Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

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In the 1990s, nuclear issues continued to dominate, especially after the Howard government embarked on an aggressive expansion of Australia’s nuclear industry following its election in 1996. FoE played a key role working with the Mirrar people to oppose the proposed Jabiluka uranium mine in Kakadu. Practical, campaign-orientated alliances with various Indigenous communities continued with campaigns against sand mining on North Stradbroke Island (Minjeribah) in Queensland and blockades of logging operations in western Victoria. FoE’s involvement in forest issues also became more prominent in this decade. In the early 1990s, FoE carried out extensive campaigns to ensure protection of high conservation forests around the country. This included helping to maintain the direct action camp on Fraser Island in the campaign that led to the end of logging on this island. ................................................................................................................................................................................................... On a global level, as neo-liberalism entered a new phase with a systematic liberalisation of trade regimes, FoE’s focus on trade issues grew dramatically, as did street level opposition to the structures implementing this agenda. Community organising against corporate defined globalisation reached a high point with the massive protests against the World Economic Forum meeting held in Melbourne in 2000. Climate justice and climate change also became increasingly high profile campaigns in the later part of the decade. A new round of international negotiations on trade occurred and FoEM took an active role in mobilising against these. FoEM was active in the successful campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which would have established a set of rules that would restrict what governments could do to regulate international investment and corporate behaviour. FoE 30 Years 46
In the early 1990s, the nuclear industry started to make public its plans for a long term storage site for radioactive waste, not only from Australia’s research reactor at Lucas Heights, but also from nuclear reactors around the world. This issue simmered for the next decade, until plans by a company called Pangea Resources to locate a high level radioactive waste dump in Australia were leaked to FoE in England and then to FoE and other NGOs in Australia. This premature release of Pangea’s plans lead, soon afterwards, to the company closing its office in Australia. In terms of the national waste facility, both ALP and Coalition governments moved forward with plans for a low and medium level waste dump. In 1994, the Federal Government released a discussion paper outlining a selection process for the physical location of the waste facility. It identified eight possible locations. FoE and the ACF worked relentlessly to slow the process, using procedural intervention and external opportunities to highlight the flaws in the proposal, and calling instead for onsite, above ground storage of wastes. Through his time as co-ordinator of the FoE Melbourne anti uranium collective and later as nuclear campaigner with the ACF Dave Sweeney has played a pivotal role in almost all anti nuclear activity from the late 1980s onward. FoE Melbourne activist Kathleen McCann, the designer of the antinuclear “Jabiluka” hand symbol, worked with Dave to increase FoE Australia’s involvement in the FoE International network, attending FoEI meetings in Poland and Spain and acting as the International Liaison Officers for FoEA for many years. Peace has always been a fundamental concern of FoE groups and in November 1991 the Australian International Defence Exhibition (AIDEX) was held in Canberra. Although billed as being in the business of selling ‘defence equipment’, this was effectively a trade fair for weapons manufacturers, and several thousand people demonstrated outside the National Exhibition Centre. Picket lines were established at all gates to the exhibition, ................................................................................................................................................................................................... with each occupied by people of different political persuasions. As a result, tactics varied from classic Ghandian approaches through forest blockade tactics (tripods, etc) to stand up fights. The police presence was enormous. FoE did much of the organising of events and people from Melbourne helped co-ordinate actions at the blockades and run the camp established for the duration of the exhibition. With a strongly non-violent, but nondogmatic approach to actions, FoE was unpopular with some militant groupings and some practitioners of a narrowly defined ‘orthodox’ non-violence. FoE coordinated the ‘environment action’, which was called by some the ‘non violent action’ and which suffered from unsuccessful attempts to derail it. The AIDEX protest was important in significantly raising the profile of the arms industry, regional security and peace issues in Australia. In the following year, FoE worked with a range of groups under the umbrella of the Disarm the Skies Campaign Coalition to organise actions outside the Aerospace Expo at Avalon, west of Melbourne (‘AIDEX on wings’), handing out over 40,000 leaflets. In April 1993, a national protest action held outside the Nurrungar US base in the South Australian desert near Woomera saw close cooperation with the Kokatha traditional owners. It also increased public debate over the nature of our alliance with the USA and the deployment of troops to secure the base. This strong focus on militarism was influenced by many people including Dimity Hawkins, who co-ordinated the first ever banner drop off the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne in the build-up to the AIDEX actions. In the early 1990s, a significant number of FoE groups were in rural areas, including Maryborough (QLD), Cessnock, Maitland, the Snowy Mountains in NSW, Willunga (SA) and Stanthorpe in southern Queensland. This was before the days of affordable, widely available internet access, and this geographical isolation FoE 30 Years 47
Page 2 and 3: Up to a few decades ago, many peopl
Page 4 and 5: It seemed like a simple idea: to pr
Page 6 and 7: The optimism, courage and creativit
Page 8 and 9: Over thirty years, FoE has develope
Page 10 and 11: decades. In Australia, FoE is commi
Page 12: This group acted as an inspiration
Page 15 and 16: In the 1970s, a handful of key issu
Page 17 and 18: Apart from working on the direct im
Page 19 and 20: In the mid ‘70s I was studying en
Page 21 and 22: In 1976, there was a strong campaig
Page 23 and 24: egan to jostle for access to Antarc
Page 25 and 26: Keith Suter The future is never as
Page 28 and 29: I first became aware of FoE via Pet
Page 30 and 31: I remember the attempts of the nucl
Page 33 and 34: I grew up with the threat of global
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Page 37 and 38: In late 1980 a couple of people who
Page 39 and 40: In the 1980s, there was a shift to
Page 41 and 42: The Australian Mining Journal noted
Page 43 and 44: sense that these issues formed a pa
Page 45 and 46: was (and remains to this day) the o
Page 47 and 48: Ila Marks Dave Sweeney talking at t
Page 49 and 50: from a community radio background,
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Page 55: With the Gulf War and the Dili mass
Page 58 and 59: What makes these comments sadder in
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Page 62 and 63: Action outside the state government
Page 64 and 65: a month. Perhaps the seminal moment
Page 68 and 69: The first meeting of the Dharnya Al
Page 72 and 73: From 1985 until 1992, undercover of
Page 74 and 75: Kathleen McCann In 1996 I was in Ja
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Page 78 and 79: Dave Sweeney From its earliest days
Page 80 and 81: March at the Jabiluka mine site, NT
Page 82 and 83: The camp’s office was located wit
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Page 90 and 91: Gillian Walker ....................
Page 92 and 93: When it was announced that Melbourn
Page 96 and 97: Greens Senator, Bob Brown, 2004 ...
Page 98 and 99: Steph Long, Kim Stewart Friends of
Page 100 and 101: Australia has been largely obliviou
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Fossil fuels have not bought wealth
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Roman Orzanski Possibly the first F
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Everyone helped make the procession
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In 1996, Consolidated Rutile Ltd ga
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Melia Bugeja, FoE Melbourne Food Co
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genetic engineering and techno-indu
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East Gippsland (CROEG) to launch th
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1994. VicRoads was planning to wide
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Lee Tan “Let’s chuck in some co
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Friends of the Earth in Sydney (FoE
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Herald Sun Columnist, Andrew Bolt P
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change. Mark Carter, co-founder of
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Australia given Indigenous manageme
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Their final edition, in the year th
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FoEA is a federation rather than an
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input to national decision making f
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are independent. A secretariat base
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lead to some form of wisdom: a know
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FoE 30 Years 137
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FoE 30 Years 139
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FoE 30 Years 141
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Anon (1987); Know your FoE; the Coe
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Page 5 • ‘U Mines’ - Through
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1990s Page 46 • Image from Chain
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• The march that followed the ‘
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Page 116 • FoE ran a food stall a
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Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

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