A rally against the Howard Government in King George Square today in Brisbane attracted over a thousand protestors.
During the demonstration, which was outside the Liberal Party’s federal election campaign launch, speakers such as the Socialist Alliance’s Senate candidate Sam Watson and Richard Neilsen from The Greens accused Prime Minister John Howard of dishonesty over children overboard, the environment and the war in Iraq.
Donna Mulhearn, a peace activist and former human shield, claimed Howard had been lying in campaign literature about the current state of water and electricity services in Iraq.
“I was there and he wasn’t”, said Mulhearn.
Others present expressed concern about the Howard Government’s policies in relation to women, human rights and asylum seekers and increases in tertiary education fees.
A marcher named Dave declared “…it is time for the Howard Government to go and I think there is no way they should be holding a political forum in a public space”, while Ph.D. student Jen exclaimed, “I don’t like Howard”.
Genevieve pointed out that plans to write “Not Happy, John” in the sky as part of the protest did not occur after the company who were going to do it withdrew after the idea was revealed on crikey.com.au and the ABC.
The presence of four members of the Working People’s Coalition of Australia caused a minor stir after its leader maintained he strongly disliked “communist scum”.
The only other incident occurred after a woman tried to kick down the barricade that surrounded City Hall.
Chas from The Chaser was last seen wearing an orange rat-catcher’s costume and looking for the rodent with a big brown head.
September 26, 2004 | Unknown
Marchers accuse Prime Minister of being a “Lying Rodent”
3 Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Darlene, I think Dave might have been a bit incosistent about the appropriateness of the Coalition launch. Why is not OK for the Coalition ‘…to be holding a political forum in a public space’, but it IS ok for the protestors such as himself to do the same thing?
Not sure there were 1000 people protesting, I’d say the crowd that protested between City Hall and the markets reached 300, tops. More though (maybe 500-600?)for the crowd waiting for Howard’s car to pull out of the car park, across the road from Wallace Bishop.
Interesting to note that Coalition supporters now give lip back to smart-alec student lefties hurling abuse.
Comment by Alexander Drake — September 26, 2004 @ 8:20 pm
alexander, as a polite greenie I can assure you the conservative parties have always been particularly heavy with lip when election time trots round to the NSW north coast. Finding a place at polling booths is a battle against fanatical national party bullies who resort to threats and violence and with an electorate thoroughly intimidated in the business sector you can say democracy, let alone a leftie point of view has little chance of an airing. I say great that even 500 fearless souls take to the streets to take shots at the hopefully extinct howard.
Comment by trish mann — September 27, 2004 @ 4:18 pm
Thanks for comments.
One can only make a guess at the number of people present, of course. The mainstream media usually underestimate and supporters go the other way.
As for Coalition supporters giving lip, it was my impression that the Working People’s Coalition of Australia, who said to me and others present that they were “patriotic”, called protestors “rabble” and said “socialism is just communism by stealth”, are an extreme group of the right-wing variety. I think they had every right to be there, but if they are the Coalition supporters you are referring to, Nationals and Liberals should be very concerned.
Comment by Darlene — September 27, 2004 @ 4:38 pm