Showing up for Indigenous artists, combatting weapons manufacturing in 'Geelong', Qantas Engineers on strike, NSW Police Strip Searches at Train Stations, Public Housing Class Action Launches

Monday Breakfast

Welcome to the Monday Breakfast show for Monday October 28th, 2024. Last week, Eric spoke with Myles Russell-Cook about Reko Rennie's REKOSPECTIVE exhibition at The Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia in Fed Square. The pair spoke about the exhibition, the importance of platforming Indigenous artists, toxic masculinity as well as art being inherently political. This Saturday, there was an anti-military rally on the Geelong waterfront organised by IPAN Geelong & Vic Southwest, and Elbit out of Vic (an initiative of Free Palestine Coalition Naarm), denouncing the push by ALL levels of Government to make Geelong a Military hub under the guise of 'job creation'. We will now hear from Zelda Grimshaw, an antimilitarist organiser with 'Wage Peace/Disrupt Wars' and a core organiser at the recent Disrupt Land Forces mobilisation. Zelda zooms out to discuss links between militarism and climate collapse from a decolonial perspective - bringing us the personal story of Wity Unue, a young man from the highlands of West Papua.The speech mentions an article about Wity's story, which includes the video of him singing with his friends prior to his murder. [CW* This segment makes mention of military violence]. On Wednesday of last week around 300 workers from the Qantas Engineers Alliance, a coalition of workers from the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, the Electrical Trades Union, and the Australian Workers Union, walked off the job for 24 hours. The strike is part of industrial action that the Qantas Engingeers' Alliance has been taking for weeks and was a response to Qantas' refusal to discuss a new enterprise agreement with the alliance. The current enterprise agreement expirence at the end of June; the alliance is asking for a 5 per cent per year pay rise as well as a 13.5 per cent first-year increase to compensate for three and a half years of wage freezes and to align wage levels with elsewhere in the industry. To talk about the action and the wider campaign for better conditions and wages for workers in the Qantas Engineers' Alliance, Rob spoke with Michael Wright, National Secretary of the ETU on Friday. NSW Police have conducted almost 900 strip searches at train stations since 2016, data released by Redfern Legal Centre last week has revealed. Of the 883 strip searches conducted, a disproportionate number were conducted on First Nations people, making up 9% of all searches. A total of 66 searches involved children aged between 10 and 17. To speak more about the data and the legality of the searches, Rob spoke with Sam Lee, supervising solicitor at Redfern Legal Centre. A class action filed by Inner Melbourne Community Legal launches today to find answers about why the Victorian Government made its decision to 'retire and redevelop' 44 public housing buildings across the state. Lead plaintiff Barry Berih argues that the Victorian Government did not properly consider the human rights of residents when making its decision to demolish the towers. To find out more about the class action Rob interviewed Harry Millward, General Secretary of the Renters and Housing Union. The class action will be taking place today and tomorrow at the Supreme Court on Lonsdale St, with the residents requesting for Community Members to come down in support if possible. You can also find out more at imcl.org.au ; and listen back to the last episode of Raise The Roof on the 3CR website, which presented voices of affected older residents. Raise the Roof is hosted by the Housing for the Aged Action Group, and you can find that previous show at 3cr.org.au/HAAG.