BY SUE BOLTON
MELBOURNE — Armed federal police and immigration officers carried out a Rambo-style raid on an inner-city building site on February 20.
The police and immigration officers stormed the Bayview building site in Port Melbourne at 7am, just as the building workers were due to begin work.
The police and immigration officers immediately grabbed every single building worker of Asian appearance and locked them in a shed. No other building workers were allowed into the shed to find out what was happening to their workmates.
Around 60 workers were imprisoned and told to provide immediate proof of their right to live in Australia. Not a single non-Asian building worker was asked to provide such evidence.
Eventually, all except 18 workers of Chinese descent were released. One of those was subsequently released, the others were taken to Maribyrnong detention centre. Some of these workers have been living in Australia for up to 10 years.
The Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union has been denied access to the detained workers. CFMEU state secretary Martin Kingham and Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Leigh Hubbard have condemned the raid. Kingham told the media that the raid flouted the fundamental safety codes governing construction sites and "could have ended in death or serious injury".
Kingham explained that during the raid, "Someone could have gone down a lift well or over the edge, barriers could have given way with people running around ... Building sites are dangerous places ... Adding guns to the mix cranks up the danger level. Suddenly finding armed men in your workplace is just the sort of thing to send people running for cover. Running scared is dangerous behaviour in an unfinished building."
Kingham also pointed out that the detained workers are all paid up union members working under union-sanctioned pay and conditions. None of these workers were under-cutting other workers.
Federal immigration minister Philip Ruddock was quoted in the February 21 Age as complaining that the Victorian CFMEU branch did not cooperate with immigration department raids on building sites, whereas the NSW immigration department had worked closely with the CFMEU branch there.
From Green Left Weekly, February 26, 2003.
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