The ASF is pleased to announce a win for Shawn in his dispute with Northcote Social Club.
On Tuesday 18 October, during a Fair Work Australia conciliation meeting, Northcote Social Club backed down and agreed to pay Shawn compensation for his unfair dismissal. While Shawn is not at liberty to disclose the details of those discussions, nor the nature of the resolution, the ASF understands he is very happy with the result.
In light of what we previously knew, we understand this to mean that Shawn feels fully compensated regarding the pro rata long service leave entitlement he would have become eligible for this October had he not been illegally sacked from his role in July.
The ASF would like to thank all of those who helped by participating in the picketing of Corner Group’s four pubs:
– The Northcote Social Club (Northcote, Vic.)
– The Corner Hotel (Richmond, Vic.)
– The National Hotel (Richmond, Vic.)
– The Newtown Social Club (Newtown, NSW).
This win would not have been achieved without the pressure exerted on Corner Group’s bosses by the ASF’s direct action methods.
For the time being, Shawn has requested that the ASF and all the people who supported him during this dispute refrain from taking any further action in his name against the company.
While the ASF will continue to support other underpaid workers from Northcote Social Club, we will be observing a 30 day hiatus of action in order not to jeopardise the agreement reached between Shawn and Corner Group.
Well done to all involved. And thank you for your support!
Damn.
Apparently, the Northcote Social Club (301 High Street, Northcote), which is part of the Corner Group of venues (owners of The Corner Hotel and The National Hotel in Richmond and the Newtown Social Club in Sydney), has been screwing over some of its workers. The situation has been developing over some months and it seems that management has been intransigent in refusing to fulfill its obligations with regards at least one and possibly more workers. This is disappointing as the venues are very popular and generally well-regarded and myself and a shitload of people I know like to drink and perform there. In any case, as a consequence of management’s poor behaviour, a boycott of the Northcote has been initiated — until such time as The Corner Group agrees to do what’s right. Hopefully, this is soon, as a failure to do so will permanently scar the venue’s reputation among locals, especially unionists and music-lovers.
The Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation (ASF) is calling upon patrons, bands, booking agents to boycott Northcote Social Club (NSC) to support Shawn, in a case of wrongful dismissal.
After reviewing the facts associated with this case, the ASF is of the opinion Shawn’s dismissal was engineered by NSC management to avoid becoming liable to pay Shawn pro rata long-service leave to which he was 3 months short of becoming entitled to under Section 58(1) and (2) of the Long Service Leave Act 1992 (Vic.).
Five of Shawn’s fellow workers at NSC have since resigned in protest at his treatment. The ASF also believes that NSC has been illegally underpaying its employees for the last 7 years, by using their annual leave entitlements to pay certain public holidays in contravention of Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), Sections 114–116.
We note the cynical hypocrisy of these actions in a pub whose branding seeks to cultivate an image of working class values.
The ASF requests your assistance in boycotting NSC until these grievances are addressed.
Furthermore we encourage the boycott of all CUB products in solidarity with the CUB55 (incidentally CUB is the Northcote Social Club’s main supplier).
You can’t quench a hard earned thirst with a cold, scab beer, especially not at the NSC!
Update (October 15) : I haven’t linked to the many online discussions re D666 or to anecdotal accounts of their shows attracting nazis. But I will post this extract from an interview with local comedian Aamer Rahman about his experience at a D666 show back in 2003.
Black/death/thrash heavy metal band Deströyer 666, which originally formed in Australia over two decades ago, are touring the country in November. The tour comes on the heels of the release of their new album Wildfire (on French label Season of Mist — you can read a hostile review here); their first since 2009’s Defiance (also on Season). The band is playing the following dates and venues:
Friday, Nov 4: Brisbane – Crowbar
Saturday, Nov 5: Sydney – Manning Bar
Sunday, Nov 6: Canberra – The Basement
Friday, Nov 11: Melbourne – Max Watts
Saturday, Nov 12: Adelaide – Enigma
Sunday, Nov 13: Perth – The Rosemount Hotel
Back in July, the band copped some heavy criticism on the Metal Sucks website, which called them ‘racist douchebags’, and in a series of three articles — since removed from the MS site — made various claims about the band and in particular its lead singer, KK Warslut (AKA Keith Bemrose), concluding that, inter alia, Keith is a ‘proven racist, misogynist and asshole’ who has ‘alarmingly racist, misogynistic and violent tendencies’. (The deleted articles were titled ‘Deströyer 666’s Set at Denmark’s Metal Magic Fest Marred by Fight Between the Audience and the Band’, July 11, 2016; ‘Deströyer 666: Officially Racist D-Bags’, July 12, 2016; ‘Deströyer 666 Frontman K.K. Warslut Digs in on Racist Comments at NYC Show’, July 15, 2016). On July 18, the site published an ‘apology’ to the band — this too has been deleted.
At the time, I made the mistake of sharing one of the articles on my Facebook page. This apparently triggered two of the band’s local fanboys.
(Note: Ryan Marauder formerly played gits with Melbourne heavy metal band Gospel of the Horns (1997-2005; 2007-2011) and bass with neo-Nazi rockers Deaths Head (2003-2011); the neo-Nazis are assembling again this weekend in Melbourne for the annual Ian Stuart Donaldson memorial gig.)
So what’s all the fuss?
The publication of the articles sparked a virtual storm in a verymetal teacup, and mostly assumed the forms you’d expect, ie, HAILS! from fans, tut-tutting from critics, and bemusement on the part of the rest. The fact that Keith and D666 have a deliberately kvltivated reputation for being meanies seems to have escaped most commentators, as has the fact that his shtick forms an important part of his appeal (among the band’s fanbase, at least). One site that attempted to provide a more nuanced response was ToiletOvHELL: On Threats, Censorship, and Destroyer 666 (July 19, 2016).
I’ll try my best to lay out a timeline here: On July 9th, a drunk KK spent a good amount of time on stage at Metal Magic festival in Denmark expressing his hatred for the audience. He was particularly “sick of” the men, who had descended from Vikings, but were now living in a “matriarchal” society. He also became outraged at a concertgoer in an Antifa mask, but in fairness, that outburst was far more understandable due to the militant nature of the Australian left-wing extremist group, who tends to default to immediate violence themselves. Several fans jumped on stage at different times in an attempt to fight KK, who had to be held back himself. Luckily, their set ended without violence. This unprompted display of misogyny resulted in perplexed coverage from a few metal websites; Metalsucks paired it with a discussion of KK’s Nazi-associated tattoos, his identification of the white wolf (which is standing over its mutilated brown prey) on their Unchain The Wolves album as “the spirit of the white man,” and his former membership in the openly racist band The Raven’s Wing.
In which context, a few things:
• Keith’s concerns about The Emasculation Of Danish Society are kinda silly, while his drunken antics can be read in at least one of two ways: a) he acted in ways he wouldn’t when sober; b) in his inebriated state, the filter that would normally separate his bRanes from his mouth wasn’t working very well, and so he expressed himself more crudely than he would otherwise. In either case, his views about the threat posed to Men by Feminisms is reasonably widely-shared, and not only among metalheads …
• According to Keith, speaking in another interview (Bardo Methodology, July 27, 2016), the so-called ‘antifa’ who jumped on stage to pick a fight was just Some Guy in a mask: ‘As it turns out, this clown was no left-wing extremist at all; just an idiot who thought it would be cool to wear a mask to a show. I believe the common term for such types is twat.’
• It seems a bit odd to link this incident to an article in The Sydney Morning Herald on Those Mysterious Antifa, especially as D666 is now based in Europe. A more relevant link would be to the ambush of Polish NSBM band Tormentia … but that’s another story.
• Keith does have a ‘Nazi’ tattoo on his tummy — the Wolfsangel or Wolf’s Hook. In his interview with Bardo Methodology (cited above), Keith reckons he got it because he likes wolves ‘n’ shit — and besides, it’s an ancient rune.
• Keith’s quip about the wolf on the cover of the band’s 1997 album Unchain The Wolves occurred during a radio interview on 3RRR’s The Hard Report in June of the same year. You can read more about that interview here.
• Asked about Raven’s Wing, Keith (Bardo Methodology) says: ‘What a fuckin’ joke. I challenge anyone to find a single phrase on that album (“Through the Looking Glass”, 1997) that denigrates any race’, adding that ‘I respect all ethnicities, my own included. I believe that all peoples deserve respect and access to live as they wish in their own homelands – without outside influence or coercion.’ For the record, the Raven’s Wing album Through The Looking Glass was recorded for German neo-Nazi label Destiny Records. Originally released in 1997, it was re-released by Rock-O-Rama in 2008, and featured the talents of Keith, ‘Aussie’ Nigel Brown and Mark Costello (AKA ‘Coz’ and ‘Howitzer’) on drums. The chief vocalist on the projekt was Scott McGuinness, better known as the singer for neo-Nazi reich ‘n’ roll band Fortress. Leaving aside the lyric content — mawkish laments for a better, Whiter Australia and tributes to The White Man’s Struggle, for the most part — it beggars belief that Keith was unaware of the nature of the recording. In any case, while Fortress is defunct, Brown apparently now resides in the Netherlands and occasionally performs live at ‘Rac’n’Roll Place’ in Veendam:
Veendam is about an old gym just outside the center, where a portion from July 2014 was opened as a tavern. Martin pivotal figure of the grind (1969) from Winschoten has been running for over thirty years around in the extreme right scene and this gym has been converted into ‘Rac’n’Roll Place’. Here is sold as in Ravenstein drink and far-right propaganda material distributed. As the southern Nationalist Flemish guests also pulling know, so Rac’n’Roll Place focuses successfully on German sympathizers. The difference between these spots is that there are gatherings take place more often in Veendam, where significantly more visitors coming. There is also a space where archery, strength training and kickboxing can be practiced. Furthermore they occasionally musicians, such as the Australian guitarist Nigel Brown (1967). Brown has played in a number of imaginative Nazi bands and was sentenced in Australia to nine months’ imprisonment for ‘gay bashing’. In 1995 he takes in the North Holland village Zwaag a CD with his band Celtic Warrior. During this recording, the band members were arrested by police. Two years later, Brown was sentenced to a fine of 1500,- for insulting Jews. In the old&new party which 2014 ended the visitors could admire Rac’n’Roll Brown a fee of € 15,- entree.
• While Keith’s status as a ‘neo-Nazi’ is questionable, and it seems he rejects the term, it appears equally obvious that he shares at least some of their views regarding the natural *cough* order of things, and provides at least tacit support for the concept of a Safe European Home for Whites. That said, the recordings he’s made and the associations he’s had over the last two decades seem just as much social as they are political. Partly, this is a product of sharing common origins with the Whyalla thrashers of the 1980s, with Keith doing time in Corpse Molestation, Bestial Warlust and D666; Rob ‘Death Dealer’ Currie in Vomitor and Spear of Longinus; Mark ‘Howitzer’ Costello in D666 and Gospel of the Horns; Brad ‘B.C.’ Chung in Corpse Molestation, Vomitor and Razor of Occam; and Matt ‘Razor’ Schneemilch in D666 and Razor. In other words, it’s a close circle of Happy Metal Friends (which happens to include neo-Nazis).
Back to ToiletOvHell:
This brings us to July 17th. Destroyer 666 posted a long tour wrap-up on Facebook, and spent most of it calling out metal blogs and SJW culture (ah yes, the old standby attack). In a truly deplorable display, KK railed against Blair Hopkins, calling her a “little lying dishonest whore.” He accused her of being “more intent on advertising her attractiveness to drunks than she was in writing an honest review.” Then, switching to a second person narrative (while drastically upping his typo-per-sentence rate), he finished with “Clearly your insecure about your looks woman and felt a burning desire to advertise just how irresistible you are.To drunks.Sad desperate bitch.”
These are not very nice things to say in response to a review, but do seem to accurately reflect Keith’s approach to critics.
ToiletOvHell again:
Next, and most deplorably (although finding new lows seems difficult at this point), he targets the editors of Metalsucks. Like several other metal blogs (and grown men who call themselves KK Warslut), each contributor writes under a pseudonym … KK took great offense to [their articles], and posted the real names of both editors, and a picture, the home address, and personal phone number of the site’s founder in their rambling nonsense.
In other words, Keith d0xxed the site’s eds.
Finally, Stockhausen decries Keith’s misogynist response to Blair Hopkin’s review, but I would suggest that the lyrics to the song ‘Raped’ (from 2002’s Cold Steel … For An Iron Age) are relevant:
So too, his response to a question (Bardo Mythology) regarding the incident in Denmark:
[BM] KK once lived in Denmark for a few years, and I’m curious if this is where his resentment stems from. — On the contrary, he proclaims, of all the Scandinavians I’ve found Danes to be the least emasculated. Sweden on the other hand, I’d say is the first real matriarchal society we’ve seen in the West – famous also for their staggering rape statistics. How’s that working out for ya’s, ladies?
In introducing the song to the DeathKult Open Air Festival 2012, Keith states: This one’s for all the Muslim immigrants who are invading — who are invited to invade our fucking continent. Fuck you Allah. Yeah everyone’s busy being anti-Christian. Fuck being anti-Christian, let’s be fucking anti-Muslim for once. This is our fucking land …
Several months after they began parading around the Melbourne CBD, The Age has taken notice of the Soldiers of Odin. See : Vigilante-style group Soldiers of Odin patrolling Melbourne CBD, Chris Vedelago and Cameron Houston, October 10, 2016. According to The Age: “The Soldiers of Odin appear to operate similarly to the Guardian Angels network, founded in New York City in 1979 to patrol the subway system amid growing crime rates.” I would suggest that a better model would be the street patrols of Greek neo-Nazis Golden Dawn. Be that as it may, a few points:
• The SOO were founded in October 2015 by Mika Ranta, a Finnish neo-Nazi activist with links to the Suomen vastarintaliike or Finnish Resistance Movement (FRM), the local branch of neo-Nazi grouplet Nordic Resistance Movement. Like others belonging to SOO, Ranta has a violent criminal record.
• Members of the FRM are allegedly responsible for the recent killing of an anti-racist activist, 28-year-old Jimi Karttunen: “The man arrested in connection with assaulting a man to death at the Helsinki Central Railway Station is a key figure in the Finnish Resistance Movement (SVL), confirmed the police. A passer-by was beaten up outside the Helsinki central railway station where the Finnish Resistance Movement was holding a demonstration on September 10. The man succumbed to his injuries at the Helsinki Meilahti hospital on September 16” (Helsinki murder suspect key figure in SVL, FTimes-STT Report, September 21, 2016). His murder sparked a massive protest in Helsinki, one of the largest in recent memory.
• Since its formation in Finland, the SOO — rather like the (now largely-moribund) English Defence League — has expanded to a number of other territories, including Canada. Anti-Racist Canada has exhaustively documented SOO’s links to neo-Nazism and criminal violence.
• The leader of SOO in Melbourne is Jay B Moore. Like other Soldiers, Moore has an association with other patriotik groups, in particular the Patriots Defence League of Australia (PDLA). Below he’s pictured at the joint Reclaim Australia/United Patriots Front (UPF) anti-Muslim rally in Melton in November 2015 and at the UPF rally in Bendigo in February 2016 sporting PDLA merch. (Another member of the SOO, Cam ‘Moody’ McCann, was present at the Reclaim Australia rally in Melbourne in April 2015 in the company of a small clutch of neo-Nazi methgoblins.) Given the apparent collapse of the PDLA, it makes sense for Moore and others to have hitched their wagon to yet another anti-Muslim vehicle; an ever-present dynamic within the broader milieu. Or: same shit, different pile.
• The SOO joined the True Blue Crew (TBC) and UPF at their anti-Muslim rally in Melton in August this year at which members of the TBC and SOO clashed. The TBC eventually booted the SOO from Melton, with most of their animosity seemingly being directed at SOO President Jay B Moore. Despite this, the SOO — minusincluding Moore — joined with the TBC at an anti-refugee rally in Eltham on October 1.
2) DYVRS – Diamond Yarra Valley Resistance Solidarity
The Party for Freedom (PFF) is holding another anti-refugee rally in Eltham on November 5. The ostensible target of their ire is St Vincent’s Care Services, which has recently won a contract to provide housing to something in the order of 100 Iraqi and Syrian refugees. St Vincent’s has published a fact sheet explaining the initiative here.
In response to this rally and the rally of October 1 a new group has formed: Diamond Yarra Valley Resistance Solidarity (DYVRS). On the DYVRS blog it notes that a majority of those present at the rally on October 1 were drawn from the TBC, SOO and other satellites; the Soldiers, the Crew, the UPF, the PFF and All The Usual Suspects (even Ralph Cerminara!) have announced their intentions to return on November 5, making it a fun day for the whole racist family. Those unhappy at the prospect of another assembly of racist and fascist bigots should follow DYVRS for more announcements.
3) Blood & Honour / Southern Cross Hammerskins
FTR, Benson & Hedges and the Southern Cross Hammerskins are holding their annual Ian Stuart Donaldson memorial gig this weekend in Melbourne. The event commemorating the death of the Skrewydriver has been held every year for the past two decades with only occasional fanfare in the media — even the massacre conducted by Hammerskin Wade Michael Ppage at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin 2012 barely registered in Australia. In any case, their cheeky kameraden in the UK managed to fool keen-eyed and whip-smart Cambridgeshire Police a few weeks ago as ‘Hundreds of people attended a neo-Nazi rally that was not opposed by police in the belief it was a charity event’ LOL (Cambridgeshire neo-Nazi rally allowed as ‘charity’ event, Sally Chidzoy, BBC, October 6, 2016).
Update (October 1, 2016) : A small rally protesting a proposal to house refugees at St Vincent’s in Eltham took place outside Jenny Macklin’s office this morning. In addition to a handful of locals, a few members of the Party for Freedom (SYD) participated, as did around one dozen ‘Soldiers of Odin’ and 20 or so members and supporters of the Melton-based ‘True Blue Crew’.
1)
Three men — Neil Erikson, Chris Shortis, and one other — have been charged with offences allegedly committed during the course of a publicity stunt by the United Patriots Front (UPF) in Bendigo on October 4 last year. According to police:
Detectives charge trio in relation to Bendigo incident
Tuesday, 27 September 2016 16:15
Bendigo Crime Investigation Unit detectives have charged three men in relation to an incident that took place in Bendigo last year.
It is alleged the men beheaded an effigy and damaged property in a public area on 4 October 2015.
A 31-year-old man from South Morang [Erikson], a 34-year-old man from Frankston [?], and a 45-year-old man from Wallan [Shortis] have each been charged with:
The men have been charged on summons and are expected to appear before Melbourne Magistrates Court on 6 March 2017.
Erikson has a previous (February 2014) criminal conviction for harassing a rabbi:
A man has avoided jail for abusing a Melbourne rabbi in a series of racially-motivated phone calls he tried to explain as a prank.
Neil Luke Erikson, 29, phoned Rabbi Dovid Gutnick of Melbourne City Synagogue on three occasions, telling him “Give me the money Jew or else I will get you” and abusing him for his faith.
He also spoke of circumcisions, blood money and Jewish sidelocks and told Rabbi Gutnick he knew his location and was coming to get him.
Magistrate Donna Bakos said she had no doubt Erikson’s calls were motivated by prejudice and found he had little remorse for his crime.
Shortis, who has recently left the UPF in order to join the Australia First Party, is currently engaged in a legal dispute with the Chief Commissioner of Police in Victoria after having had his gun licence revoked. Shortis subsequently won his appeal to the Firearms Appeals Committee (August), and while it’s unclear if the Commissioner will seek to have the decision reversed, it seems likely.
Today, Erikson, pretending to be a journalist, paid an unscheduled visit to St Vincent’s Care Services in Eltham. The facility is planning on housing a number of refugees from Iraq and Syria. Opponents of the plan have organised a protest at Jenny Macklin’s electoral office in Heidelberg on Saturday.
2)
Among those promoting the rally in Heidelberg on Saturday is the Sydney-based ‘Party for Freedom’ (PFF). An unregistered but active micro-sect, the PFF regularly organises very small but vocal protests, generally directed at African migrants, Muslims, asylum seekers and refugees, leftists, equal marriage proponents, Chinese developers and so on. A handful of PFF members were present at the ‘True Blue Crew’ (TBC) rally in Melton in August, at the TBC/UPF rally in Melbourne in June, at the TBC/UPF rally in Coburg in May, and at the halal exhibition in Ascot Vale in April. This week the group, comprising a dozen or so members, staged a rally outside a Sydney court where three people are facing charges arising from an incident in January outside Black Rose infoshop in Newtown. Joining them was the Million Flag Patriot, who has now extended his control of Melton to the Sydney CBD.
3)
The leader of the UPF, Blair Cottrell, was a special guest of Hack Live the other week. I won’t bother to assess the program in any great detail, but briefly:
a) It’s somewhat curious that while Cottrell — a neo-Nazi with a string of criminal convictions for violence — was considered a fit person to join a panel on the subject of ‘patriotism’, Zaky Mallah’s appearance on QandA in June 2015 triggered a media shitstorm. Indeed, on this matter, not a single peep has been made by the commentariat.
b) Another extra-special guest was a geek named ‘Damien Rieu’ (r/n: Damien Lefèvre) from fascist projekt ‘Génération Identitaire’, who joined in the chorus supporting a ban on Muslim migration to Australia. Note that for a very brief period Neil Erikson touted establishing an Australian equivalent before abandoning the idea and handballing responsibility for the stillborn group’s Facebook page over to another neo-Nazi. (The page is now known as ‘Australians Resistance Network’.)
c) At about 8:22, former soldier Andrew Fox makes reference to a YouTube comment made by Cottrell condoning violence against women. The comment Andrew refers to reads: ‘Women have manipulated me using sex and emotion; demoralization, and I have manipulated them using violence and terror. We use what we have to get what we want.’ Blair denies ever having written this, stating: ‘I never said that and I never wrote that. False statements are attributed to my person all the time.’
The statement in question has long-since been deleted from YouTube, presumably by Blair, along with dozens of other, similarly objectionable comments about women, Jews and the like — I published a number of these on my blog on July 27, 2015. The comment he claims not to have made was reported on October 17, 2015 in an article for Fairfax by Michael Bachelard and Luke McMahon, who were in a position at that time to independently verify this statement, along with the others included in their article.
With regards Blair’s criminal record, he provides his own account (as ‘Bruce’) in a segment of a documentary about youth incarcerated in Port Phillip prison, Stories From The Inside (2014). I transcribed his testimony in a blog post published on February 23, 2016. In it he describes how he abused steroids, stalked his former partner and her boyfriend, tried to kill him, set fire to their house, and eventually got arrested, convicted, and sent to prison. This was later reported by Geir O’Rourke and Angus Thompson for the Herald Sun (June 11, 2016). Of his offending, they write:
Cottrell, 26, was sentenced to four months in prison in May 2012 after being convicted of 13 charges, including seven counts of intentionally damaging property. County Court Judge Michael Tinney convicted the then-22-year-old of throwing a missile, stalking, failing to comply with a community-based order, and two counts of recklessly causing serious injury. In December 2013 he was fined $1000 and sentenced to seven days in jail by a County Court judge for aggravated burglary, property damage, arson, trafficking testosterone, possessing a controlled weapon and breaching court orders.
4)
Speaking of neo-Nazis: ‘A white supremacist from Sydney’s south-west has been charged with setting fire to a Pentecostal church on the NSW mid-north coast. Ricky White appeared in Taree Local Court on Monday accused of deliberately starting the fire at the Destiny Church at 1:30am on Sunday’ (White supremacist charged over Taree Pentecostal church fire, Nick Ralston, The Sydney Morning Herald, September 19, 2016). Described as a ‘skinhead’ (sic) with Nazi tattoos, ‘It is understood that Mr White is also the head of the Wotansvolk fraternity in NSW and the second in charge nationally’. This may be so, but Ricky is also known as ‘SGT Hatchet’, the 2IC of tiny neo-Nazi groupuscule ‘Right Wing Resistance Australia’. A handful of its members have rocked up to various Reclaim Australia and patriotik rallies over the course of 2015/2016.
5)
Local council elections are being held in Victoria on October 22. Among those vying for electoral glory are the Australia First Party, which is standing in Brimbank (John Carbonari, Harvester Ward) and Wyndham (Susan Jakobi, Harrison Ward). In Bendigo, Elise Chapman (Lockwood Ward) is running and, rather oddly, using a Chumbawamba song as her campaign anthem; further, ‘Chapman has been given extra time to plan her appeal against a councillor conduct panel ruling ordering her to apologise for an obscene tweet’, and is now expected at VCAT on November 14. Another anti-mosque campaigner, Julie Hoskin, is running in Whipstick Ward. Note that Hoskin led an unsuccessful (and rather xpnsv) legal challenge to the mosque proposal: ‘One of those who made the appeal, Julie Hoskin, said the legal process had so far … cost more than $200,000, which was mostly crowd-funded.’
On this month’s edition of Floating Anarchy on The SUWA Show (5.30pm /// Friday, September 23 /// 855AM /// streaming live on 3CR), Dr Cam and I have a yarn with uber-special-lovely-Berlin-squatter-guests Lukas, Patrick & Rizo all about Rigaer94, squatting in Berlin, anti-gentrification, anti-fascism, naughty pixies and moar!
George Katsiaficas’s account covers the period 1968-1996 and pays special attention to the role of autonomous feminist movements, the effects of squatters and feminists on the disarmament movement and on efforts to shut down nuclear power, and the antifascist social movements developed in response to the neo-Nazi upsurge.
In addition to providing a rare depiction of these often overlooked movements, Katsiaficas develops a specific notion of autonomy from the statements and aspirations of these movements. Drawing from the practical actions of social movements, his analysis is extended into a universal standpoint of the species, a perspective he develops by uncovering the partiality of Antonio Negri’s workerism, Seyla Benhabib’s feminism and notions of uniqueness of the German nation.
1) Blair & Thomas Go To East Melbourne Collingwood
The United Patriots Front (UPF) staged another dingbat stunt on Saturday night, on this occasion targeting Yarra councillor Stephen Jolly. The event the UPF attempted to gatecrash was titled ‘Re-elect Stephen Jolly – Vote socialist for Yarra!’ and was held at Collingwood Gallery in Smith Street, Collingwood; Jolly is hoping to be re-elected to council on October 21.
Like almost all their stunts, this one was filmed and the footage uploaded to the UPF Facebook page. In a subsequent video, UPF fuehrer Blair Cottrell states that the UPF had considered assembling 50 boys to go to the event and shut it down, but in the end decided on sending just 5 (including Cottrell and his sidekick, Thomas Sewell). As the few minutes of footage reveals, Cottrell & Co enter the campaign launch and start to shout questions at Jolly, who is one of several to ask the men to leave. Eventually, the UPF are forced from the venue, campaigners and supporters joined in their efforts removing the annoying gits by several workers from the CUB site, currently on strike/locked-out of their jobs in Abbotsford. Jolly has spoken in support of the strikers’ claims, which has attracted widespread support among unionists, including the AMWU.
In any case, this is not the first time that the UPF and other fascists have objected to Jolly’s presence on council. Indeed, about 70 or so went to the UPF’s first public action in Richmond last May. Cottrell even promised to physically remove Jolly from office if, for some mysterious reason, their protest rally failed to do so. Otherwise, the failed disruption is another moment in a long line of attention-seeking stunts, from roasting a pig outside ABC studios in Melbourne last June to beheading a dummy outside Bendigo council offices last October; attending MAC and 3CR the following month to April’s foolish banner drops at the footy. Before proclaiming himself an opponent of Black Lives Matter (July), Cottrell and the UPF tried jumping on the dairy farmers’ bandwagon — only to be told to bugger off.
Whatever the immediate impact, all these performances are really for the camera, producing footage intended to capture the attention of like-minded individuals, almost exclusively via Facebook. Thus the UPF page recently celebrated gaining 70,000 likes; IRL, it can (still) barely gather together 70 boys to act like fascist boofheads in public. Saturday’s stoopid is rather ironic, however, as the UPF made a whole lotta noise about the political blitzkrieg Fortitude would become, and yet in September 2016, where is Fortitude? Rather than speaking from the floor of the House, Fortitude is a shambles, its supposed Senatorial candidate, Chris Shortis, has decamped for the Australia First Party, and the UPF is reduced to whining disingenuously at the campaign launch for a goddamn Commie. As for unions, they’re generally regarded, alongside Muslims, as Teh Enimy — the one, partial exception being UPF lackey Kris0 Richardson, who’s proudly worn CFMEU gear while touting the virtues of a White Australia. Before joining the UPF, Kris0 established the ‘United Australian Front’ (UAF) website and Facebook page. In-between noting the UAF’s development (August 18, 2016) into a straightforwardly neo-Nazi project, the Facebook page has been closed re-badged as ‘Order 15’.
2) Ralph Choo-Chooses The AMWU
Serial pest Ralph Cerminara was in Melbourne a few weeks ago to join the True Blue Crew (TBC) at an anti-Muslim protest in Melton. When he returned to Sydney, Cerminara drunkenly declared himself to be the Grand Poobah of the TBC in Sydney — which came as a surprise to the TBC in Melbourne …
This week, Cerminara has stated that he’ll be attending the AMWU office in Sydney on the weekend, presumably to film himself muttering and cursing outside its closed doors. In addition to documenting the nefarious influence of unions on Australian politics, the valour thief has been keeping busy filming himself muttering and cursing at socialist students. See : Right wing bigots and extremists exposed 1, September 2, 2016; note also that WordPress has deleted Cerminara’s blog.
LOL.
3) STRAYA First Goes To The Polls
The Australia First Party ran several candidates in the local council elections in NSW on the weekend. In Blacktown, Cassie Orrock (AKA Lili Chel), Terry Cooksley and Thomas Bell did reasonably well to collectively gain 2,184 votes (8.30%) but seem unlikely to gain a seat. In the Blue Mountains, Matt Hodgson, Mark Slater and Gordon Gilroy fared less well, receiving 343 votes (2.95%). Finally, in Wagga Wagga, Lorraine Sharp, Robbie Williams, Jean Williams, Chris Sharp and Jean Hughes got 1,302 votes (4.03%). In Hawkesbury, a former Australia First Party activist and serial candidate Tony Pettitt ran on the Liberal Democrats ticket.
Finally, the party has announced the formation of a United Nationalist Front or ‘Australian Coalition of Nationalists’, which at this point consists of the AFP, (whatever remains of the) Australian Protectionist Party and Nationalist Alternative, with the AFP Jnr. (AKA Eureka Youth League) and Hellenic Nationalists Australia Inc. (Greek fascists) nominated as ‘associates’ of the Coalition (as opposed to ‘partners’).
Around 100 or so people attended an anti-Muslim rally in Melton on Sunday, ostensibly in order to voice opposition to a stalled local housing development. (The developer, Rahber Developments, was wound up in May over a $400,000 debt to the ATO.) Meeting at Hannah Watts Park, those assembled listened to some speeches before marching to the council chambers (in the footage, the crowd looks closer to 200-strong), where they continued to shout slogans at an empty building.
Organised by the ‘True Blue Crew’ (TBC), the boys were joined on the day by the remains of the ‘United Patriots Front’ (UPF), a handful of (Sydney-based) Party for Freedom activists (among them Toby Cook and George Jameson), sometime Grand Poobah of the ‘Australian Defence League’ (ADL), Ralph ‘The Cancer’ Cerminara, and ‘Love Australia Or Leave’ Kim Vuga. Also making an appearance were a dozen or so ‘Soldiers of Odin’ (SOO).
The SOO were founded in Kemi, Finland in October 2015 by neo-Nazi activist Mika Ranta. The Soldiers appeal to racist thugs and boys who think Sons of Anarchy was a documentary, but by exploiting more generalised antipathy to Muslims and refugees, SOO helps bridge the gap between neo-Nazi activists and Western publics.
Sound familiar?
A true Viking, in May 2016 Ranta was given an 18-month suspended sentence for assault committed in June 2015: ‘Mika Ranta, 29, was sentenced for aggravated assault on one man and assault on a woman who tried to stop the attack, both of them Finns.’ (Antifa paid a visit to SOO’s clubhouse in Tampere, Finland a week later.) Ranta’s history as a neo-Nazi activist turned Nordic onanist is not unusual: AFA in Sweden have documented these links, which occasionally appear in media reportage, as has Anti-Racist Canada.
The Melbourne chapter of SOO announced its existence in March 2016 and, in the wake of its establishment in Finland just a few months prior, is one of scores of SOO grouplets to have sprung up across Europe and North America. A vigilante group whose 14 Words sneakily substitutes ‘our children’ for ‘white children’, in the last few months the Soldiers have been attending City Square in the Melbourne CBD, republishing dank right-wing memes, and otherwise carrying on like patriotik pork chops. In other words, they resemble any number of patriotik gangs that have emerged in Australia over the last 5-10 years.
Be that as it may, the potty-mouthed clash between members of SOO and TBC on Sunday appears to have revolved around the unwanted participation in the rally of its President, ‘Jay B Moore’. Moore is pictured below exchanging pleasantries with Steven Skinner, the person who may (or may not) have invited Moore and his Soldiers to Melton. Oddly, Skinner was named (seemingly wrongly) by Shermon Burgess as having had his house searched by police when they arrested Phill Galea.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Roundly abused by TBC, Moore was eventually forced to leave Melton and the rally with his tail between his legs. Exactly why the Soldiers were supine in the face of this attack upon their President is unknown (maybe they don’t like him that much either?), but their routing by the TBC may spell trouble in the future if — unlike many other such incidents — it doesn’t simply disappear down the memory hole. That may seem unlikely, but the case of Ralph Cerminara is illustrative.
Denouncedlast year by UPF fuehrer Blair Cottrell as a ‘cancer’ and a ‘virus’ who will ‘infect and destroy everything he touches’, Cerminara was nonetheless once again embraced this year by the UPF as a comrade. This has upset some. Since being drummed out of/having left the UPF late last year, Burgess (‘The Great Aussie Patriot’) and Neil Erikson have denounced it as ‘Nazi’: a fact which apparently escaped them for the eight or nine months they spent as members of the group. Since then they’ve made a series of attempts to establish new patriotik (Facebook) groups, including ‘Generation Identity: Australia’, ‘UPF Originals’ and ‘Aussie Patriot Army’. Proclaimed just weeks ago, ‘Australian Settlers Rebellion’ is the latest in this series, which was intended to include Burgess, Erikson and … Ralph Cerminara. But that was yesterday. Today, Cerminara is once again back with the UPF and denouncing Burgess and Erikson as ‘dogs’ and ‘traitors’.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
More generally, is it possible that the ‘patriots’ have now reached peak derp?
While ‘Reclaim Australia’ has more-or-less collapsed, the UPF’s mobilising capacity appears to exist in inverse proportion to its Facebook likes. Further, its attempt to establish a political party (‘Fortitude’) have ended in complete failure, with one-time Senate candidate Chris Shortis recently having decamped for the Australia First Party. In Melbourne, those left holding the bag are Cottrell, his preppy sidekick Thomas Sewell, and Kris0 Richardson, the founder of the ‘United Australian Front’ (UAF), a tiny grouplet which has since evolved into ‘Order 15/UAF’ while pumping out unabashed expressions of anti-Semitism, White supremacy and fascism. In Perth, the UPF lvl boss is Dennis Huts, whose own White supremacist and fascist convictions are also becoming increasingly frank.
With regards the TBC, it organised two public rallies prior to Sunday’s: a flag-waving parade in Melbourne on June 26 and an anti-left counter-rally in Coburg on May 28. (The TBC also took part in an anti-Muslim rally in Melton in November last year, organised under the auspices of ‘Reclaim Australia’.) The Coburg rally, which the UPF and a smattering of other neo-Nazis joined, attracted approximately 100 participants; the flag-waving ceremony (with the added participation of both the UPF and Rise Up Australia Party) attracted a similar number. So it would seem that there’s been no growth in either the TBC or UPF’s ability to draw a crowd. In fact, one could even speak of a rather precipitous decline since the Reclaim Australia rallies and anti-mosque rallies in Bendigo last year. Further, the TBC’s antics on Sunday will only underscore the fact that they’re basically a small group of frequently drunken, always bad-tempered, and invariably racist goons.
Oh, and to add some icing to the cake: Cerminara was allegedly given a Glasgow kiss by John Wilkinson (‘Farma John’).
On this month’s episode of ‘Floating Anarchy’ on The SUWA Show on 3CR (5.30pm /// Friday, August 26 /// 855AM /// livestreaming on the 3CR website), our extra special guest is writer, musician and raconteur Iain McIntyre, who talks a bit about … squatting! Iain also helps maintains the Australian Museum of Squatting — ‘A celebration and documentation of Australians putting abandoned and disused property to good use’ — which is ace and grouse.
Otherwise, it’s a very busy weekend for squatters.
On Saturday in Footscray:
Hot Shots Monthly Skillshare presents: SQUATTING IN AUSTRALIA – PAST AND PRESENT
‘An afternoon of discussions, talks and skillshares exploring squatting in Australia, its history, current campaigns, practical skills and more.’
See : HOTTTSHOTS! for more infos on Saturday’s fun and all the other heaps good stuff happening @ Footscray’s hottest spot. (NB. On Friday night there’s a benefit gig for compañerxs @ Rumah Api in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.)
On Sunday in Collingwood:
Bendigo St Festival, Collingwood ⌂⌂⌂ Celebrating Community ⌂⌂⌂
‘This Sunday, join us as we celebrate almost 5 months of fighting homelessness and building community in Narrm Melbourne. Many houses along Bendigo Street will open their doors, to share food, live music, workshops, film screenings, and conversations about housing and homelessness.’
It’s next-to-impossible to keep up with the various shenanigans engaged in by ‘nationalists’ and ‘patriots’ Down Under — I’m considering updating A (very) brief guide to the contemporary Australian far right sometime soon, maybe — but a few things are worth taking note of.
1) The True Blue Crew (TBC) is holding another anti-Muslim rally in Melton on Sunday, August 28. (Their last rally took place in Melbourne on June 26.) They’ll be joined by the United Patriots Front (UPF) and presumably assorted other rightists (including Ralph Cerminara, a man Blair Cottrell, fuehrer of the UPF, has memorably described as a ‘cancer’). Amusingly, the TBC have co-opted Eric Bogle‘s ‘And the Band Played Walzing Matilda’ in order to promote their hate rally.
2) Not joining the TBC on August 28 will be Phill Galea. Galea’s arrest and prosecution for ‘terrorism’ has generated a lot of commentary, obviously, with much of it centred upon establishing who Galea is and what role he played in the far right movement. As noted previously, Galea did attend an abortive anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rally back in April 2010, but has otherwise been an enthusiastic participant in a range of different groups (Australian Defence League/ADL, Reclaim Australia, Patriots Defence League of Australia/PDLA, TBC, UPF et. al.) and patriotik events. The reaction of his (former) friends to news of Galea’s arrest is captured by Peter Grace in one of his numerous videos documenting their antics:
See also : ASIO monitoring of right-wing extremists uncovered alleged plan to attack radical left, Nick McKenzie, Michael Bachelard, The Age, August 13, 2016. Note that the article contains a correction, viz, ‘An earlier version of this story quoted a person purporting to be Ralph Cerminara. Fairfax now accepts this was not Mr Cerminara, and that Mr Cerminara does not subscribe to the beliefs expressed. Fairfax apologises for the error.’ Speaking of Cerminara …
3) Shermon Burgess (‘The Great Aussie Patriot’) recently announced the launch of yet another Facebook project: Australian Settlers Rebellion (ARSE). At this stage it consists of Burgess, Neil Erikson, UPF leader (?) Scott Moerland and (possibly) Cerminara. ARSE takes the place of a series of Facebook projects established by Burgess and Erikson since they left the UPF and denounced the group as ‘Nazis’. Other stillborn projects include Generation Identity Australia (now known as Australians Resistance Network), Aussie Patriot Army (deceased) and United Patriots Front – Originals (defunct).
The departure of Burgess and Erikson from the UPF, and their declaration that the ‘patriots’ they’d been working closely with for more than six months were — shock! horror! — actually neo-Nazis, has naturally produced some bad blood. (This is in addition to the fact that Erikson now has very few allies among the far right in Melbourne.) A few days ago, this blood appears to have boiled up in the person of UPF lackey Linden Watson. Peter Grace again:
4) The UPF appears to have lost the support of Chris ‘The United Nations is attempting install the Pope as leader of a new world government’ Shortis, who has now openly embraced ‘national socialism’ and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and gravitated towards the Australia First Party. ‘Last Thursday’, Blair Cottrell’s sidekick Thomas Sewell expressed his support for fascism in a post which was soon deleted from the UPF page.
Otherwise, The Boys continue to hint at the fact that The Jew is responsible for All The (Bad) Things; a perspective expressed frankly in their internal discussions alongside, crucially, a recognition of the fact that being honest about their beliefs risks losing the support of that fraction of ‘patriots’ not down with neo-Nazism. It may also be read as evidence of the ideological incoherence of the milieu, and the fact that broadly speaking, it comprises anti-Semites, white nationalists, national socialists and fascists as well as Islamophobes: whether one aspect or the other is emphasised is largely a tactical question. The case of UPF leader Kriso Richardson (United Australian Front: UAF) underlines this fact.
5) The UAF was established in late 2014, ie, prior to the emergence of both Reclaim Australia and the UPF. While men wearing UAF merch made their debut at the anti-leftist rally in Richmond in May, 2015, it is now known as Order 15/UAF, and is open about its commitment to white nationalist and fascist doctrines.
6) The UPF and the TBC held a small counter-rally in Perth on August 13, and again on July 30, The Boys on both these occasions expressing support for The Mother Potato, Pauline Hanson. In Melbourne on July 16, the UPF attempted to mount a very small counter-protest. Wearing masks and holding a ‘Blue Lives Matter’, the boys (around 10–15 in total) were told to shoo by police — and did. Just a handful of neo-Nazis stuck around to heckle the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protest later in the day, which attracted thousands.
7) Nick Folkes and his micro-Party for Freedom staged a successful media stunt on the weekend, disrupting a church service in Gosford. The event succeeded in Folkes being invited to address radio and television audiences — even if it also earned him a rebuke from Andrew Bolt and The Mother Potato herself expressed qualms. In any case, this is not the first time racist meatheads have targeted churches for their commitment to human rights, the PFF’s antics recalling an earlier period in which right-wing radicals harassed ‘progressive’ church-goers. Dorothy McRae-McMahon:
In the autumn of 1986, six men marched into the Uniting Church in Pitt Street during my morning service. They marched in fast, carrying the Eureka flag. They came down the centre aisle, put a pamphlet on the lectern and handed out various leaflets before marching out again.
That was the beginning. From that day on National Action launched a sustained campaign of harassment against me because of my involvement in the anti-apartheid movement and other anti-racism activities. It went on for two years.
Initially, most of the harassment was aimed at frightening me and trying to bring down my career. They sent out pamphlets not just to my parish but around many of the parishes of the Uniting Church, claiming some pretty amazing things about my sex life. It would have been exciting indeed if I’d been doing the things they said I was doing! One particularly unpleasant pamphlet they put together was called ‘Sodomy and Gonorrhoea in the Uniting Church’. It was a classic Nazi document, mainly homophobic and racist, and it was clearly an attempt to end my ministry.
The church authorities firmly supported me and there came a time when it would have been very difficult if they hadn’t done so. The parishioners at the Pitt Street church were also supportive to a person. Members of National Action had clearly been going through the church’s rubbish bins for some time and they’d got hold of discarded documents including part of our mailing list. They started phoning up some of our people and saying: ‘We know where you live and we know the names of your children and if you don’t leave the Pitt Street church we’ll come and do something to your children’. We lost nobody. In fact we gained people in that period.
By 1986, the Uniting Church in Pitt Street had clearly identified itself with the anti-apartheid cause. Archbishop Desmond Tutu had spoken there on two momentous occasions. It’s a church that seats 2000 people and we’d never seen it full like it was on both those days. It was a great thing for us to facilitate the gathering of so many anti-apartheid activists. We also had an anti-racist graffiti team which went around the city painting over slogans that said things like ‘Kill an Asian a day’. I was the only church employee in the regular team that went out, the rest were all parishioners from the Pitt Street church. On one occasion we approached the railway authorities asking them to wipe out slogans in the Stanmore railway tunnel. Six weeks went by without a response, so we went and did it ourselves. We got caught and were arrested for being on railway property.
…
I suspect the publicity we got after the graffiti incident was a triggering point for National Action’s campaign. Apart from the pamphlets there was nuisance-type harassment. Week after week they poured sump oil and printing toner across the front steps of the church. We sometimes had to pay for it to be cleaned up because it would soak into the sandstone. Their campaign gradually escalated until it became quite frightening. I was living alone at the time and they’d phone me in the middle of the night and make death threats and say various other horrible things. Bags of faeces and vomit were thrown all over the front steps of my house and stuffed in the letter box or in the windows. One time they graffitied my front fence. If I left the phone off the hook or later when I got a silent number they would come around and knock on my door in the middle of the night.
I was frightened during these incidents but I also felt supported by many people around me, not only in the church but outside as well. I have to say my spirituality sustained me too. They never gained power over me, nor any of us in the parish. After they’d been around I could always ring up somebody from the parish. No matter what time of the night it was, even at three o’clock in the morning, somebody would always hop in their car and come around to clean up the mess, sit down, have a cup of coffee and debrief me.
We eventually decided to go public about National Action’s campaign. We’d been reluctant to do so because we didn’t want to give them any publicity. But then it went on and on and they’d been harassing the parish for some eight months, we thought: ‘Well the Australian community has a right to know what’s going on in its midst.’ We were also getting very angry by then.
We took the initiative and wrote an open letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. The media took an immediate interest. We discovered lots of other people were being attacked by racist groups. Often they were individuals who had no support group or members of the Jewish community. Or people who worked for the NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission, even some journalists. We then formed a loose-knit anti-racism coalition and started lobbying for government and police action.
We took a deputation to the NSW Police Minister. He was outrageous. He was absolutely outrageous. He told us that things like a few bricks through windows were par for the course in a diverse sort of community where people have different opinions. We came out of the meeting stunned by his attitude. We didn’t know what to do next because we really needed his support. What was even more surprising was that his press secretary and advisers later put out a press release which said the Minister was really troubled by the racist attacks and they had to stop. That was very different from what he said to us. In the end the Sydney Morning Herald ran a column which gave our account of that meeting with him.
In all this, more and more anti-racism groups came together in support of each other. We had very moving experiences. One time people gathered on the front steps of the Pitt Street church with placards saying ‘If the police won’t defend this church – we will’. They were people who wouldn’t normally come near a church …
Good results for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation; poor results for everybody else, especially the Australian Liberty Alliance (ALA). Hanson’s victory — she’ll be joined in the Senate by Malcolm Roberts (QLD), Brian Burston (NSW) and (probably) Rodney Culleton (WA) — has caused a good deal of weeping and gnashing of teeth and much commentary. Margo Kingston reckons the nice lady and her nice followers oughta be treated to a nice chat; David Wroe writes:
What has driven this success? It is what Griffith University political lecturer Paul Williams called “a perfect storm” for Ms Hanson: dissatisfaction with major parties, the end of the mining boom hitting regional areas such as Gladstone, a lacklustre federal election campaign. Other commentators have added that the removal of Tony Abbott as prime minister has driven conservative voters away from the Coalition.
The ONP Senate vote totals 593,013 votes or 4.29% — an increase of 3.76% on 2013’s effort. The vote breaks down as follows:
QLD : 250,126 / 9.19% / +8.64% [42% of total]
NSW : 184,012 / 4.10% / +2.88% [31% of total]
WA : 55,026 / 4.03% / +4.03% [9.3% of total]
SA : 31,621 / 2.98% / +2.69% [5.3% of total]
TAS : 8,700 / 2.57% / +2.57% [1.5% of total]
VIC : 63,528 / 1.81% / +1.80 [10.7% of total]
The Australian Liberty Alliance scored a total of 102,982 Senate votes (0.74%): 29,795 (0.66%) in NSW; 29,392 (1.08%) in QLD; 23,080 (0.66%) in VIC; 15,168 (1.08%) in WA; 4,435 (0.42%) in SA and 1,112 (0.33%) in TAS.
The following seats are where the various parties — AFP, ALA, CEC, ONP, RUAP — contested for the bigot vote:
NSW
In Lindsay, leader of the Australia First Party (AFP), Jim Saleam, placed last of eleven (11) candidates, scoring 1,068 votes (1.20% — a gain of 0.50% from when Mick Saunders had a crack in 2013). Saleam was beaten by Stephen Roddick (Australian Liberty Alliance: ALA), who got 2,110 votes (2.36%) and ex-Tory Marcus Cornish (2,128 votes/2.38%). In Paterson, Peter Davis (Citizens Electoral Council) received just 533 votes (0.53%; a decline of 0.12% since 2013), while Brian Clare (Rise Up Australia Party: RUAP) got a few more (1,007 votes/1.01%, a gain of 0.45% on 2013’s effort). Graham Burston (Pauline Hanson’s One Nation: ONP) smashed them both, Burston getting 13,0563 votes (13.05%; a massive 11.62% increase on 2013), placing third behind the Liberal and Labor candidates. See also : Meet Brian Burston: One Nation’s power behind the throne, Damien Murphy, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 7, 2016.
NT
In Lingiari, Peter Flynn (CEC) — 261 votes (0.61% –a decrease of 2.95%) — lost badly to Regina McCarthy (RUAP) — 1,498 votes (3.49%/+1.50%). In Solomon, John Kearney (AFP) got 798 votes (1.46%/+1.46%), Brigid McCullough (CEC) got 183 (0.34%/-0.07%) and Silvija Majetic (RUAP) got 985 (1.80%/+0.81%). The Marijuana (HEMP) Party candidate got 1,143 votes (2.09%/+2.09%).
VIC
Susan Jakobi (AFP) in Lalor gained 3,232 votes (3.03%/+3.03%) and placed fifth of five (5) candidates, while Marion Vale (RUAP) got a few more (4,685 votes/4.39%/+2.59%). In Mallee, Chris Lahy (CEC) came 5th of five (5) candidates, receiving 1,715 votes (1.96%/+1.68%) while Tim Middleton (RUAP) got 4,536 votes (5.19%/+4.29%) for their troubles. In Murray, Jeff Davy (CEC) got the grand sum of 227 votes (0.26%/-0.10%) while Yasmin Gunasekera (RUAP) got 1,195 votes (1.36%/+0.73%), while former AFP president Diane Teasdale (Independent) won 1,037 (1.18%/+1.18%).
QLD
In Fisher, John Spellman (ALA) did OK, coming fourth, just narrowly avoiding the 4% threshold (2,952 votes/3.52%/+3.52%), and beating Tracey Bell-Henselin (RUAP) with 2,210 votes (2.64%/+2.25%). (Mike Jessop — a candidate of the unregistered Whig party — got 2,906 votes or 3.47% (+3.47%).) In Hinkler, Damian Huxham (ONP) did very well, placing third with 16,987 votes (19.16%/+19.16%), easily beating Rob Windred (ALA) who came second last (1,670 votes/1.88%/+1.88%). In Leichhardt, John Kelly (RUAP) got 1,439 votes (1.62%/+1.06%), placing 8th of 9 candidates; Peter Rogers (ONP) easily out-polled Kelly, getting 6,775 votes (7.63%/+7.63%) and coming fourth. In Longman, Michelle Pedersen (ONP) done good, placing third (8,293 votes/9.42%/+9.42%) and easily beating the ALA’s Caleb Wells (830 votes/0.94%/-0.13%; Wells ran as an Independent in 2013). Finally, in Maranoa, Lynette Keehn (ONP) also done good, coming third and getting 16,047 votes (17.82%/+17.82%), while Sherrilyn Church (RUAP) had to be content with God granting her just 841 votes (0.93%/-0.03%).
* In addition to Saleam in Lindsay, Kearney in Solomon and Jakobi in Lalor, the Australia First Party also ran in McMahon, with Victor Waterson gaining 1,797 votes or 2.09%, placing 5th of 6 candidates. The party also ran two candidates, former members of One Nation WA, for the Senate in WA. Lyn Vickery and Brian McRae got 3,005 votes (0.22%).
* Kim Vuga failed to register her party ‘Love Australia or Leave’ but still managed to run for the Senate in QLD as an independent. She accrued the grand sum of 172 (0.01%) votes for her troubles.
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
