In case you had any illusions about the feminist's hold on Kevin Rudd. Read his objections to the shared parenting family law amendments passed last year. Its also interesting to note his support for the discredited minority report prepared by Nicola Roxon (minority meaning that she was the only objector amongst the full committee comprising labor, libs and nats).

http://www.fathers4equality-australia.org

The National Sorry Day Committee presents its credentials as the long established premier National Advocate for the Stolen Generations.

We are making a national statement to the Australian people.

There is now a real danger of the creation by the Howard government of another Stolen Generation.

Well, it's confirmed. Both parties aim to force us into a deadly nuclear future. Labour will exploit more uranium (did anyone else notice how happy Premier Peter Beattie was with the 'Yes' vote, despite his recent assurances that we in QLD will not be forced to accept more uranium mines?), export cancer and consign future generations to deal with toxic nuclear waste.

Most of us take it for granted that businesses aren't allowed to deceive and mislead us in their advertising. But if someone you care about is ever faced with an unplanned pregnancy, watch out.

Consumer protection regulations already prohibit false advertising, but a loophole in the law allows pregnancy counsellors who don't charge a fee to say whatever they like in ads they place in doctors' offices, police stations, magazines, online and in the phone book. This means women are being actively deceived by counselling agencies with a philosophical position on abortion.

The Government's latest strategy of swapping Sri Lankan asylum seekers for Cuban and Haitian refugees in the US is simply bizarre and demonstrates just how much John Howard has lost touch with the electorate.  People smugglers will be telling their clients that the glittering prize of a life in the US is now available - they just have to be apprehended in Australian waters.

Last week, a jury in the NSW Supreme Court acquitted Pan Pharmaceuticals founder Jim Selim of charges that he ordered the destruction of critical computer data relating to batches of the company's travel-sickness drug, Travacalm. In May 2003, the company went into voluntary administration after the Therapeutic Goods Administration issued a recall of the supplement due to complaints, and therefore suspended Pan's licence.

Ecosystems

Eco Tourism

False Cape

Flecker Botanic Gardens

Flowers

Local Politics

Native Plants

Sustainable Technology

Bob Brown (Green's) motion endorsing the Australian Council of Trade Unions' action plan on climate change was voted down by Labor and the Coalition in the Senate on Monday the 26th of March.

I am particularly disappointed in the Democrats (who say that they are in power to help keep the B's honest), who abstained from voting.

The ACTU's motion reads:
That the Senate endorses the climate change action plan proposed by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, including its call for:

1. government subsidies for energy efficient retrofitting of buildings;
2. mandatory green building codes
3. large-scale reuse of treated effluent
4. improved vehicle fuel efficiency
5. greater use of shipping to cute greenhouse gas emissions
6. the right to reject work which harms the environment
7. a mandatory renewable energy target of 10 per
   cent, as called for by the Greens in 2002

- by Dr Evan Jones

At present in Australia, banks are effectively above the law with respect to small business customers. Banks operate, self-consciously, in the realm of the law of the jungle. The public image of the Australian regulatory system is that the rule of law prevails. The ACCC, ASIC, APRA, and so on, are the public face of this public image. The public image in this domain is a lie.

Most victims, good law-abiding citizens, have lapsed into passivity, which suits the banks and the regulatory agencies perfectly. The less fuss the better. The victims have been reduced to idleness (when not futilely seeking assistance from politicians and regulators), supported by relatives, and/or are on pensions at public expense. Family breakdown is par for the course. Suicide is not unknown, especially amongst farmers (drought is a contributing factor to depression in the bush, but bank thuggery is also a contributing factor, well known to those affected but suppressed by the media and rendered oblivious to those in authority).

Frankly, one can understand if bank victims took the view that they could achieve better justice if they themselves took the law into their own hands and operated according to the same law of the jungle.

IRAQ: Four years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the country is wracked by ongoing and escalating violence. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, according to a study published in the respected British medical journal The Lancet in October.

The corporate media's coverage of the Iraq conflagration has focused only on reports of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis. This violence is stripped of political context and conflated with the post-invasion surge in common criminality and the brutality of US and US-controlled proxy forces to obscure the roots of the ongoing bloodshed. The media presents the greatest threat to Iraqis as not being the occupation but other Iraqis and therefore, the logic goes, the occupation's end. Sectarian violence is today the key justification espoused by Washington for maintaining US troops in Iraq.