Naarm/Melbourne

Writer and Occupy Melbourne activist Wil Wallace took part in a March 1 protest against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a new free trade agreement currently under negotiation between nine nations, including Australia and the United States. Wallace’s account of the protest is below. * * *

Public housing in Victoria (and elsewhere around Australia) is in a state of crisis. For at least the last two decades, successive state governments have failed to meet the challenge of providing public housing to all who need it. Instead, they have relied on the free market to provide “affordable housing” as a means of avoiding their responsibilities. The result has been a disaster, with nearly 40,000 people on waiting lists.

More than 500 people attended a dinner of the Australian Tamil Congress (ATC) on February 4. The ATC, formed in 2009, campaigns for the rights of Tamil people in Sri Lanka, who have been subject to discrimination, oppression and massacres at the hands of successive racist Sri Lankan governments since the independence of Sri Lanka in 1948.

Thousands of Victorian nurses, mental health workers, public servants and others have been trying to negotiate new enterprise bargaining agreements with the Coalition government. Premier Ted Baillieu's intransigent state government has insisted it will not agree to any pay rises above 2.5% a year without productivity trade-offs. The exception was the police force, which won a 4.5% annual pay rise a few days after more than 500 police violently evicted Occupy Melbourne protesters from City Square.

February 1 was the day of the most vibrant climate rally seen in Melbourne for some time, with nearly 500 protesters overflowing from the steps of the state parliament house to call on the federal and state governments to revoke their funding of HRL, Victoria’s proposed new coal-fired power plant. The rally, called by grassroots climate collective Quit Coal, was held principally to influence the federal government, which is currently reviewing HRL’s Howard-era $100 million grant.

Police violence has been increasing against the Occupy Melbourne camp, now located at Flagstaff Gardens. There have been a number of extremely questionable police actions in recent days against Occupy Melbourne.

Victorian nurses have decided to take their claims directly to the community, after negotiations with the Baillieu Victorian government over their enterprise bargaining agreement broke down yet again. Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) Victorian branch secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick told a mass meeting on December 2: “The government negotiators staged a ‘breakdown’ in negotiations last night to bait nurses and midwives into taking further industrial action that would pull the last forced arbitration trigger.

A rally to support the Egyptian revolution took place in Melbourne on November 27.

After 13 days of an around-the-clock picket line, the workers at poultry company Baiada in Laverton North have won a tremendous victory. Baiada was well known as having the worst pay and conditions of all poultry processing companies.

The Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) has begun a series of rolling stoppages for better wages and conditions at mental health services across Victoria. HACSU covers mental health and allied health workers. Stoppages and rallies have been held in Bendigo and Shepparton, and at Eastern Mental Health, St Vincents and Melbourne Health. A two-hour stopwork rally will be held at Latrobe Valley Mental Health on November 29, from noon at the Latrobe Valley Hospital in Traralgon.

Occupy Melbourne released the statement below on November 22. * * * Today's victory of striking chicken workers is a massive boost in confidence to the most exploited workers of the 99% in Australia. Occupy Melbourne's Community and Union Outreach group has been a community supporter of the Baiada chicken workers since before the strike, with participants on the picket line during police attacks, as well as performing prominent stunts targeted against major Baiada purchaser Coles.