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Vol. 74/No. 12      March 29, 2010

 
Australia unionists back
Aboriginal protest camp
 
BY RON POULSEN  
SYDNEY, Australia—Protests have been taking place here against federal government intervention in remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. Beginning in 2007, 73 Aboriginal townships with rights to traditional lands were taken over and made “prescribed areas” under direct control of the federal government in Canberra, which imposed many discriminatory restrictions.

A February 24 meeting here drew some 50 people to hear a reportback from a union work brigade that recently erected a building at a new Aboriginal protest camp about 200 miles northeast of Alice Springs in central Australia.

The new encampment outside the federally “prescribed area” has become a focus of protests against the continued intervention from Canberra. In July 2009, members of the Alyawarr people “walked off” their existing town camp at Ampilatwatja to protest “rules and interference” by white bureaucrats directing the federal intervention. They moved to escape overcrowded and neglected housing and raw sewage in the streets.

Liz Barrett, a young research officer from the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union, described how, in two weeks, union volunteers joined by some local Aboriginal youths built a “protest house” that will now be used as a central community hall.

Barrett cited a recent Northern Territory government press release that said it had “almost built two houses in two and a half years” for Aboriginal people. Both were built only after community leaders signed a 99-year lease turning traditional land over to the government.

Rebel Hanlon, who joined the encampment for a protest weekend, explained that he was one of “lots of indigenous members” of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union. Due to lack of jobs, housing, and education, Hanlon said, “indigenous people die 17 years earlier than the average” in Australia. Those of indigenous descent make up 2.5 percent of Australia’s population of 22 million.

“We are going back to the bad old days of working for rations,” Hanlon told the meeting. Under intervention “income management,” a “basics card” has replaced both welfare payments and wages for Aboriginal workers employed by government programs.

Paul McAleer, Sydney branch secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia, pledged his union’s support, saying opposition to the intervention is “a working-class issue, not an Aboriginal issue.”

A march and rally in Redfern of about 250 people was held February 13 to protest continued federal intervention in the Northern Territory by the Labor government.  
 
 
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