En Passant

A few students interrupted Liberal Party hack Sophie Mirabella at Melbourne University on Monday.

So loved was  Mirabella in her past life as a Liberal apparatchik and parliamentarian that the good people of Indi threw her out at the September election when everywhere else across the country there was a big swing to the Liberals, big enough to deliver them government with a big majority.

It says much about the bankruptcy of universities that the powers that be at Melbourne University considered this washed up reactionary a star recruit.

The interruption to the status quo at Melbourne University  follows similar student protests at Sydney Uni and UTS when Foreign Minister Julie Bishop spoke there and on Q&A when Tony Jones was questioning education Minister Christopher ‘The Grub’ Pyne with all the ferocity of a wet lettuce leaf.

The Grub

Of course the usual suspects, including The Grub, have whined about assault and violence. Any disruption of the anodyne politics as usual is assault and violence in their eyes. Upsetting the great god profit and his cardinals will rain down pestilence upon us.

We live in a violent society but because that violence supports the system it is never or rarely challenged.

Every week a building worker is killed or seriously injured on site.  The introduction last time of the Australian Building and Construction Commission under Howard saw deaths on site increase because workers lost any power to enforce safety by walking off the job. To do so would have seen them jailed, as the authorities attempted to do with Ark Tribe.

Given the Royal Commission into pink batt deaths, when is the Royal Commission into deaths on building sites and the contribution of the ABCC and its political masters to those deaths going to be set up? Why don’t the reactionaries condemn this real and systemic violence?

Reza Berati was murdered under the Manus Island watch of Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison on 17 February. That is over 100 days ago and still no one has been charged with murder. Why haven’t those who set up this violent system and on whose watch he was murdered, Abbott and Morrison, been charged with complicity in murder? Why don’t the reactionaries condemn this real and systemic violence?

Asylum seeker detention centres are concentration camps, wreaking physical and mental violence on those brutally transported to them. Why don’t the reactionaries condemn this real and systemic violence?

Aboriginal men die over ten years before their non-indigenous counterparts. Why don’t the reactionaries condemn this real and systemic violence?

What about Aboriginal deaths in custody? Why don’t the reactionaries condemn this real and systemic violence?

Every week a women in Australia dies at the hands of her partner or ex-partner.  Why don’t the reactionaries condemn this real and systemic violence?

In Australia the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. The Budget increases that inequality. Why don’t the reactionaries condemn this real and systemic violence?

And of course there are the senseless wars Australia has been involved in, sending troops to support our big and powerful friends – first the UK and then the US – as insurance for future times and, so Australian capital thinks, to allow Australian imperialism to impose its will in the immediate region.

From Vietnam to Iraq and on to Afghanistan, why don’t the reactionaries condemn this real and systemic violence?

They remain silent because it is their system; it is their violence.

And the born to rules or their first cousins the Labor aristocrats are so used to the rest of us bowing and scraping that when when one peasant stands up against the cruelty of the system it is to them violence.

Maybe the tide is turning. Maybe the student protests are harbingers of more and more turmoil across the country as more and more people realise the the depth of the economic violence Abbott and Hockey are unleashing on all of us for the benefit of capital and the rich.

This government has declared war on the sick, the poor, the working class, the disabled, the unemployed, indigenous Australians and pensioners, to name but a few.

To fight back against the violence of the system is not assault; it is not violence. It is self-defence. The best self-defence our class has against the bosses’ violent system is to withhold our labour. Stop work to stop the bosses’ budget.