Shona, Craig and Ian on Paradigm Shift 14 Dec 2018 – 30th anniversary of 4ZZZ eviction from the University of Qld. Jack interviews 4zzz stalwart Dave Lennon and Ian interviews Historian Jeff Rickertt.

14 Dec 1988,
On this day the right wing University of Qld Student Unions attempted to evict 4ZZZ from its studios under the Refectory.

At 4.17am executive members of the UQ Student Council and four security guards served immediate eviction notice on graveyard announcers Mark Solway and Stefan Armbruster.

4ZZZ had been taken off air.

The president of the UQ Student Union, Victoria Brazil, supported by the Queensland Government were attempting to foreclose on radio 4ZZZ from its premises at the University.  Over 1,000 listeners and supporters turned up to defend the station.

Within hours 4ZZZ announcers were making emergency broadcasts direct from Mt Cootha and later in the day the Student Union was occupied by protesting students and supporters effectively taking control of their own union and radio station.

The University stepped in and asserted ownership of the UQ Union Complex thus backing the union executive’s attempt at eviction. Students continued to occupy the station ensuring that it continued to broadcast.

Despite this, the 4ZZZ collective curiously elected to leave campus and set up the station in Toowong thus ending Zed’s affiliation with the Student Union and the University where it started in December 1975.  The station nearly folded and if it weren’t for the assistance of the Communist Party of Australia through a ‘gift’ of its building at 291 St Pauls Terrace Fortitude Valley, it surely would have. Forty-one years later 4ZZZ survives as an independent broadcaster with the slogan ‘Educate, Organise, Agitate’. Here is the report prepared by 4ZZZ at the time.

December 2018
During the darkest years of the Bjelke-Petersen government, the Union precinct was one of few places in Queensland keeping alive the flames of democracy. Like Monash University in Melbourne UQ Union was host to  vibrant anti-Vietnam War movements in the country, it served as the Queensland base of the anti-apartheid struggle, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists organised from there to Smash the Acts, it was a centre for the Right to March campaigns.

4ZZZ was launched there. No other site on an Australian university campus has a history more entwined with the broader political and cultural narrative of its host State.

Now we discover the University wants to tear down the entire edifice. The Schonell, the award-winning original student union building, the forum area, the relaxation block, the refectory, the old student union arcade building. All are mooted for demolition.

According to the St Lucia Campus Master Plan the entire site will be ‘reimagined’ as a student hub providing services and fast food outlets. Despite the Plan’s barrage of contemporary master-planning buzzwords, the contempt for history and the appeals to a self-serving and consumerist version of ‘progress’ and ‘improvement’ could have been lifted straight from a National Party policy book in 1988. Historian Jeff Rickertt has this to say about the proposal.

A steering committee has been formed to wage a public campaign to enliven the space again and look to alternative culture and ideas that will bring people together. Please sign the e-petition below and keep an eye on Save the UQ Union Complex facebook page.

Click this link to open the E-Petition: https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/work-of-assembly/petitions/petition-details?id=3052. 

This E-Petition closes on 1/3/2019.

Thanks to Peter Gray (Radical Times) and Jeff Rickertt (Save the UQ Union Complex) for the historical material included in this article.

Listen at http://4zzz.org.au/program/paradigm-shift

Playlist

Notes by Ian Curr
14 Dec 2018

References

Qld parliament E-Petition: https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/work-of-assembly/petitions/petition-details?id=3052. 

https://www.facebook.com/Save-the-UQ-Union-Complex-289804548313603/

http://radicaltimes.info/

Every time an aboriginal person dies years before he or she should I think that this is, in part, a result of the brutal invasion of this continent. Robert Janjimdaimjan Wharton was born in 1979 and passed away before his 40th birthday. He is a descendant of Mardigan and Kooma tribes in South-West Queensland and was a proud Brisbane Black.

Robert was a dreamer, a song man and an artist. He grew up in Cunnamulla in a big extended family. He appeared on Paradigm Shift (4ZZZ fm 102.1 Fridays at Noon) and played at a number of events organised by Sovereign Women United and local aboriginal groups. Robert always turned up at Dundali commemorations in January.

Dundali led the resistance to the British invasion of an area where Brisbane now stands. After a long campaign he was captured by the invaders and hanged in front of the Brisbane Post Office on January 5, 1855. We remember and honour this brave fighter for his land, his people and his culture each year in that place.

I can remember Robert singing at a Dundali commemoration in the rain in Post Office Square one year.

Robert leaves behind a body of music which he sang on the streets of West End. His spirit remains near the lizard on the corner Russell and Boundary streets. A couple of years ago Robert sang ‘Share the Stars’ on Paradigm Shift on 4ZZZ as a tribute to Uncle Angus and talked about the influence in his life of Angus Rabbitt and his band ‘Mop and the Dropouts‘.

Strangely the last time Robert came on 4ZZZ with me and Andy we were remembering Angus who had passed away. We decided to play ‘Dancing Aborigine‘ a fitting farewell to both these fine aboriginal artists.

Robert came from a political family involved in Land Rights struggles over several generations. I wish to extend my condolences to the Wharton family particularly to his brother Wayne, his Auntie Pat and his niece Ruby Wharton.

We need an aboriginal cultural centre in Musgrave Park so that artists that follow will have their own place.

Vale my brother,
Ian Curr
14 Dec 2018

Paradigm Shift – 7th December 2018, Lucy, Craig & Shona

QUT’s Botched Student Election: How the Young Libs Were Kicked Out

QUT’s student union has come into disrepute after it was condemned by an independent electoral tribunal. EPIC, the party which has run the QUT Guild for the last 7 years, failed to adequate publicise the election nomination period and elected itself unopposed. After a successful Democracy 4 QUT campaign, the tribunal ordered that the elections be reopened and Reach, an opposition ticket of independents and socialist alternative members won. In this radio doco, you’ll hear from Vinnie Batten, the now president of the QUT Guild and chief organiser of the democracy for QUT campaign as well as an interview conducted by Liam Blair with former president and EPIC member, Isobella Powell.

Anniversary of Brutal Attacks Against Activists
December 2nd marked 33 months of the murder of the Lenca people defender, Berta Cáceres, at her home in La Esperanza, Intibucá department (Honduras) and the attempted murder of environmental activist Gustavo Castro, member of Otros Mundos Chiapas – Friends of the Earth Mexico.

The case went to trial after many irregularities in the investigation carried out by the Public Prosecutor´s Office, which affected the access to justice by Cáceres relatives and the organization they are part of, the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), as well as the access to evidence and the results of the search warrants at DESA company, in charge of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project opposed by Berta Cáceres and her people.

Despite all setbacks and the assumptions that the crime committed on March 2nd, 2016, could be left unpunished, on November 29th, 7 out of the 8 people accused of murdering Cáceres and attempting to murder Castro, were convicted.

Playlist
The Buzzcocks – Everybody’s Happy Nowadays
Radio Birdman – New Race
Patti Smith – Piss Factory
Sweater Curse – Mon’s Song

Lucy, Craig and Ian present a show in 3 parts.

1. Save the UQ Union Complex. Ian interviews Historian Jeff Rickertt.
Anyone who lived in Brisbane in the 1960s, 70s and 80s will remember the destruction of the Bellevue, Cloudland and Trades Hall. They will remember King George Square before it was turned into a concrete wasteland dominated by giant television screens. In those decades we lived in a city gripped by violence where even the smallest displays of dissent invited a beating, while all around us precious buildings were felled by the wrecking ball. Many of you will recall how police arrested and bashed scores of people in 1967 and again in 1977 when they asserted their democratic right to protest in the streets. Some of you will know about the Nazi firebombing of the People’s Bookshop in Fortitude Valley, the Vice Squad raid on Rocking Horse Records for stocking ‘obscene’ material, and the daily terrorism waged by police against the city’s Aboriginal community.

https://www.facebook.com/Save-the-UQ-Union-Complex-289804548313603/

2. First Nations people struggles in Chile and West Papua. Ian interviews Marcela about the plight of the Mapuche people. Extra-jusicial killings, arrests, lack of democratic rights, higher taxes on their produce at market … genocide faced everyday.

3. Student and Teachers oppose coal. Andy interviews Sadie Jones on an Aurizion coal train.

Listen at http://4zzz.org.au/program/paradigm-shift/2018-11-30

This week we talk about living with less money, interviewing Jo Nemeth who lives without money and writes as Jo Low Impact; and Annie Raser Rowland, co-author of the book “Frugal Hedonism: A Guide to Spending Less While Enjoying Everything More”.

Andy’s last show. Thanks Andy.

Playlist
Bad Brains – Don’t need it
Jenny Pineapple – Rock against workLOCAL
Big Iron – Ain’t got noneLOCAL
Embrace – Money
Paul Spencer – The economic god song

All wages are theft 
            - Humphrey McQueen, historian

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
             - Hamlet

This week we talk wage theft in Queensland, past and present.

We discuss the Qld government inquiry into wage theft released today with Marianna O’Gorman from the McKell Institute. “Over a third of superannuation is stolen by the employer. If $10,000 stolen today that represents $35,000 a person retires in 30 years time,” Marianna O’Gorman, said.

We also speak with lawyer Jonathan Kawa about a class action lawsuit to recover decades worth of wages that were never paid to aboriginal workers. There are over 6,700 Aboriginal workers in the class action against Queensland government and there are potentially over 10,000 workers who was had wages stolen. The Labor government seems to be saying one thing doing because the Government refused to negotiate with the class action lawyers.

Playlist
Bruce Springsteen – Factory
Petrol Girls – Strike
Dawn Daylight – Culture
Bryte – World on strike
The Currency – 888