#Aid, push factors and people smuggling #OnWaterGate – @mary_sayed comments

The latest low to which the Australian Government – current and previous – has sunk in order to push refugees out of sight and out of mind has made headline news. The major parties’ blind determination to treat refugees as inhumanely as possible seems to know no bounds. We are now refusing to allow boats […]

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop evades on #climate change risk to security reports @Takvera

Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop attended Washington for a series of meetings on security and terrorism. But equating climate change as a security threat was just too much for Julie Bishop, evading a journalist’s probing question and replying with some untruthful spin on the Government’s climate change ‘good story’. This story was originally published in […]

Australia is a climate leaner, not a lifter: @takvera comments on #Climate2014

Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop took the podium at the United Nations Climate Summit to an almost empty plenary to announce Australia was balancing economic growth with climate action, with a 5 per cent cut based on 2000 levels by 2020 using $2.55 billion to fund emission reductions under the government’s Direct Action Plan. […]

Burke questions why she runs for Labor

By Georgina Moore, 5 August, 2013 The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Anna Burke, has wondered aloud whether she still belongs in the ALP after recent cuts to foreign aid and the party’s new hardline policy on asylum seekers. Speaking at a candidates forum in Melbourne on Sunday night, the member for Chisholm said the government needed […]