Mr Curly at World Refugee Day rally, Melbourne 18 June : Melbourne Indymedia

As well as the boat, based on a Leunig cartoon, and used here by Melbourne's Refugee Action Collective with the cartoonist's permission, there were placards with the original cartoon, as well as balloons and a wide range of banners and other visual statements of opposition to the government's treatment of asylum seekers. About a thousand people assembled outside the Museum to hear addresses from, amongst others, Senator Lyn Allison and Bishop Hilton Deakin, before setting off as in previous years, along Gertrude and Brunswick Streets, stopping at the intersection with Johnstone Street for more speeches, before joining the annual multicultural fiesta at Fitzroy Town Hall. Apart from the boat and RAC banner, the march was led by a group of West Papuans with song and dance. Along the route people's responses were generally very positive, with applause and shouts of encouragement, the only exception two men who emerged from a laneway of Gertude Street to shout "Get a job" and "Send 'em all back".

Previous years' WRD events in Melbourne can be revisited at http://au.geocities.com/melbprotest/html/19june05/19june05.html, for 2005, and
http://www.melbourneprotests.bravehost.com/20june04/20june04.html, for 2004.
Other links:
http://www.freewestpapua.com - Free West Papua Campaign (Melbourne)
http://www.multiculturalarts.com.au/ - details of the EMERGE FESTIVAL, 16 June - 1 July 2006, from Multicultural Arts Victoria
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19508141-29277,00.html - report in The Australian online 18 June
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19513480-601,00.html - The Australian 19 June

For more on asylum seekers still in limbo on Lombok - the subject of Melanie Mumford's address, see on this site http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/10/98161.php http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/10/98387.php and http://www.rac-vic.org/downloads/lombokspeech0CTOBER28.doc

with RAC's Lauren Ireland during the stop in Johnstone Street
http://www.freewestpapua.com - Free West Papua Campaign (Melbourne)

escorted down Napier Street to the Fitzroy Town Hall

...recalling the situation a year ago, and all that had been achieved since then by constant pressure on politicians - the release of long-term detainees and children, for example - but the legislation is still unchanged, and even the present threat of backbench revolt over the proposed changes will not be sufficient to stop them unless there is opposition also in the senate. It was vital to put pressure on especially Victorian Senator Steve Fielding to stand up for families, and he undertook to do before he was elected.