Articles by kieran

Milo Yiannopoulos tour cancelled; Gavin McInnes visa debate continues

October 30, 2018 Far Right 0 Comments

December’s planned far-right speaking tour, “Ann + Milo Live”, has collapsed with ticket holders directed to Penthouse’s upcoming Gavin McInnes Tour.

The “Ann + Milo Live” tour was to feature Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (more commonly known by the pseudonym Tommy Robinson) and former Katter Australia Party Senator Fraser Anning. The tour promoter (believed to be Dan Spiller, aka. Future Now Australia) emailed ticket holders today simply stating that “due to unforeseen circumstances our Ann and Milo tour has had to be cancelled”, no further explanation was offered.

Australia has become a regular pitstop on the global far-right speaking circuit. In the past year Australia has seen tours by Milo Yiannopolous, Lauren Southern, and Stephen Molyneux. The “Ann + Milo Live” tour was one of two far-right tours planned for this coming month, and there are never ending rumours that Steve Bannon intends to cash in on the Australian alt-right’s happiness to throw money at any low-rent foreign racist that shows up in Sydney.

The “speaking tour” is a key source of funding for modern far-right agitators. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has launched multiple speaking tours to cash in on recent contempt of court proceedings and is due in the United States in less than a fortnight.

Local racists who splashed cash on the “Ann + Milo Live” tour are not being offered a refund. The promoter appears to have instead onsold the ticket sales to rival Penthouse, who have also attached Stephen Yaxley-Lennon to their previously announced Gavin McInnes tour.

* * *

Penthouse have delayed and rebranded their planned Gavin McInnes tour. The Proud Boys founder and far-right thug Gavin McInnes was due to commence his Australian speaking tour this week. Penthouse, having picked up Stephen Yaxley-Lennon from Dan Spiller’s Future Now, are now promoting a Gavin McInnes + Tommy Robinson double bill for the first fortnight in December.

It is still unclear whether McInnes will even be allowed to enter Australia.

Last week Sudanese Australian lawyer Nyadol Nyuon launched an online petition calling on David Coleman and Peter Dutton (the ministers for Immigration and Home Affairs respectively) to prevent McInnes entering Australia. The petition has quickly attracted 30,000 signatures and has prompted national debate.

Nyuon argues that McInnes is coming to Australia to spread hate and encourage violence and should thus be barred:

The thought of Gavin McInnes coming to this country to spread hate is extremely concerning. The fact that his hate speech is often accompanied by violence which is extremely concerning. A man who encourages violence, who formed a gang labelled a hate group and that serially engages in violence should not be allowed into Australia. We should not allow Australia to become the last hope of such a group.

In the Guardian, Jason Wilson similarly made the case for denying McInnes a visa, detailing his history of violence.

These calls have been picked up by the ALP, with shadow immigration minister Shayne Neumann calling on the government to refuse McInnes a visa on character grounds. Neumann wrote:

“Labor strongly supports the refuse or cancellation of visas of non-citizens on character or criminal grounds and the removal of criminals from Australia under Section 501 of the Migration Act.
…
Under these powers you, as the responsible Minister, have the power to refuse visas for individuals if there is a significant risk that the individual would:
– vilify a segment of the Australian community; or
– incite discord in the Australian community or in a segment of that community; or
– represent a danger to the Australian community or to a segment of that community, whether by way of being liable to become involved in activities that are disruptive to, or in violence threatening harm to, that community or segment, or in any other way”

In the coverage that has followed, even the Murdoch media is now referring to McInnes as the leader of a violent gang (eschewing the usual euphemisms, “provocateur” and “activist”).

Calls to use of Section 501 of the Migration Act for any purpose are not without their critics.

This legislation is more commonly deployed for explicitly racist purposes, deporting so-called “foreign criminals”. Approximately 1,500 New Zealanders (predominantly Maori) have been deported under Section 501 since 2015, despite supposed free movement and residency between the two countries. Section 501 has been used to deport children, split families, and in some cases deport people who have lived their entire lives in Australia.

The political problem is that any appeal to the good graces of the government has the potential to provide cover for the existence of an incredibly unjust piece of legislation. Australia’s “border protection” regime, and all the executive powers that go with it, serve deeply racist purposes. The Australian government detains and tortures groups of asylum seekers, “turns back” (refouls) others, and holds the threat of random and arbitrary deportation over the heads of many more. Migrants and asylum seekers in Australia are held in a state of uncertainty and terror, and Section 501 of the Migration Act is one of the mechanisms the government uses to do this.

The Melbourne based Campaign Against Racism and Fascism put out a statement rejecting calls to deny McInnes a visa on just this basis. The CARF statement read in part:

Although we are disgusted and outraged by international fascists visiting Australia, we also recognise that the Department of Immigration and the Australian Border Force already execute the brutal, draconian border “protection” policy of the Australian Government, and we denounce any expansion or strengthening of that policy. We also bring to attention the irony of a Labor Party MP calling for the denial of McInnes’ visa on the grounds of his white supremacist views when it was the Labor Party themselves who pandered to white Australia’s xenophobia and created the groundwork of the current immigration regime.
…
The only possible defence against fascism is working class self-organising and self-defence. The Campaign Against Racism and Fascism calls on all those who oppose racism and fascism to reject the false protection of the state and instead take direct antifascist action.

The reality is more difficult.

The far-right is a growing threat in Australia. There is a sizeable audience for fascist ideas within Australia and there are plethora of far-right groups organizing in an attempt to relate to this audience. Tours by far-right agitators like Gavin McInnes help groups like the local Proud Boys franchise recruit and organise. If we want to stop the growth of the far-right in Australia, fascist organizing needs to be shut down.

But no matter how much we might wish for working class self-organisation and self-defence against fascism, the situation on the streets has been very different.

The state has shown a willingness, time and time again, to deploy overwhelming police resources in order to facilitate fascist events and demonstrations, and in doing so brush aside the opposition that has been mounted by small antifascist groups from the far-left.

More people are taking the threat of the far-right seriously; thirty thousand people have signed Nyadol Nyuen’s petition, something that would not have happened three years ago. But there is not yet any mass anti-fascist movement with the capacity to shut these groups down, and majority of people concerned about the growth of the far-right maintain their faith in the police and the state.

It would be preferable to stop a far-right movement before it grows, before it becomes established, and before it has the capacity to crush its opposition. As anti-fascists we have to organise, we make the case that the police and the state cannot be relied on and that working class self-organisation and self-defence are required. But we have not yet succeeded in this task.

Until we do, I welcome any set-back that the far-right faces, wherever it comes from.

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Radio National investigation reveals neo-Nazi infiltration of the Young Nationals

October 11, 2018 Far Right 5 Comments

Background Briefing has today published the results of an investigation into neo-Nazi infiltration of the Young Nationals in New South Wales.

Earlier this year The Australian and The Land newspapers reported that a “former” alt-right figure, Clifford Jennings, had been elected to the Young Nationals state executive at their May 2018 conference in Lismore.

The Land reported that Jennings and “an alleged alt-right bloc attempting to hijack proceedings” and that:

A motion calling for strict controls on migrants who were not from ‘culturally appropriate nations’ was narrowly defeated after a 90-minute debate.

Responding to media inquiries back in May, Jennings claimed he had long since abandoned any connection with the alt-right and denied that he had any “sympathies towards white nationalism or the alt-right movement”.

The Background Briefing report details how a group of up to 25 people with links to the far-right joined the Young Nationals in New South Wales just in time for this years conference. Despite their denials, it is clear that Clifford Jennings and others involved in the group have fascist politics and that they joined the Young Nationals with the explicit aim of capturing that organisation for the far-right.

This information has come to light as the result of an ongoing project by research group, the White Rose Society. White Rose researchers have gained access to a range of Facebook groups used by the far-right.

Clifford Jennings and other NSW Young Nationals infiltrators were members of a closed Facebook group called The New Guard. Facebook records reveal the group was created on 25 February 2017 and that it was originally titled “Fash Queensland”. The about section describes the group’s politics:

“Our Cause started with an Australian fascist group – the original new guard… We are the soil in which the movement will grow. Our Objectives are to enable nationalists to begin businesses, acquire funds, learn skills… Nationalists, fascists, national socialists, libertarians, Christians, pagans, agnostics, atheists and truth seekers are welcome in this place.”

The group’s administrator signed posts as “The Aussie Fascist”.

In this group, Jennings and others discussed far-right politics, made plans, and recruited young people drawn to fascist politics online to undertake action in the “real world”. To the media, Jennings has claimed that he has long since ended his association with the far-right.

But in January 2017 on a closed Facebook group Jennings wrote:

“I view fascism as being in the interests of my blood, it’s probably better to just call me a nationalist, all I care about is the fourteen words”.

Jennings’ posts are littered with references to coded neo-Nazi slogans.

The Young Nationals infiltrators have since moved from organising online. The group has links to both the Lads Society and neo-Nazi outfit Antipodean Resistance. Background Briefing journalist Alex Mann staked out the Lads Society HQ in Sydney and confirms in his report that multiple members of the far-right plot attend its Friday fight nights.

The Background Briefing report indicates that The Nationals are taking fascist infiltration of their party seriously, and that a number of individuals with revealed links to far-right politics have been sent ‘show cause’ notices which could result in the termination of their memberships. Jennings is yet to be expelled from the party.

Background Briefing will air on Radio National this Sunday, you can click through to listen to their story here. A transcript is not yet available.

Extensive screenshots, photos and other documents, along with profiles of five more far-right activists involved in the Young Nationals infiltration have been posted online by the White Rose Society today.

The far-right infiltrators mentioned in the Radio National piece are Clifford Jennings, Thomas Brasher, Oscar Tuckfield, Nicholas Walker and Michael Heeney. The White Rose Society has also compiled profiles on Stuart Churchill, Lisa Sandford, and Justin Beulah.

The far-right in Australia are active, organising, and seeking inroads into mainstream politics. The likes of Fraser Anning, Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer are making various barely concealed appeals to this constituency. The Young Nationals infiltrators are just one far-right group who have moved from closed Facebook groups to “real world” politics, theirs is unlikely to be the last attempt.

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Too Many Police

December 13, 2017 Civil Liberties, Police 0 Comments

The front page of Sunday’s Herald Sun bore a message from on high for Victoria’s political caste, the Police Association have issued their ‘pre-election wish list’. There is an election next year, and support or opposition from the coppers ‘union’ will make or break political careers.

Oddly, the coverage in Melbourne’s press (and in particular in the Herald Sun who carried it as front page news) was not outrage at the sheer gumption of a ‘union’ setting a price on an election, but rather a ringing endorsement.

There is a disturbingly close relationship between the Police Association, the Herald Sun, and the Liberal Party in Victoria. During the Simon Overland affair (2010-11) this relationship was blatant.

The Victoria Police Association was at war with the Police Commissioner. The parliamentary secretary for police (Liberal MP and former Police Officer Bill Tilley) and an advisor to the deputy Premier ran a campaign out of the deputy Premier’s office to destabilize the Police Commissioner in favour of the Police Association’s preferred replacement (Sir Ken Jones). The Herald Sun uncritically published their leaks and forcefully backed the Police Association position (for particular coverage of the media’s role, see Media Watch, Look Both Ways Before Crossing the Line).

An investigation by the Office of Police Integrity (Full OPI report: Crossing the Line) rocked the Baillieu Liberal government. The Police Association had the last laugh when the Liberal Government abolished the Office of Police Integrity in favour of a new “Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission”, a commission that by its own assessment, was designed to be a toothless tiger.

The power of the Police Association has continued to grow since the Overland affair. At every election the Police Association issues a set of demands, the Liberal Party and the Herald Sun quickly attack Labor for failing to concede to these demands fast enough, and Labor hurries to offer more in an attempt to head off the prospect of Police Association retribution.

In 2010 the Police Association wanted 1500 new police; the Liberal Party jumped, promising 1700 police and armed guards at every train station to boot. In 2014 they wanted “anywhere between 1500 and 2000 additional frontline police in the next term of government”. Then Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews promised to deliver.

This elections’ set of demands is more modest: the Police Association wants an extra 500 members and some new toys. This would be on top of last year’s commitment by the Andrews government to recruit a further 2,729 new police and rebuild a number of police stations (it’s crept up to 3,139 new police in recent media releases).

Police recruitment is big business for the Police Association, as John Silvester pointed out in an article earlier this year:

“Every time the government of the day promises to boost numbers it makes the Association more powerful – the recent announcement of a net increase of 3000 will boost revenue by $2.5 million in membership dues.

As it stands the Association makes nearly $500,000 a fortnight in subscriptions, owns its own National Trust building in East Melbourne, a swag of holiday properties, has legal officers, welfare staff, runs a legacy program for police families and has assets of around $45 million.”

But the Police Association’s agenda goes well beyond a desire for more dues-paying members. The Police Association loves new gadgets, new weapons, new powers, and greater impunity.

This election they want guns that shoot GPS trackers, and legal indemnity for police “who take reasonable steps to end pursuits”. That last demand is particularly concerning.

Car-chase pursuits, aside from being great fun, kill people and destroy property. Unfortunately, killjoys (also known as experts backed up by evidence) have repeatedly suggested that police pursuits are largely redundant in the information age, where high quality police cameras and license plate readers ensure that almost everyone is identified and caught eventually.

Whilst other states have moved to restricting the circumstances in which police are permitted to engage in high speed pursuits, the Victorian Police Association seems determined to push back. They want their chases, and they’re dead set against legal consequences for officers who endanger lives.

* * *

Victoria has seen an alarming growth in the size, powers and weaponry employed by a dazzling array of “specialist police”.

Pepper spray was introduced to the Victoria Police arsenal in the late 1990s, it was meant to provide police with ‘options between shouting and shooting’. The Victoria Police manual “very clearly specified that it should only be used in really violent or confrontational situations of serious physical confrontation”. Guidelines restricting the use of pepper spray to situations of “serious physical confrontation” disappeared from the Police Manual in 2011.

Update: These guidelines were reinstated following advocacy by Flemington Kensington Community Legal Centre in 2011, thanks for the correction AK!.

Pepper spray is now liberally used by both Police and Protective Services Officers. Public Order Response Team members now routinely carry MK 9 OC foam cans, it’s manufacturer describes the MK9 canister as a “crowd management product” that can deliver damage to skin, eyes and airways across a wide arc at over 25 feet.

A police officer engaging with some members of the public.

The Police Association similarly backed the introduction of tasers in the aftermath of the police shooting of Tyler Cassidy. Again this ‘less lethal’ electric weapon was meant to be used as a alternative to a firearm in very specific situations, unsurprisingly as tasers have become more widespread, so has usage creep.

Every growth in police powers and equipment results in the greater use of police violence and police weaponry. In March this year, the Critical Incident Response Team was equipped with new SIG Sauer automatic “machine guns”. In July, when general duties officers should probably have told a party goer to bin the prop gun that was part of his Joker costume, police instead dispatched CIRT, who then shot two people.

Update: The Age, Dec 13, ‘Cops alter story on Inflation shooting in legal defence’. Not only were two shot, one of the victims was shot, tackled by multiple police, punched repeatedly, and tasered multiple times.

In 2011, then Police Commissioner Simon Overland announced the formation of the Public Order Response Team. The “definitely not a riot squad” consisted of forty-two officers. In the 2016 state budget, the Andrews government shelled out for new robocop armour and training and by March this year Public Order Response was home to 324 officers. The batons, body armour and pepper spray of the “Public Order Response Team” are now the face of Victoria Police at an increasingly wide array of otherwise peaceful public demonstrations.

Members of the Public Order Response Team represent Victoria Police at a demonstration.

In December 2016, the Andrews government announced the creation of a “New York-style” “high-tech monitoring hub”. Today the government announced we’re getting a “high-tech” “terrorism warning system”, with police controlled loud-speakers to go up across the CBD.

Officially Victoria Police do not spy on or seek to disrupt lawful critics of the government. The infamous Special Branch was abolished by Parliament in 1982, but its various substitutes continue. The Security Intelligence Group was busted spying on activists in 2008, and was in turn abolished in 2011. Nonetheless, Victoria Police’s Intelligence and Covert Support Command remains, and the modern descendants of Victoria’s political police continue to operate, and activists continue to report being doorknocked and approached.

The legal powers of these specialist police units are growing too. New laws banning masks within “designated areas” were adopted this year, the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Public Order) Act 2017 also includes powers for police to simply ban people from “designated areas” without them having committed any offense at all.

The original “designated areas” legislation, adopted in 2009 on the back of a “law and order” panic about knives on trains, has become an all-purpose piece of legislation for suspending civil rights during protests. Police now routinely “designate” areas where protests are likely in order to suspend an increasing array of civil rights (in particular those around searches).

This same cycle of security theatre gave us PSOs on train stations. These poorly trained, well armed, and bored mint-a-cops were rolled out across the train network in 2012. They now routinely intimidate commuters, start fights, and cost $80 million a year with little appreciable impact on crime at railway stations. The Andrews government loves PSOs so much they want to hire hundreds more of them to guard supermarkets. The dues alone are a windfall to the police association.

Growing police powers, expanding “specialist” forces, and a general increase in the size of Victoria Police are having consequences. At protests and demonstrations, ‘policing by consent’ has given way to the spray and batons of ever present ‘robo-cops’. Young people, migrants, homeless persons and others now encounter the sheer joy that is PSO harassment across the public transport network. The police force increasingly claims the right to determine who is allowed to demonstration, express dissent, or appear in particular public spaces, and on what terms. The state government and Melbourne City Council (for example) routinely use the police to harass and move-on homeless people in the city, in all manner of areas, violence is substituted for effective social policy. And every increase in the size and powers of the police force further increases its weight as an institution, and flows on to buttress the political power of the Police Association.

The growing weight of policing bears down on migrant and Indigenous communities, it bears down on the young, particularly in working class areas, and it bears down on public dissent and protest.

More police, more powers, and more petty laws mean greater harassment, greater control, and greater criminalization. Unless this growth is challenged, the increasing size and power of the police force, and the corrupting influence of the Police Association in politics, will bear increasingly bitter fruit for all but the wealthiest in our society.

Bonus!

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Peter Dutton is a horrible, nasty, twisted little man

July 19, 2017 Politics 1 Comment

The federal government yesterday announced the creation of an Orwellian super department under the control of former Queensland police officer, Peter Dutton.

The new “Department of Home Affairs” will include the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (itself the product of merging the Australian Customs Service with the Department of Immigration into a veritable “border security” paramilitary), the Australian Federal Police, and ASIO.

Under Peter Dutton, Australia’s already deplorable Department of Immigration was combined with the Customs Service to create an armed black suited paramilitary force that spends more money on medals than the military.

As immigration Minister, Peter Dutton has been responsible for maintaining Australia’s brutal system of “offshore detention” system. Under Peter Dutton’s watch, more asylum seekers have been killed than resettled on Manus and Nauru, and these camps continue to record a critical incident almost every single day.

So far, six people have died in Immigration detention facilities under Dutton’s control, seven others have committed suicide in circumstances likely the product of the immigration system.

When Peter Dutton entered Parliament in 2001, he highlighted his priorities as attacking on refugees and civil liberties. In his frankly bizarre maiden speech to the Parliament, Dutton showed a particular obsession with the Refugee Action Collective, the Civil Liberties Council (whom he described as “criminal lawyers”).

This disturbing, bitter, and nasty little man, a person responsible for the ongoing torturous treatment of of men, women and children on Nauru and Manus Island, now has a national police force and a spy agency at his disposal.

* * *

At the same time the government was announcing plans to merge responsibility for ASIO, AFP and DIBP into a single department, DIBP called for tenders. The government plans to privatize large aspects of the tradition function of the Department of Immigration.

According to the Canberra Times:

the government has floated changes to its immigration system letting companies administer tests, detect fraud and recommend decisions to grant or refuse visas

A privatized immigration system would effectively outsource the assessment of most visas applications. The government invitation for tenders flags the possibility of a largely automated system, with immigration staff only having input on “complex matters”.

People who’ve experienced the Centrelink robo-debt debacle can no doubt attest, this is a great idea that couldn’t possibly go horribly horribly wrong.

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Victoria Police social media incompetence laid bare for all to see

March 14, 2017 Civil Liberties, Police 5 Comments

Victoria Police utilize hundreds of fake Facebook accounts to manage their expansive social media presence; their poor online security practices with these accounts have exposed their entire social media team.

Last week, a group of homelessness activists in Melbourne announced they would be holding a public forum to discuss “Melbourne’s rough sleeping ban”.

Shortly after posting this information to a public campaign Facebook page, organizers received a cryptic message from an individual claiming to be from Victoria Police:

This is Victoria Police. We’ve been informed of your protest action and want to let you know we’ll be monitoring this event with interest.

The message originated from a “Mark Darryl”, on an account with the URL slug markd.bayly. The account uses a Victoria Police shield as it’s profile picture, contains some generic police related content, and has approximately eighty friends.

The vast majority of these Facebook friends are fake accounts. They all have generic names, no content, one Facebook friend, and the same blank red Facebook profile photo.

Whoever operates the “Mark Daryl” Facebook account appears (at first glance) to have gone to the effort of registering 80+ fake Facebook profiles so that their fake Facebook profile could have some friends.

That said, not all of the accounts linked to this profile are fake. One of “Mark Darryl’s” Facebook friends is a “Mark Bayly”, URL slug mark.bayly.71.

A quick search for “Mark Bayly” reveals that:

Mark Bayly is the manager of online communications for Victoria Police.

Bayly’s hobbies include drumming, his band occasionally plays at Pause Bar in Balaclava, he’s a fan of Pink Floyd, his partner’s name is Margaret, and he has appallingly bad social media security practice for someone who manages the social media presence of a state police force.

It seems that Mark Bayly has received awards for his work in social media, the day to day tasks of which appear to include messaging activist groups to let them know that big brother is always watching:

But back to the fake accounts. Bayly didn’t just register these so that his fake account could have some friends, instead this appears to be the method by which Victoria Police manage their network of “Eyewatch” pages.

Rather than using any commercial solution, it appears that the Victoria Police social media team have registered hundreds of almost identical fake Facebook profiles in order to manage this plethora of different pages. There are presumably fake profiles for every officer who would ever need admin access to one of these Facebook pages.

It’s a clumsy practice but it makes some weird sense. Facebook pages are often subject to mass reporting, and Facebooks’s appalling automated moderation system routinely removes reported content and imposes bans on the admin account that posted the material.

To avoid this problem, most business would just employ a commercial solution (like Hootesuite). Instead, Victoria Police appear to have manually registered an army of paper accounts.

Unfortunately for them, the officers (presumably) using these these fake profiles have appallingly bad security habits. The account names are often similar (or identical to) the names of serving officers, and many of these profiles link back to their personal accounts. Simply by tracking the friends lists of these accounts it is possible to build an extensive map of Victoria Police’s social media presence and the officers who operate it.

The entire operation looks amateurish, but it just gets worse for Victoria Police. Operating fake profiles is a breach of Facebook’s terms of service, and every Facebook user has the ability to report a fake profile.

If sufficient reports are made, the operator of these fake accounts will have to prove to Facebook that the accounts are not fake, that they use real names and so on. Usually Facebook’s system demands a user upload photo ID. If you can’t do this, Facebook will lock your account.

A campaign of mass reporting could see Victoria Police progressively locked out of the accounts they use to manage their sprawling social media presence.

In December, the Andrews government announced that it would establish a “high tech monitoring hub” that would enable Victoria Police to engage in “real-time monitoring of social media”.

I wonder whether this “real time monitoring” system will include a subscription to Hootsuite, and whether it will be available before activists report every single one of these accounts.

Maybe the “manager of online communications for Victoria Police” shouldn’t have taken it upon himself to try and intimidate activists holding a public forum on homelessness.

Police have access to bribes, broke writers have to make do with paltry donations.

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Andrews government’s Law and Order push is racist garbage

December 8, 2016 Police, Politics, Racism 1 Comment

The Andrews Labor government has announced a $2 billion bid for the support of Victoria’s Police Association.

In a recent article on the so-called ‘Apex gang’, I noted that:

Victoria goes to the polls in two years, and both major political parties will once again engage in the traditional ‘law and order’ bidding war for the support of the Police Association and the Herald Sun.

The bidding war has now well and truly begun, and it comes complete with thousands of new police, extended police powers, and billions of dollars in spending.

The entire ‘Law and Order’ package is rotten. There is no crime wave, the new powers are not necessary, and the entire thing is rooted in racism.

The premise, pushed by the Herald Sun, the Liberal Party and the Police Association of Victoria, is that Melbourne is in the grips of an unprecedented crime wave.

Liberal opposition leader Matthew Guy has claimed that recent crime statistics are evidence of a “crime tsunami” and that he has “never felt more unsafe in my life”.

For over a year, Victoria’s tabloid newspaper and talkback radio stations have told us to fear a largely mythical ‘Apex gang’.

In reality the ‘Apex gang’ is part of a racist code used by the media to stigmatise young black men from migrant backgrounds. As Anthony Kelly (from the Flemington-Kensington Community Legal Centre) put it in recent comments to the ABC:

“The Apex gang is a convenient code word; essentially it means ethnic or African crime — it’s a code word that can be used by a greater number of commentators, like a dog whistle”

The other common dog whistle used by the media, police and commentators in Victoria is the ever threatening “youth crime”.

When the Police Association’s Rod Iddles bemoans “youth crime and the Apex gang and all that” he’s not talking about drunk middle class white kids punching each other after getting pissed at some city nightclub.

No, he’s latching onto a racist media beat-up that demonizes migrant kids from an African background, who we’re told will jack your car, invade your home and beat your white kiddies for want of something better to do on a Saturday night!

Media, police and political commentators on “youth crime” pin the blame for Victoria’s “crime wave” on kids from migrant backgrounds, in particular the Sudanese community and the Pacific Islander community.

Matthew Guy exemplified this with his call for legislation that would allow the government to immediately deport young offenders.

Unfortunately for Matthew Guy’s racist ambitions, the overwhelming majority of people committing the offenses the media has labeled a “crime wave” were born in Australia, and the crime statistics that purportedly prove the existence of this terrifying crime wave actually show nothing of the sort.

There has been an increase in the rate of reported criminal offenses in Victoria over the past year, largely as a result of the increased reporting of family violence offenses.

“Youth crime” over the same period has actually declined as:

crimes committed by people aged between 15 and 19 fell by 5 per cent, and there was a decrease of 4 per cent in crimes committed by people aged under 25.

Related, the ABS records a steady decline in youth crime across Australia since 2009-10.

But of course, it pays not to place too much trust in official crime statistics. Victorian crime statistics are obtained from the Victoria Police LEAP database. The more people the police arrest, the more “crime” Victoria records.

In reality, the number of people Victoria Police arrest for various offenses has as much to do with levels of police resources (more police means more offenses are “detected”), changing police priorities (expect a “spike in crime” among any population Victoria Police decide to target) as well as changes in which behaviors our society criminalizes.

The increased rate of family violence offers is an illustrative example. No one seriously expects that Victorian men became 10% more violent towards women in the past year. Male violence against women is appalling and commonplace, but the change in “levels” of family violence recorded by the police has as much to do with new processes that have been adopted in order to force police to take family violence seriously.

Media reportage on the so-called crime wave has highlighted increases in the number of ‘carjackings’ and ‘home invasions’ (recorded by police as thefts where the owners were present), and often links these to increases in the number of assaults recorded.

But again, this is hardly a crime wave. The Herald Sun might breathlessly report that there has been an 80% increase in carjackings, but they are still talking about an increase of 76 offenses in a city of four million people.

The media’s tendency to link this to increased reports of assaults is also deceptive. In the past two years societies’ attitude to assault has changed as the media has pushed narratives around “coward punches” and “one hit kills”.

A great many assaults that would once have been passed off as part of the standard risk involved in a night’s drinking are now reported and prosecuted. Many others are connected with increased police measures targeting domestic violence. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is hardly proof of a crime wave.

Melbourne is not in the grips of an “Apex crime wave” (as The Australian termed it in a recent racist beat up), but this hasn’t stopped the Andrews Labor government capitulating to the racist narrative pushed by the Police Association and the Murdoch press.

The government has announced “sweeping new measures” that promise to lock up more Victorian children and young people, longer. Due process will go out the window as new powers allow the police to forcefully obtain DNA samples from suspects without a warrant or court oversight. A two billion dollar spending spree will massively expand the police force, with thousands of new cops, a new helicopter and a bunch of new police stations.

The “Apex crime wave” may have been a myth, but the attacks on due process, the adoption of new authoritarian measures, and the growth of police power are very real. And they must be resisted.

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Anti-abortion creeps run “fake abortion clinic” in Albury

December 5, 2016 Oppression 0 Comments

In regional New South Wales a group of anti-abortion protestors backed by the Catholic Church have set up a US-style “fake abortion clinic”. The so-called ‘Women’s Life Centre’ (WLC) is located in Albury and claims to offer “the information you need to know about abortion”.

The Catholic activists behind WLC run extensive advertisements in the local Fairfax owned newspaper, the Border Mail, where they seek out women “facing an unplanned pregnancy or worried that they may be pregnant”.

The ‘Women’s Life Centre’ is modeled on the ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers’ popular among anti-abortion activists in the United States. These centres purport to offer free medical advice (although their Australian imitators are careful to avoid the word ‘medical’ for legal reasons), when in reality they offer a variety of deceptive practices intended to prevent women using effective emergency contraception or obtaining an abortion.

The establishment of the pseudo-clinic in Albury is part of a long running attack on women’s rights by Catholic fundamentalists in the NSW regional city. Albury is home to a branch of Melbourne’s Fertility Control Clinic, which has been under sustained attack by anti-abortion activists for approximately a decade.

In 2011 I was involved in a campaign to defend that clinic from a sustained campaign of harassment perpetrated by the so-called Helpers of God’s Precious Infants (HoGPI).

The FCC in Albury is the only dedicated fertility control clinic available to women in between Melbourne and Canberra. HoGPI are determined to discourage women accessing the clinic, and for approximately a decade they have staked-out the clinic whenever it has been open.

HoGPI’s self-described “prayer vigils” have included the surveillance and harassment women seeking to access fertility control.

The ‘Women’s Life Centre’ has been established by these same anti-abortion activists. The Director of the ‘Women’s Life Centre’ is Peta Evans, a spokesperson for the HoGPI campaign in Albury. The WLC’s domain name is registered to the ‘Trustee for the Catholic Parish of the Holy Spirit Lavington’.

Retired obstetrician and Albury based pro-choice campaigner, Dr Pieter Mourik, has repeatedly sounded the alarm about the WLC’s dubious “free pregnancy help”:

The Director of WLC is Mrs Peta Evans; her husband Dr Paul Evans, a general practitioner at The Gardens Medical Centre, is referred to for medical issues, despite the fact that Dr Evans has no specific women’s health qualifications. Dr Evans refuses to provide any contraception, other than “natural” as it is “against his strict religious beliefs”.

Volunteers at the WLC purport to offer counselling, pregnancy testing, education and “emotional support”. According to Dr Mourik:

The “volunteers” have no credentials (other than faith-based programs) to give emotional or medical advice …

They do not give unbiased advice, only anti-abortion rhetoric; their pamphlets are inaccurate and alarmist. The only “family planning” advice is “natural family planning”, which has a huge failure rate.

Prior to recent cuts at the Border Mail, the local paper provided extensive and rigorous coverage of the ongoing issue.

However, following significant staff cuts in 2015, the Fairfax owned paper has degenerated to the point where articles on important local issues read suspiciously like regurgitated press releases.

In a recent article, the Border Mail’s Jodie O’Sullivan explains how the ‘Women’s Life Centre pseudo-clinic is paired with a cafe, according to O’Sullivan it’s…

An unexpected oasis of loveliness tucked between a line of Lavington shops is serving up generous dollops of care with its coffee and cake.

At the ‘Esencia Cafe’ pregnant women can “listen to their baby’s heartbeat between coffee and cake … it’s beautiful”.

As Dr Pieter Mourik notes, in practice the “free ultrasounds” provided by these pseudo-clinics are intended to “[coerce] women to continue an unwanted pregnancy by increasing emotional distress”. It is the same reason that anti-abortion campaigners in the United States have campaigned for laws forcing women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasounds and other invasive procedures.

Women’s rights are under attack in regional and rural Australia. In Albury alone there are GP’s refusing to prescribe effective contraception, and pharmacists refusing to supply it when it is prescribed.

Women seeking an abortion have to walk a gauntlet of religious protestors to access the only Fertility Control Clinic for three hundred kilometres, and this is assuming they went to the one that will actually perform an abortion, rather than the religious run guilt tripping look-a-like clinic.

Now more than ever, town’s like Albury need strong campaigns in defence of women’s rights. If you are in New South Wales I would recommend checking out Children by Choice and the Women’s Abortion Action Campaign.

The Fake Abortion Clinics of America

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Rosalie Crestani really is deplorable

November 28, 2016 Politics, Racism 0 Comments

This Saturday’s Age contained a two page spread on “Melbourne’s Trump-land”, which is apparently located in Narre Warren North.

Instead of reviewing the economic and social situation in Narre Warren North, The Age’s Chris Johnston instead interviewed a handful of fringe right-wing figures, including Rise Up Australia’s Rosalie Crestani. The Age declared that Crestani and her fellow travelers were “disenchanted but not deplorable”. I beg to differ.

In 2012, Crestani contested Casey City Council elections on an anti-mosque platform. She won the second of two seats available in the Four Oaks Ward, despite coming fourth (with 8.09% of the primary vote) in a field of 22 candidates. She then joined Danny Nalliah’s Rise Up Australia Party (RUAP) and used her status as a Councillor to promote Rise Up’s peculiar brand of Islamophobic conspiracy theory mixed with a good dose of homophobia.

In 2014, Crestani moved to have Casey City Council ban diversity training, ban the display of materials that promote LBGTI equality, and ban the City of Casey from issuing media releases on LBGTI issues. Crestani and Rise Up Australia oppose same-sex marriage, the “normalisation of homosexuality” and “pro-homosexual propaganda”.

In Johnston’s article, a former Family First candidate claims that issues like “gay marriage … [are] a distraction from the things that really need to be done”. The mainstream political process is apparently obsessed with these ‘fringe issues’ that do not connect with the difficulties facing a community like Narre Warren North.

If anyone is obsessed with a ‘fringe issue’, then surely it is Rosalie Crestani and Rise Up Australia, with their outrageous and obsessive hate campaign directed at rolling back the rights won by LGBTI activists over the past fifty years.

Crestani is appalling when it comes to LBGTI issues, but it is in rank and borderline conspiracist Islamophobia that Crestani has made a name for herself.

In the past year Crestani has announced her support for a ban on Muslim immigration, stating she would oppose Muslim immigration “until there is a fail proof filter we have to stop all Muslims from coming in because we don’t know which ones are going to blow us up”.

Contrary to the racist conspiracy theories pedaled by the likes of Crestani, Muslim immigrants are highly unlikely to “blow us up”. Australian “terrorists” are overwhelming Australian born, tend to be comically incompetent, and despite widespread racism and anti-Muslim bigotry promoted by the likes of Crestani, there are precious few of them.

According to Crestani, on top of banning Muslim immigration, the most important issue facing “disenchanted” Narre Warren North is the threat posed by mosques! Over the past year, Crestani latched onto a racist Facebook led campaign to oppose the construction of a mosque on a vacant site in Narre Warren North.

The mosque’s development application was rejected by Casey City Council on planning grounds, but that didn’t stop Crestani announcing she would always oppose a Muslim place of worship in Narre Warren for “security reasons”. There are approximately 15,000 Muslims in the region covered by the Casey City Council, and a single nearby mosque that seats less than two hundred people.

Crestani routinely denounces mosques, halal certification and Muslim immigration. She claims that allowing a simple place of worship “risks radicalisation and terrorism”. I’ve always thought there was something darkly ironic about these claims, considering Crestani’s own links to the far-right.

Over the past eighteen months Rosalie Crestani has spoken at, endorsed, and even chaired a number of rallies called by violent far-right groups.

Crestani has chaired or spoken at the 18 July Reclaim/UPF rally at Parliament House, the June 26 True Blue Crew rally at Parliament, last year’s Cronulla riots celebration and the Reclaim Australia Rally in Melton.

Shortly before the Reclaim Australia Rally chaired by Crestani in Melton, police arrested a Reclaim Australia admin, Phillip Galea, on weapons charges. Galea has subsequently been arrested again on terrorism charges, and we’re awaiting Galea’s court date next month to learn which left wing target’s he allegedly intended to bomb.

Rosalie Crestani endorsed and promoted a violent far-right rally in Coburg earlier this year. The rally, called by the "True Blue Crew", intended to bust up a previously planned anti-racism event. At the time Blair Cottrell expressed his disappointment that Victoria Police stopped the rally "using force and violence" against their political opponents.

Rosalie Crestani endorsed and promoted a violent far-right rally in Coburg earlier this year. The rally, called by the “True Blue Crew”, intended to bust up a previously planned anti-racism rally. At the time Blair Cottrell expressed his disappointment that Victoria Police stopped the rally “using force and violence” against their political opponents.

If there was any gathering that could be said to pose a “risk of radicalisation and terrorism” in Melbourne, it is surely those far-right rallies addressed and chaired by Rosalie Crestani.

There are interesting and complex issues facing Narre Warren North, not least among them the Islamophobia and racism whipped up by the likes of Rosalie Crestani. But it is important not to overstate the depth of Crestani’s political reach in the Narre Warren community. Despite a massively increased profile in Narre Warren since 2012, Crestani only polled 17.17% of the vote in the 2016 Casey City Council elections. Her increased support is concerning, but claims she represents “Melbourne’s Trump-land” are grossly overstated.

There are plenty of people in the outer suburbs rightly disillusioned with main-stream politics. Unemployment is high (8.1% in the City of Casey), infrastructure is poorly planned and executed, services are taxed by underfunding and a growing population, and public transport is a joke.

But Rosalie Crestani and her fascist fellow travelers are not simply “disenchanted”. Crestani is an Islam obsessed homophobe whose Rise Up Australia Party seeking to build a reactionary political movement on explicitly racist lines. Crestani really is deplorable.
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Against the Sugar Tax

November 22, 2016 Politics 1 Comment

The Greens have announced a push to introduce a 20% tax on “all water-based beverages with more than five grams of sugar per 100ml”.

The LNP have said they will oppose any bill to implement a sugar tax in Australia, however the idea is gaining ground abroad.

Britain’s Conservative government have passed legislation for a sugar tax, to commence in 2018, and Mexico adopted a sugar tax in 2014.

The Grattan Institute released a report yesterday touting the potential for a sugar tax to raise $500 million whilst tackling obesity.

The sugar tax is a terrible proposal.

All consumption taxes are inherently regressive, a sugar tax would be especially so.

A consumption tax on something that people consume “equally” will account for a higher percentage of your income the lower your income is.

A sugar tax is even more regressive because people with lower incomes are more likely to consume soft drinks. The wealthiest are less likely to get their caffeine from Coca-Cola.

The $500 million that the Grattan Institute and The Greens propose to raise from a sugar tax will come disproportionately from the pockets of the working poor.

The Greens’ embrace of a sugar tax demonstrates their weakness when it comes to class issues. A sugar tax is a measure that essentially blames poor people for consuming soft drinks, whilst ignoring the fact that it is massively profitable soft drink manufacturers who produce and aggressively market these unhealthy products.

If soft drinks are a public health risk then it is soft drink manufacturers who should be penalized. The working poor hammer caffeine and sugar all day long because they are essential (if destructive) tools for getting through long days doing garbage low paid work.

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Unemployment fantasy: Minister denies basic statisics

November 22, 2016 Unemployment 2 Comments

The Social Services Minister, Christian Porter, lives in a fantasy world where jobs grow on trees and where the unemployed are to blame for unemployment.

In a speech to the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) National Conference, Christian Porter claimed there was no shortage of jobs in Australia, and that instead the Centrelink “compliance regime is failing miserably”.

The Social Services Minister believes that “there’s going to be 115,000 jobs created over the next several years” in the care sector, and thus:

“I just don’t put my hands up and say there aren’t enough jobs. I just don’t think that that’s statistically the case.”

Well it is statistically the case and Christian Porter fails at basic maths.

The ABS reports that there are 708,600 people unemployed in Australia as of October 2016.

Official unemployment figures massively underestimate the true scope of the employment problem. The rate of underemployment (where people have some work but need more) sits at around 8.5%, or a further 1 million people.

The most recent report on advertised job vacancies estimates there are 175,300 advertised job vacancies.

Christian Porter reckons there is no shortage of jobs when approximately ten people compete for every advertised vacancy. If Porter’s hypothesized 115,000 new jobs “over the next several years” materialized tomorrow, there would still be approximately 9 people competing for every advertised vacancy.

Bur rather than an employment problem, Christian Porter reckons there is a “compliance” problem. At the ACOSS national conference Porter raged that a reported 3000 people on some form of welfare turned down a job in the past year.

There are 854 665 people currently claiming either Newstart Allowance or Youth Allowance. 1 in 284 people on Newstart or Youth Allowance turned down a job.

And what kinds of jobs would you turn down when the dole is well below the poverty line? I can think of a few.

A female friend reports being offered a hospitality job at a venue with a less than desirable reputation.

I asked if I would get sexually assaulted. they said: well, it’s not ideal, but it’s not rape.

I wouldn’t take that job. My friend is in dire financial straights, so she submitted an application anyway.

This is what the government means when they talk about “compliance”.

The welfare system is designed to discipline the working class. The payments are at poverty levels and the process of claiming is both punitive and humiliating so that when you are offered a minimum wage job with the likelihood that you will be “groped and fondled a bit”, you will apply.

I don’t actually think that Christian Porter is delusional or bad at basic maths. The government attacks welfare claimants because they want to force unemployed Australians to take any job, in any conditions, at any rate of pay.

The government blames job seekers for being unemployed (calling unemployed workers job snobs, dole bludgers, etc etc) in order to justify worsening poverty payments and increasingly punitive measures, which in turn are intended to drive down the cost of labor for capital.

Despite poverty payments and the punishment regime embedded in the welfare system, 3000 people on welfare refused a job last year. I shudder to think how bad those jobs must have been.

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