Jim McIlroy, Brisbane

Around 60 members of the Aboriginal community and their supporters held an angry meeting at Jagera House on November 23 to discuss the increasing police harassment of Indigenous people in Musgrave Park and other areas of the city. Police have been hassling Aboriginal, long-term users of the parks, and tipping out their alcohol.

The meeting participants described this treatment as racist; many non-Indigenous people drink freely at barbecues and other events in the parks. The meeting, chaired by Aboriginal community leader Sam Watson, resolved to organise a delegation to visit the police commissioner and Brisbane City Council authorities to seek a reasonable solution to the issue.

The protest meeting comes in the midst of a controversy over a push by Liberal Lord Mayor Campbell Newman for the introduction of stronger “move-on” powers for police in King George Square and other public areas. This is despite a community consultation on the issue attracting 248 submissions, 85% of which opposed new police powers.

One submission, from the Homeless Persons Legal Clinic, argued that the move-on powers would “merely shift the problem of homelessness from one geographical location to another”. Clinic co-ordinator Monica Taylor told a public hearing that the move-on powers would target vulnerable members of the community and “any suggestion that they are applied equally to a whole cross-section of the population is naive.”

ALP members of the council and the state government have refused to oppose the new laws, although Deputy Lord Mayor David Hinchliffe said he doubted they would solve any problems.

From Green Left Weekly, November 30, 2005.
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