En Passant

The eye of Sauron that is the Australian Parliament has now moved its racist focus from refugees to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

Not content with a fight, a macabre dance of death, over who could best screw refugees and destroy their lives, now the Australian Parliament is ‘debating’ the Orwellian Stronger Futures legislation.

This legislation continues the Northern Territory intervention first started by well known Aboriginal supporter and sympathiser John Howard. (That is sarcasm for those who may not be familiar with Australian politics.) The invasion was based on a lie about protecting young kids from abuse. In the five years of the intervention there has not been one successful prosecution.

But what has happened or will happen is that communities have been put on income management, alcohol has been banned and parents can lose government allowances if their kids don’t go to school.

Jailed for possessing alcohol? Yes, but only if you are black.

As to income management, having experimented with it in the Northern Territory on Aboriginal people, the Labor Government will now extend it into other areas, including poorer white suburbs.

The Stronger Future laws and the intervention/invasion are racist. They breach Australia’s Human Rights Act and so are excluded from its ambit.

The end result of the laws has been a gradual further dispossession of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory from their land.

And the suicide rate has doubled since the intervention began.

The Minister, ALP ‘left winger’ Jenny Macklin, claims there has been a lot of consultation with indigenous groups. There hasn’t. It is an attempt to steal aboriginal land and further the genocide of the Aboriginal people through dispossession.

Only the Greens have taken a principled stand to defend refugees and now to oppose the extension of the racist intervention.

Bravo to the Greens. But now that the real racist nature of the Australian Parliament and the bourgeois parties who vie to lead government has been exposed, the question becomes, what is to be done?

The Greens remain locked in the vice of parliamentarianism. Now is the time to mobilise their millions of supporters to fight for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and refugees against the two racist parties, Labor and the Liberals.

You can’t play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules when fighting racists, racists who are implanting the seeds of systemic racism and watering its shoots every day. Let’s cut down the seedlings before they become an impenetrable forest.

Call us out. Lead us in demonstrations against the racists and for Aboriginal empowerment, for sovereignty. Combine that with the struggle for refugees.

This would be popular and have lots and lots of supporters. For example, according to Michelle Grattan, last year a poll found that the majority of Australians oppose offshore processing. This was true of both Labor and Liberal Party voters.

For God’s sake Greens, give focus to our anger. Lives depend on it.

Here is one example in Perth.

http://www.facebook.com/​events/314259102002490/

CANDLELIGHT VIGIL FOR THE REFUGEES KILLED BY AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT POLICY

Friday 29 June at 19:00 at Murray Street Mall (outside the underground train station)