June has been the deadliest month ever for Australian troops occupying Afghanistan. On June 7, Sapper Jacob Moerland, 21, and Sapper Darren Smith, 25, from Brisbane-based 2nd Combat Engineer Regiment, were killed by an improvised explosive device and another soldier was shot and wounded in the arm on June 16.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has once again focussed attention on the environmentally disastrous petroleum fuel industry. The devastating impact on the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico – along with the impact upon the livelihoods of hundreds of communities reliant on the waters of the Gulf – is far from a unique event.

On February 8, Australian immigration minister Senator Chris Evans announced a review of the skilled migration program. The skilled migration program is aimed at attracting workers from abroad who hold skills that Australia’s capitalists especially need.

We stand for the transformation of human society, from its current basis of greed, exploitation, war, oppression and environmental destruction, to a commonwealth of social ownership, solidarity and human freedom, living in harmony with our planet’s ecosystems.

Ark Tribe, a rank-and-file member of the construction division of the South Australian branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) is facing six months in prison for refusing to attend an interview with the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

During the July campus holidays, a dozen youth and students from Australia, England, South Africa and Mauritius will participate in the first Australian Youth and Student Revolutionary Tour of Venezuela and Cuba.

The West Australian public sector is under attack. Under Liberal Premier Colin Barnett’s privatisation plans, public sector agencies delivering services in industries such as forestry, health, education, and electricity and water supply are being asked to identify activities that may be sold off to private businesses.

Barely a ripple of interest surfaced with the announcement by the Australian Council of Trade Unions on April 20 of a new president-elect for Australia’s peak union body.

In early March the ACTU announced that pay equity between male and female workers would be “the major union campaign priority for 2010, outside of the federal election”. According to ACTU reports, full-time women workers in 2009, on average, received 82.5% of men’s pay.

The Rudd Labor government has dubbed its health and hospital reform package a “health revolution”, but it is a con. It will shuffle around working people’s taxes but will not make any fundamental difference to combating the escalating health problems in Australian society.

On April 10-11, the first feminist conference to be held in Sydney in more than 10 years attracted more than 500 people. The “F” Conference was organised to re-ignite feminist organising in Sydney, though there were many participants from other cities also.

The decision last month by the Rudd Labor government to suspend the processing of new asylum claims by Tamils from Sri Lanka for a period of three months and the processing of new asylum claims by Afghans for a period of six months is a clear and racist violation of Australia’s obligations under the 1951 UN refugee convention, which prohibits governments from deciding refugee claim

We stand for the transformation of human society, from its current basis of greed, exploitation, war, oppression and environmental destruction, to a commonwealth of social ownership, solidarity and human freedom, living in harmony with our planet’s ecosystems.

The Revolutionary Socialist Party will stand two candidates in the coming federal elections, expected to be held in the second half this year. In Brisbane, Hamish Chitts will stand in the seat of Griffith, currently held by Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In Melbourne, Van Rudd will stand in the seat of Lalor, currently held by Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

The Council of Single Mothers and their Children’s (CSMC) Action Group will stage a rally at 11 am on Thursday May 6 in Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall to highlight single-mother poverty during the Mother’s Day shopping madness.

On March 14 another Aboriginal person died in custody, this time in a Perth police watchhouse. He was 33 years old. His completely preventable death is one of over 300 that have occurred since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody issued its final report, with 339 recommendations, in April 1991.

Women could be charged with murder in the US state of Utah if they have a miscarriage caused by an “intentional or knowing act”. On March 8, the state’s governor signed into law a bill to that effect.

A lively protest was held in Brisbane on March 13 against a rally organised by a coalition of anti-abortion groups. There were about 70 people over the four-hour protest – holding a speak-out and chanting for the duration of the protest, even as the massive PA at the anti-abortion rally tried to drown out the chants with a Christian rock band.

“Aboriginal people are treated worse than second class citizens”, Paul Haywood told a rally in Perth on March 17. Haywood, whose brother Deon Woods died in the Perth watch-house on March 14, told protesters, “Deon’s son is here today. Now he hasn’t got a father. I haven’t got a brother. My mother has lost her son and my sister in law has lost her man.”

Solidarity activists and supporters of the Cuban Revolution will gather this month at the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society National Consultation, where one item of discussion will undoubtedly be how to defeat the stifling economic blockade imposed on Cuba by the US government since 1962.

Indigenous communities, environmentalists and human rights activists are gearing up for a fight against the federal government’s push to create a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. Traditional owners in the area of the proposed waste dump at Muckaty Station, located around 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek, are strongly opposed to it.

We stand for the transformation of human society, from its current basis of greed, exploitation, war, oppression and environmental destruction, to a commonwealth of social ownership, solidarity and human freedom, living in harmony with our planet’s ecosystems.

While the wars of occupation against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, like most wars, are being fought for big-business profits, they cannot be waged without the assistance of racism.

The first issue of the Socialist Alliance’s Green Left Weekly for this year, dated January 20, carried an article headlined “New period of left unity and struggle launched”.

On January 28, 2010, singer, songwriter and socialist Alistair Hulett died from cancer at just 58 years old. I recall first seeing Hulett perform at the Sandringham Hotel, in Newtown, Sydney, in 1989.