Millers Point site underneath a busy freeway (for background information on the site, [...]
I have serious concerns about the tender process that appears to have been designed to place the Cityâs tennis courts under the management of a single operator. Should the recommendation of council staff be adopted the operator at Ruchcutters Bay tennis courts will be tossed out after 25 years of service to the community. The [...]
Hot on the heels of their destruction of the habitat area at Orphan School Creek with the freshly laid concrete zig zag path, the Clover Moore Party are at it again across the road in Johnstons Canal with more habitat destruction. The proposal is a bike path that links the shared pathway emerging from Orphan [...]
The Barangaroo Authority conducted a presentation of the design ideas of British architect Richard Rogers at the City Recital Hall on 23rd February. The presentation visuals showed attractive buildings and public spaces that interfaced with the water at the cityâs western edge with a light rail service passing down Hickson Rd.
One key component of the [...]
Electoral comment authorised by Dom Rowe, 19 Eve St, Erskineville NSW 2043 All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their respective owner. The comments are property of their posters, all the rest (c) 2007 by South Sydney Greens. This web site was made with PostNuke, a web portal system written in PHP. PostNuke is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL license. You can syndicate our news using the file , and our Events using the file .