The Picket of Oz
A rather cramped demo this morning in front of Australia House in London. Roadworks all round the building meant most people having to squash into a rather narrow corridor of construction fences, and not actually coming into contact with that many passers-by. Still, everyone stayed cheerful, and rattled their protest boomerangs.
Paul in the piccy here (right) told me about one of the tactics that people often use to get good demo turnouts in Australia - they hold them in the pub! Distances are too great to travel to national demos, so local groups have ‘Pubs and clubs’ rallies, sometimes in the morning, where they have a pint and cheer on the national demo on telly. Then they go to work. Strewth! Don’t think I could get into much of a rally mood before breakfast - let alone sink a cold one - but each to their own I guess.
Anyway, totals from demos across Oz are still being totted up (hope the pubs aren’t counting double by now), but it looks like a pretty good number - over 250,000 (even if the flagship national rally was smaller than hoped). You can see more at the ACTU site, and Brendan Barber (TUC Gen Sec) has a good posting at Comment is Free on the problems the Aussie unions are up against.
