Vol. 71/No. 11 March 19, 2007
In response to widespread anti-Americanism at the rally, Macdonald spoke out against the involvement of the government of Australia in the imperialist war, saying that working people and youth should concentrate their fire on the Australian ruling class. He pointed out that the CL platform demands "the immediate unconditional withdrawal of Australian, and all ‘coalition’ troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines and all the theatres of imperialism’s global ‘war on terror.’”
On the eve of Cheney’s visit, Prime Minister John Howard of the Liberal Party announced that Canberra would send an additional 70 military trainers to Iraq.
As the CL election statement notes, the imperialist wars in Iraq and beyond are an extension of the capitalist rulers’ assaults on working people at home. Macdonald said the CL calls on workers to join the April 22 national union rally to protest the government’s antiunion laws, called "Workchoices," and to “solidarize with workers’ struggles around the world.”
Macdonald, a member of the Young Socialists, is also campaigning among students. He is joined on the CL ticket by Joanne Kuniansky, standing in Lakemba in the New South Wales (NSW) Legislative Assembly (the lower house). Both are meat packers and members of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees' Union.
Kuniansky plans to campaign at the International Women’s Day rally around the demands of the CL platform: “Oppose restrictions on access to abortion. Take abortion out of the NSW Crimes Act. Defend a woman’s right to choose.”
Supporters of the Communist League campaign joined Kuniansky in a January 26 demonstration of more than 400 Aborigines and others in Brisbane, Queensland. This protest was part of a campaign to demand prosecution of the cop who killed Mulrunji Doomadgee, an Aboriginal man, on Palm Island two years ago.
January 26 is a public holiday, officially called Australia Day, to mark the first British settlement in Sydney in 1788. This is when the genocidal war began to dispossess the Aboriginal peoples of the whole continent.
As the rally was taking place, news broke that Christopher Hurley, the cop responsible for Mulrunji’s death, would be charged with manslaughter. This will be the first prosecution in Queensland history over a Black death in police custody.
The announcement “was met with raised fists,” Kuniansky told the Militant. "Then the rally turned into a speakout about how to build on it by keeping up pressure for conviction."
The NSW elections are to be held on March 24.
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