Residents of the Millers Point public housing community and supporters protested outside the private auctions of the first two houses sold in the NSW Coalition government's planned sale of nearly 300 government-owned homes in the suburb.
The auctions were held at real estate agents’ offices in Edgecliff on August 21 and Woollahra on August 26.
The first house was sold for $1.9 million, and the second for $2.6 million.
Protesters draped banners condemning the sales on walls and fences nearby the offices, as security guards and police guarded potential buyers going inside.
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Nick Riemer, senior lecturer at the University of Sydney, addressed a Town Hall meeting on August 25 on the proposed deregulation of fees at Australian universities.
The Tasmanian Liberal government released its first budget on August 28. About 1500 people protested outside Parliament House on the same day to voice their opposition to the government’s plans.
The budget will cut 700 full-time jobs from the public sector and freeze public sector wages for at least one year.
School attendant and United Voice member Ken Martindale addressed the rally about the impact the pay freeze will have on low-income families in Tasmania, saying that bills will go up each year even if pay does not.
The first asylum seeker to be forcibly returned to Afghanistan begged an Australian court for help the day he was due to be deported.
The judge used a two-year out-of-date security assessment of Afghanistan to rule that the 29-year-old ethnic Hazara’s home district, Jaghori, was “reasonably stable”.
“Jaghori is confined, it’s like a prison,” the man said through an interpreter, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. “The surrounding areas are all controlled by the Taliban. Many people die on the way to Jaghori.”
The Coalition dominated Senate will vote on a raft of amendments to the Fair Work Act in July next year that includes the Building and Construction (Fair and Lawful Building Sites) Code.
The code will be voted in as a piece of retrospective legislation. This means it will be backdated to April 24 this year. This is so the code will apply to all new enterprise bargaining agreements (EBA) due to be negotiated by all construction unions with the respective employers.
Palestinians in Gaza took to the streets on August 26 in celebration. After 51 days of merciless bombardment by the Israeli military, an open-ended ceasefire between Palestinian resistance groups and Israel was announced that appears likely to last for at least the immediate future.
During the assault, homes, hospitals, shops, agricultural infrastructure and schools were pulverised. About 2100 Gazans were killed. An estimated 80% of these were civilians, including more than 500 children.
There has been a dramatic rise in the female prison population in Australia in the last 10 years. This increase is largely due to the rising number of Aboriginal women going to prison. In 1996, about 21% of women in prison were Aboriginal, last year it was 33%.
The imperial war drums are beating loudly again and the big parties in Australia, Liberal and Labor, are once more shoulder-to-shoulder for a new military intervention in Iraq.
Defence minister David Johnston says the Australian armed forces are in a “high state of readiness” to join the US in bombing missions with Super Hornet warplanes.
“They're incredibly capable,” he said. “They're exactly what flies off US aircraft carriers. Now, that's an obvious first port of call were we to consider it necessary to participate with our friends and our ally.”
The Renewable Energy Target could become a victim of its own success. A review into the scheme, released on August 29, has recommended the federal government close new investment into renewable energy because it has produced more energy than originally planned.
But Labor, Greens and Palmer United Party senators have vowed to block any changes to the scheme.
At the same time, a debate has emerged among climate activists about whether we should “change tack” when it comes to campaigning on the issue of climate change.
Palestinian officials have recognised that Latin American countries were the first to condemn the Israeli onslaught against Gaza.
The Palestinian National Council (PNC), the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, thanked Latin America on August 27 for its solidarity with the people of Gaza and its condemnation of the seven-week Israeli massacre in the enclave.
During a PNC meeting, the Palestinian leaders said the solidarity of Latin America with Palestinians “is an inheritance of patriots like Jose Marti and Simon Bolivar”.
Stop the War Coalition released this statement on August 29.
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Sydney Stop the War Coalition opposes the Australian government’s moves to involve Australian military forces in another US-led war on Iraq.
Spokesperson Pip Hinman said: “The [Tony] Abbott government’s motives are more about trying to shore up support for itself rather than any professed concern about Sunni and Christian communities.
"The last thing Australia needs is a holy war," Nick Deane, spokesperson for the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN), said.
"Our federal government should reject completely any consideration of sending our air force personnel to drop bombs on Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, or sending our troops or SAS into combat in those countries. We know now only too well the inevitable civilian casualties from such actions.
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