As COVID-19 changes the way we live and work, it’s essential that everyone has access to safe healthcare. Yet there are tens of thousands of people living in Australia without access to Medicare. People who have to make the choice between risking deportation or seeking urgent medical help. They know that hospitals and doctors can report them to the Department of Home Affairs if questions are raised about their visa status. With borders around the world closed and international flights costing upwards of $5000 per person, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are forced to face impossible choices. The Morrison Government’s cruel directive that temporary migrants should just ‘go home’ forces thousands of people to make impossible choices, through no fault of their own. In the midst of a global pandemic, people must be able to access essential healthcare without fear of deportation and family separation.

Glady Berejiklian and the NSW Liberal Party have not provided any relief to international students and temporary workers during the COVID-19 crisis. Most temporary workers have now lost their jobs and cannot return home. They are trapped here. Many other international workers work in essential services, supporting the whole community - but they have no support extended to them in a time of crisis. NSW is the only state to provide no support.

These workers pick the fruit and vegetables we eat everyday, they’re in the hospitality industry, they’re delivery drivers and carers, they’re the backbone of our economy. The JobKeeper payment exists to provide a lifeline to those hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis, how can the Morrison Government justify their decision to exclude over 1.1 million migrant workers, temporary visa holders and casuals? The Morrison Government does not address the very real public health crisis that millions of workers are facing. Asking them to ‘go home’ or raid their meagre retirement savings to survive COVID-19 is not only short-sighted, it’s racist. So many of these workers have built lives here and have made Australia their home and with borders closed, these workers have nowhere else to go. The Government must extend income support to all workers. Not doing so risks the entire community’s health and shirks Australia's moral responsibility to look after the wellbeing of all who are here during an unprecedented pandemic. The lack of support for this group of people shows that the Government treats migrants and international students as cash cows. They hire them for cheap labour and ask them to pay huge education fees, but when things get difficult, they wash their hands clean of any responsibility. This pandemic does not discriminate based on visa status or employment status, and neither should we. Everyone deserves to be safe. That's why we need Minister Ruston to ensure a wage subsidy for all workers so that all of us can follow public health advice and stay safe during this crisis.

The Government must extend income support to all workers. Not doing so risks the entire community’s health and shirks Australia's moral responsibility to look after the wellbeing of all who are here during an unprecedented pandemic. The lack of support for this group of people shows that the Government treats migrants and international students as cash cows. They hire them for cheap labour and ask them to pay huge education fees, but when things get difficult, they wash their hands clean of any responsibility. This pandemic does not discriminate based on visa status or employment status, and neither should we. Everyone deserves to be safe. That's is why we need Minister Ruston to ensure a wage subsidy for all workers so that all of us can follow public health advice and stay safe during this crisis. Sign the petition now.

This can happen to any visa holder. If you are charged with a crime you did not commit in Queensland you have three options. 1. Accept visa cancellation and deportation without conviction. 2. Accept a criminal conviction and deportation without trial. 3. Wait for in excess of four years remanded in custody, or in immigration detention for a trial date. Whilst you wait for four years you are unable to work and support your family. On conviction in Queensland, most people charged with murder are convicted of Manslaughter, and are sentenced to 8-9 years (2.5-4.5 years of which will be served in prison). This means someone wrongly accused of a crime who is a visa holder, on the most trivial charge, spends longer detained or incarcerated than almost any convicted person except convicted Murderers. This is unlawful, but is accepted best practice in Queensland. Surely no visa should be cancelled prior to a conviction bring recorded. Also a charge may never exceed 12 months progressing to trial for a detained or remanded person. Further, time in detention awaiting trial, should never exceed the base (incarcerated) sentence, let alone the head sentence. The Crown (Federal Government) interfering in a Queensland charge, by cancelling the visa of a defendant was expressly protected at the time the Criminal Code was written. Now QLD Police request that the Federal Government cancel any charged persons visa, as it gains them an insurmountable advantage. Clough v Leahy, Griffith CJ, speaking for the Court, had said[200]: "Nor can the Crown interfere with the administration of the course of justice. It is not to be supposed that the Crown would do such a thing; but, if persons acting under a Commission from the Crown were to do acts which, if done by private persons, would amount to an unlawful interference with the course of justice, the act would be unlawful, and would be punishable."

I created the petition based on the myriad of scandals the Morrison government is embroiled in. The prime minister isn’t honestly dealing with allegations of corruption and rorting. He isn’t taking climate action seriously and the political/financial interference of the fossil fuel industry is likely behind that. He’s hell bent on rolling out of the Indue card despite evidence of how it disadvantages the most vulnerable people. And there’s an overall lack of accountability, transparency and integrity. Where is a Federal ICAC? The list goes on. I could also include the unwillingness to implement recommendations from Royal Commissions, the poor response to the bushfire crisis, and the rise of right wing extremism, and claiming a surplus from the NDIS underspend while splashing money around dodgy contracts with Indue, Paladin and others with links to the LNP. I truly believe that if enough ordinary people stand up we can let politicians know that democracy belongs to us and not to them. They should serve the public good and not just be in it for themselves, and the power that comes with their elected positions. When they make bad decisions, they need to take responsibility and be answerable to us. I’m sure there’s enough of us who want to give the prime minister the message: Scotty from marketing - we’re not buying what you’re selling.

Because Pauline Hanson’s rhetoric is dangerous -- it inflames and radicalises those who seek to do violence to others. It emboldens far right extremists. Many recent perpetrators of mass shootings in the US have closely echoed the kinds of racist, inflammatory comments broadcast on Fox News and other parts of the media. Let’s stop our media from becoming a platform for hate. Sign the petition to Channel Nine now.

On Monday, the Gold Coast Young LNP posted a video that has been widely condemned as racist and offensive. The Empower team was shocked and horrified by the statements made in the video, and did not hesitate to condemn them unconditionally. No such condemnation, or comment, has been heard from Barclay's electoral group - Real for UQU. The attitudes promoted by this video and by Barclay are the kind of attitudes that keep racism against people of colour well and truly alive in Australia, and should be met with outrage, not silence. Unfortunately, Barcaly's behaviour in this video mirrors what many students reported witnessing from multiple Real campaigners during the 2019 UQU election: casual racism and discrimination. Empower stood up to this behaviour then, and we will stand up to it now. These beliefs have no place at our university, or in our student union. Barclay Mcgain must resign.

The proposed redundancy of Tess comes at a time when she is more needed than ever. Recent changes, budget cuts and instability at Nura Gili Centre at the Kensington campus as well as the shockingly low employment of Indigenous (and, further CALD) staff at UNSW marks this as a part of a larger, ongoing issue at an institutional level that needs to be remedied rather than exacerbated. Diverse staff are crucial to not only the education of students but further, to their well-being. Tess remains one of the few staff members that Indigenous, CALD and other marginalised students feel they can turn to and rely on. As well as her role as a mentor, Tess is also professionally and pedagogically a boon to the institution. Her course Aboriginal Art Now has influenced countless students and has led many to pursue further and higher research - academically, curatorially and artistically - in a more considered and critically rigorous way. In addition, Aboriginal Art Now remains one of the few Indigenous art courses available at UNSW Art & Design. She has also been instrumentally involved in a vast number of exhibitions in the Indigenous arts community in the last 30 years. The volumes of academic, artistic and curatorial output of Tess evidences her prolific reach and influence in the arts sector. As Associate Professor David Garneau suggested, her contribution to the arts sector deserves an honorary doctorate. Her removal would constitute a massive loss to the UNSW community, and the wider ripple on effects of this would be unimaginable.

The petition of the undersigned shows: • that approximately 800 refugees and asylum seekers remain on Manus Island and Nauru after nearly six years; • that there is no possibility that all of these people will be able to go to the United States; • that the medical condition of many of them has deteriorated alarmingly; • that necessary medical treatment is often not available in either Papua New Guinea or Nauru and can most appropriately be provided in Australia.

The majority of Australians do their grocery shopping at Coles or Woolworths. Yet the farm workers who feed us, who pick and pack the fruit and vegetables we all eat, are enduring wage theft and exploitation on Australian farms. Two thirds of surveyed workers reported earning below minimum wage, sometimes as low as $4.80 per hour. Cash contractors act as controlling mediators between farms and workers, often resulting in stolen wages, no superannuation, sexual harassment, bullying and harassment. Coles and Woolworths must not continue to profit from this exploitation. Add your voice to stand with farm workers today!

Hochi Mama is a Vietnamese restaurant at the top of Melbourne’s Chinatown. It’s also Melbourne’s number one Asian restaurant on the venue rating site, TripAdvisor. I worked there as a bartender. And I was on a flat rate of $20 per hour, no penalty rates. In just four months I had over $3000 (including super) stolen from me. Often, we felt we were treated like dirt. Hochi Mama had a staff WhatsApp group where we got our rosters, we swapped shifts and management would give us instructions about our jobs. This was also how workers found out they’d been fired, by seeing we’d been deleted from the staff WhatsApp group. It happened to me. It happened to lots of other staff. In front of everyone. Most bosses have the decency to actually TELL you that you'd been fired. Not these guys. And it left everyone feeling afraid and wondering: who’s next? Migrant kitchen staff were treated even worse. They worked double shifts of 13-14 hours for a flat rate of $70 or $100, in cash. I even saw them sleeping on milk crates out the back of the restaurant between shifts. It’s not okay for any worker to be treated like this, particularly in a wealthy country like ours. All over this industry, we see migrant workers treated like an underclass. It’s just wrong. We need to stand together and demand fairness and respect for ALL hospo workers. That’s the only way anything is ever going to change.