The discovery of gold in Ballarat in 1851 touched off a goldrush that saw 25,000 miners there by 1854. Conditions were harsh and primitive, made worse by the government requiring expensive licences to be bought for the right to mine, 30 shillings per month (twice the average weekly wage). One view holds that the high licence fees were a deliberate ploy to drive people back to the land and farms. The fees were enforced by police and soldiers, most of whom were ex convicts The police and soldiers were brutal and, together with the government officials, were often corrupt. Escalating tensions and a number of incidents saw the miners make a stand at the Eureka diggings, named after the “Eureka lead”, a deep seam of gold being mined by the diggers. Under the leadership of Peter Lalor they constructed a stockade covering about an acre of ground. The authorities could not allow a treasonous rebellion and attacked at dawn on Sunday, 3 December 1854. Whereas the miners had had 1,500 men present on the Saturday, only 150 were present on the Sunday in the belief that an attack would not take place on the Sabbath. 22 miners were killed in the battle, together with 5 soldiers. None of the persons charged were convicted, an inquiry resulted in reforms and Lalor was subsequently elected to Parliament. He died in 1889 aged 72.

 

http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/eureka-stockade-and-its-flag.html

 

Farmers and anyone else who has a bit of dignity left in this sad country, it's time to storm parliament house with pitchforks and trucks and get as many of the shock jocks on your side. Turdy is dangerously cunningly clever and shifty, don't listen to his sweet talking while he shafts you up the arse... 

Global free market economics is a superstition and a myth, writes Bob Ellis, which has no grounding in the chaotic, uncertain, world in which we live.

As I write this, volcanic ash is preventing planes from leaving Bali, or going to Bali, and the tourist industry is being damaged.

Four years ago, an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown at Fukushima ruined every business in that region and endangered the entire Japanese economy, then the third largest in the world.

Ten years ago, an oil spill ruined the seaside businesses and swamped the economy of Louisiana, obliterating tourism there for three years. A month ago, earthquakes ended, perhaps forever, the mountain-climbing tourist economy of Nepal.

Floods ruined provincial Queensland, fires provincial Victoria, in the past four to six years. Regions have been rebuilt, with massive government assistance, from the ground up. This has happened also in Christchurch, a museum city laid low by not just one, but successive earthquakes.

And yet we are told there is a "level playing field" in a "global free market" where "the market" will make "all necessary adjustments", in a spontaneous way, that will ensure the greatest possible happiness to the world population — and there is no alternative to this.

A moment’s thought will show that this is a fantasy. In 80 years, Milton Friedman did not have that moment’s thought.

What is happening is what has happened through history: a state of war on frequent "events" that disrupt a nation’s economy by governments ever more interventionist in a wild and difficult world.

American drones are bombing Pakistan and destroying the economies of mountain villages. Islamic State is beheading foreigners and damaging tourism in Syria. Egypt is hanging its president and reducing the numbers of daily camel rides to the pyramids.

And yet we are told there is something called "global free trade" and the market will ‘adjust’ to, say, the next hundred years of air-bombing in Gaza.

It is surprising how many Labor people sign up to this nonsense. And believe, say, there should be no tariffs on anything. And by competing with the slaves of Bangladesh we will win sufficient victories – exporting Akubra hats, or whatever – to save the day.

It is not like that. It is not how things are. We are at war, economically, not just with adjacent nation states but with storms and earthquakes, and oil spills, and beheading terrorists also. The "free market" is not free — and it never was.

Tariffs worked for five thousand years, and in Japan and the U.S. are working still. Government’s subsidised industries – like the Pentagon and the BBC – still make huge amounts of money because the marketplace for them is taxpayer-fed.

I could write a book about this. But it would change no minds. They are so religiously stuck in a damn fool superstition – as dumb-assed as the belief in "leechcraft" as a cure-all the Middle Ages – that argument is wearying.

Global free market economics exist on a planet without volcano ash, or bushfires, or earthquakes, or tsunamis. It exists on a clean, sunlit, windless planet without local wars or local slavery. Ergo, it does not exist.

It is a dead parrot. It is deceased. It has gone to its maker. It is no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

And the answer, my friend?

Well take a look round you at the emergency services at work in snowdrift, shattered cities, ebola-stricken provinces. At air-sea rescue and the volunteers who in desolate African countries care for children with AIDS. Look at Save The Children. Look at UNESCO. That’s what we need. We need something like that.

It’s called government. It’s there to look after us. To repel our enemies when they come beating at the gate with cheap labour and cheap goods, wanting to take our world away.

It is government. It is we, the people.

And it’s time, and it’s time, and it’s time it were reasserted. In time of storm, vicissitude and earthquakes. And economic invasion.

Which is now.

Read also managing editor David Donovan's five part series: Why everything you think you know about economic is probably wrong.