February 3 - It has been nearly a year since Kevin Rudd’s “Apology.” Since then his regime has outrageously continued to refuse any compensation to the Stolen Generation. The ALP government has instead pursued the former Howard government’s paternalist “Intervention” into Aboriginal communities. Rudd and Jenny Macklin have ensured that black communities are now being hit with even more cops. Meanwhile, Aboriginal people continue to be killed at the hands of cops and prison guards. On January 10 in Alice Springs yet another Aboriginal man was “found dead” in cop custody within hours of being arrested.

Racist police feel they can get away with brutalizing black people because the system whitewashes all their crimes. February 14 will mark five years since police horrifically killed 17 year-old Aboriginal youth TJ Hickey after chasing him through the streets of Redfern and them ramming his bicycle. A subsequent Coroners Inquest, as is no surprise, covered up for the police.

Meanwhile, the racist policeman, Chris Hurley, who bashed to death Aboriginal man Mulrunji Doomadgee in a Palm Island cell in 2004 not only walks free but has gained state “compensation.” In contrast Palm Island Aboriginal leader Lex Wotton was last October jailed for his role in the 400-strong struggle that protested against the police murder of Mulrunji. That staunch struggle disabled the centres of racist oppression on the island – the police station and courthouse. For his role in this heroic and popular resistance Wotton was sentenced to 6 years with a non-parole period to last until July 2010. Days before he was sentenced Queensland authorities staged a provocation by awarding “bravery medals” to 22 of the policemen that crushed the Palm Island uprising. Bravery awards and “compensation” for violent racist cops but jail for anti-racist fighters. The whole saga shows how much the current “justice” system in Australia is structurally based on racist injustice and contempt for the poor.

It is with the aim of covering up these injustices of today as things only of the past that Rudd framed his “Apology.” The oppression of today is buried under the hype that “Australia has moved on.” In part this spin is designed to prettify capitalist Australia in the eyes of people overseas, all the better for Australia’ imperialist governments to intervene abroad under the guise of “human rights.” Yet even that PR campaign is soiled by the everyday racist realities of Australian society. Realities that are inflamed by the racism coming from the top – including the continuing bipartisan support for the official celebration of the anniversary of colonial invasion, that is January 26, as a national day. This very Australia Day at Manly Beach, hundreds of marauding white males brandishing their “Aussie Pride” like a blunt knife went on a rampage attacking any non-white person who was driving a car and injuring an Asian women so badly she was sent to hospital in an ambulance.

But there is also a very different element at work in this country. Many people have hit the streets to protest against the incarceration of refugees, against the NT intervention, against racist police brutality. A rally has been called for 14 February to “Stop All Black Deaths in Custody.” This demonstration which is to commence at 10 am at the corner of George and Phillip Streets in Waterloo has been called by TJ’s family and by the Aboriginal community and leftist activists. Trotskyist Platform urges our readers to be among the many other people from a wide range of political backgrounds that will join this action.

Crucially, people – Aboriginal, “ethnic” and white – have joined actions in defence of Palm Island’s Lex Wotton. On the day Lex Wotton was sentenced on November 7 last year, an international day of action in his support was held including an over 150-strong protest in Sydney outside the Downing Centre Court. Importantly, a growing number of activists realize that the strong stance against the authorities taken by the Palm Island people in 2004 was 100% justified. In coming to this understanding activists start to sense, correctly, that winning justice is not going to come through the biased “justice system.” The whole issue of the racist killing in Palm Island proves this: from the cover up by police, to the brutal police attack on the Aboriginal protest, to the sham trial that acquitted Hurley to the jailing of Lex Wotton. All the parts of the present Australian state – the police, prisons, army, courts, coroners, commissions & bureaucratic heads – form part of a machine that is designed to protect the rule of exploitation by a small capitalist elite. And racism is part of the deadly mix that fuels this machine.

Among many, admiration has grown for the 2004 Redfern and Palm Island struggles. Indeed, the campaign in defence of Wotton has energised a layer of the trade union movement. The November 7 Sydney rally was addressed by an official of the MUA maritime union who announced that wharfies across Sydney had stopped work to demand freedom for Wotton. Such action is powerful – especially if it is broadened and deepened. When the ruling class find that their profits are being cut off by industrial action they start to take notice. Industrial action designed to protest against the state killing of TJ (and hundreds of other black people) would make the authorities think twice before unleashing further racist violence.

Politically aware workers are inspired by Aboriginal resistance struggles because they understand that the capitalist rulers that brutally subjugate Aboriginal people also exploit working class people. Today, after having sweated for years to make billion dollar profits for big business, workers are being callously thrown out of work as soon as these bosses cannot make quite as much of a profit. A politically guided working class will fight together with Aboriginal people, embattled “ethnic” minorities and other downtrodden people in the struggle against their common oppressors. It is the duty of politically conscious workers to clear away the racist dust that is spread by the ruling class - the dust that is thrown in order to blind the working class as to who is responsible for its own precarious situation. It is the duty of worker activists to mobilize their class in bold actions to fight for: Full back pay for stolen wages for Aboriginal workers. For a complete end to the “Intervention” and the racist welfare restrictions. To build industrial actions to demand immediate freedom for Lex Wotton and to demand justice for TJ, Mulrunji & Carl Woods! It is the duty of worker militants and leftists to make all these struggles possible by clarifying to their class that justice is not going to come through a particular “good” judge heading a racist, rich people’s court or government-funded inquiry or a particular party heading the racist, rich people’s state. Future steps forward will take the form of militant mass struggle. And final liberation will take up the job of completely dismantling the existing capitalist state and establishing in its place a new workers state that will finally serve all those who are downtrodden today.