MELBOURNE — Arun Pradhan, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Melbourne district in the November 30 Victorian elections, has called for mass civil disobedience to stop the controversial Commonwealth Games village planned for Melbourne’s Royal Park.

The Greens, the Socialist Alliance and high profile independents are opposing the development. “Not only will the village be damaging to the environment and strain already inadequate public transport infrastructure, but ultimately it is another sell off: it gives public assets to a private developer”, Pradhan told Green Left Weekly.

“The games village is just one example of Premier Steve Brack’s privatising via the back door”, Pradhan continued. He refuted government claims that 200 of the 1000 houses planned would be made available for public housing, pointing out that they will be privately owned”affordable” housing.

Pradhan said that the games village was the “tip of an iceberg of sell offs”, pointing to a report commissioned by the Office of Housing that proposed to “give away” 18,200 public housing units, worth up to $5 billion, to privately run “housing associations”.

A meeting organised by the Royal Park Protection Group on November 13 was told by Richard DiNatale, Greens candidate for Melbourne district, that if elected he would introduce a private members bill to stop the development.

In response, Labor Minister Gavin Jennings argued that such a bill would be useless and not even be discussed in parliament. He claimed “that without massive civil disobedience this project will proceed”, and added that people should vote Labor, because the development is inevitable.

Pradhan told GLW that it was naive to rely on the parliamentary process to stop the development, instead stating that the time was coming for “direct action”.

Pradhan has had some experience of such initiatives: he was one of the organisers of the mass blockade of the World Economic Forum at Crown Casino two years ago and also travelled to Woomera detention centre as part of protests against detention centres last year.

“We can stop this development with mass civil disobedience — peaceful protests on the site every time they try to go ahead”, Pradhan said. “This is dependent on winning even broader community support for the issue. At the same time we need to continue negotiations with unions to apply “green bans” and encourage a boycott of the development.”

In response to criticism that such action would be “undemocratic”, Pradhan was emphatic: “Democracy is not something that should be limited to a ballot box once every four years. Real democracy needs to come from grassroots participation, activity and empowerment of local communities.”

From Green Left Weekly, November 27, 2002.
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