Angry workers storm Aust. Parliament

Press, 27 October 1982, Page 1

Angry workers storm Aust. Parliament

NZPA Canberra Parliament House in Canberra was besieged yesterday when hundreds of angry steel and mine workers protesting against retrenchments stormed the front entrance.

About 50 demonstrators smashed the glass doors and swept into Kings Hall, calling for the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser. The President of the Australian Miners’ Federation, Mr Robert Kelly, pleaded unsuccessfully with the men to leave as police reinforcements gathered on the stairs. The group already inside urged their fellows to break through, shouting, "Come on boys,” and drowning out police attempts to settle the crowd.

During the melee the House of Representatives was dealing with an Opposition motion censuring the Government over its handling of the economy. About 800 mining and steel industry workers from the Wollongong area travelled to Canberra in two chartered trains for the demonstration.

The main aim of the protest was to challenge the Government and Opposition to show what they planned to do to save Wollongong after

large-scale retrenchments. The men finally left Parliament House to hear the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Hayden, and Mr Bob Hawke, Labour’s spokesman on industrial relations, address them from the back of a truck on the lawns outside the building. Mr Hayden told the demonstrators that the biggest task ahead was to “get rid of the Fraser Government.”

Mr Hayden repeated his pledge to Parliament earlier yesterday that under a Labour government there would be no increased protection in the next 12 months, that steel industry quotas would be reduced immediately and that, in return, there should be a clear undertaking by B.H.P. that there would be no retrenchments either of coalminers or steel workers.

The Minister of Industry and Commerce, Mr Andrew Peacock, said after workers met Government officials that the Federal Government would move to hold off the sacking of almost 200 B.H.P. coalminers pending a hearing by the Coal Industry Tribunal.

Earlier report, page 33