The University of Technology, Sydney, has banned students from handing out leaflets displaying the word “genocide”. Our university, with ties to weapons companies and Israeli institutions, wants to hide its complicity in Israel’s crimes. 
Last week, we were told that our leaflets for a Students for Palestine forum exposing UTS ties to genocide were a form of hate speech, and anyone handing out the leaflets could be subject to disciplinary action. When we pushed back, the university administration told us that we would be permitted to put up posters, but not hand out leaflets, as being given a piece of paper could be triggering for some students. We were informed that this directive had come directly from the vice-chancellor’s office.
Why? Because apparently the word “genocide”, a term used widely in international law, is a threat to the wellbeing of those who support Israel. The International Court of Justice has declared that Israel’s assault on Gaza is a plausible case of genocide. Many people who have read the genocide convention can see that what’s going on in Gaza fits the definition. 
UTS is using the ruse of “student safety” to limit free speech. Palestine solidarity activism might hurt the feelings of Zionists committed to defending Israel’s crimes against humanity. But this is no reason to restrict anti-war activity. It’s a natural side effect of standing against injustice that those who support the status quo will oppose you. 
The genuine threat to safety and wellbeing in the world is the genocidal apartheid state of Israel, and its backers in major institutions.

Yasmine Johnson

University bans mention of Israeli genocide

The Gaza solidarity encampment movement has spread across the world, from New York to London, Melbourne to Cairo, Amsterdam to Istanbul. Thousands of students are pitching tents and organising rallies to register their opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
And the message is being heard loud and clear. On tent walls and placards in the heart of the war zone, Gazan children have written messages thanking students at the encampments. For the first time in seven months, they say, they feel a little bit hopeful.
Encampments have been established on almost 140 American campuses, and more than 80 internationally. They have sprung up on every continent except Antarctica—and even there, scientists recently raised the Palestinian flag along with signs saying “Fund science not genocide”, “Ceasefire” and “Antarctic workers for Gaza”.
This movement represents an escalation of the Palestine-solidarity activism that has been taking place since last October. It’s a product of the growing sense of frustration in the West and elsewhere that Israel has been given carte blanche to destroy the Gaza strip and murder more than 35,000 Palestinians. Students in Denmark wrote on social media: “We can no longer be satisfied with cautious dialogue that does not lead to concrete action”.
The links between Columbia University, where the movement kicked off, and elsewhere are easy to draw. Almost every university maintains research and financial ties with weapons companies—the manufacturers of death. These companies supply Israel with the bombs, drones and other weapons that are now raining down on Gaza. Protesting their universities is one way that students can try to strike at Israel’s war machine.
Student protests in the US, UK and Australia have received wall-to-wall media coverage in recent weeks. But the movement isn’t limited to the West; it’s spreading through the Arab world as well. Students at Egypt’s American University in Cairo have protested in recent weeks, calling on the administration to cut ties with corporations accused of aiding the Israeli occupation. In Jordan, students raised slogans against the crackdown on protesters at Columbia, while calling attention to the ties between Jordanian institutions and apartheid Israel. The Jordanian government has been arresting protesters for the last seven months, and universities have suspended or expelled those involved in pro-Palestine activism. 
The global encampment movement is bringing students into conflict with the institutions that drive support for Israel and cracking through universities’ rhetorical commitment to free speech. They’ve been met with physical violence, denunciation and suspension from their universities. 
Police have made more than 2,800 arrests across more than 60 campuses in the US. In Amsterdam, the cops smashed a student encampment with a mechanical digger. Activists at Berlin’s Free University were doused in pepper spray as police broke through human chains defending the encampment. 
Charges of anti-Semitism are hurled at students by Zionist organisations, university heads, the media and politicians. At University College London, four protesters were arrested under the Terrorism Act for the alleged “crime” of carrying a banner depicting a dove holding a set of keys. In Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has labelled the Palestine solidarity slogan “From the river to the sea” a violent statement. The Berlin Senate is considering legislation that would allow universities to expel students on political grounds. 
This repression has failed to quell the movement. It’s not just a set of demands that student protesters have in common—it’s a sense of determination and bravery. As one University of Columbia student told Fox News: “The commitment to Gaza runs deeper than fears for our safety, our academic careers, fears for our pay checks. It’s a fundamental obligation that we have”. 
If anything, repression has provoked new waves of struggle. Even where encampments have been smashed by the police, students and their supporters have continued to fight. High school students have joined encampments at places like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. At Sciences Po in Paris, activists occupied part of the campus and barricaded the entrance until violently attacked by police, then, refusing to give up, they marched through the city centre with students from the Sorbonne. Thousands did the same in Amsterdam after three encampments were attacked. The list of campuses involved continues to grow. 
Participants are drawing links to previous waves of student struggle. Protesters at Columbia have invoked the memory of 1968—when campus occupations there became a catalyst for the global student movement against the Vietnam War—making matching signs and placing their photos side by side with those from the past. The scale of the student movement that rippled across the world in 1968 was enormous, much bigger than today. But the current Gaza solidarity encampment movement proves that when some students take a lead in challenging the status quo, they can inspire thousands around the world to do the same.

The global Palestine solidarity student movement

The announcement on 13 July that Deputy Governor Michele Bullock will replace current Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Philip Lowe was welcomed by many. Treasurer Jim Chalmers hailed the appointment of Bullock—who will be the first woman to head the bank—as “history-making”. ACTU leader Sally McManus <a href="https://twitter.com/unionsaustralia/status/1679666551312580610?s=20">greeted it</a> as a chance to “consider the realities of the Australian economy with fresh eyes”. 
Undoubtedly, many are relieved to see the back of Lowe, who has made a name for himself as a cold-hearted warrior for the Australian ruling class. In just over a year, Lowe raised interest rates twelve times, sending mortgage repayments through the roof and helping to drive the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.
In recent media appearances, Lowe was unapologetic about wanting workers and the poor to bear the burden of controlling inflation, despite <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/oecd-report-shows-corporate-profits-contributed-far-more-to-inflation-in-australia-than-wages/">evidence from the OECD</a> and others that big business profits are most responsible for rising prices. He made clear at every available opportunity whose side he was on. At a banking conference in June, <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2023/sp-gov-2023-06-07-q-and-a-transcript.html">he commented</a>: “We will get ourselves into trouble if we accept the premise that all workers need to be compensated for inflation”. Asked about mortgage holders struggling with rate rises, he suggested that instead of wage increases, “if people can cut back spending or in some cases find additional hours of work, that would put them back into a positive cash flow position”. 
Speaking at a meeting of the Senate estimates committee in May, Lowe also <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/philip-lowe-wants-you-to-get-more-flatmates-to-help-solve-the-rental-crisis/krqfkx7r2">had some advice</a> for renters. In the face of rapidly rising rents, he suggested, people could simply live at home longer or “get a flatmate”. “We need more people on average to live in each dwelling”, he said. Lowe himself takes home an annual salary of more than $1 million and lives in a multi-million dollar five-bedroom house in Sydney’s leafy eastern suburbs, which he purchased in 1997 with help from a heavily discounted, <a href="https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/phil-lowe-received-heavily-subsidised-home-loan-for-1997-house-purchase/news-story/302052fe6010be207c1300037f763451">taxpayer-subsidised loan</a>. No flatmates for him! 
Lowe’s increasingly Mr Burns-like public persona was becoming a political liability for Labor. So, despite his (understandable) popularity with the top end of town, he has been shown the door. How much in the way of “fresh eyes”, though, can we expect from Michelle Bullock when she starts her term in September? The short answer is none.
Bullock is as establishment as it comes. She has worked at the bank for almost four decades, starting in 1984 and gradually moving up the ranks. She was made assistant governor in 2010 and was promoted to deputy governor (second in the chain of command, immediately under Lowe) last year. Bullock has been privy to every decision made under Lowe’s governorship and has given no indication of opposing any of the recent interest rate rises. 
Bullock has been in lockstep with Lowe on unemployment too. In <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2023/sp-dg-2023-06-20.html">a speech to the Australian Industry Group</a> in June, she said that “employment is above what we would consider to be consistent with our inflation target”. She endorsed a rise in unemployment to 4.5 percent—equivalent to the loss of around 140,000 jobs—to get inflation under control. Suffice it to say, the topic of how those 140,000 people would survive on welfare rates well below the poverty line and still make their rent or mortgage payments didn’t come up. An understandable blind spot, perhaps, for someone with <a href="https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/interest-rates/inside-the-property-portfolio-of-the-rbas-first-female-governor-michele-bullock/news-story/ab95073303f7972b2dda43622bda0efd">a property portfolio</a> worth an estimated $6 million.
Other bankers and economists, <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/media-releases/2023/mr-23-17.html">including Lowe himself</a>, have widely praised Bullock’s appointment. Warren Hogan, chief economist at Judo Bank, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/14/michele-bullock-new-rba-governor-who-is-everything-you-need-to-know">told the Guardian</a> that Bullock is “experienced and battle-hardened” and that she “knows exactly what it takes to make good monetary policy”. 
The term “battle-hardened” is often used as a slogan by the CFMEU, denoting the construction union’s experience fighting for its working-class members. When applied by an economist to the likes of Bullock, it means much the same, but from the opposite direction: that she can be trusted to continue the RBA’s fight for big business and the rich. Bullock’s “experience and expertise”, touted by Jim Chalmers <a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-treasurer-jim-chalmers-on-michele-bullocks-appointment-as-reserve-bank-governor-209793">in an interview</a> with the Conversation, will be used to make decisions in line with what’s best for ruling-class profit-making.
There’s no “good” pick for RBA governor. The bank isn’t an institution designed to ensure the well-being of ordinary people. It has always been and will continue to be under Bullock, part of the system of undemocratic-by-design economic “checks and balances” that maintain the smooth functioning of capitalism in the interests of those at the top.
The Labor Party has made it clear that it has no intention of changing this. It has given “in-principle” support to removing the treasurer’s power to overrule RBA decisions—one of the key recommendations of the government’s <a href="https://rbareview.gov.au/sites/rbareview.gov.au/files/2023-06/rbareview-report-at_0.pdf">review of the bank</a> released in April. It’s convenient, after all, for the government to wash its hands of decisions about interest rates and leave it to supposedly “independent experts” like Bullock. This creates an illusion of objectivity and helps ensure the invaluable service provided by the RBA to the rich can carry on, as much as possible, outside the political spotlight.

James Plested

New RBA head is just another ruling-class arsehole

The cost-of-living crisis is now a constant feature of news headlines and daily life. Housing costs—from interest rate rises jacking up mortgage repayments to skyrocketing rents and house prices—have become one of the harshest aspects.
Census data shows that around two in three people own a home, but they’re acquiring ever-higher debts and taking longer to pay off their mortgages. Between 1996 and 2021, the number of people who had paid off their home loan dropped from 42 to 31 percent. The International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook noted that because houses are expensive and household debt is high, Australians are now the second most likely in the developed world to default on their mortgages.
Research from the Australian National University shows that the average weekly mortgage repayment has increased by $364 since 2019, now sitting at $864. If the Reserve Bank does not lower interest rates before the end of the year (nobody predicts they will), the average mortgage holder will be paying more than $900 a week—an 80 percent increase in just four years. Someone earning the median income will be spending nearly 40 percent of their income on this repayment.
In places where housing is least affordable, people are already spending a significant proportion of their income on housing. The 2023 ANZ CoreLogic Housing Affordability Report showed that on average, Sydney residents would need to spend more than half of their income on paying back a new mortgage.
In major cities, people are moving further away from the prohibitively expensive inner areas, and the quality of new constructions is falling. Nearly half the population of Australia’s five largest cities live in the outer suburbs. But doing so still isn’t cheap, and it comes at the added cost of reduced access to infrastructure and amenities. Western Sydney, where the population has substantially expanded in recent decades, scored poorly in the 2022 Liveability Census in areas such as investment in roads and schools, employment opportunities and the quality of state services. In Melbourne, 50 new suburbs were added to the outskirts of the city in the decade to 2015. With almost no access to public transport, the average resident will end up spending more than 15 percent of their income on running a car, according to a survey by the Australian Automobile Association.
These suburbs aren’t equipped for climate change either. Western Sydney’s 2.5 million residents could find their homes uninhabitable in coming decades due to extreme heat. The advocacy organisation Better Renting reported that across Australia the majority of apartments are already reaching temperatures that the World Health Organisation deems unsafe.
The housing crisis is particularly acute for renters. Over the past year, ANZ’s CoreLogic report shows that house rents have increased three times faster than wages, while for units the rate of rent increase is six times that of wages. Those earning a median income are forced to spend almost a third of their pay on the average rent for a new lease. For households earning around $800 a week, that figure jumps to half their income. The Labor government recently raised the maximum rate of Rent Assistance by around $2 a day, but rents are increasing at double that rate.
Across capital cities, the asking price for units has increased by 25 percent, and in certain areas the number is far higher. In inner-Melbourne, for example, unit prices have skyrocketed by 40 percent in a year. Some smaller cities and regional areas have been hit even worse: the most unaffordable places to rent relative to income are Hobart, followed by regional areas of Queensland and NSW.
The increase in rents has relatively little to do with landlords passing down increased mortgage rates. According to ANZ Bank economists, the main motivator for most landlords is the fact that there are very few rentals available. Landlords are taking advantage of the crisis to gouge tenants and increase rents.
Anyone who has looked for a rental in the last six months knows that they are nearly impossible to find. The vacancy rate is 1.2 percent, which, in addition to making it difficult for anyone looking to move, puts renters under pressure to keep their heads down. Tenant protection laws are inadequate and knowing that you could be served with an eviction notice or rent rise makes it difficult to challenge landlords and property managers. Tenants frequently find themselves in homes riddled with toxic mould and long-term maintenance problems but have nowhere to move.
In NSW, “rent bidding”, where potential tenants offer to pay more than the listed rent to secure a property, is rife. Frantic tenants feel that in such a tight market, there’s no other way to find a place to live. There are more restrictions on rent bidding in Victoria and Queensland, but these have failed to prevent the practice.
In the past, working-class families might have rented for a few years while saving up for a deposit on a home. Now, that seems like a pipe dream for most people. In Sydney, Australia’s most unaffordable city to purchase a home, it would have taken 4.5 times the average pre-tax annual income to buy the average house in 1970. It would now take more than twelve times the average income. 
The stress of mortgage and rental hikes is taking a serious toll. In Queensland, the Council of Social Services reported that the number of homeless people has increased by 20 percent in the last five years. Those who lose their homes find it increasingly difficult to access help—the Productivity Commission found that in 2020-2021, 114,000 requests for homelessness services went unassisted. 
Two in five people say that the cost-of-living crisis and personal debt is causing them more distress this year than last, and Suicide Prevention Australia reports that these stressors, along with housing access and affordability, and unemployment and job security, are the top risks contributing to increasing suicide rates.
There is however, a minority of people who are exempt from these pressures. Australia’s ultra-rich are driving a massive increase in the luxury property market, with Australian cities now ranking among the top in the world for multi-million-dollar sales. Last December, tech billionaire Scott Farquhar paid $130 million for a Point Piper mansion in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs—smashing existing records for house prices. He did not need to take out a mortgage. 
Harry Triguboff, the billionaire owner of property development company Meriton, with a personal property portfolio of nearly 10,000 apartments, has weighed in on the crisis. His solution? Remove the “red tape” that is apparently preventing developers, like himself, from constructing new houses and making his next billion. 
The housing crisis is spiralling out of control in every corner of the country. The fallback option which once existed, public housing with capped rents, has declined from 9 percent of all dwelling approvals in the 1980s to 1.6 percent today. There is no pressure on landlords to keep rents at affordable levels. Nothing is being done to stop the wealthy gaining an ever-increasing share of the housing market through investments.
Having a safe and stable roof over one’s head should be one of the most basic expectations of any society. The current housing crisis is one of the starkest illustrations of capitalism’s basic inhumanity.

The housing crisis across Australia

Public housing tenants in Sydney’s Glebe are being kicked out by the NSW Labor government after fighting eviction for years. The remaining residents at 82 Wentworth Park Road will be forced out in the coming weeks so that the site can be redeveloped—a process that could take years. 
Meanwhile, the 50,000 people who have applied for public housing in the state face wait times of up to a decade, and more than 35,000 are currently homeless.
Residents at Wentworth Park Road have faced constant pressure to move since the redevelopment was announced in August last year. Many have already left, and there have been several deaths in the building over the last year, which residents say is related to the stress of living with the constant threat of eviction. 
“Before the election, Rose Jackson, the minister [for housing], came here and I escorted her through the building. There was a promise that she wasn’t going to let the privatisation of public housing happen. But obviously that has all backflipped”, Carolyn Ienna, who has lived at Wentworth Park Road for 30 years, told Red Flag. 
After only a few months in office, it’s clear that the new Labor government has no intention of stopping the selloffs or of committing to rapidly expanding the construction of public housing.
All over Sydney, the Labor government is knocking down some of the last remaining public housing sites. The largest public housing complex in the country, Waterloo Estate, is set for demolition; residents in Waterloo South are being forced to relocate this year. Some 750 public homes will be lost in the process, despite intense opposition from residents and community members involved in the Hands Off Waterloo campaign, which was initiated when the redevelopment was proposed in 2015. 
Under the redevelopment, most new housing will be private, despite promises from Labor that they would stop the privatisation of the site. Local Labor MP Ron Hoenig wrote to Waterloo tenants before the last election, telling them that a vote for Labor was a vote to keep private hands off the Waterloo Estate. Now, Premier Chris Minns is saying that the redevelopment of public sites into privately run housing doesn’t meet “the definition of privatisation”. 
Instead of retaining publicly owned and operated housing, most of the Waterloo site will be turned into what the NSW government terms “community housing”: dwellings operated, and usually owned, by private companies funded by the government. This essentially means that the government is outsourcing its responsibility to provide housing for those who need it, while handing cash to property developers.
At Waterloo South, less than one-third of the new development is earmarked for “social housing” (the government’s umbrella term for public and community housing), most of which will be privately operated. The rest of the building will be entirely in the hands of property developers. 
At Wentworth Park Road, it’s not clear what will replace the existing properties. Rose Jackson recently tweeted that the site would be redeveloped entirely as public housing, but the development application currently under consideration is for 43 “affordable housing dwellings” to be built on the site. 
Residents are understandably sceptical of Jackson’s claims: the state Labor government is allowing 70 percent of all construction on public land to be run by private developers. Of the few social housing dwellings being constructed, most will be privately operated. 
There is plenty of money—and space—for more public housing. Down the street from the Glebe site, the state government is spending $750 million on the new Pyrmont Fish Market. The development will include more than 1,500 luxury apartments, which are being built on public land. 
Not only could more public housing be built, but existing housing could also be given to those who need it. There are three times as many vacant properties in Sydney as there are people on the NSW public housing waitlist. Taking these properties out of the hands of investors and putting them to use as public housing would be an obvious place to start.
The ALP, at both a federal and state level, however, is determined to undermine the idea that governments should build and maintain housing for those who need it. Labor is more than happy to allow landlords and developers to make serious profits from commodified housing—the tax cuts given to property developers in the last federal budget are just one indication of this. Labor’s approach means it’s up to us to fight to put people ahead of profit. 
Get a Room: Students for Affordable Housing, a student campaign group, will join Action for Public Housing at 1pm on Saturday 17 June at Sydney Town Hall to demand action on the housing crisis. Join the event here: <a href="https://fb.me/e/RJeH4L7b">fb.me/e/RJeH4L7b</a>.

NSW Labor evicts public housing tenants

The Labor government is waging class war—and students are the latest to come under attack. The Albanese government has decided to maintain the system of indexation of university student loans, whereby the value of student debt rises with inflation, forcing thousands of dollars’ of extra debt onto 3 million university graduates. With inflation through the roof, the amount that those with HECS/HELP debts are expected to repay increased last year by the highest amount in a decade and is set to rise even further when indexation takes place at the start of June. 
This is another blow to students and young workers during a cost-of-living crisis that is already driving down living standards. Labor’s decision to oppose a push by the Greens to end indexation will mean forcing an extra $1,700 of debt onto the average HECS loan holder, according to the Guardian Australia. 
Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi introduced a bill last year to freeze the $74 billion in student debt and increase the repayment threshold. A Labor-chaired Senate inquiry rejected the proposal just weeks out from the date of indexation. 
Treasurer Jim Chalmers recently told a Brisbane press conference: “This indexation that happens around the middle of the year, every year, happens regardless of who is in office”. But the status quo is not an unalterable fact—the government has the power to change this legislation, just as it has the power to increase Centrelink payments yet refuses to do so. The Labor government is instead spending billions on tax cuts for the wealthy and nuclear submarines. 
Higher education is an essential service for Australian politicians and bosses, but one they would prefer we foot the bill for. Universities produce graduates whose skills are required to keep industry running smoothly—a 2016 report from Universities Australia boasted that each graduate entering the workforce boosts national GDP by $124,450. Universities also pump out research to improve productivity and service Australia’s “national interest”. Catriona Jackson, the chief executive of Universities Australia, flew to Washington in April to participate in talks about how the sector could assist the AUKUS military alliance. 
Domestic and international students are paying more for their degrees than ever before, while the proportion of fees covered by the government continues to fall. This trend has had bipartisan support in Australia for decades, and the new Labor government is continuing along the well-established route of forcing the costs onto students. 
Labor’s determination to make workers pay for the cost-of-living crisis means that the push by the Greens to reduce student debt, like similar pushes for solutions to the housing crisis, won’t easily be won in parliament. It will take a serious fight against Labor to win the sort of measures that could improve the lives of workers and students in this country—it’s a fight which will have to be built on the streets.

Student debt will increase under Labor

For 350 years, Dutch colonialism oversaw a system of brutal exploitation and repression in Indonesia. But in 1945, a mass movement defeated the colonial regime, despite the imprisonment, torture and execution of thousands of independence activists.
The Netherlands East Indies were one of Europe’s most valuable colonial possessions, and the Dutch were determined to hold onto them at any cost, including waging war on the newly declared republic.
Defeating the Dutch would take a relentless struggle by the Indonesian population. They found allies in a group which has often been written off as too racist to support any fight against oppression—the Australian working class. Between 1945 and 1949, maritime workers and their allies stopped more than 500 vessels carrying supplies for a Dutch offensive in Indonesia from leaving Australian shores. In the process, they stood up to attempts by their employers, the Dutch and conservative civil society to crush their campaign, and the Labor government’s attempts to undermine them. Much of this history of anti-imperialist working-class solidarity would be lost if not for the writings of Rupert Lockwood, a Communist Party journalist who documented the campaign in his retrospective account, Black Armada, upon which this article draws. 
When fighting broke out in the Pacific during World War Two, the Dutch were not sufficiently prepared to defend their colony. In 1942, Japanese forces swept through Indonesia, and the Dutch surrendered unconditionally. Colonial administrators fled to Australia, where they were welcomed by the Labor government. They were confident that they would retake Indonesia after the war, and Attorney General and External Affairs Minister Doc Evatt reassured them in 1943 that “Australia will become a base from which the Dutch colonies will be finally regained”.
But the Dutch unwittingly brought with them the force that would eventually help stifle the recolonisation effort. Up to 10,000 Indonesians arrived in Australia during the war, half of whom were merchant seamen working on the Royal Netherlands Packet Line. They were mutinous from early on. Expected to cross mine-strewn and bomber-patrolled seas in accommodation far worse than that of Australian and Dutch workers (and for less than 10 percent of the pay), Indonesian seamen were on strike within a month. In Dutch eyes, the strikers were mutinying against the Allied war effort. The Australian government agreed, branding them illegal immigrants and sentencing them to six months’ jail.
The anger of Indonesian workers and soldiers about their appalling treatment was compounded by the growing confidence of the old colonial rulers that their return to Indonesia was imminent. When Indonesian independence was proclaimed on 17 August 1945, activists rapidly set up Independence Committees around Australia and released a manifesto calling for open defiance of the Dutch, who tried to smash the republic. 
By this point, thousands of Indonesian workers and army personnel were scattered along Australia’s eastern seaboard. They worked in shipping, heavy industry, the Dutch military and Australian work camps. Indonesians were vital to the Dutch administration’s functioning, operated the majority of Dutch ships sailing from Australia and played a crucial part in the armed forces. Thrown into this mix were hundreds of former political prisoners, many of whom were communists, exiled by the Dutch before the war for their involvement in anti-colonial struggles and then brought to Australia to prevent them from spreading their ideas at home.
These activists helped set up the Indonesian Seamen’s Union. Its members, monitoring every signal coming out of Indonesia, were among the first to hear the news about independence. One of them raced across Sydney to the offices of the Seamen’s Union of Australia to call for support. Having already taken up Indonesian demands for better conditions on the waterfront, they were quick to express solidarity, which rapidly spread to other unions. Within days, the Waterside Workers Federation began putting out circulars detailing which ships were to be avoided. “To assist the Dutch in any way”, they read, “is to assist avaricious Dutch imperialism against Indonesian democracy”.
Similar developments were taking place in other cities. To get the Van Heutz—one of the first ships placed under the ban in Brisbane—out of the harbour, the crew had to be taken as prisoners. Without tugs to tow her down the Brisbane River, and lacking fuel, she limped away from the docks to the sounds of a demonstration of Indonesian and Australian workers. When she reached Bowen, having taken a week instead of the usual 72 hours, a Dutch ship already at sea had to return to Australia to provide her with fuel.
From the outset, Labor stepped in to quash the emerging solidarity movement. The Stevedoring Industry Commission, the Chifley government’s waterfront labour control body, was instructed to put a crucial ship carrying Dutch administrative personnel first on the list to be loaded. When workers refused, the commission stopped offering other jobs, essentially threatening to starve wharfies into submission by denying them work until they serviced Dutch vessels. But these were workers educated in traditions of solidarity. They held strong, and 1,400 of them went without pay for the day. 
The Communist Party played a leading role in this fight for independence. It had a significant presence in the waterfront unions and a history of connecting workers’ struggles with struggles against oppression. But the Communist Party was by this point a Stalinist party, and this put limits on the positive role it could play. 
CPA support for the dictatorship in Russia meant arguing that workers and the oppressed had to throw their lot in behind the Allies once Russia joined them in 1941—even though this meant opposing workers’ struggles when they got in the way of the war effort. It also meant subordinating anti-colonial struggles to the Allied cause, even though the vast majority of the 750 million people under colonial rule at the time lived in countries held by the Allies. Unwilling to accept what Rupert Lockwood describes as a common attitude among Indonesians, that “the war was a purposeless clash of empires, after which they would be asked to accept the familiar currency of authoritarian direction”, the Communist Party called for collaboration with the Dutch during the war. Jan Lingard, a lecturer in Indonesian studies, recounts in Refugees and Rebels that they praised the leader of the Indonesian Communist Party, Sardjono, who donned a Dutch uniform and joined the colonial propaganda agency to convince others to join the Dutch army.
Once the Japanese surrendered, however, and war in the Pacific came to an end, pressure mounted to support the Indonesian republic. The Communist Party swung behind the struggle to end colonial rule and began to wage arguments in the unions. The resulting “black bans” imposed on Dutch ships helped to cripple the Dutch invasion. Merchant ships, passenger liners, troopships, oil tankers, submarines and barges waited without service or repair in Australian docks, unable to be loaded, and without Indonesian crews. This support wasn’t just symbolic. Vital shipments of troops, supplies and key administrators remained stuck in Australia, which allowed the new republic to start consolidating itself.
This took place, remarkably, in the time of the White Australia Policy, and the bans were met with open hostility by the media and political establishment. The Sydney Morning Herald painted the Indonesian activists as Japanese agents and declared: “Only mischief can result from the blundering attempt by the Waterside Workers in Sydney to prevent the shipment of supplies by Dutch vessels”. Support amongst the population for a total end to colonial rule was below 30 percent in 1945, according to Australian Gallup polls. But even before the independence campaign, Indonesians living in Australia had started to form ties with local workers. 
Workers were far more likely to support a free Indonesia than any other section of the population. The people attacking Indonesian independence—the bosses, the politicians and the press—were those who went after workers most rabidly, and who the unions had a tradition of standing up to. Rather than being blinded by the racist political mainstream of the day, Australian workers united not just with Indonesians, but also with Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Malaysian and Melanesian workers, who also joined the solidarity movement.
The strength of the black bans forced concessions from the Australian government. Rather than getting away with sending Indonesians home on Dutch vessels, for example, the first Indonesians returned to the newly proclaimed republic on an Australian ship. More than 1,000 seamen and rebel soldiers packed on board the Esperance Bay. They were farewelled by a crowd of their supporters, calling out “Merdeka!”, meaning freedom in Indonesian, and “Down with the Dutch!”. 
They returned to a country wracked by a bloody war. Lockwood notes that when they arrived, according to one passenger, Dutch soldiers were “wandering around fully armed, holding up all red-and-white flagged cars, shooting at innocent, unarmed Indonesian men, women and children”. The Dutch, unwilling to let go of their former colonial crown jewel, continued to wage war on Indonesia until it became clear in 1949 that defeat was unavoidable. Sovereignty was transferred, except for West Papua, to the Republic of the United States of Indonesia, consisting of the Republic of Indonesia and various Dutch-sponsored states. This wasn’t yet total independence for Indonesia, but it was an enormous victory and was followed less than a year later by creation of a single united Republic of Indonesia. 
The shifting attitude of the Labor Party had nothing to do with supporting freedom for the people of Indonesia. It was a calculation about what would best serve Australian imperialist interests by ensuring stability in the region and expanding Australian influence. Even when it opened lines of communication with the new Indonesian government, Labor continued to undermine support for independence by supplying arms to the Dutch.
In contrast, workers during the black ban campaign showed unrelenting solidarity with the independence movement. Their actions didn’t go unnoticed in Indonesia—across Java, notices were pasted up reporting the Australian boycotts. It’s this spirit of solidarity that connects workers across the world, who have no interest in exploitation or repression, and allows them to fight together, to share in struggles against oppression, and to shake this unjust system to its rotten core.

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