The Wide Brown(shirt) Land

It is now illegal to stop work in Australia.

Some construction workers in Sydney recently stopped work for 15 minutes to hold a collection for the widow of a co-worker killed by a fallen slab of concrete. The owner of the construction company had no problems with the stoppage but, faced with fines of $20,000 from the government, had no choice but to dock the workers 4 hours pay. Nice.

Mine workers arriving at a job to find their quarters infested with fleas and feral cats refused to work until a clean-up was done, which took 3 days. The federal government fined each of them $20,000 and their union $100,000 for illegal stoppage of work. The government later backed down after protests and glaring media coverage.

Add these incidents to a long list of nationalist measures recently introduced: national ID cards, the all but complete dismantling of unionism in any form, powerful and secret anti-sedition acts – including incarceration without charge and limiting the press’ ability to report on anything deemed to fall under the act – and the recent announcement that refugees are no longer accepted in Australia, period. All people arriving in Australia by boat will now be processed off-shore and those found to be genuine refugees will be given sanctuary in a third country. Usually this means Australia has bribed some desperate Micronesian country like Nauru to take them off its hands in exchange for say, a new power generator or two.

Police are now allowed to inspect your mobile phone, read your text messages and look at any photos, whenever they like. This is because ‘terrorists’ might use text messaging too - and that photo of the Sydney Opera House may be in there because you plan to blow it up.

Note to self: remove all text messages referring to planned work stoppage in protest of immigration policy, and pics of family trip to The Big Banana fun park. Continue plans to blow up Big Banana.

Now, back to work damn it.