Support HungryPanda delivery riders’ campaign for wages and conditions.

 Written by: Nick G. on 23 February 2026

 

(Photo source: ABC News)

HungryPanda delivery riders who organised a strike for better wages and conditions on Chinese Lunar New Year allege that Chinese police have intimidated and targeted family members of organisers in China, and even threatened to arrest organisers on their return to China.

There is no evidence that the company organised the police actions in China, but it is evidence of the close monitoring of Chinese students in Australia by Chinese security.

 

The gig economy is notorious for its exploitative conditions, low pay and insecurity. The dispute reveals Chinese state interference in Australian labour relations which must be condemned.

 

What is HungryPanda?

 

HungryPanda is the brainchild of Liu Kelu, then a young student from China studying in Britain. Apparently dissatisfied by the availability of authentic Chinese restaurant food, he opened a food delivery service in the United Kingdom in 2017 and expanded it to Australia and the United States in 2019.

 

The company now operates in nine countries and more than 100 cities, with 6.5 million registered users, 100,000 partner merchants and around $US1 billion in annual transaction volume.

 

What separates HungryPanda from other delivery services like Uber Eats and DoorDash is that it is aimed at only one demographic – the Chinese language diaspora. Consequently, it employs young people within that demographic who often have no clear idea of their rights in a foreign country. 

 

Grievances over wage reductions, opaque algorithmic management and worsening conditions have festered within HungryPanda for some time.

 

Wang Zhuoying is one of the few to have taken HungryPanda to court over payment and welfare issues. 

 

HungryPanda’s abysmal record includes the case of a HungryPanda delivery driver who was killed in a road accident while working in 2020. The company failed to report the rider's death to SafeWork NSW promptly and refused his wife’s claims for compensation, saying that he was not an employee, but an independent contractor. A court awarded an $830,000 payout against the company, ruling that the worker was indeed an employee.

 

The previous year, the company reinstated two riders who had taken it to court for unfair dismissal.

 

HungryPanda remains a private company, and because it is not listed on the stock exchange, many key details are obscure. No-one knows Liu Kelu’s personal wealth, but it is reasonable to assume that it is greater than the delivery riders that he employs.

 

The company itself has raised significant venture capital — reportedly hundreds of millions of dollars across multiple funding rounds — but no public document from those rounds has disclosed Liu’s ownership stake or personal wealth. 

 

International finance and venture capital has bought into the company, a fact presumably known to Chinese state security services when they have interfered to warn delivery riders from organising against the company.

 

Its major sources of capital are Mars Growth Capital, a joint venture between Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) and Liquidity Group, which stumped up $55 million in 2024; UK and French-based private equity firm Perwyn that led HungryPanda’s $130 million Series D round in 2021; Swedish investment firm Kinnevik; 83North (formerly Greylock Israel Partners), an Israeli-headquartered venture capital firm that invests at all stages of a startup fundraising cycle; Australian venture capitalist Felix Capital and various other private investors. 

 

Marx wrote that one capitalist kills many, meaning that free market competition resulted in competing firms being driven into bankruptcy or taken over.

 

HungryPanda is becoming very hungry, and in our region has taken over EASI (Australia), a Melbourne-based food delivery service, and BUY@HOME (New Zealand), an Asia-focused delivery platform based in New Zealand.

 

In addition to acquisitions, HungryPanda has expanded its own product offerings using investment capital, including:

 

• PandaFresh – a fresh-food and grocery e-commerce platform.

• VouchersPanda – lifestyle deals and discounts platform connected to delivery services.

 

Capital compels its owners to find new sources of surplus value for the purposes of capital accumulation. Along with expansion goes intensified exploitation and the growth of precarious employment.

 

China buys into the dispute

 

Allegations of Chinese interference in the dispute have come from protest organisers.

 

Former HungryPanda delivery driver Wang Zhuoying has launched a legal claim against the company and accused it of slashing her orders after she organised protests against it.

 

She told the ABC she had recently received three separate phone calls from police from her home province in China which made her feel "targeted" and "intimidated". She said on the same day she got another call from a different police officer who was not aware of the first call and threatened to get her arrested upon her return to China if she chose to protest in Australia.

 

Another delivery driver in the group, Wang Caifa, verified the claims, saying that earlier this month he received a "panicked" phone call from his father in China who had just been taken to the local police station.

 

He told the ABC that the police warned his father that his son was involved in "dangerous activities" overseas.

 

Chinese police confirmed that they had monitored communications between protest participants on the Chinese WeChat platform. It is almost mandatory for Chinese citizens to use WeChat (or its Chinese parent Weixin), meaning authorities can monitor all of a person’s communications, personal, legal, financial and political. You can't really function in society in China without a WeChat account.

 

The Chinese Communist Party may have decided to intervene, not because HungryPanda has la-ed some guanxi (pulled strings and made use of personal connections), but because it has always required overseas Chinese to obey the laws of the countries in which they were residing.  From the early 1950s on, the policy of Party leaders was that overseas Chinese should not participate in local political movements and should respect and abide by the laws and regulations of their countries of residence.

 

There was nothing illegal under Australian law in what the organisers of the HungryPanda protest had done.  Therefore, there was no excuse even under the policies of the Chinese Communist Party for the Chinese police to intimidate and harass the organisers and their families. By discouraging lawful industrial protest by Chinese workers in Australia, the CCP has confirmed that it stands for the stability of capitalist relations of production and is opposed to working class struggle against exploitation.

 

The fight of migrant and diaspora workers deserves visibility and solidarity. The struggles of Chinese workers abroad are part of the common struggle of the international working class and should not be marginalised or silenced.

 

Last November, the Transport Workers Union (TWU) reached an agreement with Uber Eats and DoorDash for minimum safety net pay rates and other conditions for delivery drivers and riders. This followed years of campaigning by workers and the union.

 

The TWU must take up the case of HungryPanda emloyees and force the company to agree to minimum wage rates, improved safety measures, accident insurance paid by the company, an agreed dispute resolution procedure, and the right to union membership. 

 

We demand that the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Australia issue a statement confirming the legal right of Chinese citizens in Australia on visas to organise, to speak up, and to demand fair pay and conditions.

 

BOOK REVIEW-: The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

Written by: Alex M and Duncan B on 21 February 2026

 

We are part of a group of comrades who have been studying AI, trying to understand it and its likely effects on the working class. We have been reading various books about AI, discussing them, and writing reviews for Vanguard. We have also read many articles about AI in the daily press and on-line. It is easy to get sucked in by all the hype surrounding AI coming from both the promoters of AI, the “Boosters,” and those concerned with the catastrophic potential of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the “Doomers.” 

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M Bender and Alex Hanna is an excellent antidote to all the hype around AI. Dr. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington. Dr. Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and a former senior research scientist on Google’s Ethical AI Team.

The aim of the book is to help people become resistant to the hype surrounding AI. The authors have this to say about AI. “Artificial Intelligence, if we are being frank, is a con: a bill of goods you are being sold to line someone’s pockets.” They see “Artificial Intelligence” as a marketing term that doesn’t relate to a coherent set of technologies. The people selling technology labelled as “Artificial Intelligence” are trying to convince us that their technology is similar to humans, able to do things that require human judgement, perception or creativity. The authors want to educate people how “AI” systems work, dispel the notion that they are thinking machines with a semblance of human understanding, and to provide a model of how to think about them instead.

Technologies sold as AI can perform various functions such as decision making, classification of inputs, making recommendations, transcription or translation of text or speech and text and image generation.

The authors recognize that there are beneficial applications of machine learning and give some examples of these. However, for every beneficial application, there are dozens of applications of AI that are harming people.

These include people who have suffered harm due to bad decisions by automated decision-making systems, (think Robodebt), people (mainly black), wrongly identified as criminals by police facial recognition systems and women who are the victims of deep fake pornography. Then there are the workers whose jobs are under threat in movie making, journalism, social services, the arts and science and many more occupations.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution began, capitalists have used automation to get rid of jobs. Today’s capitalists are pinning their hopes on AI to get rid of jobs in the same way as the 19th century mill owners did. The authors say, “While executives suggest that AI is going to be a labour-saving device, in reality it is meant to be a labour-breaking one. It is intended to devalue labour by threatening workers with technology that can supposedly do their jobs at a fraction of the cost.” In volume 1 of Capital, Marx described how the capitalists of his day used the new technology of machinery to threaten workers and break their militancy. How little has changed!

The authors criticize both the “Boosters” and the “Doomers” and show that they are two sides of the same coin, both camps seeing AI as inevitable and desirable. The “Boosters” make incredible claims for the alleged benefits of AI.

For example, Amazon Web Services recently ran full page advertisements in the daily press (Melbourne Age 11/1 and 12/1/26) promoting “Generative AI”. The use of this technology in medical research will shorten by 15 years the time for people with epilepsy to become seizure-free, according to the Australian Epilepsy Project.

 Businesses will be able to use new “frontier agents”, described as “AI technology designed not just to assist, but to autonomously manage complex tasks for hours or even days at a time, freeing up workers to focus on more strategic, impactful-or just more fun-work.” Other applications include chatbots that can hold proper conversations with customers in over 30 languages.

The “Doomers” try to scare us with dystopian visions of a world where humans are exterminated by superintelligent AI systems. (Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the authors of If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, is a “Doomer.”)

Both “Boosters” and “Doomers” divert attention from the real and present dangers posed by AI as it exists now, and try to get us worrying about an AI future that may never happen. They ignore the damage being done to the environment by the rapid development of data centres and their massive use of electricity and clean water.

The authors advance some strategies to help ordinary people deal with the onslaught of AI hype. We need to become more informed about AI and question the alleged benefits of AI and protest about the misuse of AI applications.

The authors urge that existing regulations about AI should be enforced and that further appropriate regulations should be enacted. As we have said before, we hold out little hope of this when AI is controlled by Musk, Altman and co. in a US ruled by Trump.

There have been hundreds of books written about AI and millions of words. The AI Con will help us cut through the hype to understand the benefits and dangers of AI.

                                                    **************************

As Duncan B has made abundantly clear above, it is important for us to see through the piles of hype associated with AI, and Emily Bender and Alex Hanna have done a wonderful job in helping us to do so. Their book is thus highly recommended.

I would like to just tease out some more on one area in particular that Duncan’s review has touched upon namely the role that “Boosters” and “Doomers” play in diverting attention away from the major problems facing the world right now, rather than some possible dystopian future. Bender and Hanna succinctly summarise what they call the two sides of one coin, that is, the characteristics of the “Boosters” and “Doomers”. On one side of the coin, the “Boosters” promote the benefits to humanity that supposedly flow from the application of AI in various fields of work. On the other side are the “Doomers” who believe that at some point in the not too distant future, AGI will become sentient and have interests and preferences at odds with humanity and will seek to supplant humanity, possibly leading to our extinction as a species. The substance of the coin, the common element that binds the “Boosters” and “Doomers” together Bender and Hanna state: “… is the belief that the development of AI is inevitable and that the resulting technology will be both autonomous and powerful, and ultimately beneficial if we play our cards right.” (Bender and Hanna, p. 138)

Furthermore both “Boosters” and “Doomers” overlook or downplay “… the real harms of actually existing automation, at best dismissing them as less important than the imaginary existential threats.” (Bender and Hanna, p.139) For Bender and Hanna the “totality of systems sold as AI” has led to financial speculation, “the degradation of informational trust and environments, the normalization of data theft and exploitation, and the data harmonization systems that punish the people who have the least power in our society by tracking them through pervasive policing systems.” (Bender and Hanna, p.152) Added here should be the insidious application of AI into US and Israeli military software systems that have contributed to the thousands of deaths of Palestinian civilians. (In fairness to Bender and Hanna they do mention the IDF’s use of an AI enhanced targeting system in Gaza on p.4 of their book but that is in passing. The increasing use made of AI by the militaries of the Zionist state and US imperialism is outside the scope of their book)

Another part of the hype surrounding AI is the myth that workers will be both more productive and be freed from the more onerous parts of their work. A win-win for employers and employees. Such big promises have been a feature of technological innovation for a long time:

From the start of the Industrial Revolution, workers have had to contend with displacement via automation and have resisted it for just as long. One of the hallmarks of the beginning of this age was the concomitant rise of innovative technologies advertised to make work easier and simpler, and to increase productivity. Like modern AI boosters, those selling new technologies promised that they would usher in a rising tide that lifted workers and business owners alike. But that is just a fiction whose function is to sell the technology. Automation has always been part of a larger strategy of shifting costs onto workers and accruing wealth for those in control of the machines. (Bender and Hanna, p. 43)

More could be said about this important hype busting book, but for now, this will suffice.

If you want to read one critical AI book that cuts through the hype then read this book.

Capitalism fails the aged care test

Written by: Ned K. on 21 February 2026

 

(Source: https://tanea.com.au)

Capitalism in Australia cannot provide decent aged care for elderly citizens. When the new Aged Care Act came in to force in November 2025, elderly Australians were assured that the Act would provide a system that worked for the elderly when they needed either home care or residential care.

The federal government did take a small step for elderly people in care by agreeing to fund significant wage increases and better conditions for aged care workers. Aged care workers and their Unions had been campaigning for years for respect and recognition for aged care workers whether it be home care or residential care.

 

After scathing findings by the Royal Commission a few years ago, the Labor Government had to do something. However, the funding of better wages of care workers was only one aspect of the problem.

 

The Age newspaper reported last week that "aged care has become a masterclass in overpromising and under delivering - while quietly saving the federal budget billions of dollars"

 

For an elderly person to actually receive appropriate care, there are several hoops they have to step through.

 

1. Answer a series of questions in an interview over the phone to an over-worked government worker. If the elderly person or their family member making the call on their behalf misunderstands a question or gives a wrong answer by mistake, they may find themselves ineligible to advance to the next step towards arranging appropriate care

 

2. If a person gets through the phone interview, they then have to wait for an assessment which The Report On Government Services found took 27 days for 50% of applicants and for 10% of applicants, they had to wait up to 172 days

 

3.  Then the third stage is the assessment or sometimes reassessment. The assessments are now "guided" by algorithms with care needs systematically understated. This results in cost savings for the government and in some cases a finding that a person is no longer to receive any more funding.

 

4. If a person is approved for a home care package or residential care, the Age reported that "half of all seniors waited up to 204 days after approval to be assigned a home care package, with10% waiting up to 326 days"

 

5. The Age further reported that up to 60% of home care packages provided less assistance than was promised.

 

More than 200,000 people are waiting for aged care assistance in one form or another. Delays in approval of aged care packages and delays in providing care after approvals are determined are saving the federal government more than $5 billion a year. The Age says "put another way, every day of delay saves around $13.3 million".

 

Government Priorities Are Elsewhere:

 

Australia has an ageing population and an increasing population as well.

 

The federal government prefers to serve its imperialist masters by pouring money into AUKUS to the tune of $380 billion dollars, while state governments pour money into supporting big business such as racing car events and the like or more roads to service the needs of large corporations who want their goods and services moved quicker to realize profits from the surplus value created by workers overseas in some cases and interstate in other cases.

 

The system of capitalism compels governments to show that they prioritize the needs of big business rather than the needs of the people, including the elderly.

To make matters worse for the elderly many of them in need of aged care will be resided in an aged care facility owned by a private-for-profit provider such as BUPA. So, the profit motive impacts negatively on the elderly in the last stage of their lives, despite them paying taxes all their working life!

 

The only solution to a decent life for the elderly is to bring the system of capitalism to an end and build a society based on the needs of the people, not the profit goals of capitalism.

Health workers’ force Victorian government backdown

Written by: Bill F. on 19 February 2026

 

Determined and united action by members of the Health Workers Union has forced the Victorian government to make significant concessions to the union campaign for better wages and conditions.

The union represents some of lowest paid workers in the state’s hospital service, such as cleaners, orderlies, cooks, clerks, security guards and some technicians.

This campaign had been going on for well over a year, with bans and protected stop-work action building pressure on the government.

The HWU claim for 12% increase over 2 years was met initially with a paltry 3.3% over 3 years, promptly rejected, and a later offer of 9% also totally rejected.

The government would have known then that these workers were not going to back off, but chose to prolong the dispute.

Massive strike action ultimately took place on 18 February, involving a rally and march from nearby Footscray Park to Premier Jacinta Allen’s formal opening of the new Footscray Hospital. While the new hospital made the news cycle, so did the noisy and angry health workers. A further offer then conceded the full 12% over 2.5 years and will be put to the members to consider.

What do workers learn?

That they need to act together to get anywhere, that they need smart, honest, and dedicated union leaders, and that they need to be resilient to outlast the bosses. They also learn that whatever they win, the bosses keep coming to take it away again, the prices keep going up, the conditions start to slip, workloads only get bigger – capitalism never takes a “sickie”.

So, it goes on – struggle, win a bit, lose it over time, struggle again, win a bit again, lose it all again – the system works for the bosses, not the workers!

Socialism puts an end to this rubbish and brings the working class to power in society, bringing security and justice to hard-working families, replacing week to week struggle and insecurity. 

The AUKUS pork-barrel rolls on…

 Written by: Nick G. on 15 February 2026

 

The announcement today (February 15) of a $30 billion federal government release of funds to South Australia for AUKUS expansion comes just five weeks before the 21 March SA State election.

There is no doubt that Malinauskas is a popular SA Premier.  He has provided enough popular entertainment in the shape of LIV golf (being played today), the AFL Gather Round and motor racing championships, to supply local media with endless promotional photos and TV spots.

But he has not had it all his own way. His last election win came with a pledge to solve the ambulance ramping crisis. Yet ambulances continue to be ramped outside hospitals. 

The figures for last November show that patients spent 3,422 hours waiting in ambulances for emergency care during that month.
That brings the total number of hours lost on the ramp during 2025 to 48,466 hours - already a historic high with a month still to go. For comparison, patients spent 47,380 hours waiting on the ramp in 2024 and 40,474 hours in 2023.

SA is gripped in the national housing crisis. Despite claims that it is building more houses than ever, rents are increasing and so are housing costs. Residential property sales recorded throughout 2025 have shown a mere 5.22 per cent of all sales in metropolitan Adelaide were in the sub-$500,000 price bracket. Median house prices in December 2025 rose a massive 14.5 per cent increase compared to the December 2024 quarter.  No-one’s wages have gone up that much.

The Premier also lifted the heavy rock of his call for Dr. Randa Abdel-Fattah to be dropped from the Adelaide Writer’s Week program. That rock fell from his grasp onto his own toes when 200 Writer’s Week participants withdrew in protest, causing the much-loved festival to be cancelled.

So Malinauskas does seem to have lost some of his gloss. 

The $30 billion figure appears to have been plucked from the air.  There will be an immediate $3.9 billion “down-payment” with the rest to come online across the 30 years of the project. However, there has been no reliable costing of the various stages of the project.

And despite all evidence to the contrary from the US Congressional Research Service, and a former UK Navy Chief calling from withdrawal from AUKUS because Britain is “no longer capable” of running a nuclear submarine programme after “catastrophic” failures pushed it to the brink, Albanese, Marles and Malinauskas continue to believe that AUKUS will deliver on its promises.

There is no doubt that public spending on health, housing, education, regional roads and so on, is being sacrificed  on the AUKUS altar. At an average cost of $30 million a day across the 30 years of the project, our lifestyle is being sacrificed to a dream…or nightmare!

AUKUS must be stopped now.

We must come out from under the stranglehold of the US empire.

Workers should not hold their breaths waiting for the so-called AUKUS “jobs bonanza”.

Sydney’s anti-Herzog rally – snipers, a police riot, and defiance

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 12 February 2026

 

(Source: www.newsandcams.com)

In the leadup to Sydney’s rally against Israeli war criminal Isaac Herzog, it was clear to this writer that police would attack protesters at some stage.
They tried for over two years to cause trouble, to ‘prove’ those marching for justice around the country are dangerous, bringing trouble here from overseas. But strict organisation and discipline, loud opposition to antisemitism, and the presence at every rally of Jewish organisations and people (including holocaust survivors and their families) ensured they didn’t succeed. 

 Fascist-leaning laws were strengthened in the days before Monday’s protest, when a special event, usually reserved for sporting events, was declared. Stop and search powers and move on orders were announced. Carrying a flag or placard was made illegal and $5000 fines applied for not carrying ID in a restricted zone. 

Nearly 90 years after Australian Attorney General (and later PM) Robert Menzies met Hitler and declared he was good for Germany and the German people, and that it would be good if Australians behaved more like Germans, NSW Premier Minns outdid himself in grovelling to a mass murderer.

Minns deliberately created fear, telling people to work from home, to avoid the city, that public transport would be disrupted and people may not be able to get home. That it would not be safe. As if the protest were a natural disaster.

In response to the Palestine Action Group (PAG) legal challenge, police provided an unsigned briefing to the minister which failed to state NSW Police was the promoter of the special event. Ten minutes before the rally was to commence, they miraculously provided correct details in a signed version. 

The protest in Town Hall Square was declared illegal. Minns said 3000 cops stationed in Sydney to protect Herzog would be at Town Hall. Pictures have now emerged of snipers stationed above the Square. We are clearly the enemy.

The protest was big, but not huge. Many were intimidated to stay away, and show support in other ways. Many were blocked from entering. Yet, thousands defied Minns and filled Town Hall Square anyway. They were disciplined, brave and full of spirit. 

First Peoples adjust tactics to suit the circumstances

A First Peoples’ speaker said, ‘They try every attack on us first.’ They understand too well what it’s like to be on the receiving end of police violence. 

First Peoples have made compromises to ensure protests are big and powerful. During Covid they were told there could be no protest on January 26. They knew they had enough active support, and refused to comply. Instead, they agreed not to march, but the huge Sydney Domain was full of socially-distanced groups. 

Police attacked a small group as they walked to the station, just as they attacked another group at Central Station after the first huge Black Lives Matter protest during Covid. Those attacks ensured ‘demonstrator violence’, not Aboriginal deaths in custody, became headlines.

Before Invasion Day 2026, First Peoples determined to rally and march with or without police permission. They agreed to police conditions to rally in Hyde Park and march along an altered route. 30,000 attended. 

Much of First Peoples’ staggering achievement in resisting British and settler invasion in almost 140 years of guerrilla warfare is documented in Ray Kerkhove’s brilliant How They Fought. It doesn’t include Pemulwuy’s attack in Sydney Town itself, on the George Street where Monday’s attack. took place.

Probably dragging hidden spears gripped in their toes, they made a lightning attack, retreating into sunset’s blinding light with no losses. 

Just as First Peoples adjust their tactics to suit the circumstances, we need to think about doing the same.

The same offer of a rally and march to Central Station was made to PAG, who refused, stating they wanted more visibility than a park in the dark, though sunset wasn’t till almost two and a half hours after the rally’s start. 

A host of unions sponsored the Harbour Bridge March. This time only the MUA did so. The NSW Teachers Federation has for decades supported Palestine and ensured its biggest flags flew over the biggest union contingent at every protest since October 2023. Its members were there in numbers on Monday, but not under union flags or with union authority.

Yet those aerial images of Town Hall Square and its surrounds were powerful. There were certainly many more people than the 7000 Zionists welcomed to the International Convention Centre, with all Sydney City Hotels allegedly booked out by the NSW Government.

History’s sweep

On Monday night, encouraged by several speakers, thousands chanted, ‘Whose streets? Our streets!’ 

There was no leadership, no guidance, no training. That’s a huge problem.  

Calling, ‘Let us march! Let us march!’ they spontaneously confronted a wall of police on George Street. They were held at bay, until many had dispersed. Trained and armed police were always going to win. 

After a stand-off, smaller marches flowed like water in directions where there were no police. A large group who marched to Central Station, knowing nothing of the carnage behind, were elated at their success.

Another lesson? Despite being Aboriginal Land, the streets and everything else are – until we can overthrow it – the property of the ruling class. Capitalism’s iron fist, its laws, police, courts, jails and even military, aim to ensure it. 

If our protests are big enough, determined enough and organised enough to seize the streets temporarily, it’s a victory. 

(77-year old James Ricketson being brutalised during Sydney's anti-Zionist protests by the city's militarised police)

 

Many people were traumatised by police violence last night. They didn’t expect the brutality of the attacks, the pepper spray of the elderly and small children, the bashing of people praying or with their hands in the air. Breaking a grandmother’s back in four places, ignoring her agony.  At the Harbour Bridge protest police turned protesters back, with police chief’s ridiculously presenting themselves as our protectors, citing ‘danger of a crowd crush’ when the crowd was orderly, calm and patient. On Monday night police created a terrifying crush with military precision. 

It’s an old tactic. They did it in the second Vietnam Moratorium here, and before the Iraq War, against school students in the Books not Bombs protest. 
Monday was way more.  Australians have learned a new verb, ‘kettling’. On Monday night, police systematically confined people in four separate groups before attacking. 

And they learned about the men in black, the riot squad, physically hyped up, like players before the World Cup, ready to attack. Even some of the men in blue were overheard saying, ‘What the hell are they doing???’

Riot squad members are volunteers. Many sported moustaches identical to a prominent Australian Nazi. 

People don’t forget such images or vicious lessons. It broadcast across the country. It’s changed things. 

Who are we here for?

We have to ask before, during and after protests, why are we here? Who are we here for? What is our primary purpose? 

On Monday night, although Palestine was front and centre of most speeches, the protest itself, and police violence, became the media message. 

On Monday night Netanyahu announced Palestine would cease to exist from the river to the sea, as the bombings, bulldozing and genocide continue. 

On Monday night, Four Corners showed ASIO had failed to protect Jewish and other Australian people from terrorists they had been warned about. Despite its $600 million budget last year, apologists cried poor unchallenged by the reporter.  

On Monday night, Four Corners reiterated the police refusal to send officers to protect the festival at Bondi. Yet they can send thousands to police to smash demonstrators. 

In history’s broad sweep

The 300,000 March for Humanity across Sydney Harbour Bridge gave inspiration across the world. 

It terrified the ruling class. Its state machine always resorts to force when threatened by such a movement. 

Growing numbers who confronted police on Monday night have lost their fear, or act despite it. They understand, in history’s sweep the masses in action are stronger than the state and its police, that we are many and they are few. But that’s a strategic assessment, not an immediate tactical one.

Though the attack by two terrorists at Bondi emboldened the ruling class and Zionism to build more active and organised community support, the majority of Australians have seen the horrific truth too clearly. Support for Palestine is as strong as ever. Now the police have exposed their brutality for all to see.

In the Frontier Wars, only once did Aboriginal warriors take on the murderous invader front on. The Kalka Dunga (Kalkadoon), after years of guerilla warfare, determined to protect their most sacred site with their lives. They lined up and faced an overwhelming force. Even brutal racists acknowledged their bravery.

A small group has led these protests. They’ve had successes and inevitable failures. But they’ve refused to consult about tactics or anything else. 

Rising Tide has successfully blockaded and shut down Australia’s biggest coal port using guerrilla tactics. While one group occupies police attention, another seizes the opportunity elsewhere. Rising Tide provides systematic and thorough training both to minimise arrests and make those that happen worthwhile.

Everyone works in teams that suit their strengths. They provide safe and culturally vibrant protest places. We need to learn from them. 

Just as at Bondi, many people on Monday night rendered assistance. Teachers remained in the Square to provide support. Shopkeepers provided refuge and other help. This can be systematically built upon. 

We need to create more active community engagement beyond the punishing weekly rallies. The Vietnam Moratoriums succeeded in ending our involvement in Vietnam and ending conscription. It had just three major rallies over one year. It gave time and energy to build in every other mass space.

That’s already happening now, but can we expand on it? 

Above all, in the 1970s workers stopped work to stop the war. They provided the leadership that young people expanded upon. We are in such a different situation now, after 50 years of deliberate ruling class disorganisation and disempowerment of the working class.

We need to build anti-imperialist understanding and organisation for peace in unions and among workers. Unions need to speak out and organise about Palestine, about rising fascism, about police violence.

We also have to join the dots, to give meaning and understanding to scattered and unsystematic ideas and experiences. In that way, with eyes open, we can chart a forward path with optimism.

The ground’s fertile. From negative things, positive can grow. 

Richard “Hiroo Onada” Marles

 Written by: Nick G. on 11 February 2026

 

We reproduce without comment a ten-minute transcript of part of an Australia Pacific Defence Reporter podcast number 127. The APDR is an online journal of news about military contracts, personnel appointments and military technology. The podcast is by its editor, Kym Bergmann, who has worked for, and with, some of the more significant armaments industries. He does not oppose the US-Australia Alliance, but is concerned about Australian subservience within the Alliance. (For a previous excerpt from a Bergmann podcast, see here: AC+2023.pdf pages 26-7) - eds

Hiroo Onada was a 2nd Lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps and in certain circles he is famous because he was the last Japanese soldier to surrender in the 2nd World War, which he did in 1974, almost 29 years after the war had officially ended. He hid out in the jungles of the Philippines, living off the land, and for all that time killing the occasional citizens. 

Now, 2nd Lieutenant Onada was so convinced of the invincibility of Japan that he refused to accept reality and believed all of the information he received about Japan’s surrender was enemy propaganda, and he was having absolutely none of it. 

As I say, he kept that up for 29 years, and in fact, once he had been located by a Japanese adventurer, the only way he was finally convinced to give up was when the Japanese government sent his former commanding officer to the Philippines to order him to surrender.

And why am I telling you this story?

 

It’s because our Defence Minister Richard Marles and his total devotion to AUKUS means he is the spiritual heir of 2nd Lieutenant Hiroo Onada.

No matter what evidence he is presented with, he can only continue to bleat and insist AUKUS “is on track”, and as I predicted previously, he repeats that phrase repeated by that greatest monster Donald Trump that “everything is going full steam ahead”.

He was prompted to say this because there was a burst of publicity prompted by yet another report by the Congressional Research Service which posed a number of scenarios and not for the first time – that is the job of the CRS – about Australia not receiving Virginia-class submarines, either second-hand or new, and Australia using that money for other capabilities, such as B-21 long-range bombers.

Now, the Congressional Research Service is very high, very authoritative, and it has excellent contacts in the US government, and so when they produce a report like this, it is taken very seriously. It is not the sort of thing that should be dismissed, yet as I said in a previous podcast, this government, and the Coalition were no better – they have no time for think-tanks, academia, the media or the opinion of retired military people.

The Department has become entirely self-referential, as once they have collectively made up their minds about something, they are not in the slightest interested in alternative opinions or alternative views.