Jim McIlroy

More than 1000 building unionists rallied in Emma Miller Place on April 27 to mark International Workers' Memorial Day. Protests and commemorations also took place on the same day in Canberra, Melbourne and Perth, and on April 28 in Sydney and Adelaide. Organised by the building unions and the Queensland Council of Unions, the Brisbane action was billed as a time to “remember those who have been injured or killed at or through their work and to renew our commitment to fight for the living”.

The Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) has demanded that BHP Billiton surrender its lease on the Norwich Park coalmine, near Dysart in Central Queensland. The BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) combine announced early this month that it would shut down the mine because it was allegedly losing money. BMA has laid partial blame on the long-running industrial dispute with mineworkers in Queensland for losses at Norwich Park and other mines in the state.

About 50 people attended an April 17 rally in King George Square to mark a global day of action against military spending. The rally, organised by Just Peace Brisbane, called for Australian military funding to be radically cut back in the upcoming federal budget. “If the world cut military spending by just one-half of 1%, we could save the lives of 6 million children," Peter Arndt, from the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, told the audience.

”No new coal! Save the Great Barrier Reef!" was the main theme of the rally held outside Queensland parliament on World Heritage Day, April 18. Six Degrees and Greenpeace Brisbane called the rally, which attracted about 50 people. The rally came after the April 12 announcement by deputy premier Jeff Seeney that Gladstone harbour, which is facing environmental destruction due to coal industry development, might be removed from World Heritage listing.

Coalmine workers employed by the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) in central Queensland's Bowen Basin are standing firm in the face of escalating attacks by their employer. In the latest round, BHP has announced the closure of its Norwich Park coalmine, south-east of Dysart. The move is clearly aimed at putting pressure on the mineworkers to settle their longstanding industrial dispute.

The Queensland ALP “snatched disaster from the jaws of defeat,” socialist activist Gary MacLennan told a public forum at the Activist Centre here on April 3. The forum, sponsored by Green Left Weekly, discussed the Liberal National Party’s (LNP) rise to power in Queensland, the crisis in the ALP and what this meant for the labour movement. MacLennan said: “When the Queensland people said no to the [Anna] Bligh Labor government, they were not saying yes to an LNP government.

The Socialist Alliance (SA) pushed ahead with its campaign to put socialist politics before the Queensland electorate, as the ALP government faced annihilation in the state election held on March 24. Although everyone knew the government was unpopular, the sheer size of the Liberal National Party (LNP) win took all commentators by surprise. The election result has left Labor with only seven or eight seats compared with the LNP’s probable 78. The Bligh ALP government suffered a record two-party swing away of 15%.

After gaining a huge majority in the Queensland parliament, the new Liberal National Party (LNP) government is preparing its assault on unions, the public service and the environment. Newly elected Premier Campbell Newman wasted no time in showing his intentions to escalate the neoliberal offensive, already started by the defeated Anna Bligh Labor government. He began by appointing leading Liberal Party honchos to key bureaucratic jobs in the administration.

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) in Queensland is in its deepest crisis in its 120-year history following the disastrous defeat in the state elections on March 24. A swing of more than 15% to the Liberal-National Party (LNP) has resulted in the Queensland ALP's record lowest primary vote of 26.5%. Labor is likely to win seven, or at most eight, seats in Queensland’s parliament of 89. The LNP will take 77 or 78. This is a worse position for the ALP than the Joh Bjelke-Petersen regime's high point in 1974, when Queensland Labor was reduced to 11 seats.

About 1000 people attended a food security forum in the Brisbane Convention Centre on March 12 to defend agricultural land and water against mining for coal and coal seam gas (CSG). The forum, chaired by controversial radio broadcaster Alan Jones, was organised by the Lock the Gate Alliance and GetUp! Country singer Lee Kernaghan, who is passionately opposed to the destruction of Australian bushland by the mining industry, opened and closed the forum with music.

Greenpeace activists on March 7 painted a huge message saying “Reef in danger” on the side of the Panamanian-registered coal ship Chou Shan, which was moored in Gladstone Harbour. The action was timed to coincide with the arrival of a delegation from UNESCO investigating the impact of large-scale gas and coal developments on the Great Barrier Reef's world heritage values.

“Capitalism wrecks everything,” Liam Flenady, Socialist Alliance candidate for South Brisbane in the March 24 Queensland election, told a meet-the-cadidates forum sponsored by Green Left Weekly on March 6. "The neoliberal agenda of the past three decades means privatising profits, and socialising losses. Queensland and Australia are in the midst of a political crisis right now. "People have generally lost confidence in the major parties and their support for the status quo. But they don't yet have a firm belief in a viable alternative project.