Having booked seats in the public gallery, we disrupted business-as-usual in the House of Representatives on October 31. We planned to stand up and call out, "Resist bad laws! We won't be silenced!" after PM John Howard spoke on the topic. However, having waited 55 minutes for someone, anyone, from either side of the house, to raise a question about the "anti-terrorist" laws, we finally just seized the time after one of Howard's disingenuous replies about his IR laws.
Rather than arresting us, the security staff merely removed us from the house and then evicted us from parliament. Given federal and state Labor's support for Howard's police state, we should not have been surprised that no one had any questions to ask about it.
We see our action, defiance of the abuse of state power, as part of building the national weekend of protest, and the movement both against the war, and against the silencing of dissent.
Beginning our statement with former NSW Liberal Party president John Valder's denouncing of Howard, Bush and Blair as "war criminals", we argued: "The Howard government has provoked terrorism in our region by being part of the illegal invasion of Iraq... (and Howard's "anti-terrorist" laws) are not making us safer... rather they will unleash more unnecessary suspicion in the community, will bolster the scapegoating that already exists and will feed the sense of grievance and victimhood which lies at the base of much backyard terrorism."
The best way to stop the retaliation of terrorism is by stopping the provocation of terrorism: End the war now — stop the provocation.
As the world increasingly approximates aspects of George Orwell's 1984, from the weasel-words of Newspeak — such as the thought-crime of sedition, and the doublethink of WorkChoices — to survival at any price in a perpetually war against "terrorism", it is time for acts of civil disobedience.
Perhaps we should take it in turns each day parliament is sitting, and/or whenever Howard et al. appear in public, to stand up, exercise our free speech, and disrupt business-as-usual.
As citizens of a democracy we believe ultimate political authority resides in the hands of the people, not the government of the day or the state. Perhaps it's time for as many of us as possible to sign public statements of "sedition", that we oppose this illegal war and police-state and slave-labour legislation as attacks upon democracy, and will do all we can to non-violently resist.
As Orwell wrote: "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act".
Peter McGregor, Stephen Langford, (Sister) Susan Connelly, Peg Baker From Green Left Weekly, November 9, 2005.
Sydney
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