September 11. Melbourne. The scene: the area between Spencer Street Bridge and the Batman Park–Spencer Street tram stop. Heavily armed police, with glinting face coverings and shields, had seized and blocked the bridge over the course of the morning, preventing all traffic from transiting through it. Behind them stood second tier personnel, lightly armed. Then, barricades, followed by horse mounted police. Holding up the rear: two fire trucks.
In the skies, unmanned drones hovered like black, stationary ravens of menace. But these were not deemed sufficient by Victoria Police. Helicopters kept them company. Surveillance cameras also stood prominently to the north end of the bridge.
Before this assortment of marshalled force was an eclectic gathering of individuals from keffiyeh-swaddled pro-Palestinian activists to drummers kitted out in the Palestinian colours, and any number of theatrical types dressed in the shades and costumery of death. At one point, a chilling Joker figure made an appearance, his outfit and suitcase covered in mock blood. The share stock of chants was readily deployed: “No justice, no peace, no racist police”; “We, the people, will not be silenced. Stop the bombing now, now, now.” Innumerable placards condemning the arms industry and Israel’s war on Gaza also make their appearance.
The purpose of this vast, costly exercise proved elementary and brutal: to defend Land Forces 2024, one of the largest arms fairs in the southern hemisphere, from Disrupt Land Forces, a collective demonised by the Victorian state government as the great unwashed, polluted rebel rousers and anarchists. Much had been made of the potential size of the gathering, with uncritical journalists consuming gobbets of information from police sources keen to justify an operation deemed the largest since the 2000 World Economic Forum. Police officers from regional centres in the state had been called up, and while Chief Commissioner Shane Patton proved tight–lipped on the exact number, an estimate exceeding 1,000 was not refuted. The total cost of the effort: somewhere between A$10 to A$15 million.
It all began as a healthy gathering at the dawn of day, with protestors moving to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre to picket entry points for those attending Land Forces.
Over time, there was movement between the various entrances to prevent these modern merchants of death from spruiking their merchandise and touting for offers. As Green Left Online noted, “The Victorian Police barricaded the entrance of the Melbourne Convention Centre so protestors marched to the back entrance to disrupt Land Forces whilst attendees are going through security checks.”
In keeping with a variant of Anton Chekhov’s principle, if a loaded gun is placed upon the stage, it is bound to be used. Otherwise, leave it out of the script. A large police presence would hardly be worthwhile without a few cracked skulls, flesh wounds or arrests. Scuffles accordingly broke out with banal predictability. The mounted personnel were also brought out to add a snap of hostility and intimidation to the protestors as they sought to hamper access to the Convention. For all of this, it was the police who left complaining, worried about their safety.
Then came the broader push from the officers to create a zone of exclusion around the building, resulting in the closure of Clarendon Street to the south, up to Batman Park. Efforts were made to push the protests from the convention centre across the bridge towards the park. This was in keeping with the promise by the Chief Commissioner that the MCEC site and its surrounds would be deemed a designated area over the duration of the arms fair from September 11 to 13.
Such designated areas, enabled by the passage of a 2009 law, vests the police with powers to stop and search a person within the zone without a warrant. Anything perceived to be a weapon can be seized, with officers having powers to request that civilians reveal their identity.
Despite such exercisable powers, the relevant legislation imposes a time limit of 12 hours for such areas, something most conspicuously breached by the Commissioner. But as Melbourne Activist Legal Support (MALS) group remarks, the broader criteria outlined in the legislative regime are often not met and constitute a “method of protest control” that impairs “the rights to assembly, association, and political expression” protected by the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.
The Victorian government had little time for the language of protest. In a stunningly grotesque twist, the Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan, defended those at the Land Forces conference as legitimate representatives of business engaging in a peaceful enterprise. “Any industry deserves the right to have these sorts of events in a peaceful and respectful way.” If the manufacture, sale and distribution of weapons constitutes a “peaceful and respectful” pursuit, we have disappeared down the rabbit hole with Alice at great speed.
That theme continued with efforts by both Allan and the opposition leader, John Pesutto, to tarnish the efforts by fellow politicians to attend the protest. Both fumed indignantly at the efforts of Greens MP Gabrielle de Vietri to participate, with the premier calling the measure one designed for “divisive political purposes.” The Green MP had a pertinent response: “The community has spoken loud and clear, they don’t want weapons and war profiting to come to our doorstep, and the Victorian Labor government is sponsoring this.”
The absurd, morally inverted spectacle was duly affirmed: a taxpayer funded arms exposition, defended by the taxpayer funded police, used to repel the tax paying protestors keen to promote peace in the face of an industry that thrives on death, mutilation and misery.
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Eloquently and succinctly put Binoy. You have put into words the disgust I feel at this conspicuous display of death merchantry. I notice one company advertising how to upscale your lethality. The fact that Allen, a Labor Premier, was defending the rights of death-dealers over protesters’ was both telling and chilling. Anything apparently goes if it boosts the economy.
Summed up well in the final sentence. Indeed, we live in the age of rabbit holes and multiple Alice’s; destroy the planet in order to save it, kill the innocents to win the war, greet those who protest for peace with truncheons and pepper spray, provide civic welcome to the merchants of death and lay out gin & tonics along with canapés for their refreshment, all the while engaging in the theatre of normality, as if this is how things ought to be.
Remind yourselves, when next you have a chance to express yourselves at the ballot box, that this happened under a Labor government, and ask yourselves also, what would the LNP have done. Vote independent, vote Green, vote anyone but these political whores who so evidently lack conscience and an appropriate ethical framework.
Well written article Binoy, however let’s call it what it is, fascism!
Blood money. The ABC report this morning would have bordered on slapstick if it wasn’t so out of control.
I do not condone violence, but citizens should be able to protest strongly and peacefully. It seems to me that one of the main fuctions of our police force is to protect corporate interests regardless of how much damage they do to people or our environment.
@paul walter; admittedly, I’m not across the considerable spectrum of ABC output – not a TV viewer, nor a radio listener – but I did read their web news pages, until recently, until the new format… that deep plunge into irrelevancy and infantilism. I wrote many pieces of complaint as they were trialling the (hah!) upgrade, clearly not listened to. Sad, really, that what was once the gold standard of journalism is now not much better than playschool for big kids.
@Denis Hay; the police force is a paid for vector for state interests. Always has been, always will be, nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t matter how wrong their actions are, as long as they’re condoned by their political masters, they will continue to crack heads. If all drug use, for example, was decriminalised, as it is in Portugal, Czechia, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, then the police would obviously have to stop doing what they do in relation to this arena of activity, same argument with public protests, if citizens had an absolute right to vent then the cops would not be able to monster them with clubs and sprays and horses and cable ties. And lets be frank…nobody joins the police force in order to sit at a desk in front of a computer… they love the biffo, the violence, the state-sanctioned capacity to beat on people, spray them, arrest them… it’s an adrenaline rush and they get off on it.
Thank you Binoy. To read the truth these days is almost overwhelming.
Good article Binoy,
Sad but true.
If the death cult wishes to have an expo, it should not be slapped in the face of the public, who demonstrably don’t want war, nor police brutality. The tango of politics of all stripes and the feckless mainstream media continues to increasingly attempt to condition the public to a destructive and murderous mindset of ‘supremacy’ by obliteration rather than diplomacy and negotiation and cooperation. Obliteration is obliteration, and never achieves the building of trust, functional detente and lasting peace, just an ever-escalating and depletive pursuit for ‘supremacy’.
Jacinta Allen’s proclamation was utterly inept and a pile of strangulated BS. Labor should be ashamed of itself.
The death cult expo should have been held on ‘Defence’ property, where it belongs. All exhibitors and attendees could have been surveilled there, leaving police to go about their ordinary civic duties. And with the govt giving the public the names of all the corporations and their equipment being proffered, and the names and purposes of all personnel attending, whether exhibitors, spruikers, sellers, buyers, or interested ‘streakers’, ‘strollers’ and ‘stragglers’. This would have been fair and transparent, affording the public its right to know. As it appears to stand, the opacity and secrecy surrounding this death cult industry is just further weaponry in the arsenal of ‘supremacy’ by obliteration or threat of obliteration. It increases the potential for criminality and embeds paranoia, and corruption risks and the proliferation of spying.