Germinate 2005

Germinate Germinate

Germinate Issue 1 2005

Australian Student Environment Network (ASEN) Publication

Germinate Germinate

About ASEN:

ASEN is the national network of students active on environmental justice issues on their cam-puses and in their communities. As a network, we are made up of all the state environment networks, which are in turn made up of the campus environment collectives.

Because we are a non-hierarchical grassroots network, directed by our members, ASEN is constantly evolving depending on what stu-dents are doing on their campuses. ASEN was created by and continues to be organised by young activists committed to change. Students use our network to organise local campaigns and strenthen their local work with information and support from other groups; we also embark on national campaigns like climate change.

Although environmental destruction grows and injustice thrives worldwide, these problems are finding their match in the energy of stu-dents and youth willing to fight for our future. Directing this energy, involving new students, and empowering this generation to uproot envi-ronmental injustice are the goal to which ASEN aspires.

About Germinate:

Germinate is the quaterly movement magazine of the Australian Student Environment Network. Germinate exists to facilitate communication between grassroots student activists and envi-ronment collectives throughout australia and beyond, to inform about campaigns and reflect on our movement.

The articles in Germinate are the opinion of their authors and do not necessarily represent the position of ASEN.

Submissions: Germinate warmly accepts sub-missions from student and youth activists on issues, skills, campaigns, as well as collective/ state updates, graphics, photos, cartoons, po-ems, recipes, professions of your love of ASEN etc. Articles should be less than 2000 words. Please submit articles and letters to the editor by email to [email protected]. The deadline for our next issue is January 1st, 2005

Advertising: Advertising information is available on request. Please contact us for details.

Editor: Anna RoseSpecial Thanks To: Tony, Holly Creenaune, Danya Bryx, Ange Khodeir, the CCEN and SEAN crew - and the new UTas enviro collective - you rock!

Australian Student Environment Network

c/o UTS Student Association

Broadway, NSW [email protected]: 0410 375 755

IN THIS ISSUE:

4 ASEN News6 Unions and the Environment Movement 7 Jobs and The Environment 9 Indigenous Rights, Student Orgs and VSU10 Expose the Climate Hypocrite Pact12 ASEN Targets Corporate Climate Criminals13 Forbes 500 Reflection16 Campus Reportbacks18 Forests and Free Speech19 Students Targeted for Protesting20 Ashes to Ashes: War in Iraq21 Climate Criminals Poster22 Resist Neoliberalism Poster

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Germinate Germinate Germinate Hello Everyone!

Welcome to Germinate, the move-ment magazine of the Australian Student Environment Network! It has been a long time since the last edition, but after a patchy history we are now determined to get a regular publication up and running, and committed to putting out one edition per term (four a year).

This edition is a celebration of our student environment movement and the massive gains we are mak-ing in building and consolidating individual campus environment collectives and the network as a whole. It contains information on the various campaigns students are working on across Australia, and re-fl ections on where these campaigns at at right now.

There are also some articles on how environmentalists can build links with trade unions, who are cur-rently under attack from Howard’s IR attacks.

Progressive activists are facing a challenging time in Australia and

all over the world, with the “War on Terror” supposedly justifying a crackdown on dissent and increase in the power of The State to sur-veille, regulater and oppress citi-zens, hand in hand with the rise of racism and paranoia.

We as student activists are under attack from Howard’s Anti Student Organising Legislation (ASOL/ VSU). We as environmentalists are under attack from the rise of SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) writs against environ-ment activists such as the Gunns 20 Case. The big NGOs are under threat from proposed changes to tax deductability laws. We as work-ers are under attack from Howard’s Industrial Relations attacks. Indig-enous Australians are under attack from the proposed abolition of th Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Can-berra. An attack on one is an attack on all.

During the editing of this Germi-nate, one of our friends, Scott Par-kin a peace activist who had been visiting from Texas, was seized from the street by the Federal Police on

his way to running activist training and deemed a “threat to national security”, and is currently in deten-tion, awaiting deportation back to America.

This incident illustrates the fragile nature of the ‘democracy’ (aka thepolice state) that we are now liv-ing in. It is yet another example this year of police intimidating and at-tempting to silence activists.

We hope you enjoy this edition of Germinate, please write something for the next one, look after yourself and stay inspired.

And remember to keep checking the asen website, www.asen.org.au, because we are updating it re-ally regularly now.

Keep on smiling!!

Anna Rose, ASEN Convenor 2005

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There has been so much going on recently in ASEN that it’s hard to know where to start, so here’s just a brief report on recent highlights.

ASEN News

At the recent Subplot gathering in Sydney, an ASEN meeting of campus activists from three states ratified the interim ASEN constitution, which we plan to incorporate, making us a not-for-profit association, as soon as possible. We are currently getting legal advice and the initial process should be over in the next month or so!

Ideas for ASEN’s structure and constitution have been the subject of emails, proposals and meetings for over two years now, so it’s great to finally have something concrete that allows us to start fundraising and applying for grants for next year! The Constitution is modeled from a cross between the Friends of the Earth Australia Constitution and the U.S. Student Environment Action Coalition (SEAC) Policy, as well as our own ideas of course and although not perfect, its pretty good and we will sort out any flaws at the January Summer ASEN training camp.

Forbes 500

A lot of us were involved in the Forbes 500 conference protests in Sydney, which a lot of us were involved in organising. Several ASENers were arrested in the huge police over-reaction – the biggest police operation since the Olympics. Unfortunately, many of those arrested at the protests were ASENers or involved in Green Bloc, so we are co-ordinating legal and travel support through ASEN organiser Holly Creenaune. For a more detailed Forbes reportback, see p. x.

Students of Sustainability (SoS) Conference

SOS, the annual national student environment conference, was amazing as usual, with 600 students and activists converging on Monash University for a week of learning, skillsharing, workshops, films, vegan food, and fun. The action day in the city was particularly successful: hundreds of students bearing sunflowers and placards staged a peaceful climate criminals protest tour, starting on the steps of Parliament House, going on to the Victorian Cabinet, then to BHP, followed lastly by the Liberals Office

and ending up at the Department of Environment. This rally built on the hard work that the Victorian Cross-Campus Environment Network (CCEN) has been doing this year campaigning against the Hazelwood power station expansion and sent a strong anti-Hazelwood expansion message to the Victorian Premier, Bracks, and the rest of Cabinet.

Climate Change Campaign

The ASEN Climate Change campaign is progressing really well. After a group of us attended the Greenpeace clean energy training camp from August 5th – 11th, we nutted out a lot of strategy ideas and all took on action points. So far, campaigns are progressing well on individual campuses including Monash, Melbourne, UTS, Sydney Uni, UNSW, UNE and Newcastle Uni. We have also decided to target the Australian Vice Chancellors Committee (AVCC), the body of all Vice-Chancellors, to try to make ALL the Unis in Australia switch to clean energy together! So far ASEN has sent letters to John Mullarvey, CEO of the AVCC, as well as all of the AVCC Board and Members. We are still awaiting responses and hope to set up a meeting with them soon.

On the Grapevine: ASEN News

photos from SoS 2005, taken by Holly Creenaune

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Anti-Student Organisation Legislation (VSU) Campaign

The VSU legislation is due to be debated in Parliament on Thursday 15th September, and rallies are again planned in Sydney and Melbourne. Since SoS there have been two more National Days of Action (NDA) against the Liberal’s student union-smashing VSU legislation, on August 10th and August 25th. Student environment activists continued to play a leading role in the campaign by building for this rally, There were Green Blocs at both NDAs in Sydney and Melbourne. On the 10th August the Sydney Green Bloc provided a drumming troupe that added an amazing vibe to the rally.

On August 25th the Melbourne Green Bloc organised an occupation of the Victorian ALP office in response to the ALP’s disgusting backflip on VSU. This occupation was successful in getting heaps of media attention highlighting the fact that we do not want a compromise, we want to STOP VSU!

Special mention also goes to the University of Tasmania enviro collective who singlehandedly organised protests for both the NDAs and got a rally going to their local Liberal MP.

Paper Campaign

The South Australian campuses (Flinders, Adelaide Uni and UniSA) are continuing with their recycled paper on campus campaign in conjunction with TWS. They are currently setting up meetings with their Vice-Chancellors and building awareness of the campaign, and have a solid core of activists working on this practical and inspiring campaign. email [email protected]

New Enviro Collectives Starting Up

In the past few months Anna Rose, ASEN Convenor, has continued visiting campus enviro collectives, including Wollongong Uni, Sydney Uni, UTS, and The University of Tasmania! Our new policy on campus visits is that someone else from the network must also come, so we build links around, not always through, the National Convenor.

This worked really well when Danya Bryx, one of the co-environment officers at Monash Uni, came with me to UTas Hobart. The Utas collective is amazing – almost 40 students, and several sub-collectives including fair trade/composting, paper campaign, food co-op, the Weld forest campaign, transport, and media. Danya and Anna, with help from Jess of the Hobart Greenpeace local group, ran an intensive two-day weekend training workshop, attended by around 25 students. This aided the collective to begin their campaign strategy process as well as setting short, medium and long-term goals for the collective.

In other exciting news, Lucy from JCU Townsville has started an enviro collective up there, despite

opposition from her Liberal-controlled student union. The Queensland State Network, QEAN, has been supporting Lucy with materials for stalls and moral support since she is so far away from any other campus!!

SEAN Weekend

Another amazing SEAN (The NSW Student Environment Activist Network) weekend was held recently in the Hunter Valley, attended by around 25 students from most campuses in the state, including Sydney Uni, UNSW, UTS, COFA, UNE, UWS and Newcastle Uni.

The weekend was a great chance for student enviro activists from around the state to get to know each other, strategise for the climate campaign, and do skill-shares and workshops.

Workshops included Deep Ecology, The Movement Action Plan and campaign strategy, Non-violent direct action training and conflict diffusion. Campaign planning for the climate campaign took place, and Newcastle activists explained the campaign they are running against the Sandgate rail flyover, and Hunter coal exports.

Thanks to everyone who helped and who came to the weekend!!

The happy SEAN family at the August SEAN weekend

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You can look at environmentalism as an extension of workplace health and safety laws. It’s pretty simple: you have to make sure your workplace is safe, or the workers will get sick or hurt themselves. It’s easy to extend this idea to the rest of the world. We have to look after the planet, our home, or humans will get sick, and die, or even make ourselves extinct like we are doing with our current trajectory of dangerous climate change.

I bet the Liberals and the bosses would be pretty worried if they realised that the environment and union movements are starting to enter into dialogue about creating and strengthening alliances. Because the people who profit from both environmental destruction and the exploitation of workers – they’re the same ones, and they’re also the same ones trying to attack us along with anyone else who tries to resist their Neoliberal agenda.

It’s so easy to disprove the myth that it’s a choice of ‘jobs vs the environment’. Time after time it has been proven that environmental protection creates jobs and is a growth industry. For example, saving enough energy to avoid 100 megawatts worth of power plant capacity creates 39 jobs, compared with only 15-20 jobs required

to operate the same amount of capacity at a modern coal or gas fired power plant.

Creating and growing ‘green industries’ are a comparatively easy area that Unions and the environment movement can work on together. In the campus climate change campaign that our student network is working on as a priority, there are clearly huge opportunities for the mutually beneficial involvement of the energy industry and building industry unions.

There are problems – but these wedges are often the result of deliberate misinformation spread by industry lobby groups made up of bosses who profit from telling these lies. We have the same enemy! Of the 25,000 Australian timber jobs lost in the previous 15 years, 98 per cent were due to mechanisation and restructuring and only two per cent due to environmental demands.

Fundamentally, environmentalists and unionists should be natural allies – we are not environmentalists because we hate people and prefer trees, but because we think that every person, and every species, has the right to a clean and healthy planet. We want good living conditions for all humans.

This is particularly relevant for workers, especially in blue-collar industries, because often they are worst affected by urban pollution and contamination. They are the ones whose green spaces are sold off for development, whose children have higher rates of asthma, and who are going to be less able to deal with the devastating effects of climate change by relocating to less affected areas.

There are so mnay reasons why Unions and environmentalists should work together. So how can ASEN move forward in a practical way and make links with Unions?

At the moment there are very few opportunities for student environment activists to interact with and form relationship with Unionists. The barriers are not only that we don’t hang out at the same places or attend the same events, it’s also a generational thing and a gender thing. The majority of Union reps seem to be middle aged males, while most of the organisers in ASEN are young women. So I think more education needs to be done in both movements about gender politics, queer politics, and class politics as well as the actual issues and threats facing workers and Unions and the Environment.

I know that there is a perception that environmentalists only work on single-issues and don’t have a broader analysis of Unionism, classism, the power of organised labour etc. To some extent, this is true, but organisers in ASEN are trying really hard to ensure that our generation has a broader political analysis of the root cause of both environmental destruction and worker exploitation.

Many ASENers were recently part of the Forbes protests in Sydney where Unionists and environmentalists stood side by side against corporate greed, and it was pretty inspiring.

ASEN is organising a series of reading group modules for campus environment collectives to read and discuss. Our first module will be about this topic – Unions and Environmentalism. This will hopefully assist the size of ‘Green

Unions and the Environment Movementby Anna Rose, ASEN Convenor 2005

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Blocs’ at the next rallies over the IR attacks.

Common organising training is something I think we should begin to do more. The community organising school earlier this year in NSW was the beginning of something that will hopefully grow to be much larger and become commonplace – a joint activist training camp between Unionists, environmental organisers and student activists. This not only builds the personal networks that are needed for successful alliances, but also gives us a common language and understanding of activism and campaigning which allows us to do campaign strategy together.

Finally, regular meetings and regular contact between Unions and environmentalists needs to become commonplace. In the last few years, the student/ youth environment movement has been undergoing a transition and is trying become much more engaged with Indigenous issues and Indigenous struggle, and part of this has been learning the lesson that the first thing you do in a campaign that affects land is to contact the Traditional owners of that land. I think we need to do the same thing regarding Unions – that the second thing you do in a campaign is contact the Union whose workers are involved in the issue.

There are so many campaigns in Australia that affect all of us and are going to need the support of workers and Unions to win – climate change and the transition to renewable energy, and stopping uranium mining and the nuclear industry are the two most pressing that spring to mind.

ASEN on its own can’t come up with alternative employment plans, but we can push other Environment NGOs to do that. ASEN on its own can’t build the whole bridge, but we can build some of it, and we definitely want to.

Jobs and the Environment: Having the cake and eating itDispelling the myths about the false choices between employment and saving the environment

by Cam Walker, Friends of the Earth Australia.

When many people think about the ‘environment’ they often think of things outside their day-to-day lives; forests, oceans, endangered species, river systems. The environment has long been seen as something ‘out there’, beyond our lives, and, as such, is often seen as an ‘add on’ issue for many trade unionists and working people. ‘Environmentalism’ has been, overwhelmingly (in countries like Australia) a pre-occupation of the middle classes. The mainstream media, governments, business all tend to see environmental issues equally in a non-political way. While this has been shifting since the early 1970s, there still remains a fundamental chasm between the day to day ‘business’ of the environment movement and those concerned about workers’ and wider social rights.

It can be argued that the days of the Green Bans, of Environmentalists for Full Environment and attempts to achieve a conserver (steady state) economy were high points in the creation of an environmentalism that addressed equally the needs of people and the natural environment. This occurred in the early to mid 1970s. The basic premise of this emergent movement, which was class conscious and ‘political’, was that working people and environmentalists had common cause and would be stronger through identifying common enemies than in becoming trapped in oppositional politics. Dave Kerin, a long term trade union activist, argues that from the mid seventies employers saw an opportunity to divide workers from greens, and so began an internal conflict within the workers’ movement which presented the problem as ‘jobs versus environment’.

It can also be argued that much of the green movement went on a political trajectory in the 1980s and early 90s that saw ever diminishing collaboration with unions and a consciously apolitical approach to activism. The result of this was that the conflict between workers in the resource sector and environmentalists became the ‘icon’ image of environmentalism in these decades. Sadly, the decades of the 1980s and 90s saw an ever greater divergence of the mainstreams of both these movements. There were certainly exceptions to the rule, for instance, heartening collaboration between environmental activists and trade unions on issues including globalisation, common campaigning against specific companies (for instance against Rio Tinto), and the Earthworker initiative in Victoria and othe ventures.

It is worth considering Earthworker in some detail as it represents the most recent formal attempt in Australia to develop links between the two movements. Earthworker was an initiative of the Electrical Trades Union, Friends of the Earth and the Rail, Tram, Bus Industry Union and others. It arose out of discussions around the issue of union-green relations, the history of where we got those relations right, and an analysis of the points at which those relations broke down. Time was allowed for discussion around the ‘jobs versus environment’ debate and a range of other issues affecting relations between the two social movements. According to Dave Kerin, ‘out of this atmosphere (of debate) a new way of working is developing which relies upon the best traditions of the labor movement - solidarity, mutual aid and cooperation - combined with the best traditions of the green movement, interconnection, inclusivity and openness.

One of the first positions reached, which was really the underlying philosophy of Earthworker, was that a false dichotomy had been deliberately created between

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Germinate Germinate workers/unionists and greens. In establishing Earthworker the obvious was accepted, that the vast majority of active greens were unionists and/or supporters of unionism. Likewise the vast majority of unionists had a concern for environmental protection and sustainability’. Earthworker came to an untimely end in 2001 after it was asked to mediate in a conflict between activists seeking to protect native forests from logging in the Otway ranges and the Forestry Division of the CFMEU.

Some benchmarks in environment-trade union collaboration and conflict

- the ‘green bans’ of the early 1970s. See ‘Green Bans, Red Union: environmental activism and the NSW BLF’ by Meredith and Verity Burgmann.- Australian Council of Trade Unions policy to ban uranium mining and export from 1979-84- increased separation between the two movements with ever greater focus on logging/ forestry and icon areas as a key pre-occupation of the green movement – Franklin, Daintree, Wet Tropics, southern forests, etc (early and mid 1980s to mid 1990s)- the formalisation of links between the green movement and organised labor (eg, in 1993, the ACTU and ACF launched a green jobs program)- re-emergence of class conscious environmentalism (through influence of environmental justice philosophy and practical collaboration over toxics, community struggles during Kennett era in Vic, etc) (early 1990s)- increased alliance building between greens and trade unions (and other social sectors) from the mid 1990s – Jabiluka, 1998; MUA dispute, WEF protests, 2000)

‘Double dividend’ - areas for collaboration in the campaign against Climate Change

Public transport funding - “Green policies to promote public transport, cycling and walking could lead to the creation of 130,000 new jobs by 2010, which would more than offset the loss of around 43,000 jobs in the motor industry as a result of decreasing car use. Furthermore, if measures were taken to encourage the use of cleaner, more efficient vehicles and leasing rather than car ownership, another 35,000 jobs could be created.”

Renewable energy sector development – Environmentally, the transition to co-geneneration, solar hot water, photovoltaic cells, wind, low-impact hydro and geothermal sources of energy is necessary, and at the same time the source of many jobs. A coalition of environmental groups in NSW have claimed that investmentsin renewable energy instead of new coal-fired power plants “promise clean energy and jobs growth well in excess of the jobs found in the fossil fuel electricity generation industry”, including significan increases in jobs in rural areas. Friends of the Earth UK are also researching the benefits of renewable energy for job creation: “According to the 1996 European Commission’s Green Paper on renewable energies (which calls for a doubling of the contribution from renewable energies in the EU by 2010 to 12%), the development of renewables can bring positive and tangible effects on regional development and employment. Realising half the EU’s renewable technical potential by 2020 (14% of primary energy demand) could create 515,000 jobs (net, allowing for losses in other energy sectors) and reduce CO2 emissions by 16.2%.

Energy efficiency: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified cost and energy effective measures which have good job creation potential, opening up jobs in manufacture, delivery,installation and advice provision. A study for the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions found that the adoption of energy conservation best available technologies could create 500,000 extra jobs in the EU. The net employment gains of $3.1 billion of investments in US DSM (demand side management) programmes has been estimated at over 75,000 jobs, while

simultaneously saving 50 TWh. (Krier and Goodman, 1992)

Carbon tax on industry and ecological tax reform – carbon taxes on industry and commerce is seen as way of reducing the amount of fossil fuel based energy consumption. Friends of the Earth UK argues that it can generate huge revenues and the economic cost of such a tax can be offset by a concurrent reduction in labour taxes, which form a package of ‘ecological tax reform’. One study by UK researchers found that employment growth of around 3% for G7 countries for a carbon tax of $275 per tonne, resulting in a 31% drop of CO2 emissions by 2035 (Mabey, N., et al 1997). While there were initial GDP reductions (up to 1.5%), for most G7 countries there were GDP increases post 2000.

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In 1966 the Gurindgi people in the Northern Territory had had enough of being exploited as cheap labour, being forced to raise cattle for British Lord Vestey on their own country.

They walked off Wave Hill station and started a strike that lasted eight years, to get back their land and control of their lives. This was before Indigenous people in this country were even accorded citizenship. We know that was a successful fight, culminating in the famous scene where Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was photographed handing the land titles over to the Gurindgi people, symbolically pouring sand into the hand of Vincent Lingiari.

Imagine how hard it must have been at the start for the Gurindgi to get their voice heard and to let the world know about their determined fight. What helped was the support of people with a commitment to social justice, working collectively, through organisations such as university students’ organisations and trade unions.

Students’ organisations brought representatives of the Gurindgi people down to Sydney and billeted them here, to help gain public attention for the strike. Students organised opportunities for Gurindgi people to speak at forums and to the media so that the word could be spread, and supported calls for Indigenous land rights.

The Gurindgi strike was not the first time Indigenous people got organised to fight for their rights. Examples include resistance fighting during the early days of occupation by people such as

Pemulwuy; the inaugural Day of Mourning in 1938, which is the forerunner to our current Survival Day events; and strikes by Indigenous station workers in the 1940’s. The Gurindgi’s action however was the most clearly successful, mainly due to the widespread support it received t h r o u g h c o l l e c t i v e organising.

A n o t h e r example is the famous Freedom Ride around rural NSW. Charles Perkins was one of only two Indigenous students at University of Sydney in 1965, but his Students’ Association provided the support and the resources to make the Freedom Ride happen. Twenty nine students accompanied him on the Freedom Ride and it successfullydrew attention to the shameful discrimination being practiced and helped bring about change.

At UTS in the 1980s there was still no support to help address the educational disadvantage of Indigenous students and to assist people into higher education. Frances Peters and Ken Canning, the only Indigenous students at UTS at the time, decided to get organised. They got the support of individuals and groups, including the UTS Students’ Association, to fight for an Indigenous support unit, culminating with the establishment of Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning.

When I enrolled in the Business program at UTS at the start of 2003, as a mature-age Koori student,

having been out of education for 17 years, I would not have dreamed that by the end of 2004 I would be elected as president

of UTS Students’ Association, so that I could help work for access to education for all, not just the rich.

But it happened. And it happened because I got actively involved in

my Students’ Association to work with like-minded people for social justice.

So my point is, anything we have won as Indigenous people has been won by working collectively. Working together with our own people and with allies in other parts of the community. This is the polar opposite of the Howard government’s strategy of isolating and weakening movements for justice, by implementing their ideology of individualism at all levels of society.

Unite and fight. United we bargain, divided we beg.

Further reading:Indigenous resistance: http://www4.tpgi.com.au/2juls/resistance.htmlGurindgi strike:http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/1995/197/197p13.htmFreedom Rides:http://www.abc.net.au/messageclub/duknow/stories/s888118.html

Indigenous Rights, Students’ Organisations and VSUby Michelle Sparks, President 2005, UTS Students Association

“So my point is, anything we have won as Indigenous people has been won by working collectively.”

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On July 28th this year, a new climate agreement was announced between some of the world’s worst greenhouse polluters - Australia, the United States, India, China and South Korea – ostensibly to commercially develop technological solutions to climate change.

The first meeting of the climate hypocrite pact will be held in Adelaide in N o v e m b e r , w h e r e g o v e r n m e n t representatives from each of the 5 countries will negotiate the details of the agreement, which the Howard Government sees as an “alternative to the Kyoto Protocol”.

The climate hypocrite pact is yet another indication of the Howard government’s irresponsible, industry-driven approach to climate change. Thinking that technology can save us from climate change is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Addressing climate change requires immediate and fundamental changes to the way our oil and coal-dependant society and economy is structured.

The climate secret pact aims for the development of commercially viable technologies by 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol comes into effect. By this time, temperature increases will have begun to

majorly disturb e c o s y s t e m s and mosquito spread disease will be spreading further, rising sea levels and

more extreme weather will have created millions more climate refugees, agricultural crops will have begun to fail, and iconic natural wonders like the Daintree, Great Barrier Reef, and the Snowy Mountains will be well on their way to destruction.

Meanwhile, our government sits in corporate boardrooms with the major coal, oil and gas

companies and funds expensive, u n p r o v e n t echno log i ca l solutions like

geosequestration (burying emissions underground) whilst slashing funding for renewable energy.

“We need to ensure that we develop technologies that will see energy expand, because we need more energy,” stated Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell, who also recently shocked the environmental community by denying that burning coal causes greenhouse emissions.

1 The denial was made in a submission by Senator Campbell to a Federal court challenge by a Qld environmental group, Wildlife Whitsunday. He made the statement on August 5, just days after warning Australians of the inevitability of global warming.

Australia has a mandatory renewable energy target of about 2 per cent of all electricity production, but the Government has refused to extend it. It is widely

acknowledged in the environment movement that the reason for this, and the general reluctance of the Federal government to deal with climate change in any constructive manner, is the close links between the Australian coal industry and the government.

Even the former govt chief climate change official has stated that The Federal Government allows the fossil fuel, energy and mining industries too much influence on greenhouse policies, including the decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Gwen Andrews, the Australian Greenhouse Office chief executive until 2002, has publicly stated that she was never asked to brief the Prime Minister, John Howard, on climate change during her four years in the role. She has confirmed what many environmentalists have been arguing for years – that energy, mining and resource interests are essentially directing Australia’s policy on climate change.

Documents obtained under freedom of information legislation show multinationals warned the Government before last year’s energy white paper - which largely reflected their thinking

Expose the Climate Hypocrite Pact!Anna Rose and Wenny Theresia explain why you are invited to Australia’s biggest Climate Convergence, in Adelaide this November...

“The climate hypocrite pact is yet another indication of the Howard government’s irresponsible, industry-driven approach to climate change.”

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- that reducing emissions might endanger investment.

The documents, from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, show:

- BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto said a national emissions trading scheme was “premature”.

- The American oil giant Exxon Mobil advised “investments in current renewable energy technology are not economical”. It said evidence on climate change was inconclusive.

- BHP Billiton warned “greenhouse imposts could threaten the competitive position of Australia” and the Minerals Council of Australia said targeting the energy sector over emissions “should be avoided”.

- Fossil fuel companies called for government funding for research into geosequestration - burying carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants - as the main strategy to reduce emissions.

Between 1998 and 2004, five big resource companies gave at least $1.69 million to the Coalition and its foundations, according to the Australian Electoral Commission. Labor got $412,311 from the same sources in that period.

The government chief scientist until May, Robin Batterham, is a

Rio Tinto executive and supports geosequestration. Lyall Howard, Mr Howard’s nephew, is the firm’s government affairs manager.

Focusing on technology to make burning fossil fuels cleaner instead of reducing emissions is just the latest in a series of climate-change inducing actions by Australia. The climate hypocrite pact’s five member countries include four of the world’s biggest coal producers - China, USA, India and Australia.

“This is all about taxpayers’ money being diverted from developing clean, renewable technologies to try to make burning coal less dirty,” stated Greens Senator Bob Brown.

Down with climate change profiteers! Burning coal is like, sooo 18th century. No new coal, A clean energy future for Australia!! See you in Adelaide this November!

Who’s Coming to the Climate Hypocrite Pact?

Alexander Downer has announced that this meeting is to occur in Adelaide and that Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to attend. Mr Downer also announced that Donald Rumsfeld may also be present.

As US National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, was one of the main architects of the war on Iraq. She is now the Secretary of State and is a main player in the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. Rumsfeld is the US Sec-retary of Defense. He is directly in charge of the US “war on terror” and the war on Iraq. These two people are not welcome in this country by Australians who oppose wars and who seek a peaceful and just world and a healthy and sustainable environ-ment.

Join us in Adelaide in November in a mass non-violent action on the theme of “Stop the war on the environment and the environ-ment of war”.

Contact the Rice-Rumsfeld Reception Committee via email at [email protected]

Image by Patty Grant, 2004 UTS co-enviro officer

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by Holly Creenaune, UTS enviro collective

Green Bloc did a fantastic occupation of the Xstrata offices on Tuesday. It was part of a couple of days of mass decentralised action, and disruption of the city around the Forbes Global CEO Conference. Xstrata are the world’s biggest coal exporter and are pushing the Sandgate Rail Upgrade in the Hunter Valley.

Green Bloc met at Customs Square, possibly the area with the highest level of surveillance in Australia that week. We dispersed in pairs, and met half an hour later.

Somehow we got into the foyer of the building (1 Macquarie Place - it was directly next to Customs Square, where hundreds of cops and horses were waiting). Somehow we got inside the lift. Somehow we got to the foyer of Level 38 – the level of Xstrata. The offices were locked.... but SOMEHOW we got inside the offices of Xstrata and began making noise!!

There were about 15 people of Green Bloc who were part of the occupation of Xstrata. We carried banners exposing Xstrata as a corporate climate criminal, a Green Bloc Banner (“Tick tock tick tock, here comes the Green Bloc! People and Planet not Profits”). We chanted

cheers about c l i m a t e change, the exploitation of the environment and of people, and generally w e a v e d throughout the office.

We demanded Xstrata cease their use of coal and abuse of the earth, and demanded to see Xstrata’s position paper on climate change.

Some staff were meanies. One staff member started abusing us, with the usual “insult” of “get a job”. On her computer screen desktop was a picture of a HUGE lump of coal! (She was scary!)

Xstrata also had framed “art” on the walls of their offices — framed photographs of coal! It was a creepy office.

We had collective discussion about how we wanted to proceed with the occupation, and how we wanted to negotiate with Xstrata and police. We were non-violent & sat in a small space in the middle of the office.

About 20 police arrived, and immediately began yelling at us. One Xstrata Office Manager said very quietly for us to leave, and then police began forcibly removing people. They were particularly

aggressive with 2 womyn.

Eventually we got into the lifts, half of us were herded via the back exit, and the other half via the front. We occupied and disrupted the Xstrata offices for about 45 minutes. There were no arrests, and no-one had details recorded. I did about 6 live-to-air radio interviews about the Xstrata occupation (yay!!).

Green Bloc did a debrief afterward — on how people felt, what worked, what didn’t, and what we’d like to do as an affinity group in the future (cool!)

Overall, we disrupted Xstrata offices for about 45 minutes, felt great and effective, felt in control and empowered, had heaps of fun, and learnt lots!

Media Release, August 31, 12 Midday:

ACTION ALERT: PROTEST SHIFT TACT TO TARGET

Today, protests shift tact to target corporate climate criminals in the

Sydney CBD. Following a lack of dialogue at the Forbes Global

CEO Conference over climate solutions, the Green Bloc have oc-

cupied the offices of the worldʼs major fueller of climate change,

Xstrata.

From 1:15pm today, protesters will gather with banners and drums

to disrupt the Xstrata Office in Sydney. Green Bloc are demanding

Xstrata break their profit dependence on fossil fuels by producing

a climate change transitional strategy, prioritising investment in

clean energy.

Holly Creenaune, a protester with Green Bloc says “We demand

Xstrata cease environmentally destructive reliance on coal exports,

and work towards clean energy transition.

“Xstrata are the worldʼs biggest coal exporter - making them one of

the worldʼs worst corporate climate criminals. The interests Xstrata

are reflected in the Forbes Conference and in Government policy

agendas that ignore climate change.”

Naomi Hodgson from Rising Tide Newcastle says, “We are target-

ing Xstrata because of their blatant attempts to railroad any strat-

egy to address climate change.”

Xstrata produce more than 70 million tones of coal each year, more

than 50 million is from Australia, predominantly from the Hunter

Valley. Xstrata are a major advocate of the Sandgate Rail upgrade

in the Hunter Valley, which will increase coal exports by 60%.

Newcastle is already the largest coal exporting port in the world.

ASEN Targets Corporate Climate Criminals at Forbes 500 Protests

ASENers Inside the Xstrata office

12


I went to Sydney with limited expectations. Given that there is currently hardly a coordinated radical movement against neo-liberalism I wasn’t expecting more than a few random actions and at best 2000 people on the Tuesday night. I think some people may have come with near delusions, almost S11 style in grandeur. I wasn’t even expecting anything as coordinated at the mobilisations around the WTO mini-ministerial in November of 2003, and these actions were indeed smaller. However there were still almost similar numbers and a lot of new, young, energetic radical faces. What was lacking was more good organising and experience.

Since September 11 2001 the movement against neo-liberalism in Australia has been in steady decline, unable to develop a coherent analysis and praxis under this new regime of power that could facilitate the development of large mobilisations against it. The question of how neo-liberalism is to be challenged under the war on terror are yet to be answered. The Forbes mobilisations, despite their limitations, proved to me that there is still a convergence of people to at least pose the question to. And I think this is the heartening fact about 30A, briefly breaking that isolation that we feel in our everyday struggles.

SpokesCouncilsThere were significant numbers at the so-called spokescouncils, anywhere from 100-120 people. Given that the authoritarian socialist groups stayed away this time around it is almost as many as for the WTO. A big hole however was that no one from the 30A network came (or was invited) so that people could get a better idea of what had been planned and

what the current situation in terms of organising was. There seemed to be very little information to distribute.

The spokescouncils however were hardly that. They were essentially mass meetings. Perhaps only half the people were organised in affinity groups which in some ways made the spokescouncil already impossible. This again is related back to the current state of the movement, there are just not the daily campaigns going on in which people are already organised, and not a strong political culture where new people have space to learn about self-organisation. Many of those who participated in S11 got a rapid and radical political education from participating in things like the Jabiluka, East Timor, Goolengook and MUA campaigns. These kind of daily struggles are just not currently present. There was a noticeable lack of people at Forbes who had previously participated in large counter-mobilisations, this meant that skills were not being passed on. Any possibility of building a radical opposition to neo-liberalism means sharing those knowledges and this didn’t happen to the degree it should have at 30A.

Pre-convergence coordination and communicationFinding out information about plans for the convergence before heading to Sydney was quite difficult. Arriving in Sydney however it seems like part of this was related to the fact that very little had been organised beyond the Tuesday night march. It’s a credit to people that in a few days so many actions we able to be thrown together. In future much better communications systems need to be set up for those coming from out of town. A positive was the three or four different convergence booklets that were put together.

Subplot and SSFThe Sydney Social Forum fell down quite a bit on my expectations, and I think those of the organisers. Less people came than the previous year despite the mobilisations. The space felt empty and lacked vibrancy. At a fundamental level it lacked popular support and at an even more fundamental level there is a lack of campaigns and activities that are even required to call such a convergence. Again the problem comes back the current stagnation of radical social movements in Australia.

Subplot, despite the lesser amount of money and energy that went into organising it had a fairly decent turnout, perhaps up to 150 people. It served as a good convergence point for people organising direct action at 30A and in this sense fulfilled it’s purpose. Similarly the convergence space at the Nunnery was also highly advantageous, without which the mobilisations would have been significantly splintered. A convergence space thought out far more in advance however would also have been good, especially for people coming from interstate.

30ATuesday night was very mixed. There were some great moments; the march was very lively, loud and energetic with sounds systems, a samba band and lots of noise, and the spontaneous deconstruction of the heavily fortified concrete and steel fence was quite inspiring. Breaching what appeared to be an impenetrable barrier was a great confidence boost to the crowd as was the commitment to engage in active disobedience and the refusal to submit to state authority. It sent a message that the elite should indeed be fearful and take

Reflections on 30A - Forbes 500 Protests(posted on Sydney Indymedia by andenator )

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us into account as much as they did in planning for the conference. We were a significant thorn in their side, making Forbes move the opening dinner, forcing them to justify their handouts from the NSW government and massive police spending, making corporate power an issue, demonstrating that there was opposition to it and raining on their PR parade. They were also forced to put up barriers around the opera house turn away thousands of visitors.

Other positives were the George Bush Snr hoax whereby a fake press release was sent out and website constructed informing media that the former President would be in attendance. The media swallowed it whole, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) in particular, and they were forced to acknowledge their mistake in print delegitimising themselves by demonstrating they were willing to believe any information that came to them with a Forbes logo on it. Hopefully this raised questions amongst people as to how trustworthy any information they would print about the protest would be. SMH got their own back printing a highly derogatory piece the next day and quoting only the police saying just 500 people had showed up and neglecting to mention the breach in the fence.

Tuesday night also had significant problems mostly stemming from the fact that the venue had been changed. By 5.30 this was well known, what was not well known

or confirmed was where they had moved to. This information only arrived and hour or two later. Before five o’clock dozens of delegates were leaving u n h i n d e r e d from the Stamford hotel and boarding busses for the venue. Even 100 people of the 1500 people just 2 minutes away could have seriously slowed this, 3-400 would potentially have stopped it. But there was no capacity to communicate and make decisions autonomously and no way to accurately gather information. We were set in the tracks that 30A had set for the evening.

This is where the failures of the spokes council were most pronounced and also the lack of communication groups like ixpress in Melbourne. We had no ability to converge and swarm out. There were no delegates from affinity groups who could talk to each other, no signals to draw them together to meet, no communication and thus no organisation or action.

Once we knew where the dinner was actually being held there was no way to decide what to do. At least the trots weren’t shouting at people through megaphones but in this vacuum of power the autonomous groups could have coordinated directly democratic decision making structures in the street, but instead nothing happened. This failure however isn’t necessarily a major obstacle to overcome, skill share trainings and practice could easily facilitate it. A bigger contingent of experienced activists (now all to cynical it seems) would have helped

enormously in this regard.

A brief however well done to the puppet makers, they were great,

and the mobile Indymedia van which served as a wireless net access point and was uploading stories from the street.

WednesdayWednesday was always going to be small. Some groups a c c u r a t e l y assessed the situation and had successful

actions, and others didn’t. The reclaim the streets was a disappointment and there was never going to be enough people to make it a success. It seems to often that when people don’t know what kind of action to do they fall back on doing a reclaim the streets.

RTS is unfortunately far past it’s used by date. London RTS hasn’t existed in anything like it’s real form for at least 4 years. The tactic has had it’s time. If people aren’t assured they are going to get at least 500 people it’s not worth it anyway. The RTS in Sydney became an RTP, a reclaim the pavement and was profoundly disempowering. Instead of wasting energy fighting with cops as to whether or not we can walk on the road much more t a r g e t e d and specific actions with a concrete p o l i t i c a l b a s i s need to be deve loped

“ Post - S11 the movement shifted into an ideological abstraction and created something known as the “anti-capitalist activist”, completely removed from the daily struggles that created the movement in the first place.”

Germinate Germinate Germinate and RTS has to stop being some kind of default action people do when they can’t imagine anything else.

Similarly on Wednesday morning people thought they were going to be able to blockade the conference which was never a possibility. A more accurate estimate of our power is required if we are to be effective at anything. Again I would put part of this down to a lack of experience and the missing presence of more seasoned activists who might have been able to bring people back to earth before so much energy was wasted.

However on Wednesday there was one action that was overwhelmingly successful, the shut down of ANZ branches in the CBD. Activists targeted three ANZ branches due to it’s participation in the Iraqi Reconstruction Bank and thus funding of theneo-colonisation. In response to the actions and occupations ANZ shut down all it’s branches in the central business district. Activists did similar actions on Thursday and Friday, again closing all branches. If people are able to keep this up and maintain focus there could be a real chance of affecting ANZ’s operations in Iraq. Here quite successfully people

were able to assess their capacities and create genuinely achievable goals.

The media of course could see no connection between Forbes and ANZ. ANZ were not at the Forbes conference so what were they doing? Unable to comprehend that protestors weren’t specifically against Forbes but against their corporate neo-liberal agenda the media were baffled as to why protestors weren’t down at the conference gates. Moving away from the terrain the police had set up on their terms was a great move, instead activists set the agenda and took the initiative and were duly rewarded.

in Conclusion

There is much to learn from the A30 actions, all in all it’s a mixed bag, though I came away feeling fairly good about it all. I had fairly limited expectations and they were exceeded to some extent. The question needs to be continually asked however, how useful are these protests? What are we setting out to achieve? The A30 actions brought activists together from around the country and hopefully built relationships that will be ongoing and can serve as a basis for

ongoing campaigns. It also kept the issue of unfettered corporate power on the political agenda, something that can be built on. Hopefully much was learned in terms of generating self-activity and self-organisation that can be extended further, despite the limitations in these areas.

People have already begun talking about the possibilities of counter actions to the G20 in Melbourne next year. These however will be as limited as the actions against Forbes if daily struggles and campaigns are not built. Post S11 the movement shifted into an ideological abstraction and created something known as the “anti-capitalist activist”, completely removed from the daily struggles that created the movement in the first place. If future actions are to be successful at all activity must move into the everyday and create ongoing laboratories of resistance that build roots, skills and construct possibilities in the here and now.

ASEN Summer Training CampASEN is holding its first ever Summer Training Camp from January 30th - February 3rd 2006!

Students taking on campus and state environment organiser roles are invited to attend this 5-day intensive training course. Come and meet other environment organisers from all over Australia, learn campaign skills,

how to convene a campus group, fundraising and financial management, media skills and messaging, non-violent direct action, meeting facilitation, goal setting, critical path analysis, coalition building, Applications open now.

Cost is only $50 for the whole camp, and ASEN will heavily subsidise travel costs for inter-state students.

ASEN Trainers will be working alongside experienced activist trainers James Whelan and Sam La Rocca from the

Change Agency. - see www.thechangeagency.org for great activist training resources!

Location: Wangat Lodge is a tranquil bush retreat made of mud bricks and locally hewn timber, set in peaceful natural surroundings on the northern side of the Hunter Valley and in the foothills of the Barrington Tops, NSW. It is situated on a 37 hectare Wildlife Refuge bordered by a pristine stretch of the Chichester River, overlooking the

Barrington Tops National Park.

15

Germinate Germinate (Thanks to Julia Dehm from Melbourne Uni for chasing up these reportbacks, and to all the campuses who provided them. We really need to work on developing a culture of regular reportbacks, we can have really good national communication, but it is up to YOU to write one for your collective!

Swinburne (“Swinnie”) Environment Collective Our main achievement so far was organising an amazing Environment Week in May where we managed to involve students in competitions, free vegetarian food, info booths, seminars and an excursion. This year we hope to improve waste management on our campuses (eg. to have organic waste bins, more signage on recycling bins), educate the Swinburne community about green office & sustainable practices, to join ASEN in the climate change campaign and to involve more students in our enviro collective!

UQ Enviro Collective

Sustainable unisOur sustainable university group has been meeting regularly now – talking about ideas to make our campus more enviro-friendly. Ideas include – increased recycling bins, reduction in throw away containers used in refecs, renewable energy and energy reduction on campus, tree planting, car poolingThe first project is going to be a native foods trail. It will be working in conjunctim with local Indigenous people who are interested in doing an Indigenous cultural trail around campus.

Garden shareA new initiative is starting up.. Each fortnight people gather a different house to help create or maintain

urban organic gardens. It’s a way to share skills, build community and have fun, while also creating great gardens and showing that organic food production can be done anywhere.

SOSAs SOS is in Brisvegas next year, this is going to be a big part of environment collectives in Qld. Many people in UQ EC are involved in preparing for SOS 06.

Corporate scumbagsWe have been researching corporate involvement in UQ and running ‘corporate scumbag tours’ to raise awareness of who is really getting a say in our education and why we should be worried about this. (Also I have just found out that the Qld govt and Boeing are going to be creating an elite high school here in Brisbane, might be something to campaign on in the near future.)

KurbingaibahOn sept 3rd EC is taking a day trip to Kurbingaibah Indigenous cultural awareness centre to meet local Traditional Owners and to learn about land management practises, bush foods, local history and current local Indigenous issues. We will also be helping them do some re-veg and construction work on the property.

Discussion group A discussion and skill share group will be starting up. The idea is for people to have the chance to talk about theories and strategies to make change as well as learn and share skills that are useful for making a difference.

Melbourne Uni Environment Collective

The University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) Environment Department and Environment

Cam

pus R

epor

tbac

ks

Germinate Germinate Germinate Collective have been extremely active during the first half of second semester.

Green Week, an environment themed week within the Union, was held between 8-14 August and was a great success. Events included a talk on climate change by Dr Graham Pearson, former chief atmospheric scientist for CSIRO, a free breakfast for students who traveled to campus via sustainable transport, a cake stall fundraiser, the VSU National Day of Action and a tree planting weekend to help restore breeding habitat for the Regent Honeyeater.

The Climate Change Collective held a social night to engage more students in the campaign against climate change on campus. Michelle Braunstein from Friends of the Earth gave a talk about climate refugees, which was followed by a delicious dinner and a climate change trivia night. Much fun was had by all. The Climate Change Collective is also currently working on a proposal to submit to key decision makers within the university administration calling for significant improvement in the University of Melbourne’s energy practices.

The Environment Collective is currently going back to basics. There’s been a lot of new faces lately so it has been focusing on activities like cake stalls, production of recycled lecture pads and tree planting weekends. One recent cake stall raised over $212 for the Blue Wedges Coalition, which is currently campaigning against the proposed channel deepening and dredging of Port Philip Bay. Another cake stall raised over $182 for Students of West Papua, a new cross campus group committed to campaigning for social and environmental justice in West Papua. The second half of semester is

shaping up to be equally busy, with a number of activist training sessions, more tree planting weekends, another free breakfast for students who use sustainable transport, several climate change actions planned, the Australian Campuses Towards Sustainability Conference, helping to organise an end of year cross campus environment camp and heaps more.

Strategically, we’re looking to build the independence of the Environment Collective as we slowly rebuild after years of corruption in the Union. This will include opening an independent bank account, making ourselves more robust in the face of VSU and considering a formal constitution.

We’re looking forward to reporting back on how it all goes later in the year.

Imogen Hamel-Green and Bill Bretherton, Enviro Officers.Website: www.union.unimelb.edu.au/environment

Utas Hobart Enviro Collective

The VSU Rally on the 25th August - Well we had a big sausage/veggie burger sizzle which drew a crowd, I’m not sure how many, but more than our last rally! (All the food was donated by various businesses. No money from the union). Jenny made a little speech, followed by Jamie Kirkpatrick (head of the Geography dept.), Ollie read out motions condemning the Federal government that you sent him, About 8 of us went to Eric Abetz’s office (although he wasn’t there) and delivered the motions that were passed at the Student General Meeting, against the backdrop of an anti-vsu banner. I don’t think he’s responded to it yet, although he was heard on the

radio complaining about how the radical/extremist anti-vsu students at UTAS ‘hijacked’ a sexual health awareness day to rally against VSU (referring to the first rally we held).

We’ve also been busy down here with Weld valley and Food Co-op meetings... and the Botany department has switched to recycled paper, woohoo! We’ll let you know if we have any big breakthroughs.

Anna’s note - Contact Jesse and Ollie if you have any messages of support for the Utas enviro collective, or if you want to get involved in the Weld Valley campaign, or are visiting Tassie and want to meet the collective - [email protected]

Monash Enviro Group

The collective has been going well, focusing on climate change, building a giant sun costume (too big to fit on the bus!), and building for the campus climate referendum that is being held on 19th - 21st September, where students will be asked whether they support Monash University a) reducing its energy use, b) generating electricity renewable energy on campus c) purchasing more clean energy.

The Uni Administration has already agreed to the first two demands, and will be making a public announcement to this effect in October.

Monash enviro collective has also been working on the campaign against Hazelwood, and will continue fighting against the disgraceful decision made by the Victorian cabinet and Premier Bracks.

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The back room of the Great Northern Hotel in Byron Bay was quieter than usual, though there were many people in there to see a show. The stage was lit but in place of the drum kit and amps was a single podium in low light, and on the screens were images of Tasmania’s forests. The images change from that of magnificent forests shrouded in mist to fire-bombed wastelands entombed in smoke.

The show that people had come to see was that of the Forests & Free Speech national tour, a national tour inspired by the lawsuit brought about by Tasmanian woodchipping giant Gunns Ltd against 17 individuals and 3 organisations.

To tell the story of Tasmania’s forests and the people willing to go through a lawsuit to defend them were Louise Morris (defendant #8 in the Gunns case) and Luke Chamberlain, coordinators of the Forests & Free Speech national tour. The night started off with a 15 minute DVD showing what is at stake in Tasmania, both its natural beauty and the ability to speak freely. It also introduced the 20 who are being targeted in the lawsuit by Gunns Ltd.

Central to these stories are the likes of Lou Geraghty, a grandmother and small business owner from the sleepy hamlet of Lucaston in southern Tasmania. Lou is being sued for standing up to Gunns Ltd when they announced plans to log an area next door to her home. Lou campaigned with the rest of the community for many years to provide alternatives to logging this area, including offering money to buy out the logging contract. This was refused and the

logging commenced. It was at this point that Lou Geraghty, and other Lucaston residents, took the final stand in a long and desperate campaign to save their forests and stood in front of the bulldozers and log trucks. It is for these actions, and passion for her community, that Lou Geraghty is being sued.

This story was echoed many times over as the stories of the individual defendants were revealed and glimpses of the people behind the

numbers and the lawsuit were given.

These stories were compounded when Louise Morris, (defendant #8) took the stage. Due to her involvement in the lawsuit Louise was required to stick to a carefully crafted script to ensure nothing was said that could land

her in more trouble. Before Louise commenced her scripted speech however, she revealed that only a matter of hours earlier she had been notified by an ABC journalist that she had been sued a second time by a different logging company in Tasmania.

This time it was Harback Logging Pty Ltd. suing Louise in the Tasmanian Supreme court. Louise had not seen the document, but only new that in the local Tasmania newspaper, The Mercury, a public notice had been published on 3/9/05 stating that Louise was the defendant in a new litigation of unknown size. She had three days to lodge an appearance in the Tasmanian Supreme Court to state her intention to defend herself against the allegations.

It was with this sobering reminder of how relevant such cases are to all those who voice an opinion, that

Louise went on to discuss the Gunns lawsuit and the need for legislative reform in every Australian state. With a concerted community effort aimed at politicians at all levels, especially state based MP’s, such lawsuits as the Gunns lawsuit and now the case against Louise by Harback Logging Pty Ltd can be outlawed.

To have such lawsuits clogging up the court system and taking up the valuable time of those who speak out for what they believe in, and act from their conscience and belief in the greater good, is a blow to democracy in Australia.

These cases, if successful, will have far reaching implications for the type of society Australia will become. It is not too dramatic to say that we are at a turning point, where new laws allowing the detention of people with out charge are looming, and where people can be targeted for expressing an opinion and belief. There is a way we can actively turn this trend around, and that is to force our political representatives to ban such stifling forms of litigation. If we fail to act now we will be limited in our actions for the foreseeable future.

For more information on the Forests & Free Speech national tour go to www.treedomfighters.org.au

For information on the tour contact Louise Morris 0408667100 or Luke Chamberlain 0424098729, Coordinators of the Forests & Free Speech national tour.

Free Speech in the Back Room

“We are at a turning point, where new laws allowing the

detention of people with out charge are looming, and

where people can be targeted

for expressing an opinion and belief”


Last week, Thursday 16th Septem-ber, a Sydney University student, Patrick Langosch, was arrested by plain clothes police officers in a Newtown back street. He was on his way home from a small rally at Newtown Neighbourhood Centre against anti-Muslim racism and in defence of civil liberties.

He has been charged with offences relating to a demonstration against Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU) on August 10th. When friends with Patrick asked the police why he was being taken one officer re-sponded, “if you do evil then you will be punished”.

This arrest represents another dis-turbing example of the recent shift towards coercive intimidation of activists involved in social justice movements. A similar incident oc-curred two weeks ago at Sydney University when a tutor leafleting against VSU was taken from the campus by plain clothes police, also in relation to incidents from August 10th.

Three students from Sydney Uni-versity were also arrested during protests against the Forbes Glob-al CEO conference, two of them picked off while simply standing in

the street. Police presence at all of these demonstrations has been excessive. We have faced horses, police helicopters and hundreds of officers completely surrounding gathered crowds.

At least we haven’t been pepper-sprayed yet, like last year during protests at UTS administration over the fee increases.

The Education Action Group, the SRC anti-VSU campaign collective, is call-ing on the po-lice to drop all charges current-ly placed on stu-dent activists. They are demanding that Vice-Chancellor Gavin Brown step in and stop police coming on campus to make arrests relating to political protest.

Lucinda Gidlow from the Sydney University Education Action Group said, “These recent arrests are de-signed to intimidate activists. This is also the agenda behind the VSU legislation - the silencing of dissent. But we will not be silenced. We will continue to demonstrate against the government and fight till both

the VSU bill and all the charges are dropped.”

Paddy Gibson from the Sydney university Stu-dents Represen-

tative Council (SRC) said, “Many of us involved in progressive cam-paigns have been severely shaken by the recent detention and depor-tation of American peace activist Scott Parkin, who lived and cam-paigned with Sydney University students while in Sydney.”

These incidents are happening all over the country: ASEN Na-tional Convenor Anna Rose and

UTS Student Holly Creenaune have been phoned by the Federal Police regarding student involvement in the Free West Papua campaign. The Monash Student

Association queer activist list is being monitored by police (as are many other of our e-lists). Phones have been tapped and we know there have been undercover police at our gatherings and demonstra-tions.

Similarly, we believe that many of the proposed amendments toanti-terrorism legislation that seek criminalse vague actions such as“supporting Australia’s enemies” are aimed squarely at those who oppose the government. The mes-sage coming from the Liberals is clear: ‘if you speak up, you could be locked up’”.

By Paddy Gibson, Sydney Univer-sity.

Students Targeted for Protests: The State Begins its Crack-Down

The message coming from the Liberals is clear:

‘if you speak up, you could be

locked up’”.

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Even those of us who have tried to follow the war closely are not aware of a fraction of the horrors unleashed in Iraq.” Author Arundathi Roy at the World Tribunal on Iraq, Is-tanbul, 2005.

This unimaginable devastation is largely this country’s responsibility and we are unaware of the intensity of it because Western broadcasters con-tinue to suppress the atrocities and destruction unleashed on a defence-less country. Along with the corporate media being anything but informative, there’s Bob ****off and other gormless pop stars saluting Bush and Blair’s man-handling of the third world at Live8, further separating people from the truth. However, despite Gandalf’s nauseating carnival of PR, some people couldn’t quite shake off their blood-tinted sunglasses this summer. While many were preparing for the G8 circus, some headed off to Istanbul for the world’s largest ever public in-quiry into the war on Iraq. News of this event didn’t make you choke on your cornfl akes though did it? Here’s why Big Media weren’t so keen on shouting about it...

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) was held in Istanbul from 24-26 June. The objective of this meeting was to dis-cuss the illegal invasion and occupa-tion in Iraq, point a fi nger at the scum responsible for it and emphasise the signifi cance of justice for the Iraqi peo-ple. This was the culmination of twenty hearings held in different cities across the world and based on the tribunals organised by Bertrand Russell into the US invasion of Vietnam in the late ‘60s.

One of the main outcomes of WTI was their confi rmation that the war in Iraq was indeed illegal. Never?! Other key facts, established after reviewing much evidence, were “blatant false-hoods about the presence of weap-ons of mass destruction in Iraq” and that the imposition of sanctions back

in 1990, the establishment of no-fl y zones in Iraq and the continuous bombing over the last decade were all aimed at “degrading and weakening Iraq’s human and material resources and capacities in order to facilitate its subsequent invasion and occupa-tion” (as if they would). And why has this happened? Well...most evidence supports the conclusion that the main motive behind this is the US’s need to control and dominate the Middle East and its vast reserves of oil as a part of “the US drive for global hegemony”.

So how many people have paid the price for this latest planetary power play? Whilst the Iraqi body-counters reckon between 24-27,000 have been massacred in Bush’n’Blair’s crusade against er, civilians, recent reports have shown that this was far from ac-curate. At the beginning of this year, leading health journal the Lancet re-ported that 100,000 people had been killed by the invasion in Iraq. After a lot of throat clearing the government de-clared that this was “misleading” and “entirely unfounded” due to the esti-mate being based on an “extrapola-tion technique” (using fi gures from one specifi c case and then generalising and applying to other similar cases, a technique which had to be employed due to no-go areas in Iraq.) However, on the ground Iraqi Human rights or-ganisation Maskarat al-Islam put the number of civilian dead at 128,000 as of July 2005.

The WTI heard 54 testimonies from advocates and witnesses who came from all over the planet including Iraq, the US and the UK. These gave a voice to the victims of the war crimes and atrocities that had occurred on their own soil at the hands of US and British soldiers.

Independent Lebanese journalist Dhar Jamail described the horrifi c story of a civil servant in Baghdad who went to a US airbase to ask what had hap-pened to his missing neighbours. In-

stead of being invited in for a cuppa (and an explanation) he was stripped naked, hooded and forced to simu-late sex with other prisoners. Sound humane so far? Other barbaric tricks for kicks included being beaten in the genitals, electrocuted in the anus and being smeared in shit. This account was typical.

So why did the US military get the idea that they could carry on like this then? “Our aim is to put you in hell. These are the orders from our superiors. To turn your life into hell.” explained one female soldier to prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

BBC’s refusal to broadcast any of the copious amounts of footage and inter-views it recorded at the WTI refl ects the mainstream media’s agenda and only helps thicken the fog of war. After a fl ood of complaints about the black-out, the BBC released a statement ex-plaining why they had decided not to cover the WTI: “We are committed to evidence-based journalism. We have not been able to establish that the US used banned chemical weapons and committed other atrocities against civil-ians in Fallujah” said the BBC spokes-woman.

Leading journalist John Pilger reck-ons this is “simply ridiculous... The US has admitted using napalm, a banned weapon, and the evidence of atroci-ties in Fallujah is too great to list here. Read, for example, the statements of doctors at Fallujah General Hospital and of other independent eye witness-es. The reason the BBC ‘has not es-tablished’ all this is because its report-ers are embedded with the Americans and British and report the occupiers’ news, about which there is nothing ‘impartial’.” (on www.medialens.org, a UK media watch project).

Ashes to Ashes. Taken from Schnews, an independent UK media centre - www.schnews.org.uk

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Taken from Schnews, an independent UK media centre - www.schnews.org.uk wanted for crimes against

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