En Passant

If or when the Australian Federal Police refuses to investigate, or finds no breach, can we mount a private prosecution against Attorney General George Brandis? And if the meeting took place in Canberra, can the ACT Attorney General, and Labor Party Deputy Chief Minister, Simon Corbell, launch a prosecution?

Maybe they hate us Senator Brandis because the last time we invaded, in 2003, about 1.5 million Iraqis died as a result? The number continues to rise. Maybe they hate us because the puppet regime we imposed on them was a sectarian Shia dictatorship over Sunnis? Maybe they hate us because we are invading them again. And killing women and children. Again.

Both the Liberals and Labor have embraced the racist Northern Territory intervention and attacked asylum seekers, although they sometimes differ a little on the detail. They are both on the right. They are both bigoted.

Our tasks are twofold – to build a movement to resist the racists and to build an organisation of the revolutionary left capable of organising with workers to challenge the system that produces bigotry and racism.

To make sense of the zeal of George Brandis for certain types of freedoms we need to judge them through the prism of class. Brandis’s freedoms will directly or indirectly assist the ruling class in its ongoing campaign to justify itself and reinforce its barbaric and exploitative rule. His proposed freedom commissars will strengthen the dictatorship of capital.

Barnaby Joyce: “This is not thousands of dollars. This is hundreds of dollars.” Like the $900 Peter Slipper claimed for his alleged wine tour you mean? Treat Brandis and Joyce like Slipper. Put them on trial too.