International Human Rights Day

In 1948 the United Nations declared December 10th to be International Human Rights Day.  The Occupy Sydney movement, still soldiering on after two months and repeated police actions against them, held a festival day to mark the occasion on 10th of December this year.

I was asked to speak at the commemoration and my comments on the state of Human Rights in Australia, still a shocking affair in 2011, have been placed online by the Occupy Sydney collective at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3_4-DKicjk.

Council dealing with domestic violence

A proposal for a policy to support staff dealing with domestic violence, as originally proposed by the United Services Union (USU), was debated at the last meeting of Council.

While the policy was well intentioned it sadly consisted mostly of “motherhood statements” – the right words were said but they carried little in the way of substance.