Selected Excerpts:

Earlier this year, the Victorian government amended planning legislation in Victoria with the approval of the Planning and Environment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Act 2026.

The new Act has been designed to speed up housing delivery and development by “cutting red tape”. The legislation changes mean that many types of new urban development applications now go directly to the Minister of Planning for approval instead of local councils and are separated into 3 different types of applications. The first two types of low and moderate impact proposals for new single dwellings, townhouses and low-rise apartment developments typically preclude the need for local notification, and VCAT appeal rights no longer apply.

If a large high density or commercial development was proposed, most people would assume that local residents surrounding the area would be informed. However, postal notice is now restricted to adjoining landowners. This means that potentially, a new twelve storey development or data centre can be built a street away and the only notification required is an online notice or physical sign on the land. Appealing a new large-scale development that has a huge impact on local amenity and wellbeing has also been restricted.

The new legislation also means that planning appeals are restricted to residents who received direct notice of the new planning application. This means that if you live just streets away from a new high-rise development that is likely to take your daylight, you won’t even have the right to appeal. The changes raise serious implications for democratic decision-making in urban planning and city design, ignoring broader community input on decisions that will affect the ongoing liveability of an area for decades to come.

Maybe there was a reason Labor of the 1970s were aligned with Social Democracy and Unionism, rather than Big Business and Capitalism?

Selected Excerpts:

Until recently, the Australian Education Union’s Victorian branch had been locked into disputes with the state government over teacher’s pay and school funding. It was running paid ads against Labor MPs until early October.

The union is not formally affiliated with Labor and has not endorsed it at this campaign.

We are absolutely not campaigning for Labor,” says Lucy Honan, a state councillor with the Australian Education Union in Melbourne. “I can’t even describe to you the sense of anger we have. It’s desperation and anger.”

The Health and Community Services Union, meanwhile, has eight members running this election – none for the Labor party it is affiliated with. Its secretary, Paul Healey, has signed off on flyers encouraging members to support the Greens and Socialist candidates.

The AMWU, meanwhile, won’t tell its members who to vote for but is distributing material highlighting the achievements of unions in the 12 years Labor has been in government – things like free Tafe, criminalising wage theft and portable long service leave.

“Yes, people are angry, people are shitty,” Mavromatis says. “But when people are angry and shitty they just remember the shit and they don’t remember all the good stuff.

“It’s important to remind members what unions have achieved with a Labor government since 2014.”

But for some, it’s not enough.

“The unions and a whole lot of low-paid workers see the premier, driving around in the big red campaign bus that says he’s for working people, and rightfully wondering, well is he?” one MP says.

Within Labor, this is called "Thin Labourism" - a few mild/incremental adjustments here and there, small increases in wages, but no large reforms or wider socially democratic policies. No trying to change or fix the systems at play.

Something to watch, something to share around.

Something to watch, something to share around.

Archived/Unpaywalled version here:

https://archive.is/JUCng

…and yes, The French Student Protests are also GenZ protests. More information here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gen_Z_protests

For more information on the current wave of Gen-Z protests, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gen_Z_protests

"In the name of Allah, it is the darknesses" (Bismillah c’est les ténèbres). That's what a French undercover cop typed into a Snapchat DM conversation with a child while trying to infiltrate the protest movement that's happening in French high schools and across the country right now. The cop was hoping people would believe he was a teenager of North African descent named Madu, very interested in breaking things and looking for an opportunity to do that. But instead, people interpreted him as the most racist version of the "How do you do, fellow kids?" meme that has ever existed. And now "Bismillah c’est les ténèbres" has become a slogan of the protest movement.

It's written on signs at rallies. Greta Thunberg is saying it, and it's become a meme both in France and internationally.

The Dil Pickle Club (often spelled "Dill Pickle") was a Bohemian nightclub, forum, performance venue, and free-speech center in Chicago Illinois, active primarily from the mid-1910s through the early 1930s.[1][2] The club became associated with Chicago's labor-radical, artistic, and "hobohemian" subcultures.[3][4]

Founded by labor organizer John "Jack" Jones, a former member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the club hosted lectures, debates, poetry readings, theater productions, dances, and political discussions. Its audiences included labor organizers, professors, journalists, artists, hoboes, reformers, socialites, and political radicals.[5][6][7]

The club became an important gathering place during the period sometimes called the Chicago Renaissance, attracting figures such as Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson, Ben Hecht, Clarence Darrow, Emma Goldman, and Ben Reitman.[2] Historians have also identified the club as an important site in the development of early queer social life and sexual discourse in Chicago.[8][9]

Historian Franklin Rosemont described the Dil Pickle as "far and away the best-loved, most notorious, most stimulating, and most influential little gathering place in the city's history."[1]