We will not be silenced about genocide

 Written by: Louisa L. on 12 July 2025

 

Several hundred protesters converged on SEC Plating in Belmore on Friday night, two weeks after Hannah Thomas was assaulted by police and charged outside the factory which manufactures components used in Israel’s genocide on Palestinians.

Local teacher, Liv, from Canterbury Bankstown Teachers Association which includes Belmore, spoke first, saying she grew up in Belmore, regularly watching the Bulldogs play at Belmore Oval. ‘I don’t think I could ever have imagined that in this same suburb of Sydney a company would be manufacturing parts for F35 jets,’ she said.

Two weeks earlier, she arrived anticipating another peaceful protest outside the company. Instead, she saw ‘at least ten police officers surrounding a fragile and terribly injured woman’.

‘They weren’t consoling her, or tending to her obvious facial injuries … I asked to cross the road to comfort her, and I was told I would be arrested.

‘I asked police officers if it was their daughter or their sister or their mother if it would be acceptable that they were left for half an hour waiting for an ambulance?

‘As I looked at Hannah standing alone, my heart shuddered … Where was I living? Could this possibly be Australia, where trying to draw attention to a genocide and a company complicit in that genocide will have you surrounded by police, as if you are the criminal?’ she asked.

Peace is union business
‘We cannot afford to be silent, because our silence will not protect us.’

Speaking of ‘unionised workers directly engaged in research and development, manufacture and export of arms to Israel’, she stated, ‘In capitalist society workers have very little control over what they produce. Nobody becomes a transport worker with the intention of furthering the sale of weapons to Israel’ and that ‘many are not even aware. But this work materially supports the genocide of Palestinian people.’

She praised those workers and unions supporting the Palestinian Trade Union Movement’s call to take action against complicit companies, calling out particularly the inspirational refusal of Piraeus Port workers to unload an Israel bound container ship, and the stand of both the ACTU and her union, the NSW Teachers Federation, which say ‘Peace is Union Business’.

Other speeches, several by Palestinians, were just as powerful. They targeted capitalism and Australia’s role as the wagging tail of the US imperialist dog. One pointed out the truth so often ignored, ‘Palestinians did not cause the Holocaust!’

Another told of a mother holding her daughter’s hand after another Israeli attack. Then she and her husband searching for her other body parts to be buried. Part of her body was blasted into a tree. 

What democracy?
Rightly, police were condemned. Along with jails, courts, the legal system, and ultimately the military, they form the iron fist of the capitalist state, the reality of force used to maintain that brutal system of war against our peoples. Individually, some police or judges may believe they defend democracy. But what democracy when it stands on stolen land?

First Peoples have faced treatment like that meted out to Hannah Thomas, that may still result in the loss of one eye, again and again for 230 years. And far worse.

At the start of the protest, as the commanding officer read out a section of the NSW Summary Offences Act (used to attack the poor, the homeless, and protesters since 1966 and updated since then) his voice shook. No wonder! Alongside US-Zionist puppets like Premier Chris Minns or the sorry federal crew like Richard Marles, Penny Wong and Michaelia Cash, he is on the wrong side of history. He told us not to offend people.

Liv, the teacher who spoke first, held up a picture of three little Palestinian children murdered on Thursday. Police told the protest leaders the picture was offensive. But no word about the genocide. No word about the dead children, or the father who buried on them on the day of our protest. 
No more words are necessary to show genocide and this system’s complicity.

But we will not be silent. We will not be silenced. A reckoning is coming.

 

Australia/Gaza: Opponents of repression face increased repression

Written by: Nick G. on 1 July 2025

 

In order to maintain their support for the genocidal Zionist regime ​in Occupied Palestine (aka Israel), Australian authorities are increasingly using repression against its opponents.

Police are regularly deployed to prevent and restrain demonstrations and rallies, either declaring them unlawful or imposing conditions related to the route or place chosen for the rally.

The most recent example of police brutality at a pro-Palestinian rally was at the rally in front of SEC Plating in Sydney.  The company manufactures plating, engineering coating and finishes for F-35 fighter jets used by Israel in its death raids on Gaza.

Police declared the rally “unauthorised”, although legally, there is a right to protest in New South Wales. Police issued a “move on” order then moved in to make arrests. 

Maritime Union of Australia branch organiser Shane Reside, who moved in to try and stop the police violence, was arrested. So were another three, including Hannah Thomas, a rank and file member of the Australian Services Union.

In her case, the diminutive (155cm) Thomas, who was believed to have been acting as a legal observer, was tripped to the ground, and then assaulted by arresting police, resulting in severe damage to an eye. It was reported that this would necessitate surgery and may result in the loss of sight in that eye. 

She was charged with resisting arrest (resisting assault at best) and failure to comply with officers who were throwing her to the ground.

In response to community outcry, police have been forced to declare her assault a “critical incident”, that is, an event involving a NSW Police officer that results in the death or serious injury of a person, with police required to investigate once declared.

So, the police will investigate the police! As if we haven’t seen this sort of farce played out before!

This is the latest in a whole string of repressions, not all of which have involved the police. Journalist Antoinette Lattouf has just won her case after being unlawfully sacked by the ABC which had been lobbied for her dismissal by Zionist organisations. 

So-called “anti-Semitism” laws have been passed to restrict criticism of Zionist Israel and its ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Laws against the right to support the Palestinians come from the same politicians who have enacted laws against the right of workers to organise. 

Accordingly, workers have emerged as leaders of pro-Palestinian activities. There is the umbrella group Unionists for Palestine, as well as rank-and-file organisations in individual organisations.

This is the case in other countries as well.

We should thank the politicians and the police for encouraging the workers to organise and become active.

Where there is repression, there will be resistance.

Defiance of reactionary authority is a very good thing.

Police attempt to COVID normalise repression of Protest

 

John G

A few hundred students and some friends protested Commonwealth increases to University fees for non-STEM courses and other issues at Sydney University on Saturday 10 October. They were chanting and waving banners at their most assertive.

Many if not most wore masks. Some effort and some lack of success at keeping distance was in evidence.

Dozens of police including 4 mounted and several police vehicles trailed the demonstration without interfering for about half an hour. When the protest halted as they arrived at the Parramatta Road Uni entrance gates, Police attacked protesters. They seized megaphones and posters. Police grabbed a number of protesters and issued heavy on-the-spot fines.

The people fined were arrested. Many were grabbed and forced violently to the ground with police sweeping their legs from under them, dropping them to their knees if not to their stomachs. Police imposed themselves on the protesters violently.

Why the Police attack on protest?

It was not for breaching COVID restrictions. After all, thousands upon thousands of Sydneysiders are gathering every day at shopping centres, on beaches and often in pubs and football arenas in queues getting within 1 ½ metres of others, casually breaching Public Health Orders.

Police daily exercise their discretion in numerous social settings on distancing rules.  However aggressive police action and violent arrests and heavy fines are becoming the COVID normal in response to protests. There is little discretion exercised in relation to protests. At this rate, it will not be long before repeat protesters will be facing gaol.

Police aggression is also the norm in relation to gatherings of young people in working class districts in Sydney and Melbourne. A bit more discretion has generally been exercised in these cases but it also serves to COVID normalise police aggression in circles of young people. 

This is developing resistance. It warrants serious examination and responses.

There is widespread support of measures to secure community safety from the Covid-19 pandemic. Many if not most COVID health restrictions are important measures to make and keep communities safe from illness and death caused by the Covid-19 virus. In the environment of some inexperience with this disease, there are uncertainties and debate about the range of correct responses to suppress the transmission of the virus. That uncertainty does not excuse rejection of COVID safety measures.

Police and their government commanders rely on the widespread support of COVID safety measures to evoke division in the community over struggle against hardships, exploitation and oppression.

Support of COVID health restrictions does not exclude support for public exercise of political rights, nor require people to abandon the nobbled democratic rights people have within capitalist rule. Epidemiologists and the World Health Organisation advocate proportional actions to suppress the virus, not fascist dictates in response to the pandemic.

The Authorities fear people rebelling over hardships

Early in the pandemic, many activists involved in providing support for communities suffering deprivations due to shutdowns and lockdowns, including charities and foodbanks, came across grave paranoia amongst government bureaucrats and police. They expressed fear of civil unrest erupting in response to disruption of incomes and restriction of supplies of household necessities.

Unprecedented moves were made by governments and other authorities to secure household incomes and the supply of necessities to the great majority in the community, even while some minorities were abandoned to their own devices, homelessness, reliance on handouts of food and finance from charities, family and friends.

Tens of billions were committed and spent by government to provide income and ensure supply lines to the majority. Hundreds of millions were provided to bankers to suspend mortgage payments and stave off evictions. Supermarkets were engaged to ration some supplies like meats, sanitisers and toilet paper, among others, to ensure supplies were spread across the community and that large number were not left without basic food and sanitary products. Emergency home delivery arrangements were subsidised by government.

As incomes, housing and supply of household necessities have been somewhat secured, the paranoia of the authorities starts to dissipate.

Governments reducedJobkeeper and Jobseeker payments, reimposed assets tests, removed moratoria on evictions, and restored mortgage payments. It reveals the ruling class’s confidence in starting to load the burden of the COVID economic crisis onto the people.

At the same time, the Federal government in particular, is moving to open the population to greater but “manageable” harm from the pandemic. They turn from supporting and protecting people to head off revolt, to now imposing the burden on people to free up capital and stem the bleeding of finances to people’s welfare.

On two fronts, economic and health, they are acting to load the people with the burden of both crises.

Unleashing hardship, deprivation and even sickness and death on people triggers resistance and revolt. It is a great compliment to Australians that the ruling class is finding it necessary to build violent suppression of resistance into their COVID response. 

People rise against the hardships. They rebel against oppression of their protests.

The ruling class knows it and is preparing. The people are learning how important and necessary their rebellion is.

South Australians respond to militarisation of police

Written by: Nick G. on 7 July 2020

More than 200 people gathered at Parliament House in Adelaide on Monday to protest the militarisation of the SA Police (SAPOL).

Last week, the Police Minister in the State Liberal government announced the creation of a new police unit, the Security Response Squad (SRS), comprising 48 specialist officers who will wear ballistic vests and carry semi-automatic assault rifles when on duty. They will also carry a pistol, a taser, some pepper spray, a baton, a helmet and a radio.

Unlike similar units interstate which do not display their weapons on routine patrol duty, the unit will be deployed, fully armed, to routine tasks in areas including Adelaide Central Market, Rundle Mall, Adelaide Oval and the city's main railway station. As a sign of thing to come, police refused to rule out deploying the SRS unit at Saturday’s Black Lives Matter rally in the days leading up to the event. In a typical good cop-bad cop routine, they then let the rally proceed without the SRS, praising organisers for the peaceful and well-organised event.

The police are an essential component of the state machinery that protects the day-today functioning of capitalist class rule.

Militarisation of police forces is a growing international phenomenon and has a distinctively American flavour.  The scourge of terrorism serves to justify the increasingly coercive presence of police in civil life. SA Police Minister Corey Wingard exposed the “terrorist” rationale when he said that the highly visible new unit would be a constant “deterrent to anyone thinking of trying anything on”.

While some people may find comfort in the expansion of police powers, others were quick to express their concerns.

An online petition calling for the SRS to be disbanded was signed by more than 3,500 people in its first 24 hours and at the time of writing was close to 10,000 signatures. SAPOL had to take down their original Facebook post announcing the creation of the SRS as so many people posted angry comments on it.  The parliament House rally was organised very quickly and with no publicity other than social media posts.

Protests erupt across the country over Kumanjayi Walker murder

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 18 November 2019

Just days before 19-year-old Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker was murdered in Yuendumu, Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri, and Yorta Yorta writer Nayuka Gorrie spoke about deaths in custody on Q&A, “It’s not just racism and white supremacy. It’s wanting to disappear Indigenous people and for our sovereignty not to be upheld.

They “want to pin it on one person and say, ‘You know it’s one bad guy or it’s a couple of bad apples.’

“If we’re thinking about the police, if we’re thinking about institutions, we have to understand it’s a cultural issue. It’s a systemic issue,” Gorrie said.
Kumanjayi Walker is the 424th First Nations person to die in custody since the 1990 Royal Commission.

Eyewitness Senita Granites said police dragged Kumanjayi from his family home by his leg to the paddy wagon that then took him to the police station. Family were not informed of his death till the next day. 

In a message to rallies around the country, Senior Lawman Harry Jakamarra Nelson said, “He was minding his own business and they came in and shot him dead. There was no weapon at all. Hundreds of us waited outside. Even our Aboriginal police officer was not allowed in.”

Another Senior Warlpiri Lawman Ned Jampajinpa Hargraves said, “The police were giving us no information. They shot him in front of his family. Policeman is not qualified to look after him. Why three shots?” he asked.

Standing firm

The Warlpiri People are standing firm as support grows.

The Territory First Peoples’ legal service spoke out immediately.

The Central Australian Aboriginal Health Service has called for the inquest “to take priority over all other inquests”.

They want a report in three months, because families are dragged through years of anguish awaiting coroners’ reports.

The Central Lands Council called for immediate release of police body camera footage.

Protests have continued for a week. In every Australian capital city, record numbers protested. In Sydney, well over around 1500 gathered with just 24 hours’ notice, many times bigger than any recent death in custody rally.  In Adelaide, the cold granite columns of Parliament House were covered in blood red handprints.

In Alice Springs, hundreds gathered on Thursday and became thousands by Saturday, the biggest protest in the town’s recent history. There were also rallies on Elcho Island, at Elliott, Hermannsburg, Tennant Creek, on APY Lands and other parts of the NT, as well as in Kalgoorlie and in Geraldton WA where Yamatji woman Joyce Clark died in custody, shot by police, two months ago. Police provocatively increased their presence in Carnarvon for her funeral two days ago.
Until last week, no police officer had ever been charged with murder, though it’s been a demand at many inquests. The quick arrest of a police officer, charged with Walker’s murder, is testament to the strength of the Warlpiri and their wide connections.

But it’s also a ruling class attempt to quieten things down. That may succeed to a point.

But a significant shift in power has happened. Despite Yuendumu’s physical isolation, that story has spread like a flame across Australia.

The young are taking their Elders’ lead and learning the strength of unity.

(Melbourne protest, above)

Bourgeoisie only has one answer to effective dissent: repression

Written by: John S. on 13 November 2019 

We are witnessing an upsurge of popular action around the world.

 

In 2011, there were the massive actions of the Arab Spring. In the decade since, there have been the Occupy, Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements originating in the US. The French workers created the Yellow Vests movement of social protest. Young people around the world go on school strikes to protest inaction on climate change.

 

And now huge popular uprisings in Chile, Lebanon, Haiti, Ecuador and Iraq against material problems such as corruption, repression, unemployment, and the increasing cost of living.

 

There is mass action for self-determination (e.g. Catalonia and West Papua).  

 

In other cases, there is action by some sections of the masses against perceived problems, and for some vague, convenient but superficial instant remedies (e.g. Brexit), often whipped up by demagogues and reactionary populists.

 

Despite the diversity of the demands and causes, the common factor is the preparedness of people to take action.

 

Building up the repressive resources of the State

 

The consistent response of the ruling classes around the world is the build-up of the repressive resources of the state, to stamp out opposition. Over the last twenty to thirty years, there has been a steady militarisation of police forces and policing. More and more heavily repressive equipment, black Nazi-style uniforms and brazen bullying and suppression of opposition, and accompanied by legislation that has steadily wound back democratic rights, often in the name of anti-terrorism.

 

All this has occurred in Australia.

 

Australian police forces have been acquiring more and more weaponry, drones and vehicles. The Australian government has passed several pieces of legislation increasing ASIO's powers to secretly detain and question people, with no access to lawyers and no right to even tell anybody. Evidence surfaces of police acting against protesters giving white power hand gestures and wearing right-wing slogans.

 

The Australian Federal Police have raided journalists, and arrested lawyers. ASIO has raided the lawyer representing East Timor in its dispute with the Australian government over oil and gas rights in the East Timor Sea. The police and ASIO have been intimidating and repressing actual and potential whistle-blowers who believe, for some reason, that the Australian people have the right to know the truth about what governments, the police and the armed forces are doing.

 

The world-wide upsurge in the popular movement to save the planet from destruction has been so strong that it not only threatens to get out of ruling-class control, but also has pressured banks, super funds and now insurance companies to start to divest from fossil fuels, to refuse finance and insurance. This is a huge threat to the fossil fuel industry and to the ideological fossils who will not see beyond their bloody-minded myopia. (The latest incarnation is the belief, alluded to by Morrison, that this is all part of an international conspiracy to take over the world and impose a single world government, presumably the United Nations, which in reality could not organise itself to get out of a wet paper bag).

 

Threats against people’s rights

 

The response of the Australian ruling class is repression. Dutton threatens to withhold welfare payments. Morrison threatens to extend anti-secondary boycott provisions to outlaw divestment and boycott campaigns The Queensland Labor government threatens repressive legislation and action, reminiscent of Bjelke-Petersen. The Victorian police viciously attacked demonstrators at the recent rallies against the international mining conference in Melbourne. The Federal government is introducing legislation to hobble and repress unions even further.

 

Morrison patronises and belittles the students who joined the environmental rallies, telling them they should stay in school. As Paul Oosting of GetUp! observed, “Morrison talks of quiet Australians because he wants Australians to be quiet”.

 

It is all proof of the accuracy of the comment by former Prime Minister John Gorton when he said “Dissent will be tolerated so long as it is ineffective”.  And how little room they allow for ineffectiveness – the slightest threat is met with repression.

 

This raises the issue of democratic rights. Despite all the hype about the beauty of our democratic system, our democratic rights are actually very limited and fragile. What has been hard won over centuries is easily and quickly lost – dispensed with by governments that sense the slightest threat.

 

Australian people, indeed all people around the world, must and will continue to stand up for their rights – civil liberties; rights to speak up, to organise and to protest; to protect the planet; for a decent standard of living; for clean honest government; for national independence and self-determination.

 

However, in the long run, these limited defensive actions are not enough There can never by political democracy without economic democracy. The whole system of private ownership of the economy, the power of the multinationals to exploit the world's people and environment, to control the media and what people see and hear, and to impose their selfish will through weak, subservient governments, needs to be overthrown. We need a socialist economy, with full democratic rights for the people, a popularly controlled media, and respect for the people and the environment.

 

Only full economic and political control can guarantee our democratic rights.

Organisation is the central aspect of the revolutionary question of arming the masses

Adam K.

Guns and gun control laws are once again a topic for discussion following the news of yet another mass shooting in the United States, this time at a high school in the state of Florida. It is a topic that sparks a wide range of responses from various perspectives.

For Marxist-Leninists it is imperative to understand that the most basic element of a correct revolutionary approach to the gun question is that of organisation.
 
Marxism recognises that fundamentally the State is the instrument for the rule of one class over another. In capitalist society that means the rule of the capitalist class (or bourgeoisie) over the working class (or proletariat). In a superficial democracy, like Australia, the ruling class may first try to maintain its rule through deception via institutions like parliament, but ultimately this rule of the bourgeoisie rests on force and violence. It relies on the police, the law, the courts and the jails. Always backing up this force and violence in case it isn’t enough is the central component of state power: the army. The armed force of the capitalist class can only be overthrown by the armed force of the ideologically and organisationally prepared working class. This is a historically proven universal truth and a basic principle of Marxism-Leninism.
 
This is one reason why some communists and revolutionaries often argue against the call for legislation to prohibit and restrict the ability of ordinary civilians to acquire firearms. In short, they argue it renders the working class unarmed and leaves the state and its agents with a monopoly on armed force. While this is partially true, it still neglects the most decisive factor in the question of armed struggle between the classes; the ideological and political preparation and organisation of the working class into a fighting force under the leadership of the Communist Party.
 
Failure to understand and give this most decisive factor its due importance often means falling in to the trap of bourgeois legalism and overemphasising the importance of this or that particular legal reform in order to defend the working class. From a revolutionary perspective, the legality of the working class owning guns is largely irrelevant. The arming of the organised working class in a revolution will not be dependent on any legal right to do so and acquiring arms will mean doing so by any means available. Sufficient preparation and organisation, as well as correct leadership from the proletarian party, will solve these problems at the appropriate time. 

Marx on arming the proletariat

There is a quote by Marx that is often used by those who argue against the introduction of laws to restrict the sale of firearms to ordinary people to give their argument a ‘Marxist’ justification.
 
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.” – Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, March 1850
 
This cherry-picked quote taken out its historical context, and indeed the context of the surrounding text, seems to justify the arming of the working class under any pretext.

 In 1850, the working class of Europe had already experienced two years of revolutionary upheaval against the remnants of feudalism. In France, the revolutionaries were successful in abolishing the monarchy, but in Germany the revolution was mostly defeated. By 1850, the seizure of power by the petty bourgeois democrats in Germany was imminent, and Marx foresaw that they would turn on the workers’ movement the moment they achieved power. Marx was calling for the workers’ party to “go into battle with the maximum degree of organization, unity and independence, so that it is not exploited and taken in tow by the bourgeoisie as in 1848.”

He was not arguing for the spontaneous and haphazard arming of the working class masses regardless of historical context, or arguing in defence of any existing bourgeois legality to keep and bear arms, but was calling for the maximum organisation of the working class to defend its own independent agenda in a volatile revolutionary situation.
 
The centrality of the element of organisation to Marx’s argument is clear if we read the quote in full.
 
“To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party , whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.”
 
Armed struggle and Australia’s revolution
 
The debate over gun control laws has largely been settled in Australia for the time being, and there is little desire among the Australian people to see the sort of lax gun laws or gun culture that exists in the US.
 
Although notable exceptions exist such as the war of resistance by First Nations people to British colonisation (known as the Frontier Wars) and the Eureka Stockade, historically speaking armed struggle has not been a major form of struggle in Australia. One of the main reasons for this has been the strong hold of the illusions of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and the faith of the people in the forces of social democracy and the trade unions which have time after time been used to defuse and funnel the anger of the people back into the peaceful and legal struggle of the ballot box.

Despite this, the people’s movement is continuously met with the force and violence of the state. We see examples of this with draconian legislation against civil liberties, police assaults, the increasing militarisation of the police force, and the deployment of increasing numbers of riot police and their willingness to deploy non-lethal chemical weapons at otherwise peaceful rallies and protests.

 
Sooner or later, the people will need to confront this state violence. The fact remains that the highest form of revolution is the seizure of political power by armed force. This is a universal truth and Australia is no exception. 
 
Following our theory of a two-stage continuous revolution, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) analyses the current stage of Australia’s revolution to be the anti-imperialist struggle for independence under the leadership of the working class as the first stage on the road to socialism.
 
To overthrow imperialist domination will require intense revolutionary struggle by Australia’s working class and its allies, and will inevitably be met by the counter-revolutionary force and violence of the reactionary ruling class. To defend against this counter-revolutionary violence the Australian people will need to be well organised for armed struggle.
 
The question of arming the anti-imperialist forces will inevitably arise as the cause of anti-imperialist independence and revolution becomes a mass question. Firstly, this requires the Australian people to be convinced by their own experiences that such a revolution is necessary. But it also requires the Party to be organised deep in the heart of the working class and among other progressive strata of the people, learning from them and in turn teaching them, step-by-step raising their ideological and political understanding. It means building organisations and institutions that can serve their immediate needs and further their struggles, directing them against the main enemy of imperialism in Australia.
 
It is with this spirit of serving the people that our Party and its members approach the revolutionary tasks that lay before us.    

Put More Pork on Your Fork

Pat F. 

The Victorian Government has announced an “unprecedented” increase in police funding, personnel, and resources. The police force will become the largest it has ever been. It will consume the largest budget it has ever had. 

The justification for this extra-ordinary expenditure, and for the required diversion of resources from other areas, is claimed to be the need to improve personal safety for people living in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and nearby areas. There is mention of domestic violence and drugs, which are a problem throughout Victoria, and Australia. So why is the focus on the outer suburbs of Melbourne?

There is no mention of the problem of tax avoidance by international corporations. No allocation of resources to collecting outstanding tax owed by internet companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. No resources to stop tax avoidance through transfer pricing by companies like Coca Cola. No effort to pull back the subsidies paid to Ford, GMH, Toyota, etc now that they have decided to cease the activities in Australia which attracted the subsidies. No funds allocated to compelling privatised electricity supply companies to pay their court approved tax bills; instead the ATO recently settled with Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, owner of the SA Power Networks for only $800,000 of a tax debt of $8m, according to Four Corners. And of course no allocation of resources to hit the biggest drug dealers (CUB) and gambling gangs (Packer). And there is no halt to the employment policies which cause the incomes of workers to crash. 

So why is the focus on the outer suburbs of Melbourne?

Because these are the working class areas where unemployment will be highest; where mortgages will be unpayable; where repossessions will become endemic; where working hours will be most reduced; where rising motor fuel prices will have most impact; where the misallocation of education resources away from state owned schools to private schools will be most disastrous; where youth unemployment will become an epidemic. 

These are the areas in which the anger and resistance of workers will be greatest. 

These are the areas in which workers without an articulate working class party will vent their justified anger in ways which will be expensive in casualties, and collateral damage to those who are not the real enemy. 

These are the areas which without a strong working class party will have no voice and no strategy. Without the Party working diligently within the suburbs, in the places where workers can still congregate, there will be opportunity for Judas goats like Trump, Hanson, and especially Shorten, to blame religious and ethnic differences, for the necessary outcomes of imperialism and capitalism. 

The rich in Australia are terrified of working class rebellion. They know that their situation is tenuous as imperialist powers squabble, compete and prepare for war with each other. They know that if the organised working class rebels, the rich cannot win. And that is why the police force is being reinforced, not just in suburban Melbourne, but wherever workers gather throughout Australia. And that is why the Party must urgently re-double its efforts to organise the working class, and those other non-working class elements which can be united against the hard core of US Imperialists in Australia. 

The police forces are the agents of the state. They are the enforcers of the state. They maintain the so-called “law and order” of the state which enables capitalism and imperialism to crush working class revolt, and continue their exploitation and destruction of Australia.

The police claim to be protecting the people from criminals, but the real criminals are the rich who sack workers, pay no tax, and force the people of the world into wage slavery.

As a draft resister comrade from the 70s once said, “Do not believe them when they say you never had it so good; for if you do, they will be completely in charge, in their marble palaces and granite banks, from which they rule the people of the world.”