In December 2013 the Victorian Liberal party introduced new legislation to Parliament with
the aim of ?updating? the State?s Summary Offences legislation (in place since 1966).
Under the new laws the police and ?Protective Service Officers? (PSOs) would have the
power not just to ?move on? individuals, as they do presently, but entire groups of
people. Attorney-General Robert Clarke has made it abundantly clear in a recent press
release that these new measures are aimed squarely at limiting the power of unions and
activists to organise, stating that ?Union friendly restrictions on the use of move-on
powers by police at unlawful pickets and blockades, which were introduced by the former
Labor government, will not apply in these circumstances?.
In addition to removing laws that protect protestors from move-on orders the government
plans to introduce ?exclusion orders?. Exclusion orders, if introduced, will give police
the power to ban individuals from an area for up to twelve months. The reason Clarke gives
for this is that police need to ?tackle serial law-breakers intent on causing trouble for
hard-working Victorians and their businesses?. The penalty for infringing one of these
orders is (up to) 2 years imprisonment. To put that in perspective, the maximum penalty in
Victoria for ?Common Assault?, is just 3 months imprisonment. Breaking an exclusion order
is to be considered eight times as serious an offence as assault according to the new laws.
The Victorian government?s ?move-on? powers have to be understood as part of a wider
attack on union organising and workers? rights in Australia. Over the past thirty years
the ability of workers to take effective industrial action has been repeatedly attacked by
the state. At present, in the aftermath of WorkChoices and the Fair Work Act, strike
action is only legal where it is wholly ineffective. Unions face prohibitive fines for
supporting ?unlawful? industrial action and union officials are easily banned from
worksites under threat of long prison sentences.
One response to this limitation on the rights of the working class to organise in defence
of their interests has been the use of ?community pickets?. At the Baiada chicken
processing plant in Laverton in 2011, a community picket was instrumental in closing the
worksite and making the workers? strike action effective. At the Queensland Children?s
Hospital construction site in 2012, a nine week community protest was a key component of a
campaign to secure an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement that ensured all workers on site
were entitled to the same pay and conditions. The power of a ?community picket? in these
instances was the ability to bypass bans on and the timidity of mainstream unions. For
capital, this kind of effective industrial action is an affront that was meant to have
been quashed through federal government anti-union laws.
This attack on the rights and freedoms of the working class goes beyond the workplace and
beyond Victoria. Confected moral panic about ?drunken violence? and ?bikie crime? in New
South Wales and Queensland provide the justification for ever greater police powers, ready
to be wielded against unions, minority groups and the working class in general.
The ability to obstruct business as usual is the key weapon of workers and community
members defending rights and conditions at work and in wider society. New ?move on? powers
exist to protect ?business as usual? at all costs. Traditionally ?move on? powers were
justified as giving the police the ability to deal with a violent or disruptive individual
in an apolitical setting. Laws that enable the police to ?move on? entire groups of people
are quashing what little avenues of workers? power that remain in our society.
In the long run our strategy in defeating these laws must be to confront them, break them,
and render them a dead letter. In times past union organising was a criminal act ?
pioneering unionists were exiled to Australia for associating to create a workers?
?combination?. Workers organised, defied the laws, and secured those rights to industrial
action that are now under such vicious attack. We must remember that the state and capital
never concede ?rights? willingly ? the only genuine rights we have are those we seize and
defend.
Lorcan
9.3.2014
Related Link: http://www.anarchistaffinity.org/
* paper of Anarchist Affinity
