The battered old Peacebus sets up in Blamey Square
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Report of the SpeakOut @ Defence HQ There were but four of us at the GDAMS SpeakOut @ Defence HQ in Canberra yesterday. Youngest was baby Liam Daly, now i month old, wearing his first political slogan: "Boobs not bombs!"
  We set up a banner rig under the 'rabbit ears' and the sound bounced around the architecture as i gave vent on the profligacy and incompetence of the military, addressing my rant personally to Defence Minister Stephen Smith (who appeared on ABC Four Corners the night before looking "like a man drowning on dry land"), Secretary of Defence, Duncan Lewis, Dark Lord of the Oz Terror War, the man responsible for the SAS-isation of the military ("Who do you serve?") and Army Chief David Morrison ("a threat to national security").
 Most enthusiastic about my oration were the Australian Federal Police on duty. After they came to personally congratulate me on what had been said ("agree totally") and to say how good the banner rig looked and how well the sound had carried. "I could hear it clearly at the back of the buildings," said one on a bike. They feel good about protecting the right to free speech. "That's what the Army is supposed to be protecting," said another of them. It was his first protest too. No media showed but we were noticed none the less; a letter of mine was published inÊThe Canberra Times that morning. Text below. I imagine the Defence mandarins munching their morning tea biscuits while reading it, then suffering dyspepsia at the sound of our lunch time presence. Poor dears. Best we can. For peace.
Graeme Dunstan
 
Canberra Times Letter 17 April 2012 Army chief David Morrison is sceptical about any peace dividend flowing from the withdrawal of Australian troops from Afghanistan. Rather, he advocates that the $1 million a year per soldier we now spend keeping troops safe on the ground in Afghanistan would be better spent preparing for his army's next foreign adventure. Furthermore, he reckons the ragtag Taliban is not the benchmark for which we must ready ourselves. He has an enemy more hi-tech in his sights. Maybe Indonesia, China or India. The general needs to be reminded that, though his army will return intact and only a little bloodied, nonetheless it will, after 11 years of murder, abduction, torture and general terrorism of the Afghan people, return defeated. Mission unaccomplished. The ragtag Taliban has prevailed, as the ragtag Viet Cong did in Vietnam. Our proud professional Australian army has followed the United States into another of its imperial wars, wasted blood, squandered treasure and learned nothing. May I suggest to the Australian Federal Police that the general is a more tangible threat to our national security (and to peace in the Pacific for coming generations) than any number of Aborigines banging on a door. And if there is to be a national security dragnet, please include in it those other rampant toters of war: Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Defence Minister Stephen Smith and Foreign Minister Bob Carr.
Graeme Dunstan,
  Benjo Keaney has a spruik in Blamey Square |
