Solidarity with Port Botany blockade of ZIM Shipping

Today in Parliament Abigail gave a speech in solidarity with peaceful protesters in Port Botany, and calling for their charges to be dropped.

22 November, 2023

Abigail said:

The Greens are proud to stand in solidarity with the brave and peaceful protesters who blockaded Hutchison Ports Australia at Port Botany against ZIM shipping, which had a vessel docked in port last night. ZIM shipping is a company heavily integrated into the Israeli Defense Forces and is complicit in delivering weapons to be used against peaceful, trapped civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Through successful and sustained boycott actions, just like those taken against apartheid in South Africa, we can exert our strength in the struggle for global justice and liberation. We condemn the violence and intimidation tactics used by police against a peaceful blockade by concerned citizens. This is part of a terrifying pattern of fascist behaviour by the New South Wales Government on its rapid descent into a police state, wielding the violent coercive forces of the police against peaceful, civil society actors. So far at least seven individuals have been charged with disrupting a major facility under section 214A of the Crimes Act. This is the offence that was shamefully waved through by the major political parties as they rushed through the repressive and anti‑democratic anti-protest laws in Parliament last year. The New South Wales Government must immediately repeal these draconian laws and call for the charges against protesters to be dropped.

Read the full transcript in Hansard here.

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

NSW is missing out on tens of billions of dollars. By introducing a progressive coal royalty structure similar to the one in Queensland, we would have raised an extra $20 billion last year.

The NSW Government owns and controls, on behalf of the people of this state, the rights to the minerals and materials that naturally occur in NSW land.

Huge fossil fuel companies are only able to extract and sell these commodities with the consent of the State. It’s time they paid a fair price for that privilege.

The fossil fuel industry has made hundreds of billions of dollars out of their cosy relationship with governments. Granted permission to extract and sell coal, these large multinational fossil fuel corporations pay just over 7% in royalties back to the people of NSW – keeping the rest as mega-profits for themselves. These companies have a track record of taking more than their fair share and leaving communities suffering and stranded with poisoned groundwater, devastated landscapes and a stranded workforce when it suits their business models.

Globally, the hyper-inflation of fossil fuel prices driven by price-gouging opportunism and war profiteering from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has delivered record windfall profits to these already obscenely wealthy corporations. In the last year, NSW coal exports totaled over $70 billion dollars, but the people of NSW will only see about 7 cents in every dollar, or about $6 billion dollars of that amount.

Rather than going toward schools, hospitals and public infrastructure, billions of dollars went into the pockets of multinational mining corporations. The Greens believe there should be more money for schools and hospitals and less for mining billionaires.

Sign our petition calling on the NSW Labor Government to increase coal royalties to invest in communities.

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Solidarity with Port Botany blockade of ZIM Shipping

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

Sign our petition calling on the NSW Labor Government to increase coal royalties to invest in communities.

Will you sign?

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