The Torquay Towers and The People of Hervey Bays struggle against it

 Written by: (Contributed) on 10 September 2024

 

(Above - The proposed development.  Photo: www.theurbandeveloper.com )

 

A coastal city with a focus on tourism must consistently strive in a capitalist economy to keep its worth for its profiteers. How can this city survive on tourism when what generates its worth in the for-profit economy will also inevitably destroy it? Tourism is not a sustainable pillar of a city's economy and is a short-term profitable source for its investors. There must be a focus on all essential factors to creating an effective and balanced economy that has its people in command. Only this can ensure health and longevity for the city and its population. 

Hervey Bay, the unceded and traditional land of the Badtjala People, is undergoing large developmental projects. Development is not necessarily bad, and Hervey Bay needs development, so what is creating uproar within the community? Why is it that there has been constant backlash against the local and state government for the developments in Hervey Bay? Should not the community be rejoicing in the city’s much needed development? The answer lies in the question and answer of who this development is for, and what its impacts are for both sides. 

The most recent construction that is affecting the people of Hervey Bay is the development of the 18 storeys ‘Torquay Towers’ or the Sheraton Resort. The people of Hervey Bay clearly see the destructive socioeconomic and environmental impacts of this construction and therefore are extremely concerned with the consequences it will bring. The Torquay Towers are not only destructive but are not in the interest of the people of Hervey Bay. 

The government, local profiteers and landlords have put a focus on Hervey Bay as a city for tourism and retirement. As a result, there are limited educational options past grade 12, and students pursuing an education are apt to leave and not come back.

When a city is built on being a place for tourism and retirement, gentrification Is inevitable and there is no mobilisation for its youth. The youth leave and there is more focus placed on tourism and retirement to combat this contradiction. As you would expect this further exacerbates the contradiction and more material and finances are contributed to the very thing creating the unevenness in the contradiction. 

The Torquay Towers are a prime example of this contradiction. This 18-storey monstrosity makes it “the ‘largest’ hotel development north of Brisbane”. Not only will this look ridiculous compared to all other buildings around it, with the current largest in the bay being 6 storeys, not even being close to its size and offensiveness, it will bring devastating environmental impacts to the reef due to its two towers that will shine over the reef causing coral bleaching it will almost be out of a Tolkien novel.

Mayor George Seymour is well aware of the public outrage to the point that at a council meeting with some of the public, due to heckling, he threatened to close the meeting. It has already been apparent Seymour doesn’t care for the residents of Hervey Bay or their wishes and demands with this being one of the most blatant, opportunistic and sell-out of his actions yet. It is clear that he will not be swayed in his convictions and the people must demonstrate their outrage of this. 

Hervey Bay is facing a housing crisis, the government and profiteers are struggling to house its own population, yet the profiteers and government have the audacity to green light its largest tourism project yet. Under capitalism housing becomes a commodity and becoming homeless, which despite the many injustices of past economic systems, becomes a possibility. Even under Feudal systems homelessness was not something the people had to face. Housing must not be a commodity; it is a right. 

Australia is facing a cost-of-living crisis nationwide and yet they have the audacity to greenlight a $450 million dollar tourist venture. 

We the people of Hervey Bay who are struggling in these desperate times must not relent in the struggle against this development. We have already been mobilised against it with an inspirational spirit, but we must not relent. 

The corrupt and bureaucratic Landlords, Profiteers, Government and Seymour must feel the power of the people in unity. They must be challenged. For the longevity of Hervey Bay and the spirit of resistance nationwide. 

We must challenge the development of the Sheraton Hotel/Torquay Towers and all future developments that are putting profit over people and environment. Be creative, be persistent and challenge the destructive status quo. Hervey Bay is symptomatic of a nation-wide issue of Capitalism and settler-colonialism and its destructive and irreversible effects we as a country must change. 

Do we really want the rich to sip champagne at the Sheraton while the people ponder prosperity?

 

DFLP calls for arming West Bank Palestinians

 Written by: Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on 10 September 2024

 

A message from the Foreign Affairs department at DFLP to the world’s parties about the crimes of Israeli settlers.

For these reasons... we call for the arming of the Palestinian people in the West Bank to combat Israeli settlers’ terrorism.

The terrorist acts committed by Zionist settlers in the West Bank under the protection of the occupation army cannot be seen as a reaction to the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation. 

Rather, one of the reasons for this operation is the ongoing and past actions of the occupation army and settlers against the land and people of Palestine in the West Bank, including the repeated aggression against Palestinian cities and camps. In this context, numerous crimes committed before October 7 can be cited, such as the burning of the town of Huwara in Nablus Governorate in February 2023, the kidnapping and burning alive of the boy Mohammed Abu Khdeir in Shuafat, Jerusalem, in 2014 by settlers, the burning of the Dawabsha family's home in the village of Duma in Nablus, leading to the martyrdom of an 18-month-old infant, in addition to dozens of Palestinians who were martyred by settlers in their homes, fields, roads, schools, and public places.

The United Nations, the European Union, and Western countries have condemned the crimes of the settlers. Some described their criminal actions as horrific and a direct result of settlement policies and repeated instances of impunity. Others demanded the Israeli government to immediately stop these unacceptable acts, while some said that the settlers’ attacks on Palestinian civilians must stop. However, these positions and statements did not stop the crimes or curb their fascism. On the contrary, some Zionist gangs increased their defiance of Western positions by expanding the scope of their criminal acts and settlement activities. The result on the ground is that the settlers are becoming more ferocious and fascistic, and their leaders are expanding restrictions on the Palestinian landowners, whether through “laws” from Israeli bodies that have no legal authority to deal with another people and occupied Palestinian lands, or through military and administrative decisions from the army and its various apparatuses, or through field procedures that impose a new reality of occupation and settlement by legalizing land theft or expanding the granting of permits to settlers to build in the West Bank while restricting Palestinian construction and demolishing their buildings under the pretext that they are illegal.

While the occupation army continues to commit genocidal crimes against civilians in the Gaza Strip for more than ten months, political genocide continues in the West Bank by imposing the annexation and resolution plan by official bodies and settlement institutions working according to their own agenda, disregarding international condemnations. Since October 7, for example, Palestinian and international institutions have recorded more than 300 attacks against Palestinians by settlers, including shootings, vehicular assaults, house and field burnings, invasions of cities, camps, and remote communities, uprooting of trees, and road closures, in addition to the army’s operations of bombing, invasions, destruction, and arrests.

The goal of these practices is no longer a secret. Dozens of Israeli officials, including ministers and security and military officials, openly take responsibility for these crimes and their goals, which aim to expel the largest number of Palestinians. The recent plan by Smotrich to expand the scope and powers of security, military, and civil control for the army and its institutions is just one example of dozens of plans overseen by senior officials in the Israeli government and army.

Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich speaks of a clear plan to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state by increasing the number of Jewish settlements and settlers in the West Bank. Security Minister Ben-Gvir calls for unleashing more settlement outposts and launching a large-scale military operation to eliminate thousands of Palestinians. Meanwhile, the Israeli government tries to portray to the world that it is enforcing the law in the West Bank, through the Prime Minister’s criticism of the crimes committed by the settlers against Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s positions do not change the fact that the fascist and racist right-wing government in Israel, with all its components, oversees the arming of settlers, whether through ministers in the government and settlement institutions or through the occupation army itself and security institutions. Ben-Gvir has admitted more than once that through his ministry, he has armed 100,000 settlers and that there are 300,000 requests on the ministry’s table, in addition to approximately 165,000 weapons that were distributed to settlers before the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation. This confirms that Israel’s crimes, by its army and settlers, are not isolated from the plan that Israel seeks to impose in the West Bank, which is the annexation plan, ignoring the condemnations, appeals, and international and UN positions rejecting Israel’s practices in the West Bank.

What the media and Western embassy reports present about the increasing severity of settler crimes only reflects a small part of the reality that all Palestinian cities, camps, and communities in the West Bank are daily subjected to settler aggression and crimes, which are accompanied by repeated aggression carried out by the occupation army in many cities and camps. This indicates that there is a real partnership and division of roles between the army and settlement organizations that are unusually active in the West Bank, heavily armed with the latest weapons and an extermination and fascist ideology that believes only in killing and terrorism as a means to achieve its plans, repeating the experience of 1948, when Zionist gangs committed dozens of massacres against Palestinian civilians, resulting in the displacement of more than three-quarters of a million Palestinians who are still refugees in neighboring Arab countries and within Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian people view the positions of some Western countries, especially the United States, which consider settler crimes against Palestinians as mere violence, as partners in the crime, practicing political hypocrisy daily, in comparison with their positions on Palestinian resistance and the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, which came as a natural and necessary response to Israeli crimes and terrorism in various forms accumulated over the past decades. They ignore the fact that settlement and occupation are the highest forms of terrorism according to international laws, and that imposing individual sanctions on a small number of settlers is nothing but encouragement for the occupying state and the leaders, organizations, and militias of the settlers to continue committing their crimes. All forms of settlement are illegal and terrorism, as is the occupation that sponsors, encourages, and legitimizes the theft of Palestinian land.

For all these reasons, we in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine call for the arming of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the formation of defense committees for Palestinian cities, villages, and camps to confront settler gangs and the incursions of the occupation army, to be the protective shield alongside the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatuses so that they together defend the land and national dignity, raising the cost of Israeli colonial and occupation presence on Palestinian land, and sending a message to the international community that our people are tired of unanswered appeals, complaints, and positions, and will take their cause into their own hands, no matter the price and sacrifices required, to make the occupation understand clearly that our land will not be desecrated, and every inch of it will cost the occupier dearly.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
-Department of Foreign Afairs-
08/09/2024

Inspiring Speakers At Free Palestine Rally In Adelaide

Written by: Ned K. on 9 September 2024

 

Supporters of the Palestinian people continue to take to the streets in cities all around the world.In some cities such as London, the numbers of people attending is in the hundreds of thousands.

In smaller cities such as Adelaide in South Australia they are much smaller, but no less important and effective.

On Sunday 8 September supporters of the Palestinian people rallied as they have done every second Sunday since October last year when the Israeli Government and its Defence Force commenced their intense attacks on the Palestinians in Gaza.

This latest Sunday rally, although small in numbers, was even more important and notable for the following reasons

1. It follows the Israeli Government’s expansion of its military offensive targeting Palestinians in the occupied territories of the West Bank

2. This Adelaide rally was addressed by an Australian Services Union member who outlined the support for Palestinian people from union members from a growing number of Unions, even those like her Union that are affiliated to the ALP

3. A Palestinian woman who lives in Adelaide spoke with amazing clarity about what life in Australia is like for the Palestinian diaspora. With incredible feeling expressed in her voice, she explained that the Palestinian diaspora are not ok here. They feel completely alienated due to the Australian Government’s support and indifference for the Zionist regime’s genocide against the people of Gaza.  She said the Palestinian people here despair that while feeling ignored here, they can hardly somehow return to their Palestinian homeland.

So, she asked “What can we do?”

She said the Palestinian diaspora will never give up fighting for the liberation of Palestinians from the Israeli Zionist regime and thanked people across Australia and the world who stood alongside Palestinians in their struggle for liberation.

Many people at the rally went to her side to personally express their support and congratulate her on speaking with such passion combined with clarity of why Palestinians will never give up!

 

CEPU exercises right-to-disconnect

 Written by: Nick G. on 9 September 2024

 

(Above: CFMEU members in Perth supporting their union)

When ACTU Secretary Sally McManus announced at the end of August the very welcome win of the right-to-disconnect, she probably had no idea that unions supporting the CFMEU would exercise it to disconnect from the ACTU and the ALP. 

That is just what the 100,000-strong Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union has done, voting to disaffiliate from the ACTU and to withhold more than $1m in donations to the Labor Party ahead of the 2025 federal election. 

The tactic is reminiscent of the period in the union movement in Victoria where in 1961 the more militant industrial unions created a bloc called the Trade Unionists’ Defence Committee to oppose the influence of the right-wing National Civic Council, and subsequently of the Victorian Trades Hall itself when it came under the control of the NCC in 1967.Two years later, the THC refused to oppose the gaoling of Tramways Union Secretary (and Vice-Chairman of our Party), Clarrie O’Shea.  A group of 27 “rebel unions” coalesced around the Socialist Left of the ALP in Victoria.  

The 27 "rebel unions" defied the ACTU directive to all unions and workers not to join the strike in support of striking Tramways Union members and their Secretary Clarrie O'Shea.

Today’s action by the CEPU is a measure of rank-and-file workers’ anger at the ALP and ACTU for their attack on, and attempt to destroy, the CFMEU. 

The move to no longer make donations to the ALP is quite correct has been welcomed by many workers. More unions and their members are calling for/considering It should be followed by disaffiliation from the ALP. Unions must be free to pursue the interests of their members regardless of which party of capitalism holds office. There should be no holding back on actions on the grounds that they might prevent Labor from gaining office, or embarrass it when it is in office. 

The right of workers, in their unions, to pursue an agenda independent of the parliamentary fortunes of the ALP, must be fought for. 

Time will tell whether disaffiliation from the ACTU is supported by enough unions to be worth pursuing. For the moment, it reflects workers’ anger at the treachery of the ACTU, and that is a good thing. 

This is not about John Setka, or bikies or criminals.  It is about defending the working class and their unions from the coordinated attacks by capital.

The SA Police Commissioner has just reported to the SA Government that as far as bikies or organised crime goes within the SA Branch of the CFMEU, there is “nothing to be overly concerned about”. 

Yet the million-dollar man Mark Irving, (he is being paid $1.9m of CFMEU members' own funds over 3 years to destroy ther union), has placed the SA Branch under Administration and sacked the popular State Secretary, Marcus Parè.   

It is all about destroying a tough union and leaving its members to the tender mercies of a bunch of tough employers.  

 

Deep-Sea mining could quickly destroy marine ecosystems for profit

Written by: Leo A. on 9 September 2024

 

(Above: Capitalism is not interested in nodules’ oxygenating of the seas, but only in those components that grease the wheels of private profit. Image from Flickr Commons) 

 

It is common in our current time that the pursuit of profit will irreparably damage or destroy a unique ecosystem before it can be protected, or before it has even been properly studied. Of all Australia’s ecosystems, the least studied by far is the deep sea which surrounds our nation’s coasts. Over a third of the seafloor within Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone has yet to be mapped, and globally this figure is even higher. 

Much of the abyssal seafloor is covered in polymetallic nodules. These are pebble-like objects containing large amounts of manganese and other metals. A deep-sea mining industry based on the harvesting of these nodules is already inching toward production. Tests conducted in the 1980s showed that collecting them off the seafloor can be accomplished on a large scale – and the sections of seafloor harvested by these tests are still “dead zones” to this day. 
 
This is because the nodules aren’t just rocks. A research study published in late July has shown that they play a critical role in keeping the deep sea habitable for its wildlife. Specifically, the nodules produce oxygen in the water which deep-sea organisms consume. It appears that this is due to the high voltage potentials of the nodule surfaces, which cause seawater electrolysis. In other words, the nodules split small amounts of the surrounding water into hydrogen and oxygen, the latter of which “dissolves” back into the water. This allows the environment to stay oxygenated without the need for photosynthesis. 
 
Now imagine what will happen if this vital component of the abyssal ecosystem is harvested en masse. Without enough dissolved oxygen in the water, marine animals could suffocate to extinction. Many of these could go extinct without ever being discovered at all. Australia has more abyssal seafloor in its territory than almost any other nation, and so it is critical that we make the efforts necessary to protect our deep-sea environment, before greedy capitalists destroy it for a profit. 

 

 

The fraud of the Healthy Forests Foundation

Written by: Leo A. on 9 September 2024

 

(Above: Blinky Bill says "Hands off our forests!")

In late June, a new environmental NGO launched which calls itself the Healthy Forests Foundation. Within a matter of weeks, an ABC investigation exposed the true nature of this organisation – a front for some of the most powerful logging interests in Australia. 

This is not the first time that big industries directly involved in causing environmental harm have created puppet organisations like this. Back in 2018, the federal government gave a $444 million grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. Attention was quickly brought to the corporate interests involved with the foundation, such as the obvious presence of major fossil fuel executives. Something similar is now happening here. 
 
The Healthy Forests Foundation was registered on June 28. Two days later on June 30, one of Australia’s biggest logging companies, VicForests, shut its doors and ceased to exist following controversies of widespread and systemic illegal logging, and of spying on activists. The connection between the two groups is easy to spot. For example, the CEO and managing director of the Healthy Forests Foundation, Monique Dawson, was also the CEO of VicForests. Within weeks, several other former staff from VicForests joined the company, along with the CEO of a major logging lobby group in Victoria. Another powerful logger that’s found its way onto the board of the foundation is Pentar, a private company that both runs its own logging operations and also processes native timber. 
 
The Healthy Forests Foundation says it's a not-for-profit environmental organisation, focused on protecting and restoring the health of Australia's forests. But it’s just a front. It’s just a way of keeping the logging industry going, with all the same industry players as before. 
 
Meanwhile, there are many organisations in Australia who truly do have our forests’ best interests at heart. We must understand the distinction between true environmental activism and the trojan horses the capitalist class throws in our path to mislead us. Ultimately, the restoration of our forests to a truly healthy state will only be possible in an independent, socialist Australia.

People's culture against imperialist Land Forces

Written by: Red Menace on 9 September 2024

 

This banger by Red Menace expresses all our rage, frustration and determination to dismantle the war machine in 2024. 

After 10 months of struggle to #freepalestine from genocidal occupation, we plan to take on the military industrial complex at home - to #disruptlandforces.

While weapons corporations are making a killing, the people and the planet suffer again and again and again. This time, we are drawing a line in the sand. No more! No more flesh for cash or blood for oil.

No. More. War.

Watch on Youtube here.

Or here on Instagram.