Jim McIlroy

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.

"Still no justice! Stop Black deaths in custody!" were the themes of a rally held at Emma Miller Place on November 19. The protest marked 20 years since the release of the report of the Royal Commission into Black deaths in custody in 1991. Up to 150 people attended the rally and marched through city streets to Musgrave Park in West End to demand a new Royal Commission into the Aboriginal deaths since 1991. Murri activist and rally chair Sam Watson announced that a new Deaths in Custody Watch Committee would be formed in Brisbane to monitor treatment of Aboriginal prisoners.

November 19 marks the seventh anniversary of “the police murder of Mulrunji Doomadgee on Palm Island”, says Sam Watson, a prominent Queensland Murri leader and Socialist Alliance member. In Brisbane, supporters of Aboriginal rights will rally that day to demand governments implement all 339 recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Black deaths in custody. Watson told Green Left Weekly: “It is important that Aboriginal people and their supporters mark this solemn day with a rally and march to continue our urgent call for justice for all Aboriginal deaths in custody.

“It’s great to see the sense of coming together shown in your camp here,” Murri community leader Sam Watson told a gathering of about 40 people at the Occupy Brisbane camp at Post Office Square on October 29. Watson spoke at a special forum as Occupy Brisbane entered its third week at the square. The work of the camp has continued to develop and expand, as up to 40 tents now occupy the park, and an “OccuLibrary” has been added to the “OccuPlay” childcare tent. General assemblies are held every evening to discuss issues facing the occupation.

The second Sunday forum of the Free University of Occupied Brisbane discussed “creative forms of protest” on October 30 in Post Office Square. Phil Monsour from Justice for Palestine talked about the boycott divestment and sanctions campaign against apartheid Israel.

A powerful art exhibition took place in Brisbane over October 15-23, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the SIEV-X tragedy on October 19, 2001, in which 353 asylum seekers, including 146 children, drowned when their fishing boat sank between Indonesia and Australia. The exhibition featured the works of Melbourne-based artist Kate Durham, under the title, "SIEV-X — and some were saved". It included a supporting exhibition of paintings by artists from refugee communities who came to Australia by boat, titled “Floating”.

Occupations in Sydney and Melbourne have been violently broken up by police in the past few days, but the Occupy Brisbane camp at Post Office Square is going well so far.

The Queensland government lifted a ban on fishing in and around Gladstone Harbour on October 6, but controversy over diseased fish goes on. Writing in the October 19 Courier Mail, environment reporter Bryan Williams said: “The mystery of the Gladstone fish disease outbreak continues, with scientists focusing on a parasitic flatworm and about 300 tonnes of Barramundi that spilled into the Boyne River last summer from Awoonga Dam.

More than 600 people rallied and marched in Brisbane’s CBD on October 16, as part of a national day of action to “Defend our water from coal and coal seam gas”. The rally in Queens Park was sponsored by the Lock and Gate Alliance and Defend Our Water Queensland. Lock the Gate Alliance spokesperson Drew Hutton told the rally: “We live in the driest country on earth. To allow the mining industry to pollute our water and destroy our best farming land is a disgrace. “Why is the Labor government allowing the mining companies to ruin our state? And the Liberal-National Party are no better.”