Assange: Sydney Peace Award

Julian Assange will be honoured alongside Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama by the Sydney Peace Foundation, which awarded him with its gold medal.

The foundation's director, Stuart Rees, said the award was far more significant than the organisation's annual peace prize because it was handed out so rarely. Mr Assange will be only the fourth recipient in 14 years.

"We think the WikiLeaks revelations and the courage to persist with them is a watershed in the struggle for freedom of expression, for freedom of speech, and that for the first time in decades, if not in centuries, the secret power of governments, of military, of business, is starting to be unveiled," he said.

Professor Rees said the release of the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables, leaked from the US State Department, and before that of the Iraq and Afghan war logs, had had a seismic effect on the world order.

"It's as though we've been hoodwinked for several centuries - allowing the people in power to do as they like, allegedly in our interests," he said.

ACTU: Budget submission

In the ACTU Budget submission, Facing the Future, unions have identified a number of priority areas that can be addressed by the Federal Government. They include:

• Building a fairer and more sustainable tax system, that is progressive and promotes participation and productivity improvements.
• Increasing job and income security by delivering better jobs with good wages and conditions through collective bargaining and fairer industrial laws.
• Planning for an ageing population, lifting the Superannuation Guarantee to 12% and ensuring more of workers’ savings end up in their post-retirement incomes.
• Acting on climate change to ensure Australia fully participates in and benefits from the global low-carbon economy and that working families are supported during the transition.
• Rebuilding the infrastructure of flood affected cities and regions and investing in new infrastructure to expand economic capacity and meet social needs.
• Improving investment in education, skills and training, including apprenticeships, to establish a workforce that is suited to the future demands of Australia’s economic growth.

Download Budget submission (PDF)

Gillard confirms flood levy

The federal government will impose a one-off flood levy of 0.5 per cent for middle-income earners, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

A levy of 0.5 per cent will be applied on taxable income between $50,001 and $100,000 and a levy of 1 per cent will be applied on taxable income above $100,000.

"Anyone earning under $50,000 will not pay the levy," Ms Gillard told the National Press Club.

"In other words it is not like the Medicare levy, which for most taxpayers applies to all their income - it is like income tax rates which apply only above certain income levels."

Someone who earns an income of $60,000 will pay just under $1 extra a week under the levy, Ms Gillard said.

"A person earning $100,000 per year will pay just under an extra $5 per week," she said.

The levy would apply only in the 2011-12 financial year and was expected to raise $1.8 billion, she said.

"People who were affected by the floods will not pay this levy.

"Anyone who receives the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment for a flood this financial year will be exempt.

"And importantly, this levy is completely separate from donations."

What you will pay a week

$50,000 - nil
$55,000 - 48 cents
$60,000 - 96 cents
$65,000 - $1.44
$70,000 - $1.92
$75,000 - $2.40
$80,000 - $2.88
$90,000 - $3.85
$100,000 - $4.81
$110,000 - $6.73
$120,000 - $8.65
$130,000 - $10.58
$140,000 - $12.50
$150,000 - $14.42
$160,000 - $16.35
$170,000 - $18.27
$180,000 - $20.19
$200,000 - $24.04

Stop power sell-off rally Sydney

Join the loud chorus of protest against the NSW government's sale of electricity retailers and trading rights for generators that will have severe impacts on household bills, the energy workforce and the environment.

The sell off of NSW electricity is purely a policy of NSW Labor politicians, 80% of NSW voters are opposed and it is against the expressed policy of the NSW Branch of the Labor Party - it only has support from the press and their big business advertisers. It is actually a give away of very lucrative common assets so that only commercial interests will decide the price of electricity in NSW.

when

05 February 2011

from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm

where

Top of Martin Place, Macquarie St, Sydney

The $5.3bn sale is a disastrous deal for the people of NSW. The Upper House inquiry has lifted the lid on some of the details of the transaction despite the best efforts of the Premier to shut down the inquiry and scare off potential witnesses. Join our call for the sale to be reversed.

Speakers confirmed include: Charmaine Crowe, Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association (MC), David Shoebridge Greens NSW MP, Pepe Clarke, Nature Conservation Council, Sally McManus, Australian Services Union, Jess Moore, Socialist Alliance and John Kaye Greens NSW MP.

Robert Fisk in Cairo

Robert Fisk: Egypt: Death throes of a dictatorship

The Egyptian tanks, the delirious protesters sitting atop them, the flags, the 40,000 protesters weeping and crying and cheering in Freedom Square and praying around them, the Muslim Brotherhood official sitting amid the tank passengers. Should this be compared to the liberation of Bucharest? Climbing on to an American-made battle tank myself, I could only remember those wonderful films of the liberation of Paris. A few hundred metres away, Hosni Mubarak's black-uniformed security police were still firing at demonstrators near the interior ministry. It was a wild, historical victory celebration, Mubarak's own tanks freeing his capital from his own dictatorship.

In the pantomime world of Mubarak himself – and of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Washington – the man who still claims to be president of Egypt swore in the most preposterous choice of vice-president in an attempt to soften the fury of the protesters – Omar Suleiman, Egypt's chief negotiator with Israel and his senior intelligence officer, a 75-year-old with years of visits to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and four heart attacks to his credit. How this elderly apparatchik might be expected to deal with the anger and joy of liberation of 80 million Egyptians is beyond imagination. When I told the demonstrators on the tank around me the news of Suleiman's appointment, they burst into laughter.

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