[The consul-general of the Republic of Cuba in Australia, Nelida Hernandez Carmona, presented the following greetings to the first congress of the RSP]

On May 15, Ark Tribe, a rank-and-file member of the South Australia branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) construction division, became the second person to be charged by the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) for refusing to attend an interview.

Early in April, a Cairns couple was charged under the anti-abortion provisions in the Queensland criminal code. A 19-year-old woman faces seven years imprisonment for allegedly illegally terminating a pregnancy while her 21-year-old partner faces three years imprisonment for providing the abortion drug allegedly used for the termination.

The Queensland ALP government, re-elected in March, has put forward legislation to sell off the port of Brisbane, Queensland Motorways, Forestry Plantations Queensland, Queensland Rail’s coal business and the Abbot Point coal terminal in the state’s north. All of these government-owned corporations (GOCs) provide significant income for Premier Anna Bligh’s government.

The first congress of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) was held in Sydney over the June 6-8 long weekend. Sixty-two delegates and observers came from Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Geelong, Adelaide and Perth, and from several overseas locations, for three days of analysis, discussion and planning of future activities.

A “disgrace” and custody conditions “not fit for humans” were among the June 12 findings of Western Australian state coroner Alistair Hope on the January 27, 2008, death of 46-year-old Warburton Aboriginal elder Ian Ward.

A significant victory in the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was registered on June 8. It was reported in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper that the French-owned Veolia company plans to abandon its involvement in the light rail project being built to connect Jerusalem to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

On April 23, the Senate select committee on climate policy heard what should have been taken as a striking ultimatum: To avoid catastrophic climate change, there must be an immediate moratorium on the construction of coal-fired power plants, and existing coal-fired plants need to be shut within 20 years.

Last month the Melbourne Age revealed that members of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) had covered up the killing and wounding of civilians in Afghanistan by Australian Special Air Service (SAS) troops. In the same month, The Australian newspaper proudly reported the use of SAS patrols as death squads carrying out assassinations in Afghanistan.

A protest campaign has been launched in Brisbane against the charges bought against a young couple in Cairns under the anti-abortion provisions in the Queensland Criminal Code. The campaign was launched on May 9 when 80 people protested against an anti-abortion demonstration, blocking the anti-abortionists’ way to the state parliament building.

Whenever Australian capitalist politicians have talked about protection, welfare and reconciliation in relation to Aboriginal people they have actually meant dispossession, forced cultural assimilation and racial oppression. The capitalist class knows that much of its wealth has been gained at the expense of Aboriginal people through the takeover of their lands.

The Australian government is playing “Russian roulette with the climate system, with most of the chambers loaded”, according to CSIRO climatologist James Risbey.

Under the impact of the global and domestic recession, Australia’s manufacturing sector is facing its worst downturn since the early 1990s. Manufacturing output contracted 4.8% in the last quarter of 2008. More than 50,600 jobs in the sector were lost during the last nine months of 2008.

Forty years ago, on May 19, 1969, Victorian tramway workers union secretary Clarrie O’Shea was jailed for refusing to obey a court order that his union pay $8100 in fines under the penal sections of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act.

On April 16, a young couple faced court in Cairns on charges brought against them under the anti-abortion provisions in the Queensland Criminal Code (sections 224, 225 and 226).

“It’s time to bite the bullet on paid maternity leave” after “12 years of neglect”, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stated in September. But the Rudd Labor government is now trying to renege on a national parental leave scheme in the forthcoming federal budget – citing the global financial crisis as the prime excuse.

The tragic April 16 explosion on a boat carrying Afghan asylum seekers from Indonesia has refocused public attention on the Australian government’s refugee and “border protection” policies. The explosion – which killed 5 of the 47 asylum seekers on the boat – occurred while an Australian navy vessel was taking the boat to Christmas Island.

The global crisis of capitalism is being used by the ALP as an excuse to water down workers’ rights and measures to tackle climate change as well as for a general “belt tightening” of public services. But the Rudd government is keeping its commitment to maintain the Howard government’s annual 3% real increase in the Australian Defence Force (ADF) budget.

The museum-style artwork called Economy of Movement – A Piece of Palestine that was located in a subway under Melbourne’s Flinders Street train station contained two framed explanations of its centre piece – a stone, resting on a glass pedestal. The first frame explained: “The stone exhibited is from East Jerusalem, Israel (occupied Palestinian Territory).

The draft legislation for the government’s planned greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading scheme (ETS), released on March 10, contained no real answers to the problem.

The Rudd Labor government’s Fair Work Australia (FWA) bill, passed by federal parliament on March 20, was touted as finally killing off the Howard government’s deeply unpopular Work Choices laws. Work Choices dramatically reduced employment standards by replacing the comprehensive wages and conditions in awards with just five legislated standards.

Both the ALP and the recently amalgamated Liberal National Party (LNP) tried to present themselves as offering “change” in the state election on March 21. But pro-capitalist politics as usual is what remains in the wash-up. With Labor retaining government despite a 4% swing against it, Labor leader Anna Bligh became the first woman in Australia to be elected a state premier.

The Rudd Labor government claims that saving workers’ jobs from the impact of the deepening global economic recession is its top priority.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s lengthy essay on “The Global Financial Crisis”, in the February issue of the Monthly, blames the international economic crisis on neoliberalism.

Australian soldiers of the Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) were searching through homes in southern Uruzgan province on February 12, when, they claimed, they were fired on by Afghan resistance fighters. The troops returned fire, killing five children and wounding two children and two adults.