In the small community of Mona Mona, just north of Cairns, some 150 people met last December 9 with Linda Aplet, the director-general of the Queensland government’s Department of Communities.

The announcement by the Melbourne-headquartered Pacific Brands clothing and footwear manufacturing company on February 25 that it would sack 1850 employees – one-fifth of its global workforce – over 18 months, including 1200 in clothing manufacturing, demonstrated the failure of the Rudd Labor government’s $10.4 billion pre-Christmas “jobs protection” economic stimulus package.

The official death toll from the Victorian bushfires was 210 by February 23. At least 7500 people have been left homeless by the fires, which began on February 7, after over 2000 houses were destroyed.

Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU) was introduced by the Howard Coalition government in 2006, the same year as the introduction of the Work Choices legislation, aimed at crippling trade unions. VSU made membership of a student union voluntary and due to a severe decrease in funding, the result was the closure or reduction of many essential campus services around the country.

2008 was the 9th warmest year since measurements began in 1880, according to data published by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies on January 13. At 0.44oC warmer than the 1951-1980 average, it was also warmer than any year on record prior to 1998. The 10 warmest years on record have now all occurred since 1997.

“Batten the hatches. This is not just a recession. This is the sharpest deceleration Australia’s economy has ever seen”, Australian economic forecaster Access Economics warned in its latest quarterly Business Outlook report, released on January 18.

On January 20, a boat carrying 20 asylum seekers was intercepted by Australian navy patrol boat HMAS Maryborough, 39 kilometres from Ashmore Island in Australia’s far north-west. The asylum seekers were taken nearly 2000 km to the immigration detention prison on Christmas Island.

As Israel began dropping bombs on the Gaza Strip on December 27, Australian Palestine solidarity activists began organising protests. Despite occurring during the “quiet” part of the year, these protest actions snowballed in size during the weeks of Israel’s 22-day war on Gaza.

Many who voted for the ALP on November 24, 2007, did so thinking that a Rudd Labor government would end Australia’s involvement in the US-led war in Iraq. One year on and the Australian military under PM Kevin Rudd is still an active cog in the US-led imperialism war machine in Iraq.

John McCarthy, a Brisbane doctor who in the 1970s played a significant role in the development of the revolutionary socialist movement in Australia, died on November 1 after a long battle with cancer. While in Britain in the 1960s McCarthy joined the International Marxist Group (IMG), the British group supporting the Trotskyist Fourth International (FI).

After PM Kevin Rudd’s February 13 official apology to the Stolen Generations, media outlets around the world hailed him as a great humanitarian friend of Aboriginal people.

On November 25 – a day after the first anniversary of the election of the Rudd Labor government – deputy PM and workplace relations minister Julia Gillard introduced the government’s Fair Work bill into federal parliament. She said the bill would “sweep away” the Howard government’s Work Choices laws and deliver on Labor’s election promises.

In a media release on November 20, Edmund Rice Centre director Phil Glendenning said the response to a November 19 SBS broadcast of the new documentary A Well-Founded Fear had been overwhelming. The documentary, by Anne Delaney, highlighted the centre’s research into the fate of more than 400 asylum seekers deported from Australia.

On November 6, ABC Learning, which controls nearly a quarter of Australia’s childcare centres, went into receivership owing more than $1 billion to the banks. Less than two weeks later CFK, Australia’s second biggest childcare company, also went into receivership, after revealing it was losing $400,000 per month.

The global arms industry is a very lucrative way for businesses to profit from death, destruction and oppression. It is estimated that each year 2% of world gross domestic product (GDP), or more than US$1 trillion, is spent on the military. Part of this goes to the procurement of military hardware and services from the arms industry.

A 400-strong rally was held in Brisbane on November 1 as part of the campaign to free Lex Wotton, an Indigenous community leader from Palm Island, who was found guilty on October 24 of “rioting with destruction” by an all-white jury in Brisbane’s District Court.

On the afternoon of Friday, October 17, Victoria University vice-chancellor Elizabeth Harman sent an email to all staff describing her “unhappy” decision to proceed with 270 “voluntary and targeted” redundancies.

The rate of growth in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – 3% between 2006 and 2007 – has exceeded the “worst-case scenario” predictions of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the September 26 Los Angeles Times reported.

The enthusiasm for nuclear power in sections of the ALP that was nurtured during the government of the previous prime minister, John Howard, has not been dampened.

On September 29, the Rudd government announced that it would give a 2-week extension to the review board and panel of experts handpicked to look at the federal government’s intervention into remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.

On October 7, the upper house of the Victorian state parliament will vote on the Victorian Abortion Reform Bill, which was passed in the lower house on September 11 by 48 votes to 35.

In December and January, the 26th annual Southern Cross Work-Study Brigade will visit Cuba and take part in celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the triumph of Cuba’s revolution against US domination. The brigade is organized by the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society.

Protest actions are being planned for Brisbane in October when Lex Wotton faces court. Wotton has been portrayed by the Queensland police, government and establishment media as the leader of the “riot” that occurred on Palm Island on November 26, 2004.

Issy Wyner, one of the pioneers of revolutionary socialism in Australia, died in Sydney in August, aged 92. Issy was an early member of the Workers Party, the first Trotskyist group in Australia, formed in May 1933.

In a July 29 speech, Labor immigration minister Chris Evans announced an end to the previous Howard Coalition government’s costly “Pacific Solution” to “illegal” asylum seekers – closing the offshore processing centres on Nauru and PNG’s Manus Island.