Watching the violent protests in Melbourne on Monday it was easy to imagine we’d been transported to 1980s Belfast. Reading the media-political reaction, it was even easier to imagine that we were back in the USSR.
If the sight of paramilitary police firing rubber bullets at protesters isn’t bad enough, the self-serving drivel coming from our political leaders and their media bootlickers is truly Soviet stuff.
Australia’s most militantly left-wing union members are lashed as “right-wing”, “fascists” and “Nazis”. A union bully with a rap sheet longer than a politician’s pandemic presser is hailed as the voice of reason. People demanding the right to work and be free from state-mandated health procedures are sneered at as “anti-vaxxers”.
Still, it’s amusing to see a socialist government in full panic-mode as their own leftist boot-boys turn on them.
The Andrews government has ordered an immediate shutdown of Victoria’s $22bn construction industry following violent protests in which union members joined forces with anti-vaxxers, smashing the windows of the CFMEU’s headquarters, throwing flares and projectiles, and hurling abuse at union boss John Setka.
The decision came after more than a week of threats from the government to close worksites, after the industry was linked to hundreds of Covid-19 cases and the seeding of the virus into regional local government areas.
It also followed the issuing of a strongly worded joint statement from building industry unions including the CFMEU, ETU, Plumbers Union and AMWU, which accused the government of introducing “heavy-handed” health directions that had “only served to drive many people towards the anti-vax movement”.
“Anti-vax” has become the “counter-revolutionary” or “rightist-subversive” of the modern, pandemic dictator. It’s a lazy, poisonous slur used without any regard for fact, slung about to stifle any and all criticism.
At least 500 protesters swarmed the CFMEU headquarters in Elizabeth Street, just north of the city, for much of Monday. The crowd included mostly men without masks who donned high-vis jumpers.
Some anti-lockdown protesters seen at Saturday’s violent rally in Richmond were also spotted at the scene.
Ah, so they are anti-lockdown, then? Not anti-vax? The mainstream media need to get their talking-points straight.
Despite pleas from Mr Setka to “please calm down”, the protesters drowned him out with many of the expletives he’s renowned for using. Punches were thrown and scuffles broke out throughout the day.
Personal insults hurled at Mr Setka included “you gutless c..t” — or group outbursts of “F..k the jab”, “stand up or stand down”, and “Dan Andrews’ b..ch.”
A daily industry engagement call set to take place between the government and stakeholders at 7pm was cancelled at the last minute, and they were instead told of the shutdown in an online meeting some described as “very heated”.
The closure will affect all sites in metropolitan Melbourne, Ballarat, Geelong, the Surf Coast and the Mitchell Shire, with the exception of 11 critical infrastructure projects, and emergency repairs. It was due to start at 11.59pm on Monday […]
All construction sites were required to close tea rooms and introduce worker shift bubbles and Covid-19 marshals from Friday. All workers are required to have received or booked at least one dose of vaccine before midnight this Friday, unless they have a medical exemption.
The Australian
This is the Andrews government hitting the panic button. The union movement is Labor’s bread-and-butter, especially the socialist Andrews government, which has explicitly run grubby deals with unions at the last two elections. If the militant CFMEU turns on Andrews, it may well be as fatal a blow as when transport workers parked 250 trams in Melbourne’s CBD for over a month, during the Cain government in 1990. It was a visible symbol of a Labor government spiralling out of control and out of office.
Now we have the sight of “Dictator Dan” finger-wagging union blokes in hi-vis vests and lecturing, “Now look what you made me do” as Robocop-like police open fire.
The footage of the rolling violent protests in Melbourne is being watched around the world. People who had wondered what had happened to the Aussie spirit are saying, “I wish people here had the guts to fight back like that”. The violence is shocking, perhaps, but an indictment on the government rather than the people. Victorians have been locked down for most of the past two years. The government’s own research — which it tried to keep secret — shows that the mental health of the state is deteriorating rapidly. Many have clearly reached breaking-point.
For all the tut-tutting of the chattering classes, the Melbourne protests are a grim example that even the most authoritarian state can only crush the peasants so much before they have nothing to lose by rising up.
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