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Protesters greet 'Australia's biggest liar'
GEELONG — More than 500 people protested the visit of "Australia's biggest liar", Prime Minister John Howard, on April 2.
Visiting the city for a Liberal Party fundraiser reported to cost $1200 a head, Howard was greeted by a range of unions and community groups, indicating the unpopularity of the federal government's policies in regional areas.
The rally heard speakers from the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), Geelong Trades Hall Council, the Socialist Alliance and the Geelong Medicare Action Committee. Tim Gooden, assistant secretary of Trades Hall and Socialist Alliance candidate for the federal seat of Corio chaired the protest.
The Maritime Union of Australia, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, the Health Services Union of Australia, the Electrical Trades Union, the Australian Education Union, the Australian Services Union, the NTEU, Deakin University's student council, the Geelong West branch of the ALP, the Geelong Anti-War Coalition, Friends of the ABC, the Geelong Medicare Action Group, activists campaigning for improved transport in Geelong, the Socialist Alliance and Resistance all had contingents and banners at the rally.
There were loud cheers when Deakin University NTEU vice-president Neville Millar said that Howard is Australia's own weapon of mass destruction, given his track record of destroying public education, health, the environment and welfare.
Passing drivers demonstrated their support by honking their car horns as protesters marched through the streets, watched closely by large numbers of police. For the first time in years at a Geelong rally, police horses were present.
Trisha Reimers
Solidarity for Redfern
MELBOURNE — Seventy people attended the Socialist Alliance's "Racism, resistance and the truth about Redfern" meeting on March 31, featuring Socialist Alliance member and Aboriginal activist Ray Jackson.
Jackson outlined the series of events that led to the death of a young man from Kamilaroi (whose family has requested that his name no longer be used) on February 14 in Waterloo. "We can prove from eye-witnesses that police were chasing him", Jackson said, adding that after the accident occurred, "police did not even call an ambulance. This was done by an eight year-old girl. The police called for back-up."
Jackson outlined the harassment of the young man's family the day after the death, claiming such treatment is "normal for Aboriginal people living in the Redfern/Waterloo area".
As for the so-called riot that followed, "that was not a riot, it was a set-up", Jackson argued. "It was a set-up to do one thing. The police knew they were in trouble for the death of the young man, and they had to get his death off the front page of the paper. And it was successful."
Jackson identified the huge value that developers now placed on the land, returned to Aboriginal people by the Whitlam government in 1973. "The [Redfern] block is very valuable land, and it's our land", he explained, outlining that plans being hatched by the NSW state Labor government to relocate Aboriginal families to the fringes of the city and develop the land would be fiercely resisted.
The forum was also addressed by Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation project officer Frank Hytten.
Graham Matthews
Medicare: 'Howard can't fool us!'
MELBOURNE — Fifty people joined the Defend and Extend Medicare group's sixth rally at the state library on April 1.
The rally addressed how, under Howard's new scheme, Medicare as a universal health-care system has ended. The group's spokesperson Joe Toscano stressed that the fight for Medicare is not over just because the new legislation was introduced, and that it needs to continue through further public mobilisations.
[For more information phone (03) 9766 8555, or email <info@defendandextendmedicare.org>.]
Margarita Windisch
From Green Left Weekly, April 7, 2004.
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