Speech at the May Day March, Port Kembla 2023

I gave this speech at the South Coast May Day March in Port Kembla on 6 May 2023. Since the announcement by Scott Morrison that Port Kembla was being considered as a potential site for a nuclear-powered submarine base, I have been campaigning against the base as part of Wollongong Against War and Nukes. On May Day, thousands of local people and supporters from Sydney, Canberra, and further afield marched down the main street of Port Kembla to show their opposition to a base.

Comrades, welcome to Port Kembla. It is wonderful to see you all here in my hometown for May Day.

I want to thank the South Coast May Day Committee for making the call to shift May Day to Port Kembla because we are facing a grave threat to peace and to the green economic revolution that we need to survive our battles with climate change. When Scott Morrison announced in March last year that Port Kembla was on his hit list for a nuclear submarine base, he jeopardised the long-term plans of unions and the environmental movement in the Illawarra for a just transition to a renewable economy that leaves no worker behind.

I have lived here in Port Kembla for 20 years. My children attend school and preschool here. We want to live our lives in peace but this announcement has cast a shadow over us. We are already struggling with the toxic legacies of industrial pollution in Port Kembla. We don’t want to add nuclear radiation to the mix. Having lived in Japan for many years both before and after the terrible accident at Fukushima in 2011, I know the impact that a nuclear accident can have on communities. The consequences of an accident in Port Kembla harbour would be catastrophic for the people of the Wollongong.

But the people of Wollongong know how to fight the nuclear and war industries. That’s why last year I joined with my comrades to form Wollongong Against War and Nukes to coordinate a community campaign to stop the base, sink the subs, and build a movement for peace in our region.

I know that many of us here today had hoped the new Labor government would put a stop to the AUKUS pact and the insane waste of money and of our future that it represents. Unfortunately, we meet here today three days out from a Federal budget with a government that is pledging $368 billion for a fleet of second-hand nuclear submarines from their friends in the American military-industrial complex but refuses to raise the rate of Jobseeker and income support payments for the most vulnerable. The $368 billion dollars that this government is gifting to the warmongers is $368 billion dollars being ripped out of social services, the NDIS, healthcare, housing, and meaningful action on climate change. The latest research from the Australian Council of Social Services shows that right now 1 in 6 children in this country are living in poverty. What sort of government leaves kids without enough food to eat while they stock up on big boys toys?

But the spooks and the warmongers didn’t know what they were dealing with when they decided to take on Port Kembla. Since we started this campaign we have already had some important victories. After the Defence Department leaked in March that Port Kembla was its preferred location for an east coast subs base, we have already forced the government to walk back from its threats. Just three weeks ago when Wollongong Against War and Nukes rallied outside an arms dealers’ conference at the Novotel, Assistant Minister for Defence Matt Thistlethwaite announced that no decision would be made on a base until after the next election. Now this week he tells us that the government will not honour Morrison’s shortlist at all and that an east coast base is no longer a government priority. We’ve clearly got them running scared but obfuscation and delay is not good enough. We must demand the government rule out the subs base here in Port Kembla, rule it out in Newcastle and Brisbane, rule it out anywhere on the eastern seaboard and tear up the AUKUS agreement and commit to an independent and peaceful foreign policy where we are friends to all and enemies of none.

Comrades we can all see that capitalism is entering deeper and deeper into crisis. Inflation is soaring, wages are stagnant and the international financial system is teetering on the edge of a major debt crisis; all while the planet burns from the effects of runaway climate change. The capitalists are out of ideas and out of time. That’s why we are seeing the rise on a global scale of the far-right. Fascism is confined no longer to the dark corners of our society. It is resurgent in the heart of Europe and it is gaining ground around the world. The capitalist class turns to fascism when it can no longer contain the social and economic crisis produced by its own greed. There is a very real chance that Donald Trump will be elected as the next President of the United States of America. At that point, having signed away our sovereignty through the AUKUS pact, we will be beholden to the actions of an unstable megalomaniac with his finger on the nuclear button.

War for the capitalist class is an opportunity, an opportunity to get rich from the profits; and an opportunity to cleanse society of the poor, the working class, and those of us who resist their haughty power. But here in Port Kembla, we know how to fight war and fascism. We did it in the 1930s and we will do it again. But we will need a multitude. We need all those who dream of a better world and who work for a just peace here and around the world to take their place in our movement.

My comrades in Wollongong Against War and Nukes have been working day and night to fight this monstrous base. I know many of you have been too. By coming here today you have shown us that you believe in a better future and that you are prepared to stand with us and fight for it. I regard that as an act of love and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for showing us that love.

No politician or anyone else in power is coming to save us. To stop the future of war, conflict, and climate chaos they have planned for us from becoming a reality we need to rebuild our movements in the workplace, in the home, in the communities where we live, in the streets, on the picket lines, and on the frontlines of the climate crisis. We have to build our power, our organisation, and our autonomy from all of those who would seek to dominate us and use that power to change the world.

Happy May Day comrades. May our struggles continue.