“We will not retreat, no matter what they say and no matter how they threaten us.” Debbie Kilroy from Sisters Inside summed up the defiant mood of a 1,500-strong crowd protesting against the Queensland LNP government’s attacks on workers and civil liberties.
The demonstration was flooded with the flags and placards and attended by everyone from cleaners, teachers, firefighters, nurses and wharfies to student, environmental, Aboriginal and Equal Love activists.
All are refusing to be cowed by Campbell Newman’s latest attempt to create a climate of fear, intimidation and division in Qld.
Those who attended the Queensland Council of Unions-endorsed demonstration on 19 November could see that behind the smokescreen of Newman’s apparent concern for “bikie violence” lay the strengthening of police powers to criminalise dissent and freedom of association.
During the demonstration Fair Work Harmonisation Bill was being debated in parliament. QCU president John Battams described it as “the single worst piece of Industrial Relations legislation introduced into any parliament ever in this country”.
It will make legally-protected industrial action almost impossible. It will empower the government, on the termination of any industrial agreement, to apply to move the case straight to the Industrial Court. If any union decides to take industrial action in a bargaining period, the Court will be forced to order an immediate end to it. And employers, as well as the industrial relations minister, will be given more power to influence the so-called “independent” industrial umpire.
University of Queensland education activist and Socialist Alternative member Rutaban Yameen spoke about the need for solidarity and the rich history of student resistance in Queensland – such as the campaigns against South African apartheid and the Vietnam War.
These struggles were effective because they also had the backing of the working class. This is what will be needed to challenge the Newman government’s neoliberal agenda.
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