Anthony Albanese

A predictably appalling article from Nicholas Reece, City of Melbourne Lord Mayor, and a seasoned career growth enthusiast, has found a cozy spot in Australia's legacy press.

The letter below was sent to Prime Minister Albanese on 24 January 2025. In it, I refer to the abduction of Professor Rasha Al-Ali from the University of Homs.

Unfortunately the 'Online Safety Amendment (Protecting Australian Children from Online Harm) Bill 2023 passed the Australian Senate last night, with an amendment to be inserted after section 63D.  I attach both the bill and the Senate amendment to the bill. 

This article has been adapted from a double-sided A5 leaflet.

How is this democracy!?

The overwhelming majority of 98 submissions[1] from the Australian public strenuously oppose the Albanese government’s foreshadowed “Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation)” MAD bill. Any objective perusal of the debate about the MAD bill in Hansard [2] shows that the government clearly lost the argument on both the 6th and 7th November. In spite of losing the argument, the MAD Bill was still carried 78 votes to 66. Every Labor member voted for the bill, whilst the Greens, the Independents and every member of the Opposition voted against it.

See also: Citizens Party press release of 19/11/2024, Close to victory against MAD censorship bill—the Greens must also reject it.

(PDF containing transcript can be found here) Genocide is reliant on the dehumanisation of others to justify inhumane action. Since 7 October, we have heard Netanyahu describe Gaza as a city of darkness and ask people to flee or face certain death. Of the Palestinians, Netanyahu says: 'We are facing monsters.

While the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024 purports to aim to enhance transparency and accountability among digital platforms, it does not adequately protect users from arbitrary actions by governments regarding the content they post.

Dear Prime Minister Anthony Albanese,

As you are surely aware, Julian Assange has been locked away since 11 April 2019 – more than 5 years ago - in solitary confinement for more than 23 hours per day for more than 5 years

If Julian Assange, who has broken no British law [1] can be treated in this way, this means that any Australian citizen can also be imprisoned. (This article has been adapted from a PDF file. To download, see the end of this article.)

In the recent 29 February by-election for the UK seat of Rochdale, George Galloway campaigned against Israel's mass-murder of Palestinians in Gaza and for Julian Assange's freedom. He defeated the two major pro-war parties, Labor and the Conservatives, to become the new MP for Rochdale in the House of Commons. In the attached 18 minute YouTube video, he is interviewed by Syrian-born British journalist Richard Medhurst.

At the end of this document you can see a list of who voted for Mr Wilkie's motion for, among other things, [underlining] the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr Assange can return home to his family in Australia. The motion was carried by a majority, which included the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. References: Nos 11 and 12 in THE PARLIAMENT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS No. 104
WEDNESDAY, 14 FEBRUARY 2024

Australia’s  population of 26.5m grew at the rate of 2.2% (year ending March 2023.) At 2.2% growth rate our current population would increase to 30m within 10 years and double in 31.85 yrs and would reach 150m by 2103, within the life-expectancy of a child born today. Less than 25% of that 2.2 rate of population growth was due to natural increase. Without the 454,361 migration, we would have grown at about 0.55%.

Monday 31 July 2023 update included below.

Dear Andrew Wilkie,

On 9 June you said, "It’s deeply disappointing that the United Kingdom High Court has denied Julian Assange the right to appeal his extradition to the United States.

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In a media release on 17 July 2023, Annette Brownlie of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) welcomed the decision by India not to particpate in the 'Talisman Sabre military exercises which were scheduled to be held from 22 July in Queensland's Shoalwater Bay. Other participants are New Zealand, Australia and the United States.

I emailed the following to Independent Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie and to a number of other members of the Bring Julian Assange Parliamentary Support Group on the evening of Monday 12 June, the day before the 13 June resumption of the sitting of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. How you can help : Contact your local Member of Parliament, your state Senators or members of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Support Group and ask them to vote for my proposed motion, included below or, at least, to vote for the procedural motion to allow Standing Orders to be suspended so that motion can be put. Please let us know here on candobetter of your efforts, any responses or lack thereof.

At the Sydney protest for Julian Assange last Thursday 25 May, David McBride, the former SAS officer who exposed the murder of unarmed Afghans by Australian troops, spoke alongside Stella Assange and Scott Ludlum. McBride's speech is included immediately below, whilst Stella Assange's speech is included further below.

I posted the following letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus at around 11:00am on Thursday 7 April during a protest for Julian Assange outside the electoral office of Mark Dreyfus in the Melbourne suburb of Mordialloc. I had hoped to hand a copy of this letter to Mark Dreyfus in person or, at least, to a member of his staff, but his office was unattended. For security reasons, as explained to me by a member of the Federal Police, there was no slot through which I could put the letter, so I had to send the letter through the mail. I expect that my letter would have been received in Mark Dreyfus' office the next day and that my letters to Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong will arrive at Parliament House on Tuesday 11 April following the Easter long Weekend. I have also e-mailed this letter, with the subject Please act humanely now to end the illegal imprisonment of Julian Assange, and sent CC copies to members of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Support Group.

The following article has been adapted from the leaflet handed out at the weekly Vigil for Julian Assange in the evening of Friday 17 March 2023 at Melbourne's Flinders Street Station: Julian Assange, the multiple award-winning Australian journalist, has been imprisoned in solitary confinement for 23 hours per day in London's Belmarsh prison since April 2019 - almost four years ago.

Prime Minister Albanese should take note from the young female Syrian in the embedded video below: The illegal sanctions which Australia, the US and its other allies have imposed against Syria, made life close to unbearable for Syrians, even before the earthquake. Those illegal sanctions are now causing death as those struggling to rescue earthquake survivors are deprived of life-saving equipment and medicine as consequence of the sanctions.

Hersh, one of the most famous and respected journalists in the world, has just published an investigative report showing that the United States, in cahoots with Norway, conspired and executed the destruction of Nordstream2.  The United States, Norway (and investors in Norway petroleum) were the obvious immediate beneficiaries.  See Seymour Hirsh, "How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline," Substack News (8 Feb 2023)

Update, 8 Feb 2023: I have received a reply from Josh Wilson and responded further below. They both now precede my original "Open Letter" of 6 February, which is further below.

At Woodford Folk Festival, 28 December 2022, Prime Minister Albanese spoke about how democracies all over the world are coming ‘under attack from a whole range of corrosive, insidious forces’ and that ‘no-one is immune’ (see Appendix 2 below). He also said that by next year there will be an indigenous voice in parliament.

As the embedded YouTube video below shows, yesterday, on 30 November 2022, in the House of Representatives, during question time , Dr Monique Ryan, the independent member for the north-eastern Melbourne metropolition seat of Kooyong, pointed out to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that only political intervention will free Julian Assange.

There are two critical facts which, to me, don't seem to have been taken into account by many of those, both here and overseas, who are fighting for Julian Assange's freedom. Had these facts been understood and then acted upon, I believe that Julian Assange would be free today or, at worst, our prospects of freeing him in the near future would be much greater than what is now the case.

After John Howard followed up on the Kennett-led destruction of state awards, with his Corporations and Work Choices legislation,[1] the floodgates were opened for mass import of cheap labour.  Before that, it simply did not pay to import cheap labour to Australia, because it was too hard for employers to escape the enforcement of industry awards at State, and, to a lesser extent, Federal level.  It was for this reason that Australia had, 'til then, escaped the widespread scourg

This article points to the utter failure of Australia's parliamentary system to deal with Julian Assange's predicament and the associated public concern.

Update, 19 February 2023: According to a video by EU President Ursula von der Leyen on 30 November 2022, which she soon edited, 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have perished [1] since the launch of Russia's Special Military Operation on 24 January 2022. If true, the number of Ukrainian military deaths greatly outnumbers her figure for 20,000 claimed civilian deaths. This makes Ukrainian soldiers, mostly conscripts including ethnic Hungarians the greatest victims of the Ukraine conflict, a conflict, which is clearly a war of choice by the West and its puppet, Zilenskyy.

Former German Chancellor Merkel, former French President Hollande and former Ukrainian President Poroshenko have all revealed that the 2014 Minsk Accords were only designed to buy time for then Ukrainian President Poroshenko to re-equip the Ukrainian Army. Even President Zilenskyy admitted on Thursday 9, February that he personally refused to implement those agreements. So the ongoing war in Ukraine is clearly a war of choice by President Zilenskyy and and his US masters.

However, even if we were to, somehow, still find a way to attribute all of those deaths to Russia and not to the Kiev regime, how does this compare with the record of the United States, which by one estimate, has, since the end of the Second World War in 1945, killed between 20 and 30 million people in many bloody wars of aggression across the globe? Even United States political leaders such as President JFK, his brother, Robert and Marin Luther King, who tried to stop these wars have also fallen victim in circumstances, which can be described at best, as very suspicious.

One fact, apparently not properly appreciated amongst the vast popular movement in support of Julian Assange, both in Australia and overseas, is that, in spite of the fact that the Government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese could make the British Government release Julian Assange today, it has chosen not to.