Australia

Chinese students at the University of Queensland, in Brisbane, Australia, have set up a "Lennon Wall" in the student union precinct at the main campus.

The wall, expressing solidarity with the protests in Hong Kong, has been ripped down twice by pro-Chinese-government students, but restored each time.

Corinda State High School, a secondary school with over 1800 students in a middling-income inner-west suburb of Brisbane, has declared itself the first "carbon-neutral" school in the Australian state of Queensland.

It was certified as "carbon-neutral" by the Queensland government Department of Energy in April 2019.

Corinda was not as much a flagship in Australia's student climate strikes, a few months ago, as Kenmore State High School, on the other side of the Brisbane river. But it has done the work to audit its carbon emissions, including from staff journeys to work.

The latest stage of Fair Work Commission cuts to minimum penalty rates came in on 1 July 2019. The union that is taking on employers and keeping penalty rates is the Retail And Fast Food Workers Union. We spoke to Hayden Walsh, a Sydney retail worker and member of the RAFFWU National Committee.

Sydney RAFFWU ranks-and-file members organised a snap speakout in the CBD on 6 July to coincide with the 2019 cut to penalty rates. About 40-50 people came along. It was fun. We know it’s possible to retain penalty rates.

When Bob Carnegie lost the election for Queensland Secretary of the MUA after one term in office, this matched a pattern for successful rank and file challengers to long term incumbents with ALP factional roots. Here are some other examples.

The Global Climate Strike on 20 September, initiated by school students striking for climate action is hugely important.

In this issue

Daisy Thomas, who recently became a climate change activist in Brisbane, discussed the Workers’ Liberty pamphlet For workers’ climate action with Janet Burstall.

I was aware of socialism as an idea. This pamphlet gave me more understanding of how socialism can be used as a driver for change. It made me realise the importance of tapping into workers as a social mobilisation force that can be part of their own solution, including in fossil fuel industries that are going to be phased out. I’ve also started reading a book on the Green Bans.

The Australian Labor Party’s climate action platform for the May 2019 Federal Election was the most ambitious yet. Pre-election polls showed climate change was a high priority for voters.

The Liberal-National coalition was divided on climate action. Climate-change deniers controlled the party room, and had elected Scott Morrison as leader, an MP who had famously cradled a lump of coal in parliament to show his support for coal-fired power. Yet Labor lost the election.

The veteran Marxist writer Paul Le Blanc has written the most substantial and critical account yet of the collapse of the USA’s International Socialist Organization, of which Le Blanc was himself a member, though not a central one.