By Anthony Benbow
PERTH — In the midst of an election campaign focusing heavily on personalities and photo opportunities, questions of Aboriginal relations seem to be off the agenda.
The ALP's policies in this area are clear. 1993 is the fourth year of the protest at the old Swan Brewery site. Successive WA Labor governments have pushed this development forward, overriding the concerns and needs of the public in favour of big business. Premier Carmen Lawrence's record on this issue has been as bad as that of her WA Inc predecessors.
Half way through last year, the government moved to amend the Aboriginal Heritage Act, reducing the influence of traditional owners and granting more power to heritage minister Jim McGinty. This was in spite of strong opposition by Aborigines, some unions and community groups, expressed in rallies and marches, and in the round-the-clock Nyungar camp at the brewery site.
Shortly afterward, the government announced a 20-year lease deal with Multiplex, with payments fixed at $1 per year for the first eight years.
In August, after the WA branch of the Builders Labourers' Federation changed its position to support for the development, the government (via the Industrial Relations Commission) ordered the Construction, Mining and Energy Union (CMEU) and the electrical and engineering union (AEEFEU) to resume work or face deregistration action.
A mass meeting of the two unions voted narrowly in favour of resuming work. A mass meeting held six weeks earlier, before the order was issued, overwhelmingly rejected lifting bans.
Over the next week, hundreds of supporters came to stand on the picket line from all parts of the city, and from some country areas. The picket was 24-hour, with people arriving as early as 5 a.m. in some cases, and others staying late, or camping for the night. An attempted counter-protest, organised by Kalgoorlie MHR Graham Campbell and funded by the developers, had little effect on morale.
Multiplex forced its workers, many of them BLF members, onto the site in the last week of August, backed by around 80 police. When unable to separate the lines of protesters standing across the gate by direct force, police simply drove their trucks through them. A number of protesters were injured, including aged people
and children.
For months afterward, Multiplex and the government kept up the same tactics. Police attended the site every morning, and people were threatened with arrest for merely standing near the gates, whether there was traffic or not.
Multiplex also employed Aboriginal workers to stand on the site by the gates, in a blatant attempt to divide the Aboriginal community. Reports in the mass media were heavily biased against the protesters. They countered by producing their own broadsheet, the Brewery Picket.
The developer's latest stunt has been to apply for liquor licences over the holiday break, so the time allowed for public comment would elapse before government offices reopened. Many submissions opposing the licences have been sent in, though.
Unfortunately, the Liberal-National Coalition position is no better. Their commitment to oppose the brewery redevelopment was conditional on work not "advancing too far".
Liberal spokesperson Colin Barnett stated in an interview with the ABC's 7:30 Report in September that, if the development did end up going ahead, he would have no qualms about going there for a drink.
The Coalition's policy statement makes no mention of the brewery as a specific issue. It proposes establishing registers and lists of sacred places, as well as setting up special units and programs to help Aboriginal people interact with society. No details are given of how these projects are to be funded, or how much control Aborigines will have of them.
Sacred sites will be indicated by a system of "markers and memorials". No information is given as to whether land will be returned to Aboriginal owners or not.
The whole policy comes under the heading of "Lifestyle". Exactly how entrenched impoverishment and discrimination can be called a "lifestyle" is also not made clear.
To counter the brewery picket, ridiculous numbers of police have been mobilised each morning, often in rotating shifts. On one morning when work resumed in November, 40 police attended the site when there were only five people on the picket line! This makes the ALP and Coalition's claims that WA has a shortage of police look somewhat farcical. The two parties are running identical "law and order" platforms of more police and harsher legislation.
Only some of the independents and smaller parties are raising the real issues of how to address the social causes of problems.
Further information is available on the Brewery Picket Line — ph 0055 26057.