Remember when stations in Victoria were places where you would wait for a train? Not anymore. Despite there being no increase in levels of crime, train stations are fast becoming a playground for the law and order Liberals and their uniformed thugs.
The changes started two years ago when the state government announced it would introduce more than 900 protective service officers (PSOs). PSOs are non-police officers who are given 12 weeks’ training before being provided with a uniform and armed with guns, pepper spray and batons. Today, PSOs can be seen across the railway network routinely harassing public transport users and gathering unnecessary information from innocent people on platforms.
Not satisfied with this, the government has announced a new plan to turn train stations into prisons. To build these prisons, they propose to spend over $78 million – a sum that could be used to provide lighting, heated waiting rooms or perhaps even trains that run on time. Instead, the money will be used to build special “PSO pods” to “hold criminals”, indefinitely, while the PSOs wait for the real police to arrive.
According to the ABS National Prisoner Census, the number of people in prison in Australia has risen by 31 percent in the last 10 years. Whether you call it a cell or a pod, these station prisons are another stop further along the repressive law and order line.
While most of us are being hit hard by the biggest cost of living crisis in a generation, Australia’s “big four” banks—Commonwealth, Westpac, ANZ and NAB—have had a record-breaking start to the financial year, posting a combined half-year profit of $17.1 billion. That’s a 19 percent increase from the equivalent period in 2021, and $1.3 billion more than the previous record of $15.8 billion in 2015.
The South Australian government has followed New South Wales and Victoria to undermine democratic rights. A bi-partisan bill has been rushed through parliament’s lower house, which proposes fines up to $50,000 or three months in jail if protesters “intentionally or recklessly obstruct the public place”.
Australia is facing a full-blown housing emergency. House prices have been increasing faster than wages for decades, meaning that for many people, the prospect of ever owning a home is now vanishingly remote.
An undignified display: two vainglorious leaders of mid-level powers groping in front of 20,000 people. Anthony Albanese and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were clumsy with excitement as they embraced at Sydney’s Olympic Park on Tuesday, projecting unity ahead of well-publicised bilateral talks.
Banksia Hill is a youth detention centre with an overwhelmingly Indigenous population and a notorious record of human rights violations. Detainees are regularly confined to their cells under “lockdown” conditions, which means that they are released from their tiny, suffocating rooms for only 10-30 minutes a day, as has been exposed by the ABC. One inmate spent 79 out of a total of 98 days in solitary confinement, according to Jesse Noakes in the Saturday Paper.
Not content with spearheading a concerted racist campaign against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament and his repeated vile attacks on Aboriginal youth in Alice Springs, Peter Dutton has now turned his fire on migrants.