Aboriginal people demanding human rights - once again

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CALL TO ACTION  CALL TO ACTION  CALL TO ACTION  

CALL TO ACTION  CALL TO ACTION

ALL HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS    ALL HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS    ALL HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS

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CALL TO ACTION 

WED 14 APRIL

@ 1:30 pm

 @ MAYSAR  

184 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy

The Wilderness Society at Mitcham: forests and catchments on the agenda

Most of the big environmental groups are located in the inner city of Melbourne and seldom take their meetings or operations far from the inner suburbs.  Full marks to the Wilderness Society.  It is coming to Mitcham in the Middle East of Melbourne.  So please support this meeting and the Victorian forests and catchment areas by coming to this conveniently located meeting.

Mitcham
Wednesday 28 April 2010 - 6.30pm
The Willis Room (front of the Civic Centre)
Whitehorse Civic Centre, 379 Whitehorse Road, Nunawading
Melways ref: 48 G9

For further details regarding these meetings contact Jacquie Kelly t: 03 9038 0814 e:jacquie.kelly@wilderness.org.au

And this is what the meeting is all about:

In 2010 there is a unique opportunity to help  protect Victoria’s water catchments and carbon banks from woodchipping.

In Victoria alone in the last twelve months, we have pushed the Brumby Government to protect another 140,000 hectares of red gum and old growth forests in new reserves and National Parks.

This could not have been achieved without  support. But more needs to be done.

Victoria’s forests are our water catchments, carbon stores and home to a range of rare and threatened wildlife. Yet tragically logging and woodchipping reduces water supply and quality and releases dangerous CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, making climate change worse. On top of that, native wildlife such as the Long-footed Potoroo is pushed closer to extinction.

It’s time for the Victorian government to act. In the lead up to the 2006 election, the Victorian Govt promised to protect the last remaining stands of old growth forest. This promise has not been delivered.

2010 is an election year, so it’s your chance to stand up for protecting water catchments and taking decisive action on climate change. It’s also the year when Victoria’s huge plantation estate reaches maturity, and is now large enough to substitute for logging native forests. 

Victorian Government corporation breaches human rights in water management

Jan Beer - is she dangerous?

Miss Eagle has been gone for a long time.  Some of it, in the beginning, was due to busy-ness but then came a long bout of ill health.  I have wondered what it would take to get me off my backside to write again and to-day the answer has come.  This story has made page 3 in to-day's edition of The Age.  It quite clear that Jan Beer's human rights and civil liberties have been breached and abridged by Melbourne Water.  

Melbourne Water is the major water corporation in Victoria.  It is wholly owned by the State Government of Victoria.  The government is the only shareholder as is the case with water corporations throughout Victoria.  In fact, the government never tables a balance sheet for these corporations.

Victoria is one of two jurisdictions in Victoria that has a human rights instrument.  Victoria's legislative instrument takes the form of a Charter of Rights and Responsibilities.  Read here to discover the freedoms to which Victorians are entitled.  As you will see from the article in The Age, Jan has been arrested.  However, arrests are common as acts of civil disobedience and as part of a campaigns which may want to test the legality or force of particular laws.  Jan was arrested in 2008 for these sorts of reasons.  The picture above was taken in early 2009 and, while she is pictured standing cheerfully beside a water-swigging policeman, she is not under arrest and not being treated like a terrorist either.  Funny that, since she is such a danger that Melbourne Water could devote a slice of its budget to breaching Jan's human rights.  

Jan is a leader, along with Mike Dalmau, in the Plug the Pipe Campaign.  They have been outspoken about the Brumby Labor Government's plan to provide water to Melbourne via the North-South Pipeline as part of the Food Bowl Modernisation Program and the Northern Victorian Irrigation Renewal Project. 

Miss Eagle expects that the publicity surrounding this breach of human rights will not bode well for the Brumby Labor Government.  Polls are showing water as a major negative for the Brumby Labor Government which faces the polls on the last Saturday in November this year.  

One major environmental group in Victoria, after carrying out their own polling and focus groups, looks like running a water/rivers campaign on the theme of "Brumby doesn't have a plan".  This in spite of millions of dollars spent on the North-South Pipeline which cannot deliver as promised without environmental deprivation and billions of dollars spent on building a desalination plant  most of which will go to that wonderful human rights proponent (ahem!) Suez/Degremont.