Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

Dimity Hawkins
The ‘Gungalidda embassy’ outside the CRA AGM in
Melbourne.1994.
meant there was only limited connection
between the groups. While there was
a spirit of co-operation and a sense of
being part of a national network, physical
collaboration on specific projects was
often quite limited. Despite this, FoE
local groups carried out significant and
often very diverse local campaigns, from
physically blockading logging operations
on Fraser island to the work of FoE
Maitland in lobbying local councils on the
need for municipal recycling programs
and collecting, propagating, planting and
maintaining indigenous vegetation.
In 1993, FoEM began working with
Wadjularbinna, a Gungalidda woman
from the Doomadgee community in the
Gulf country of north Queensland. Many
within the Gungalidda community were
opposing plans by CRA to develop the
Century Zinc deposit at Lawn Hill, about
250 kilometres north-northwest of Mt Isa.
FoEM held actions outside the CRA AGM
in Melbourne and raised the issue in the
AGM itself as part of a campaign that ran
for several years.
Largely through the efforts of Lee Tan,
these campaign links developed into a
broader informal alliance. FoEM activists
subsequently helped establish the
Bugajinda/ Moonlight outstation project
which included the construction of basic
facilities that allowed members of the
Moonlight clan to visit their country on a
more regular basis, acted as a base for a
series of cultural exchanges and formed
the beginnings of an eco- and culturaltourism
business.
FoE 30 Years 48
(Australia’s International Defence
Equipment Exhibition) was billed by the
defence industry and government as “the
forefront of defence shows in the entire
Asia-Pacific region”. The Stop AIDEX
campaign touted it as “Australians trading
in death and destruction”, certainly a little
less of an up-pitch, but far more accurate.
AIDEX exhibitions were held in both
1989 and 1991, displaying wares from
some of the largest and deadliest defence
and offence contractors in the dead-heart
of our very own capital city, Canberra.
The ‘91 exhibition attracted a strong and
sustained national focus of opposition
and around 1,000 protesters to the huge
24 hour on-site protest camp from 22-28
November.
Context is everything and the context in
this case was that AIDEX was held at the
tail end of a year that had seen the first
Gulf War rage short, sharp and furious
across our TV screens and brought us
marching to our feet (thirteen years later
we are still marching to the same beat and
the Iraqi people have endured twelve more
years of continuing tyranny at the hands
of their own leader along with sustained
bombings and crippling sanctions from
“coalition” forces before this current
chapter in the sad tale).
It was also the year that saw the Dili
massacre in East Timor. A nation whose
plight was systematically ignored and
belittled by the majority of our parliament
and media, again in the name of that
great political silencer, oil. For many,
the Dili massacre brought to the fore the
ugly and damning truth of the situation
in Timor. (Again, how tragic that it took
nearly another decade before the Timorese
people could find freedom.)