A Badly-Written Rant

When I first heard about APEC the main thing I thought was ‘Extra day off – great! Thanks, Bush!’ Yet now I’m scouring the internet for protest marches I can join. Now, I’m as apathetic as the next person. So what has brought this about?

I’m sick of hearing politicians and the police talk about ways they can keep the people ‘obedient’ and squash protest. I’m sick of them sneering at dissenters. And I’m amazed that they admit to it so openly. If this was China, the government would pretend there was no dissent. If this was the UK, they’d pretend they welcomed it as an expression of free speech. This being Australia, they openly tell anyone who’ll listen that they plan to stamp out any expression of the people’s anger, smugly showing off the new water cannon which they plan to use against their own citizens. I’m shocked by the aggressive tones they use when telling us how they plan to shut us out.

In Britain, we have this thing we like to call ‘the right to peaceful protest’. We don’t use it very often, but it’s OUR RIGHT. No amount of threats from politicians (and the media are quite cheerful about reporting these) should deter anyone from exercising this right.

I admit that I’m worried the police are going to initiate/encourage a dangerous situation during the protests. They’ve been softening up the public in preparation for some time now, and I can just imagine their air of pleased resignation if they have to report a violent end to the event. They clearly can’t wait to use their brand new water cannon on their fellow citizens. Yet, I think it’s extremely important that protesters avoid violence at all costs. There’s nothing the establishment would like more than to portray Howard-haters simply as thugs looking for kicks.

But even if some protesters do turn ugly, surely the police should contain them efficiently and quickly, without having to turn the whole thing into a Tiananmen Square? There’s violence sometimes at other big events – eg rock concerts, football matches – and the police don’t seem to feel the need to ban those events outright, or make an example of everybody.

What really blows me away is how little the Australian public seems to care. In the UK, people are quite apathetic too, but I like to think that even the average man on the street would be appalled at the gall of an elected government which happily ignores the basic rights of people in a free society. Are the Australian people in such a deep stupor of material well-being that they can’t see what’s going on around them? I never thought to experience such blatant state and police repression in a western democracy. Maybe Australians should get out more and note how things are done in other democracies, and then they might be as outraged as they bloody well should be.

I’m reminded of this slightly bogan young guy who I work with. He was mouthing off one morning about how people are going to vote John Howard out and then the economy is going to collapse, blah blah blah. Now let’s just suppose for one moment that John Howard is indeed an economic visionary, and that what’s good for the economy is indeed good for the average person. Have moral values no place in voting criteria? Has it not occurred to him that there’s more to a leadership than making sure people can afford to buy more stuff? How greedy are you people? Clearly such issues as education, the arts, foreign policy (ie do we have the right to kill people in other countries), the environment, etc have completely passed him by. It’s scary to think that he is representative of the Australian public. If he is, then hell, maybe they don’t deserve freedom of expression. Freedom of mediocrity more like.

This morning the bimbo on breakfast TV happily told us that prisons are sending lower-priority inmates home to make sure there’ll be plenty of space for us during APEC. A threat? Surely not!!

BRING IT ON.

So I’ll be out there in the protests on the APEC weekend. Baking day can wait.