Saturday 27th of May marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum in which Australians voted overwhelmingly to amend the Constitution to allow the Commonwealth to make laws for Aboriginal people and include them in the Census of Population and Housing conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, commencing with the 1971 Census. The referendum put the following question to the Australian people: Do you approve the proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution entitled 'An Act to alter the Constitution so as to omit certain words relating to the people of the Aboriginal race in any state and so that Aboriginals are to be counted in reckoning the population'? The proposed law (... Read more...
On 1 March 2017 the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, introduced the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Bill 2017. The Bill responds to a number of Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) investigations and prosecutions for significant and systemic breaches of employee entitlements, many of which were in the franchise sector. The Bill has been referred to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 9 May 2017. The Committee received 35 submissions. The Bill is supported by a number of significant stakeholders, such as the Business Council of Australia and the union movement. It is opposed by the Franchise Council o... Read more...
A 24 April article in Foreign Policy magazine reports on a leaked United States Government internal budget document detailing proposed cuts to the State Department and US Agency for International Development (USAID) programs for fiscal year (FY) 2018. If these cuts are enacted, some of Australia’s closest and poorest neighbours would be among the most severely affected. Read more...
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