Above : Boneheads gather outside the Virginia Palms Hotel in Brisbane. The meathead on the right reading the newspaper is wearing a ‘Ravenous’ t-shirt — Ravenous is a Melbourne-based neo-Nazi reich ‘n’ roll band: the band’s merch is available for purchase through local neo-Nazi outlet 9%.
Australia First Party members and supporters and various other racist trash — including neo-Nazi skinheads — have this week unexpectedly joined multi-million dollar Christian charity/business ‘Mission Australia’ in Brisbane, ostensibly in order to “TRANSFORM the lives of homeless Australians who don’t have the power to choose where they sleep each night” as part of ‘National Homeless Persons Week’ (August 2–8, 2010). Thus a handful of racist cranks, in response to Mission Australia’s appeal to organise a ‘Winter Sleepout’, organised one to take place outside of the Virginia Palms Hotel in the Brisbane suburb of Boondall. The Hotel briefly came to public attention when in May 2010 homeless advocacy group / private equity firm CVC Capital Partners revealed that approximately 80 asylum seekers had been transferred there from their prison on Christmas Island.
The Australia First Party has come up with its own win-win solution for raising funds for the homeless and awareness about the plight of boat people this National Homeless Persons Week.
Under Mission Australia’s Winter Sleepout banner, a goon squad of AFP members camped outside the Virginia Palms Hotel in the Brisbane suburb of Boondall.
The choice of campsite was influenced by the 80 women and children seeking asylum being put up in the hotel instead of Christmas Island.
Mission Australia become incandescent with outrage when it learnt AFP was subverting its Winter Sleepout. It demanded an immediate end to fund-raising activities as it considered the political party pushed “hateful and divisive views”.
The AFP’s Jane Mengler offered to return funds collected during the sleepout.
Mission Australia has declared that it’s been “Sleeping out since 1988!” — that is, 10 years prior to it becoming one of a handful of similar charities/businesses to take advantage of the privatisation of the government un/employment networks under HoWARd — but the intervening decades don’t appear to have lessened the problem by any significant degree. Presumably, the $20,000+ Mission Australia has raised this year through its stunt activity will help supplement its $220 million annual budget, although I’m guessing that in 12 months time another Winter Sleepout may be scheduled.
It’s a smart move by AF to draw attention to the seeming disparity between the treatment homeless persons in Australia receive and that provided to asylum seekers; certainly, politicians are unlikely to announce that, such is the pressing need for housing, their governments will provide emergency hotel accommodation to the thousands who sleep rough. Of course, governments do provide millions in short-term funding to slumlords, but that’s another story — as is an analysis of the social structures which produce both homes and homelessness.
YOU IDIOTS . We have 230.000 people living on the streets and that was what it is all about , You clowns are not worth crap . Get off your lazy arses and help to raise money for the homeless , Every fifty dollars we raise will buy a swag for the homeless , It is all about looking after our own Australians , So Put Australians First first you clowns
G’day Peter,
‘What it was all about’ is obviously subject to some dispute. Mission Australia, unsurprisingly, has distanced itself from Australia First’s organisation of this public rally (in the name of their ‘Winter Sleepout’). The reasons for this are also fairly obvious. As for homelessness, I advocate squatting.
I don’t suppose we’ll ever see photos of you getting out there and standing up for what you believe in.
Too busy running my art gallery and drinking chardonnay.
what happened to survival of the fittest?
aren’t the homeless mostly lazy dole bludgers, oppressed coloured people, mentally ill?
Predictable response from Peter Schuback now the infiltraitors (sic) have been outed.
The homeless would be first cabs off the rank under the social purge, right Peter? Or is it a tossup between them and Indigenous people, right Peter?
Kommunista wrote:
“what happened to survival of the fittest?
aren’t the homeless mostly lazy dole bludgers, oppressed coloured people, mentally ill?”
I’m wondering about that too Kommunista. Maybe we need a heads-up from Jim Salami to enlighten us on these ground-breaking movements in Ozstraya Fist policy.
As an anarchist, you have no idea about economics. Let me introduce you to the concept of opportunity cost. $169 million is the total amount spent on the 13,500 refugees each year that are accepted into Australia. That figure does not include the other cash spent on refugees that have come to the country in the previous years that are still being supported. So, the real figure could be any where above $200 million dollars.
100,000 plus people are homeless. That 200 million plus dollars could be spent on building public commission housing like units, houses or residential blocks. So, this is where we have the opportunity cost problem. Should the government not spend that 200 million plus dollars on refugees but instead spend that cash on building housing commission accomodation? Should the federal government give that cash to the states to build the said accomodation? I would suggest giving that cash to the army so that they build the units, houses and residential blocks. Instead of spending their time and resources on killing people and fighting in other people’s countries, the Australian Defence Force could be spending the military budget and the refugee budget on solving problems that the Australian people face like homelessness and unemployment. Now wouldn’t that be true national service in the interests of the people!
Just think about the amount of jobs that would be created in the building and construction industry. The homeless people themselves could join the armed forces and gain skills by building infrastructure and housing. Unlike private contractors, the armed forces wouldn’t rip the government off.The government would be in full control.
STOP FIGHTING AMERICA’S WARS
STOP ACCEPTING “REFUGEES”
START BEING CONSTRUCTIVE IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST
Still fighting against the anti-normal persons league peter?
damn bones can’t even dress like skins. 🙁
btw if you have bigger photos of them send them to my email… 😉
Hey Peter, how do you figure that the money spent on refugees is immediately at the expense of the homeless and not, for example, subsidies for the coal industry?
It is big capital and its political bedfellow, western bourgeois liberalism, that today disseminate the idea of an Economic New World Order (the dialectical evolution of 19th Century bourgeois capitalism) giving free reign to multinational corporations, financiers and banks, to plunder the resources of the world’s cultural landscapes without any restraints placed upon them by sovereign peoples and their laws…
[Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. If yr gonna comment, make it relevant.]
The four enemies of the New Left…
[See above. Last warning.]
If the Left wants to seriously change things for the better it[‘]s going to have to make some major changes, like a serious break with the dogmatists and reformist-grounded liberals who have no tolerance for extraparilmentary [sic] or direct action politics, an admission that we live in a new era of capitalism that requires new strategies and criticisms, an opening of a cultural front that would work with youth and avantgarde counter cultural currents where grass roots, organic, and DIY ethics are practiced, and an abandoning of spectrum politics, which reduces every issue to left or right instead of capitalist and anti-capitalist, authoritarian and autonomous. Unless the Left starts to make these or similar changes, it[‘]s going to continue to be part of the problem instead of the solution.
Addendum: Oh yeah, who gives a fuck if you ban me. Not me. Fuck you Slack bastard, you bourgeois reactionary prick!!!
G’day Alex,
Call me a bourgeois reactionary prick all you like, but I think you’re a bit of a silly.
Didn’t your parent(s) or teachers ever tell you that swearing is neither big nor clever?
Besides which, your commentary doesn’t actually address the content of the post — which, to remind you, concerns the efforts of AF to capitalise upon a Mission Australia publicity stunt. (A hint that this is the case is given by the title: Mission Australia First Party.) Instead, it consists of tedious and highly over-wrought blatherings about what you think ‘the Left’ should do — although why you think that ‘the Left’ could, would or should go to a post on my blog about this event in order to obtain advice from an anonymous commentator remains a mystery. If, on the other hand, you’re seeking my opinion on your thoughts on the subject, I suggest you resume blogging, and if I feel so inclined, I’ll comment on your blog.
Don’t hold your breath but.
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I saw in the reprint of the Courier-Mail 70 years ago that a mob calling themselves the Australia First Party were arrested in Perth for conspiring to assist the Japanese Empire should they invade Australia. It seems like the same bunch of traitors have resurfaced. They would have known who this name was previously used by.