Shove polling: copping it tough before an election
November 14 2002
I feel like I've been transported back to the days when it was
frightening to dissent from government policy in Queensland. The then
Premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, banned protest marches and condoned
police violence against people who marched to protest the ban in order
to win and keep conservative voters.
It's hard to believe that a modern Labor government is blatantly using
the Sir Joh precedent more than 25 years later in what looks like a
deliberate policy to foster and politically profit from violence on the
streets.
The lead-up to today's horrific injury to a journalist when mounted
police charged into protesters in the Sydney CBD is chilling.
It began, ironically enough, when Greens Upper House member Lee Rhiannon
asked this question of NSW police minister Michael Costa October 31:
"Will the Minister, as a responsible Minister, ensure that police on
duty at the protest planned against the world trade organisation to be
held in Sydney next month do not perpetrate violence against protesters,
as we witnessed by some police at the S11 Melbourne protest in 2000 and
some M1 protests in Sydney? Will the Minister ensure that police
exercise their duty of care to protesters in such a way that protesters
who infringe any law are arrested and not brutalised by police using
their horses, batons or wedge chargers?"
Costa not only refused to give such a guarantee, but called on Rhiannon
to resign for hosting - with the permission of Costa's Labor colleague,
Senate president Meredith Burgmann - a forum on civil disobedience to be
held in parliament house that Friday. Without a shred of evidence, Costa
accused Rhiannon of condoning and promoting violence on the streets.
"I believe that every member of this House, other than Lee Rhiannon and
maybe a couple of the nutters that support her on the cross benches,
would be appalled by this move by Lee Rhiannon. She speaks very
sanctimoniously in the House about things that other members of the
House do, yet she is blatantly involved in a process that could lead to
violence at the WTO meeting. It is a disgrace. She ought to resign."
Civil disobedience, as Costa would know as the former head of the NSW
Labor Council, is about using non-violent means to make a political
statement. Having witnessed the May Day blockade of the Sydney Stock
exchange last year, I can personally attest to the discipline and focus
of protest organisers to dissuade the few outlaws who sometimes hijack
these events from causing trouble. If events were allowed to take their
normal course this week the police would have had the cooperation of
protest organisers and the great bulk of participants to arrest those
with a violent agenda.
The planned protest march against the agenda of the World Trade
Organisation meeting in Homebush this week was backed by many unions,
Christian social justice groups, environmental groups and many other
respectable community organisations Costa now condemns as condoners, if
not perpetrators, of violence.
Ms Rhiannon asked a supplementary question: "Minister, will you confirm
that, if any protester breaks the law at the WTO meeting in Sydney, they
will be arrested and the police will not use inappropriate and illegal
tactics?"
Costa's reply chilled me to the bone. "Let us be clear: People are
coming here to have a violent confrontation with the police. Let me say
to you: The police will be prepared and I will back the police in what
they do."
The next day, Costa went to town. After getting the Daily Telegraph on
the rampage with a page one scream, Costa talked to the shock jocks, led
by Alan Jones, to kick the can even more. The police commissioner then
accompanied him to Homebush for another rave. Create and incite
hysteria, suppress peaceful dissent, and what do you get? Perhaps
exactly what you want.
At last Friday's parliament house forum, rumours began to circulate that
routine negotiations with the police to arrange a march permit for the
city to protest the WTO meeting (such permits are issued as a matter of
course) had suddenly come to a halt. Instructions from "higher up" meant
there'd be no permit, junior police started saying. Why on earth would
this be so? The march would be miles away from Homebush, where no
marches were planned.
On Tuesday, the commander of security for the WTO meeting, one Dick
Adams, suddenly announced a black ban on march permits from yesterday to
Saturday, when the WTO meeting wound up. I spoke to one of Costa's
people that day. Yes, he'd heard that Adams had just announced a ban,
"but that would be an operational decision taken by the commander - we
wouldn't get involved in that".
Yeah, yeah. The Adams action was nothing short of incendiary. It meant
that the only way for dissenters to the WTO agenda to make their point
to the public - a street march - had been outlawed. He trashed
fundamental civil liberties in the state of NSW. Naturally, the WTO
protest organisers decided to march anyway. Costa had set the stage for
the violence he claimed he wanted to avoid.
Today, the inevitable result. The protest march took on enormous
symbolic importance, heightened emotions on both sides, and probably
attracted the attendance of outlaws who mightn't have bothered to turn
up if the cameras weren't guaranteed by Costa's actions to be there.
Police let the march happen, in which 1500 people took part, including
"scores of media" and "hundreds of police". That's right, hundreds. Then
the violence - by the police, not the protesters, from reports so far -
and an horrific injury inflicted by police on a reporter from the
Australian.
"The only injury so far has been Patricia Karvelis, a journalist from
The Australian, who was trampled by two police horses. Witness Sally
Quilter, a 57-year-old nurse, said: "Somehow she fell to the ground and
these two great big horses at the end of the line came out and charged
and trampled on her. "There were two big men on them, so that's a lot of
weight. They just rushed into the crowd. I can't believe they weren't
told to. I can't believe what I saw." Ambulance officers treated Ms
Karvelis before taking her to hospital with a suspected fractured pelvis."
What provoked this police action? Superintendent Glen Harrison said
there was a small element of the march "committed to provoking violence".
"Fifty or sixty of the protesters have been pushing and shoving and
trying to provoke the police and cause disruption to police and
traffic," he said. Notice he makes no allegation of protester violence.
Protesters simply provoked the police into violence. Nice one. Be
careful, all NSW citizens. The police under Michael Costa are ready to
do violence if "provoked" by a push or a shove.
What a sad way to try to win an election. What dangerous games are being
played, what civil liberties are being trashed, to keep this
disreputable, cynical government in power. Pity the police on the street
who did nothing to encourage this disgusting spectacle, yet got enmeshed
in it on the orders of their superiors after their minister's
orchestration.
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