BY KAREN FREDERICKS
BRISBANE — The decision to blockade the Australian Stock Exchange was the subject of much debate here at the March 31 "Fighting for the Future" conference, with some arguing that the movement needed to be more positive in its tactics while others defended the militancy of blockading.
Friends of the Earth's John Hepburn told the conference that the blockading the stock exchange was a "tired", even "dangerous", tactic and that the movement was in danger of getting stuck on a treadmill of "reactive events". Instead of focussing on "no", activists should be saying "yes" to alternatives, such as FoE Brisbane's Reverse Garbage recycling operation, he claimed.
Many in the 60-strong crowd disagreed, however, with Lana Nadj of the International Socialist Organisation, which organised the conference, arguing forcefully that neo-liberal attacks on many of the world's people created a situation where there was no option but to be "oppositional".
"In many countries the 'market' has left no room whatsoever for 'community'," she said.
In the conference's opening panel, Amnesty International's Ross Daniels and the Democratic Socialist Party's Karen Fletcher agreed that the institutions of globalisation, like the World Trade Organisation, could not be reformed but disagreed on the alternative to global neo-liberalism.
Daniels argued that socialism was irreparably discredited in the eyes of the majority and that the main challenge for the movement was to do the "hard, intellectual work of developing a viable alternative to capitalism". Fletcher agreed that Stalinism had made the task of convincing people of socialist ideas more difficult, but not impossible, and that the movement needed to reconsider socialism as it was the only "viable alternative" which has yet presented itself.
Four days later, on April 3, Simon Butler reports that 150 students at the University of Queensland heard an open air debate on the topic, "That globalisation has helped the Third World".
The debate, organised by the university's Students Campaigning Against Multinationals collective, pitted three members of the Economic Students of Australia, arguing the affirmative, against members of Socialist Alternative and Resistance, arguing the negative.
Resistance's Katelyn Mountford dismissed claims by her opponents that multinational corporations were benevolent but misunderstood, saying "I'm not sure that the people of Bougainville think corporate globalisation has helped them very much. [Mining giant] Rio Tinto's escapade into their country has left them with massive environmental destruction and civil war".
Students listening to the debate awarded victory to the negative.