Those Australians who think it is drawing a long bow comparing John Howard’s watch as Prime Minister with the activities of the Burmese military junta, only have to look at the raft of legislation passed by the Howard government (supported by a pliant Opposition) that have stripped Australians of fundamental rights and liberties they have enjoyed for generations.

In Australia today, you can be secretly arrested, imprisoned and interrogated indefinitely not because you are suspected of being involved in a crime, but because you may inadvertently have information that may assist the authorities in their investigations. Three Ministers of the Crown can at any time call out the Australian Defence Forces because they believe Commonwealth interests are under threat. Australian Defence personnel involved in such actions, are legally indemnified, irrespective of who they maim, kill or the damage to private property they cause. The sedition laws have been extended to prosecute people for what they think, not what they do or may plan to do.

It is illegal in this country for workers to withdraw their labour outside a designated bargaining period; those who do so can be fined and jailed. Men and women working in the building industry have been specially targeted, and have lost legal protections that other Australians take for granted. You only have to pick up a newspaper, listen to a radio station or look at the television to realise that dissent is viewed as a serious crime in this country.

Australia’s security agencies have powers that the Burmese military junta would be proud of.

Every legislative step now exists in the Australian legal code to allow the Australian government to legally carry out the same actions against unarmed protestors that the Burmese military junta is carrying out in Burma today. Anybody who has any doubts the Howard government would not use these new laws, only has to look at what happened in Sydney during the APEC conference to realise the John Howard administration has much more in common with the Burmese military dictatorship than most Australian realise.

Does anybody seriously think the reaction of the Australian government would be any different to that of the Burmese military junta if tens of thousands of Australians decided that parliamentary democracy was little more than two minutes of illusory power and challenged this government’s ideologically driven agenda on the streets and in the workplace?

The Howard government has, more through good luck than economic management, found itself in the midst of a resources boom. Despite virtually giving away Australia’s resources, a $395 billion surplus has been generated in the past 5 years - a windfall in anybody’s language. The Howard government, having paid off the national debt before the cash from the resources boom came rolling into the Treasury, has like a drunken sailor, given away $385 billion in direct and indirect tax cuts, fuelling inflation and the current national debt binge. Its ‘spend, spend, spend’ philosophy, designed to curry short term political favour, has put Australians in an invidious position.

The current infrastructure bottlenecks, the deplorable state of public hospitals and public education, is a direct result of a government that has given Australian workers illusory tax cuts, that have in the main, been used to pay for privatised public services that Australians did not have to pay for, while they remained in public hands.

The parlous state of this country’s infrastructure and the current lack of skill workers in Australia, is directly related to the Howard government’s inability and unwillingness to use windfall gains to build much needed infrastructure and train Australian to do the work that, increasing numbers of guest workers, are now coming into the country to do.

People who believe the Howard government are good economic managers are the same type of people who believe the outrages claims made in the Federal government’s pre election taxpayer funded advertising blitz. Howard and Costello have, through their poor handling of the resources boom windfall, missed a once in a century opportunity to build public infrastructure to secure every citizens needs.

The convergence of political debate in Parliament, in the media and in the community is not an accident. Power does not lie in Parliament; what Parliament can and cannot do is ultimately determined by those sections of the community that enjoy a monopoly on the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication. The greatest gift the Howard government has delivered to the puppet masters is the change to the Australian culture they have been able to foster through a carrot and stick approach.

The rich militant tradition that has won Australians many of the rights and privileges they still continue to hang onto has been stifled and strangled through legislation that makes it virtually impossible for working people to withdraw the labour. The introduction of this legislation has been accompanied by measures that has seen more and more Australians, at all levels of life, being incorporated into the capitalist system.

Relatively easy credit, increasing job insecurity, the introduction of a superannuation system that allows workers wages to be used to fund and expand the very economic system that exploits them, a mass media that pumps out the same message and a depoliticised population, have created a culture of acceptance and compliance that has greatly increased the power of those sections of the community that exercise power.

In such a political climate, wealth tends (as all the statistical data indicates) to accumulate in the hands of the powerful. No wonder 21 million people living on a continent, live in a society where the amount of resources in public hands are not enough to satisfy the real needs of all Australians, despite the current resources boom.

If Abbott and his little mate the Prime Minister were serious about the long term health of the public health delivery system, they could start by diverting the $4 billion of taxpayer funds that are diverted every year from the public health sector to help subsidise the healthcare costs of those Australians who can afford to take out private health insurance.

If Abbott and Howard were serious about putting Australia’s 750 public hospitals back into the hands of the community, they would organise for the members of the new boards they want to run public hospitals, to be elected by the people living in the communities they service, not appointed by the Federal government.

Howard, despite his 30 year parliamentary career and his 11 years as Prime Minister, has always shown an appalling lack of knowledge about how the public health system works. Not that you would expect much from a politician who has made it his life’s goal to dismantle Medicare and force Australians to take out private health insurance because his government has starved the public health sector of the finances necessary to provide even basic public health services to Australians.

The public healthcare system is in the deplorable state it is in today because of a lack of funding at both Federal and State levels. The Howard government has never shown an interest in any public enterprise unless they can sell it off. Whether it is the public health system or the public education system, the only way outcomes will improve is if the Australian people use the little power they are able to exercise before elections to make healthcare a pivotal issue in the upcoming election campaign.

As far as Tony Abbott is concerned, the sooner he is moved to a less taxing portfolio, the better for the Australian people and his Coalition colleagues.

Refusing to halt the human race’s headlong rush to oblivion because it would interfere with the increasing profits, deregulation and privatisation has delivered to them, they are screaming that public resources should be invested to discover technological solutions to the problem.

Like an alcoholic who refuses to top drinking and demands a liver transplant funded by the public sector so they can continue to drink, national and transnational corporations refuse to modify their destructive ways and demand the public sector bankrolls research into temporary solutions to the very real problems that increased greenhouse emissions pose.

Even if temporary technological solutions are found to the problems posed by greenhouse emissions, serious attempts must be made to radically alter an economic system that has created the problems we now face, or like the alcoholic who receives a new liver who continues to drink, we have only temporarily delayed the inevitable.

The solutions to rapidly increasing greenhouse emissions do not lie in the ‘business as usual’ approach that is being currently promoted, it lies in the introduction of radical economic reforms that include removing wealth from the hands of the State and the private sector and putting it in the hands of the community and creating an economic system based on the satisfaction of real, not manufactured, needs that fosters economic cooperation, not competition. Radical egalitarian economic reform, not technological innovation provides the key to solving the greenhouse emissions challenges we all face.

While hierarchies exist in a community, power continues to be held in the hands of a minority. The steeper the hierarchy, the greater the concentration of power. Hierarchical societies are based on faith and force. Those who are ruled put their faith in the ability of a ruler or rulers to do the right thing by them. Faith and force go hand in hand. If the community that is ruled loses faith in their rulers, the rulers are able to unleash the monopoly on force they enjoy to maintain the status quo.

Revolutionary change only occurs when people lose faith in the political processes and have the power to openly challenge the monopoly on force exercised by the minority in society that wields power. Anarchists understand that all human beings are potentially flawed and you cannot put your faith in one person to do the right thing by you. They also understand that allowing a minority to exercise a monopoly on the use of force is fraught with danger.

Hierarchy is the mechanism that allows individuals and minorities to exercise power. Anarchists want to create a non hierarchical society so the mechanisms in society that allows a Hitler, Pol Pot, George Bush Jnr, John Howard or any other individual or minority to have the power to impose their will on society, do not exist.

Although Australians enjoy a public holiday to mark the Queen’s birth, Invasion Day (26th of January) and the citizens of Melbourne enjoy a public holiday on the 1st Tuesday in November to celebrate a horse race, not one State marks Eureka Day. As radicals, it is important we mark the days that mould the forgotten history of resistance in this country. Eureka Day is a day we should celebrate to reclaim the past and use the past to understand the present and change the future.

We encourage people from all over Australia and overseas to join us to celebrate this day. Paradoxically, nobody else in Ballarat will be marking the day. Although the City of Ballarat is happy to market Eureka to the Australia public to bring in the tourist dollars, not one official function is held to mark the day. Celebrations (what few poorly attended events there are) are normally held on the first weekend after the 3rd of December.

We meet at 4.00am at Eureka Park at the site the rebellion took place (corner Stawell and Eureka Streets, Ballarat). Until the sun rises and the birds begin to sing (the moment the soldiers and police overran the stockade), everybody attending the Dawn ceremony is able to speak about why they have come to the celebrations, and what it means to them to be there. The Dawn ceremony is followed by a communal breakfast at Eureka Hall (next to the Eureka monument – bring your own food and drinks).

At 10.00am, we march to Bakery Hill behind a sea of flags and banners to re-affirm the Eureka oath and announce the recipients of the Anarchist Media Institute Eureka Australia Day medals. We then march to the Old Ballarat cemetery to pay our respects to the miners and soldiers who died as a result of the clash in the early hours of Sunday the 3rd of December 1854 – soldiers at either end of a bayonet.

About 1.00pm, we leave the cemetery and march through the centre of Ballarat back to Eureka Park for a light lunch and conversation – (bring your own food and drinks). We usually make our way home 12 hours later, exhausted by the 12 kilometre walk but full of energy for the next 12 months of struggle

BREAK THE BONDS OF A LIFETIME…..
JOIN US AT 4.00am
MONDAY THE 3rd DECEMBER 2007
AT EUREKA PARK
TO CELEBRATE THE 153rd ANNIVERSARY
OF THE EUREKA REBELLION

DOWNLOAD THE 2007 EUREKA POSTER Put it up at your workplace and around your community. Have no access to the internet? Write to us at P.O. BOX 20, PARKVILLE, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA for a copy of the 2007 EUREKA POSTER.

DO NOT PUT IT OFF TILL NEXT YEAR
JOIN US THIS YEAR AT BALLARAT!!

Judge Willis left many bitter memories in his wake. His first appointment to the Court in Upper Canada in 1827 ended when facing a revolt by the locals; he was removed by the British Colonial Office. Using his extensive contacts in England, he was able to obtain and hold onto an appointment on the British Guiana Court from 1831, despite being removed from the Court in Upper Canada. His attempts to return to the British Guiana Court after 12 months sick leave in England were bitterly opposed by the shell shocked citizens of that community. Instead he was sent to sit on the Supreme Court in Sydney in 1837.

When he arrived, true to form, he took an immediate dislike to the NSW Chief Justice Sir James Dowling. Judge Willis had a habit of sitting in the court when Dowling delivered his judgments, loudly exclaiming “Why does he not get his facts right?” and “Did you hear the like”. When the decision was made to open up a Supreme Court at Port Phillip, Governor Gipps took the opportunity to transfer the Judge - ‘who some people think cracked’ - to Melbourne.

Governor Gipps was wrong in believing that sending Judge Willis to Melbourne would solve his problems. Arriving in Melbourne, Willis continued his sparing with the NSW Supreme Court, making decisions that challenged the legitimacy of British rule in Australia. In September 1841, 3 months before the trial of the 5 Tasmanian freedom fighters, a local Aborigine called Bonjon appeared before Justice Willis on a charge of murdering another Aborigine. In 1840, the squatters who had established the settlement at Port Phillip were concerned about the large number of Aborigines who were camping on the Yarra banks. The Aborigines had come to the settlement to receive rations they had been promised. In October 1840, in a show of force, 200 Aborigines were arrested after a dispute in the camp led to the death of an Aborigine. By the time Bonjon appeared before Judge Willis, the other 199 had ‘escaped’.

Bonjon’s Defence Counsel made the point that “Port Phillip having become appended to the British Crown by occupancy, and no treaty had been entered into by the natives, they were not subject, nor had they submitted themselves to the British Crown”. Judge Willis agreed with the Defence Counsel, citing examples in NZ, Ireland and the East Indies, making the point that Aborigines cannot be considered foreigners in their own lands. He ruled that Aboriginal law had legal force in Australia in matters concerning the relationship between Aborigines. Judge Willis ruled that he did not have the authority to try Bonjon for a crime he had committed against another Aborigine, and sent him free.

Judge Willis’ decision was overruled by the NSW Supreme Court. In May 1842, the Colonial government in London stepped in when Judge Willis stated “My opinion although overruled, still stays the same”. The law that Judge Willis administered in Port Phillip was based largely on the laws of England. His interpretation of those laws in the Bonjon case was overturned because his decision called into doubt the legality of the British colonisation of Australia.

As far as religion is concerned, you either have faith or you don’t. Irrespective of Dawkins’ historical analysis, lucid arguments and methodical dismantling of the myth that God exists, the believer will stare Dawkins in the face and tell him he lacks faith. Dawkins’ narrative is full of little gems about the more obtuse nonsensical and frightening aspects of religious belief that somebody, who has the time and inclination to waste their life rummaging through mountains of religious texts, is able to do.

The thrust of the ideas outlined in the ‘God Delusion’ are well known to anarchists. What sets Dawkins’ book apart, are the little gems that have been fished out of the religious swamp, to reinforce the central thesis of the book that a belief in God goes against all the available evidence.

Unfortunately Dawkins fails to make the important point that human misery is not solely dependent on a belief in God. The problem when you have a belief system is HIERARCHY You can put your faith in Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, George Bush Jnr, John Howard or even the man and woman down the road reading tarot cards; faith without hierarchy is a relatively harmless pastime. When you add hierarchy to the equation, it transforms human eccentricity into a conflagration that has, and continues to cause irreparable harm. Mass murderers come in all shapes and sizes, what gives them the power to pursue their dreams and our nightmares, is the power they are able to exercise over others. The greater the concentration of power, the greater the conflagration.

I’d like to thank JOHN COLLINS for lending me his copy of ‘The God Delusion’. Should you rush out and buy a copy? That is up to how much disposable income you have. The pithy remarks about Lot (yes, the biblical Lot) and his wife who turned into a pillar of salt are enough to justify the price of ‘The God Delusion’. On second thoughts, next time you are travelling and you come across one of those ubiquitous Gideon bibles, you can read all about the dysfunctional Lot family for nothing.

An amazing 59 works covering many of the visual artist’s disciplines – oil on canvas, gouache on paper, acrylic and pencil on paper, watercolour on paper, lithograph on paper and one lone etching on paper, he paints ‘the real’. Uncomfortable with abstract styles, he has, unlike most of his contemporaries, focused on the real. What you see is what you get. Or is it? Is a tree a tree, a goat a goat, and old Byzantine wall a wall? Is every little detail in Jago’s garage real?

‘The Veil of the Real’ surreal thoughts or ideas set in concrete? We see, we don’t see. Every time light strikes the back of our eyes and we see, do we see the same thing or do we see through our mind’s eye images filtered by experience and prejudice. Is a naked woman or man a naked man or woman or a sex object? Is a convict ship a convict ship or just a ship? Is a glass half full or half empty? Strange fruit hanging from trees in Southern USA - dirty niggers who deserve what they got, or human beings horribly sacrifice on the altar of racial intolerance and superiority? Is a goat a goat, a clock a clock, or are they a metaphor for something else? Does form impart life? Is the Resurrection real or the musings of mortals dreaming of immortality?

Abstract painting allows the imagination to run loose, giving form and life where form and life do not exist. The realist painter taps the mind’s eye, allowing the viewers experiences, loves, successes, failures to extract the meaning behind ‘The Veil of the Real’.

In Western Victoria and have a little time, drop in and smother Brian Dunlop’s realist works with your very own personal experiences.

BRIAN DUNLOP - ‘The Veil of the Real’
27th September – 21st October 2007
WISHART GALLERY
19 Sackville St, Port Fairy 3284, Victoria, Australia.

Tel : 03 5568 2423
Email : info@wishartgallery.com

Open 10.00am – 5.00pm
Wednesday – Monday closed Tuesday.

In 1976, as an intern at the Royal Brisbane Hospital in Queensland, I was told not to bother to apply for a public hospital job in Queensland as I would never be employed in the public health sector ever again, because I privately raised concerns about certain hospital practices Dismissing what happened as something that could only occur during the reign of the Bjelke Peterson government, I moved to Melbourne to work in the Victorian public health sector where I soon learnt that job security, training and advancement in the public health sector is dependent on keeping your concerns about the public healthcare sector to yourself.

The culture of compliance that dominates public medicine at all levels of the healthcare delivery system has a devastating effect on public hospital morale and delivery of services to the public. It is no wonder that medical staff who responded to the Sunday Age’s ‘Chaos Rules Hospital’ article refused to put their names to their allegations, and those who did are former Emergency Department registrars who now live and work in Warrnambool

Those who privately criticised the healthcare delivery system regularly miss out on appointments and soon realise that the only way to advance their career is, despite their very real concerns, to keep their mouth shut. Those who publicly criticise the system are dead men and women walking, and have no future in the public health sector and no chance of holding a public hospital specialist appointment.

Unfortunately, if the level of healthcare is to improve, more and more people at all levels of the public healthcare delivery system need to stand up and be counted. While the culture of compliance continues to dominate public hospital practice, the climate of fear that is imposed by what in name and practice is an unaccountable mafia, that is abetted and supported by successive State and Federal governments, will continue to deliver unacceptable outcomes despite the considerable amounts of money invested in the healthcare delivery system and the exposes that from time to time appear in the fourth estate.

ROJO Y NEGRO No.203 SEPT 2007, CGT, C/-Sagunto 15, 10 Madrid 28010, SPAIN,
Tel : 91 447 0572
Email : presna@rojonegro.info

UMANITA NOVA Vol.89, No.28 23rd SEPT ’07, Settimenale Anarchico, C/-Federazione Anarchico Torinese, C.50 Palermo 46, Torino, ITALY.
Tel/Fax : 011 857850
Mobile : 3386594361
Email : fat@increte.it

• 4.00am - Dawn ceremony - Eureka Park at the Eureka Memorial

• 6.00am - Breakfast Eureka Park (bring your own food and drinks)

• 10.00am - March from Eureka Park to Bakery Hill to reaffirm the Eureka oath

• 10.30am - Presentation of Eureka Aust Day Medal at Bakery Hill

• 11.30am - Walk to Old Ballarat cemetery to pay our respects to all those who died in the Eureka battle who are buried at the cemetery

• 12.30pm - Walk back to Eureka Park through the centre of Ballarat

• 1.30pm - Late lunch and conversation at Eureka Park - (bring your own food and drinks)

• The name of the person nominated

• A few sentences outlining why they should receive the award

• A contact address for the nominee (We need to contact them if they wish to receive the award)

• The person you nominate can be a public figure or somebody only known to a few people

P.O. Box 43, Clunes, 3370, Victoria AUSTRALIA

andrewpstretton@yahoo.com.au

“SEDITION – Conduct or speech inciting to rebellion”

SIGN THE SEDITION CHARTER ONLINE - www.seditioncharter.org

If you’re computer literate and many of us are not, write to us for a copy of the Sedition Charter, at :

P.O. BOX 5035,
ALPHINGTON 3078,
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Terrible things happen when good people do nothing. Openly defy this government’s attempts to muzzle and intimidate opposition to their neo conservative authoritarian agenda – SIGN the ‘Sedition Charter’ TODAY!

THE POWER OF RECALL – Electors having the constitutional right to recall parliamentary representatives in between elections

CITIZENS INITIATED REFERENDUMS – The people having the power to initiate constitutional change through referendums

DIRECT DEMOCRACY – Electing delegates with limited mandates, to co-ordinate decisions that have been made by the people, not electing representatives to make decisions for us.

(We Currently Have 112 Paid Up Members)

JOIN US THIS WEEK :

Wednesday 11.30am – 10th October 2007
Corner Flinders and Swanston Streets, Melbourne

DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOT PARLIAMENTARY RULE - www.rulebythepeople.org

An anarchist analysis of local, national & international events. Tune into your local community radio station to listen to the Anarchist World This Week. If they don’t broadcast it, ask them why not! If they’re one of the 150 community radio stations around Australia that are affiliated to the National Community Radio Satellite, they are able to broadcast the Anarchist World This Week.

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‘LIFE WASN’T MEANT TO BE EASY’

Please send AKIN SARI A POSTCARD OR LETTER OF SUPPORT TODAY!

Write to:

AKIN SARI, c/- Melbourne Assessment Prison
371 Spencer Street, Melbourne 3000
Victoria, AUSTRALIA

A doctor working in the public health system says "patients' lives are being put at risk, my workload & stress levels & risk of negligence claims are allowed to escalate unchecked purely so the hospital can receive a funding bonus." Dr Andrew Buck, of the Monash Medical Centre, claims staff are "taking short cuts & compromising patient safety to meet unrealistic, arbitrary benchmarks" linked to funding. In a letter to Victoria's top health officials, Dr Buck says "when I came to work on Mon night all cubicles were full & there were 14 'likely admission' patients waiting to be seen & 7 'likely discharge' patients waiting & some of these had been waiting up to 8 hrs to be seen." That night, even when an elderly woman suffered a cardiac arrest & died in the emergency dept, there were "no extra staff put on to cope with the workload & there was still no communication from my superiors...about risk management or bypass procedure". Dr Buck said he was "positive that this situation is being replicated" across Melb. (The Age)