2016, 190 p & notes.
I quite often attend demonstrations. Climate change, the war in Iraq, anti-Kennett, Hiroshima commemoration, refugees – I’m there.
It’s often struck me as I gaze around at the people, many of whom are my baby-boomer age and at the police who generally just look bored, that demonstrating in Melbourne CBD in the 2000s is a fairly cost-free enterprise for me. I’m reassured that I won’t be arrested (a middle-aged woman isn’t much of a threat) and I’m certain that I won’t be killed. I am very much aware that there are other places in the world where this isn’t the case, and I suspect that although I’m happy to let the whole world see my principles and causes here in safe Melbourne, I’d suppress or maybe even jettison them in a more dangerous environment. But as Clive Hamilton shows us in this book, protest in Australia has not always been as cost-free as it is now. Continue reading
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 