by Humphrey McQueen

A presentation given to Solidarity Breakfast on Radio 3CR, 30 September 2017

Samuel Walker Griffith is known today from a NSW country town, an inner Canberra suburb and a Queensland university. The more politically aware might recall that he drafted the Commonwealth Constitution in 1891 and became the first Chief Justice in 1903, having served as Premier of Queensland and its Chief Justice from 1893. His progressive 1900 Criminal Code was adopted around the Empire in the Pacific, Africa, on Cyprus and for Palestine.[1]

Since 1992, Griffith has been the patron saint of the constitutional monarchists in a Society named after him. Its membership overlaps with that of the union-bashing H.R. Nicholls Society. Neither of those bodies cares to be reminded of what Griffith got up to in 1888-90.

Read more: Oily Sam Griffith’s moment of truth

This article was a Spirit of Eureka leaflet handed out in Adelaide, during September.

It’s a fair question.

The proposed SA bank levy on five banks requires them to pay $36 in every $1,000,000 of profit.

Get it?  That’s .0036 per cent.  It’s obviously too much!

How can they pay their five CEOs a total of $45,000,000 per year at that rate?

Read more: Why can’t the banks pay?

End the U.S.-Australia alliance

This article was a recent Spirit of Eureka leaflet

We live in a world under a permanent threat of major wars with devastating consequences for the people and the environment.  These dangerous times call for a broad and united peoples’ movement for global peace, justice and mass mobilisation against foreign military bases, foreign troops and imperialist wars. 

In Australia, it is more urgent than ever to call for an end to Australia’s subservience and complicity with U.S. wars, and to promote an independent foreign policy that builds peace, justice and independence from big powers.

Read more: For Peace, Justice and Independence

War, Peace and Independence - Keep Australia Out of U.S. wars

By everyone's estimate the 2017 IPAN conference was a big success in strengthening and lifting the call for Australia's independence from U.S., for an independent Australian foreign policy and removing Australia from U.S. led wars.  The conference took a further step in building a broad based anti-war mass movement targeting U.S. global military aggressions, campaigning against U.S. bases and troops in Australia, and de-coupling Australia from U.S. military alliance.

The 230 years long struggles by Australia's First People were passionately conveyed by Lidia Thorpe and her sister, a member of Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance.

The conference expressed international solidarity with speakers from Korea, the Philippines and the indigenous people of Diego Garcia, who were forcibly evicted from their island to make way for the U.S. military base in the Indian Ocean.

Read more: IPAN National Conference - Melbourne 8 - 10 September