Brisbane

About 40 people crowded into the Brisbane Activist Centre on February 7 for a Green Left Weekly public forum titled “The truth about the Aboriginal Tent Embassy”, presented by prominent Murri leader and Socialist Alliance Aboriginal affairs spokesperson Sam Watson. Watson was an activist at the Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972, and attended the Embassy 40th anniversary commemoration over January 26-28.

Mike Crook, Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Sandgate in the March 24 Queensland state elections, released the statement below on February 10.

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The Socialist Alliance pledges its full support to the Queensland mining unionists engaged in industrial battle with Australia's biggest corporation, BHP Billiton.

The company is now in line to make a full-year profit almost equal to that of the four big Australian banks combined.

Socialist Alliance candidate Liam Flenady, who will run in the March 24 Queensland state election, announced the party's key policy pledge on February 4.

The policy said: “Set up a new Queensland State Bank: Provide low-interest loans to householders, farmers and small business. Stop the private banks ripping off the community.”

About 200 unionists gathered at King George Square on February 2 for a meeting to commemorate the centenary of the 1912 Brisbane General Strike, one of the first of its kind in the world. The Rail Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) and the Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) jointly sponsored the meeting.

Speakers, including RTBU state officials Owen Doogan and David Matters, ALP Senator Claire Moore, and QCU assistant secretary John Battams outlined the history of the 1912 strike and its significance for today. Murri elder Bobby Anderson gave a welcome to country.

About 200 people rallied and marched to mark Invasion Day on January 26. Several speakers noted that sovereignty had never been ceded by the Aboriginal people to the British colonisers, nor to the Australian government.

They stressed the need to continue to support Aboriginal rights, to campaign against Black deaths in custody, to oppose the Northern Territory Intervention and to pay back Stolen Wages. Speakers also emphasised the mobilisation in Canberra to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy occurring that day.

Following Queensland Labor Premier Anna Bligh’s announcement that a state election would take place on March 24, the two Socialist Alliance candidates issued a joint statement.

Mike Crook, who will contest the seat of Sandgate, and Liam Flenady, who will stand in South Brisbane said on January 27: “The major parties in the upcoming Queensland election stand for the neoliberal status quo. What the people really need is a radical transformation of the system.”

Protesters picketed a December 1 event in Red Hill addressed by Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia Thisara Samarasinghe. The protest was organised by the Refugee Action Collective to condemn Samarasinghe, a former navy admiral accused of war crimes against the Tamil people in northern Sri Lanka, and the appalling human rights record of the Sri Lankan government.

A bill recognising same-sex civil unions passed through the Queensland parliament on November 30 by a vote of 47 to 40. Labor MPs were given a "conscience vote" on the issue, but only four voted against. The Liberal-National Party opposition voted as a bloc against the bill. Most independent MPs also voted against the bill.

A rally to defend WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange took place outside the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on November 25. More than 50 people attended to demand the Australian government take firm diplomatic action to protect Assange. If extradited to Sweden from Britain, Assange faces a genuine risk of rendition to the US.

“People are joining up to the Lock the Gate Alliance all over the country,”, Lock the Gate president Drew Hutton told a rally of about 100 outside Brisbane’s Sofitel Hotel on November 24.

The rally was called to protest at the annual general meeting of coal seam gas (CSG) company LNG Ltd. The company’s AGM took place inside the hotel.

Hutton said: “The Lock the Gate Alliance is now moving to ‘Block the Gate’. We are calling on groups all over Australia to blockade wherever CSG companies are setting up, against the wishes of the farmers and landholders.