21 December 2009: At the end of November last year a District Court judge in Townsville unbelievably granted bail to an Australian Army soldier, Craig Gordon, despite the fact that he was facing five charges including assault, discharging a weapon and possession of an unregistered firearm. Gordon had been arrested after firing his air rifle from his verandah at a group of mainly Aboriginal children playing footy in a park about 50m away. Two boys, aged 8 and 10, were wounded by him - eight-year-old Lloyd Cedric was subsequently treated in hospital for an open pellet wound in his calf.

According to his mother, Lloyd is now too scared to go outside anymore. Like many other Aboriginal people in Townsville, this innocent young child is a victim of the racism that the North Queensland town is becoming more and more notorious for. Local elder Renata Prior said that incidents of racist persecution had become an everyday occurence: ‘’Of course I’m scared. I have 31 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. We’re telling them be careful, you can’t trust anyone ... especially these rednecks as people call them.’’

In stark contrast to the justice system’s lenient treatment of this cowardly, racist soldier is the harsh treatment that has been meted out just before Christmas by the Sydney Local Court to Gail Hickey, the courageous mother of Thomas “TJ” Hickey. In 2004, the 17-year-old TJ was tragically killed in custody by pursuing Redfern cops when they rammed his bike with their police vehicle causing him to be fatally impaled on a metal fence. Subsequent investigations were a typical whitewash of the facts and almost six years on his grieving family and friends are still seeking justice for TJ.

Now, despite only being arrested on a minor charge (the 21 December 2009 issue of The Daily Telegraph reported that it was for “swearing at police”) by the police force that has pursued a vendetta against the Hickeys, Gail Hickey was refused bail. Recently, she has been publicly outspoken about her son TJ’s murder at the hands of the cops and has been promoting actions to commemorate the 6th anniversary of his death on February 14. And for six years now the Hickey family have had to deal with constant harrassment and persecution by the police.

We call upon all anti-racists to support the struggle for justice for TJ. Trotskyist Platform believes that in this struggle no trust can be placed in the ‘justice’ system of the racist Australian ruling class or in any other institutions serving imperialist powers - such as the U.S.-dominated United Nations. In fact, the only real force that can, in the long run, successfully stand up to racist state violence is the working class. The working class has a genuine interest in standing up to racist oppression beacuse only if it challenges racism can the multiracial working masses acquire the unity needed to stand up to the rich rulers that exploit them. Since the earliest days of the colonial occupation of Australia up until today, the most politically aware layer of the working class has through daily struggle learnt how to fight the racist, rich-peoples establishment which always seeks to oppress, exploit and divide workers, be they black or white, with its vast armada of courts, police, army and bureaucracatic machinery.

The February 2004 Redfern resistance that heroically responded to TJ’s death at the hands of police preceded the Palm Island resistance which was a response to the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee by 9 months. Though many Aboriginal people have served lengthy prison sentences for their part in these two resistance actions and, at the time of writing, Lex Wotton is still imprisoned in Townsville, none of the police responsible for either of the two deaths in custody have had even the smallest of penalties imposed on them. To the contrary, some have even been promoted in rank and Mulrunji’s killer, Chris Hurley, has even been handsomely financially recompensed.

The racist, rich-peoples justice system is well known for its heavy handed approach to Aboriginal people even over the most trivial of so-called offences. In November last year it was only some timely media attention that finally forced the WA police to withdraw criminal charges against a 12-year-old Aboriginal boy accused of the “terrible” crime of receiving stolen goods consisting of a 70 cent chocolate frog and a cheap novelty sign. In fact, Australian Institute of Criminology figures demonstrate that while 7 out of 10 white juvenile offenders are dealt with by way of a caution, police hand out cautions to only 3 out of 10 young Aboriginal “offenders”. And it’s no secret that prisons and police lockups are not safe places for Aboriginal people. Who can forget the death of a 15-year-old boy from Groote Eylandt in Darwin’s Don Dale Detention Centre just some 10 years ago. A victim of the NT’s now thankfully repealed mandatory sentencing laws, the boy died while serving a 28-day sentence for stealing textas and paint valued at less than $100. (The 7.30 Report, ABC TV, 19 December 2001)

Surely enough children have suffered at the hands of the racist thugs that serve the Australian capitalist order with their foul violence, whether they wear the copper’s badge, the soldier’s insignia or the white supremacist’s tatooed swastika. It’s time for the working class to march hand in hand with their Aboriginal sisters and brothers and sweep away their common foes and oppressors. A kinder, happier, fairer and brighter Australian Socialist Republic beckons.