Australia's occult capital welcomes George Bush

["Ozleft" <ozleft@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

By Bob Gould

The Australian national capital, Canberra, is a product of a political
compromise at the time of federation between the two major colonies, New
South Wales and Victoria. The deal was that the Australian Capital Territory
was to be independent of any state and the location was chosen so as to be
not too far distant from Victoria.

In practice, Canberra is now part of the Sydney-Illawarra-ACT axis, which is
the commercial heartland of Australia.

The architect mainly responsible for the place, Walter Burley Griffin, was a
closet theosophist, and is said to have designed the new city, which is a
completely artificial capital, like Brasilia, according to occult
principles, and there have been several erudite books on that subject.

I've been arrested at several demonstrations in Canberra, starting with the
first Australian sit-down against the Vietnam War in May 1965, at which 15
students and myself, then a book buyer in a department store, were arrested
at a Student Labor Federation sit-down in Garema Place, in the centre of the
city.

I was also pinched a couple of years later in scuffles outside the South
Vietnamese embassy during the visit of the dictator Ky, in 1967.

I'm familiar with the inside of Canberra Jail. When I first started
demonstrating in Canberra in 1965, the population of the place was about
120,000. Now it's about 370,000 if you add the large suburb of Queanbeyan, a
country town that is just inside NSW, not the ACT.

The ACT population has the highest education level in Australia. About 45
per cent of adults have a university degree, and it is a city of fairly high
incomes. Nevertheless, politically it's pretty leftist. It votes
overwhelmingly Labor, and the Greens get a very large vote as well. The
conservatives usually come nowhere much, electorally, in Canberra.

Nevertheless, it's a clean, overly sanitary kind of place with fairly high
youth unemployment because there aren't too many entry-level jobs. One
consequence of this is a drug problem.

The Commonwealth parliament was recalled for two days for a joint sitting of
the Senate and the House of Representatives to listen to President Bush one
day and the Premier of the Chinese Stalinist dictatorship the next, today
(Friday).

Following Wednesday evening's successful demonstration in Sydney, about 200
bleary-eyed rebels turned up at 6am on Thursday to pile into four busses for
the three and a half hour journey to Canberra. We had a slightly easier time
of it than the four busses from Melbourne, which faced a 10-hour trip.

In Canberra, the locals, who are pretty well organised, were already holding
a mass meeting on the lawn in the approaches to Parliament House. Attempts
by the coppers to push us away from the House had clearly broken down a bit
and the demonstration was reasonably close to the building.

Catholic Bishop Pat Power, Labor MPs Carmen Lawrence and Greens Senators
Brown and Nettle all spoke. There were about 4000-5000 people at the mass
meeting at its height.

When the meeting concluded after Bush arrived the inevitable Canberra long
march started and about 3000 of the demonstrators set off up the hill, along
Embassy Row, to the US embassy and ultimately to the Prime Minister's Lodge,
where the select barbeque for the visiting imperial leader was being held.

I'd forgotten my past experience with Canberra long marches. They are an
activity for which it's better to be young and sturdy. My companion and I,
and a few older rebels tended to puff along behind the very militant
demonstration, and we caught up at the major confrontations.

There was a certain amount of rebellious competition between the different
socialist groups, with their red flags and their generals and colonels
directing operations.

The coppers gave up trying to stop us marching on the street, because it was
impossible, and the ridiculous plastic orange barriers set up to keep people
away from Parliament House, the US embassy and the Lodge were trampled over
quite easily.

The Canberra coppers are, compared with Sydney police, a bit more laid back,
and there aren't quite as many of them, and they don't use the intimidating
mounted police, which have become normal recently in Sydney. There were
maybe 400 police and they were quite efficient at maintaining a last line of
defence at the embassy and the Lodge, and the inevitable pushing and shoving
was intense, but no one was seriously hurt on either side.

The media and the police commander later tried to beat up stories that some
of the demonstrators pulled the stakes holding up the ridiculous plastic
barriers to use as weapons, but in my view this is a complete beat-up. The
five people pinched weren't charged with anything like serious assault, only
with minor street offences.

The militant demonstration went on for a couple of hours, and eventually we
marched back down the various hills to the lawn outside Parliament House,
where the demonstration quietly dissolved into exhausted lying on the lawn
for a while, and the interstate contingents eventually went back to the
busses.

>From the point of view of myself and my companion, the big problem was
physical exhaustion from the long march and the Canberra's paucity of
official places to have a piss. I sneaked behind bushes a couple of times,
but my companion, being a woman, was ultimately forced to invade the
premises of the national protection services, slipping in behind some people
with a swipe card, and use the disabled facility, which was the only one
open, and then sneak out again, quickly, hoping not to be pinched as a
potential terrorist.

>From a health point of view, I wish there was a major demonstration twice a
week. The Wednesday event in Sydney went on for nearly four hours, and the
Canberra long march took about two and a half hours. I woke up this morning
a bit stiff, extremely sunburned, but invigorated.

EVENTS IN THE PARLIAMENT

Inside the parliament the first development was that 46 Labor MPs, including
almost all from the left and some from the right, endorsed a letter laying
out in a careful way the opposition of the parliamentary Labor Party to
Bush's Iraq adventure. It was framed in a clearly Social Democratic way,
accepted the US alliance, etc, but it was a pretty clear statement of
opposition to the military adventure in Iraq.

Tanya Plibersek, its originator, made a point of delivering it to Condoleeza
Rice in the parliament. Between nine and 17 of the Labor MPs (nine, 13 and
17 were the numbers mentioned in different media reports) refused to stand
up or applaud Bush. Harry Quick, who did not stand, also wore a white
armband and a number of the Laborites who stood didn't applaud Bush's
speech.

In his lengthy speech, Labor leader Simon Crean was at pains to endorse the
US alliance. Nevertheless, he also courteous but at some length explained
Labor's opposition to the Iraq intervention, in the form it took.

The whole event, however, was stolen by the courageous and effective protest
of Greens Senators Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle. They vigorously interjected
during Bush's speech and Nettle pushed forward in an attempt to reach Bush
with a petition of opposition to the war. She was blocked by a flying wedge
of reactionary politicians.

The Australian bourgeois media have gone ape about this very effective Green
demonstration in the parliament. The bourgeoisie is fuming.

Immediately afterwards Liberal hardman Tony Abbot moved the suspension of
the two Greens from the parliament for 24 hours, and according to one paper
this morning it was carried on the vote of the Government, so it's not clear
if any Laborites voted for the suspension, but that may become clear in the
next day or so.

A startled Bush made the best of a bad situation by an off-the-cuff remark
about not minding free speech, but the Australian ruling class clearly does
mind free speech, especially of the determined sort of Nettle and Brown.

Traveling back to Sydney on the bus, a number of us attempted a balance
sheet of the two days' events, after we'd slept for the couple of hours of
the trip from sheer exhaustion.

The necessary conclusions are:

The antiwar movement in Australia has revived somewhat, which is a result of
the efforts a wide variety of militants across the spectrum, but mainly on
the left of the movement.

The peaceful demonstrations, such as the ones in Sydney and Canberra are
extremely important.

Militant activities such as the long march and the limited confrontations
outside the Lodge and the embassy were also useful.

The different forms of opposition expressed within the parliamentary Labor
set-up, from the most determined like Lawrence and Quick, who addressed mass
meetings and sat down and didn't applaud, and even Crean's limited
opposition to the war, qualified by his acceptance of the US alliance, are
also useful.

The most courageous of all, at the parliamentary level, however, was the
necessarily sharp intervention by the Greens' Kerry Nettle and Bob Brown.

Taken together, all of these things contribute to building a mass movement.

In addition, on a final, personal note, for this 66 year-old battle-scarred
rebel, marching and demonstrating is good, both for mental and physical
health.

Postscript. While all this was going on a smaller political battle has been
proceeding in Sydney. The NSW government and Sydney City Council sponsored
peace prize, which has in the past been awarded to the likes of Mary
Robinson and Nelson Mandela, was this year awarded to Hanan Ashrawi, the
courageous representative of the Palestinian people.

The bourgeois media have gone ape about this and the Zionist special
interest group in Australia is particularly hostile and has been conducting
a public campaign against awarding the prize to Ashrawi.

Surprisingly the right-wing NSW Premier, Bob Carr, who has to present the
prize, has dug in his heels against pressure not to present it, and has
indicated he will present the prize.

He is a long-standing supporter of Israel, but he says Ashrawi is a
legitimate representative of the Palestinians and he sees nothing wrong in
presenting the prize, despite the public opposition of the Zionists.

The fact that Simon Crean felt obliged to explain Labor's opposition to the
Iraq invasion, and that Carr, who is a very shrewd politician, feels the
need to persist in presenting the peace prize to Ashrawi is, in my view, a
clear indication of a changing political mood in Australia.

Meanwhile, the Australian Jewish Democratic Society has supported Carr's
stand. Its statement is available on Ozleft at
http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Ashrawi.html




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