Jenny Macklin you can't hide, you're committing genocide!

MAIC activists showing that Jenny Macklin should not be able to go anywhere in this country without protest.

                                                                                                                                                             Chanting outside the windows where Minister Jenny Macklin was speaking: "Stop, stop, stop the Intervention, sack, sack, sack Jenny Macklin!"

 

MAIC activists leaflet unionists and IWD marchers. Many of whom signed petitions and made donations. Great support!

TODAY!! Snap action against Jenny Macklin's IWD cocktail party

Join MAIC at the 'International Women's Day Rally for Equal Pay', today at 5.30pm at the State Library of Victoria.

Jasmine Ali will be speaking for MAIC, specifically addressing the inequalities that Aboriginal women face due to the exploitative NT Intervention. 

We welcome people to join the march following the speeches. Alternatively, MAIC welcomes activists to attend a protest of Jenny Macklin's appearance at a IWD cocktail party at the Bella Union bar (inside Trades Hall, cnr Lygon and Victoria Streets). We will begin the protest at 6.30pm, but welcome people to attend after the march as well. 

MAIC supports the objectives of IWD, however the hypocrisy of the Minister of Indigenous Affairs speaking at this event, whilst administering a program that is continuing the oppression of Aboriginal women, is not something we can let go without criticism...and action!

Please invite everyone you know to this snap action--women and men are welcome at both. See you at the rally and then at Trades Hall! 

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Last year, a resolution was released by Indigenous women at the Defending Indigenous Rights Conference Alice Springs 6-9 July 2010, it is timely to re-publish this statement below.

Women’s Statement

To Prime Minister Julia Gillard:

We, the women, mothers, grandmothers, aunties, sisters in support of our men who are the shared caregivers of the NT wholeheartedly demand the NTER be abolished immediately.

The media has heralded your promotion to PM as a breakthrough for women.  All this talk is a slap in the face for Aboriginal women whose communities are being devastated by this government’s racist intervention.

For three years the removal of our human rights has been justified with lies about protecting women from violence and feeding our children.  We are living proof of the damage it has caused to us as Indigenous peoples of the NT who are trying to survive, live and practice our way of life.  Shame on you!

We call on you, and Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, to abolish this law that takes away our human rights as Indigenous peoples of this country.

Minister Macklin consistently claims that women support Income Management and the Intervention.  This is not the truth.  Under current policies we have no choice and no change and now a big cloud is covering our struggle and journey.  The Working Futures policy is about closing our homelands and communities.  This is damaging and destructive to our families, our language, law, culture, everything that is important to us.  This is our identity, passed down through generations, and this is what makes us the oldest unique culture in the world.

Income Management, cuts of the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP), the bi-lingual education ban in schools, compulsory five year leases over our land and housing – all these measures are taking away our control over our lives and our communities.  Your legal discrimination against us has given a licence to racists to abuse us in the street, in supermarkets and to attack our kids at school.

We call for the immediate end of the NT Intervention and the resignation of Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin.

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Women earn on average 18% less than men and the gender pay gap is getting worse! This International Women’s Day, take to the streets to demand action on pay justice.

Rally Tuesday 8 March, 5:30 pm
State Library, Corner of Swanston Street and Latrobe Street
Followed by a lively march to a range of city targets ending at Parliament House!

We demand:
• Wipe out the gender pay gap: equal pay for women!
• End the NT Intervention: Scrap the basic cards; fund jobs and services in Indigenous communities on award wages!
• Abolish youth and disability wages: pay the full adult rate for all!
• Stop the exploitation of overseas students and temporary residents – prosecute employers who pay less than the award wage!
• Fund pay equity: tax the rich, scrap handouts to big business and stop the war!
• For affirmative action & fully funded training programs to end the sex segregation of the workforce!
• End the mandatory double domestic shift: Free 24 hour childcare! Fully funded social services! All carers to be paid a living wage!
• Scrap Centrelink enforced dependency on partners and parents – an independent living wage for all!
• Victory to the community sector workers and federal public servants now – no gradual phase-in period!
• Union democracy: the right of union members to decide the goals and priorities of their unions through full discussion and majority vote. Free speech within unions!
• Strengthen our unions: scrap WorkChoices lite! Abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission!
• Solidarity with low paid and exploited workers everywhere!

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Details of the event that the Minister of Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin is speaking at:

International Women's Day (IWD) is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. In some countries like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, IWD is a national holiday. The first IWD was run in 1911. International Women's Day has been observed since in the early 1900's, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

This year is the IWD Global Centenary and we think that's something worth celebrating! The ACTU and the VTHC are proud to be hosting a cocktail evening at historic Trades Hall.

Join Ged Kearney, President Australian Council of Trade Unions and Melba Marginson, Executive Director, Victorian Immigrant and Refugee Women's Coalition to mark this important date

Tickets $20.00 including food service and the musical stylings of La Mauvaise Reputation.

To register, contact Debbie Gower, ACTU Event Manager by telephone03-8676-7263 or email dgower@actu.org.au 

For more information about International Women's Day - CLICK HERE!

We sent them a message

What a way to start the year for MAIC! 300 people braved the Melbourne cold and drizzle, standing in solidarity with exploited workers in the Northern Territory, demanding Aboriginal rights. We chanted for equal pay and jobs with justice. We called for an end to the 'work for rations' system of many Aboriginal people living under the racist NT Intervention.

Friday's protest was at its most lively when we took to the march along Swanston Street. We reclaimed the corner of Bourke and Swanston, the symbolic heart of Melbourne, and heard from Jenna Tipuamantumirri from the Tiwi Islands. Jenna explained the devestating impact that welfare quarantining has had on herself and her family. Highlighting the racism of the BasicsCard system, Jenna made the case that the government's assimilationist policies were motivated by the desire to push Aboriginal people off their land.

The march then continued up Swanston Street to Federation Square. For a moment, we claimed the stage of Fed Square chanting 'Always was, always will, Aboriginal land'. Jacob Grech as a representative of the Victorian Trades Hall Council accepted the thousands of signatures that we have received on our petition demanding justice for CDEP 'Aboriginal work-for-the-dole' workers.

There will be video of the protest to come. But if you  have any photos, please email them to us! melbourneaic@gmail.com

This protest has given us a big boost for taking the campaign onward. The next step is to get more people involved and aware of what's happening under the NT Intervention. Come to our next MAIC meeting, which is a special forum THIS MONDAY.

Eye Witnesses to Intervention Speak Out!

Aboriginal Rights and Jobs With Justice:

ACTU Fact Finders report back on the NT Intervention with the Melbourne Anti-Intervention Collective

• Adam Frogley - National Tertiary Education Union
• Michele O'Neil - Textile Clothing and Footwear Union
• Lucy Honan -  Melbourne Anti-Intervention Collective

Monday, 7th March 2011, 6.30pm at Trades Hall (New International Bookshop)

Australia's peak union body - The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU)

sent a delegation of union officials on a fact-finding mission to Central Australia in mid-November last year to speak to communities affected by the NTIntervention. The delegation comprised over 15 representatives from unions across the country. They met again in February to discuss union action on Indigenous rights.

Of particular concern is the new CDEP scheme, where Aboriginal workers in the NT are only paid a Newstart allowance through Centrelink. In many cases, workers have 50 per cent of these payments ‘quarantined’ onto a BasicsCard, to be spent only at designated shops.

MAIC is holding a public meeting to hear about the experience of the trip and discuss how ordinary people and unions can help stop the intervention. This is your chance to come and hear what they saw, heard and learned.

Promote this event! Click here for a flyer.
Contact Lucy 0404728104 or melbourneaic@gmail.com

THIS FRIDAY!

Protest: Stop the Racist NT Intervention!

Equal Pay and Jobs with Justice!

5pm, Friday 4 March 2011
State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

Melbourne Anti-Intervention Collective demands an end to the exploitation of Aboriginal workers in the Northern Territory. Under the Intervention policies, Aboriginal people are working for rations whilst living in extreme poverty with the government denying basic services. The NT Intervention is a determined attack on Aboriginal self-determination and has only lead to further disadvantage.

This rally demands an end to the NT Intervention, and we are drawing particular attention to the unfair working conditions that many Aboriginal people are being forced into. MAIC supports the 'Jobs with Justice' campaign, and we will be gathering signatures for a petition which will be tabled when parliament resumes.

The petition is being sponsored by the CFMEU (Construction Forestry and Energy Union) and Unions NT. It has a particular focus on the use of CDEP workers by the $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP). We are demanding backpay at appropriate award rates for all of these workers, along with an end to arrangements forcing people to work for the BasicsCard and investment in community based employment programs across all Aboriginal communities.

Stand up against racism. Stop the racist NT Intervention!