BY SUE BOLTON
& ALISON DELLIT
While the majority of Green Left Weekly's readers live in Australia's capital cities, during the last 10 years, the paper's distribution has expanded into a number of regional centres.
GLW is now distributed in Alice Springs, Anglesea, Bathurst, Byron Bay, Coffs Harbour, Geelong, Launceston, Lismore, Murwillumbah, Newcastle, Ocean Grove, Rockhampton, Shepparton, Torquay, Yeppoon, Wingham and Wollongong.
"I think Green Left Weekly is something that Shepparton needs", Catie Morrison, who sells GLW explained. "This is a National Party stronghold and there are not many alternative viewpoints put forward."
Although Morrison has copped some abuse, particularly from "rednecks in trucks", distributing GLW is, she said, "a real conversation starter".
"Usually people who buy it are attracted by one issue and they want to talk about it", she explained. Morrison was one of the key organisers of a recent refugees' rights protest in Shepparton.
"The people who get the paper from me think its really good — they realise its needed as an alternative", Shane Wilkinson, who distributes GLW in Alice Springs said. "After September 11, all the local papers were just putting the mainstream view. People really wanted to know what GLW said — and it was what they thought."
Wilkinson believes that many more people in the city would buy the paper if they knew about it, and believes that it makes a real difference. "There are a lot of racists and rednecks [in Alice Springs], but there are a lot of people who aren't. It's just hard to see, because in most workplaces racism is a cultural thing. Most of what the locals see is [Indigenous] people living in creeks. There's a lot of [Indigenous] people living in communities, but they don't see that. GLW helps challenge their assumptions."
"Distributing GLW in regional areas is important", Simon Wood, who distributes GLW in Coffs Harbour explained. "It's way better than other newspapers because it gives a working-class point of view, as well as spreading environmental, anti-racist and feminist ideas."
Some have had to struggle just to make it to the streets. Ron Bailey is the GLW distributor in Wingham, near Taree, in NSW. Bailey has been distributing GLW at two regular weekly stalls on the streets of Wingham for a few months now.
Initially, council officers told Bailey that he was not allowed to sell GLW. So Bailey organised a meeting with the mayor Mick Tuck who told him that he needed a hawker's licence. When Bailey said he would distribute GLW for free, the mayor said that he couldn't do that either. The council manager Andrew Smart then told Bailey that if he distributed GLW, it would be "at his own risk".
Since these meetings with the mayor and council officers, Bailey has continued to sell GLW on the streets of Wingham and hasn't received any more warnings. It seems that the council was just bluffing. When Bailey challenged the bluff, the council realised that Bailey was prepared to fight for his right to free speech.
Others have had an easier time. In Rockhampton, the selling of GLW has led to the development of a number of campaigns; nearly 40 papers are distributed each week. Paul Glenning, from the local Capricorn Conservation Council, has been selling GLW there for two years.
"GLW is seen by all progressive people in the local area as the vehicle for their ideas", he said. "Whether you're a meatworker, a woman campaigning against domestic violence or a worker at the university trying to negotiate an enterprise agreement, you're going to look to GLW for the basics. No-one else is going to tell your side of the story".
"You can't appreciate the political isolation that prevails in regional areas until you live here", Kuskopf said. "Take Tandem Thrust, which is the largest military exercise in Australia, carried out by the Australian, US and New Zealand military. It is a barbaric invasion of human rights in the area, bringing sexual assaults and environmental destruction. But local, state and federal governments support it and the local media act as a conduit for their views. GLW was the only information source that said that Tandem Thrust was wrong.
"In regional Australia, people are bearing the brunt of globalisation in their local communities — disputes like that at the CMG meatworks show how much solidarity is possible."
In the two years that GLW has been sold in Rockhampton, that city, which has the second highest level of domestic violence and sexual assault in Australia, has experienced its first ever International Women's Day and Reclaim the Night marches as well as its first refugees' rights protest.
Kuskopf attributes GLW's success to having a group prepared to distribute it, a point also echoed by Morrison. "Our experience with Green Left Weekly will be typical of regional Australia", Kuskopf argues. "We just have to get out there with the paper."
From Green Left Weekly, July 17, 2002.
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