Eureka 2008

EUREKA UPRISING: 154th ANNIVERSARY 3 December 2008 Celtic Club Melbourne

How things change… It is no surprise that, in the aftermath of the rising on 3 December 1854, 12 of the Eureka rebels were put on their trial for treason. The first tried was John Joseph. He was acquitted and was carried around Melbourne in triumph. Thousands welcomed his acquittal. The others were acquitted soon after. If the same things happened in Australia today, it would work quite differently. The Eureka rebels would be charged with terrorist offences. The offence of terrorism includes threatening, planning, urging, inciting or carrying out a terrorist act. A terrorist act includes acts which cause serious damage to persons or property and which are done with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause, unless it is advocacy, protest, dissent or industrial action which was not intended to cause serious harm. The trial of John Joseph started on 22 February 1855: just a couple of months after the events which we celebrate tonight. If modern day Eureka rebels were charged with terrorist offences, they would languish in Barwon prison for a couple of years before eventually coming to trial. They would be held in solitary confinement most of the time; they would be transported to and from court shackled in the back of a prison van; they would be strip searched each time they had a visitor in prison. Their lawyers would have to be security-cleared to be allowed to see the evidence. Those who celebrate Eureka each year should notice these unhappy changes in our society: dissent is not as free as it used to be. And those who celebrate Eureka each year should consider the ominous possibilities of a gathering like this. The Criminal Code provides for terrorist organisations to be proscribed by regulation. An organisation can be listed as a terrorist organisation if it “advocates the doing of a terrorist act”. An organisation advocates a terrorist act if it “directly praises the doing of a terrorist act in circumstances where there is a risk that such praise might (cause) a person (regardless of his or her age or any mental impairment … that the person might suffer) to engage in a terrorist act.” So, if celebrating Eureka might give a half-wit the idea of staging a similar revolt, we are advocatig terrorism. What did it mean? The significance of Eureka has been interpreted by many people in many different ways. It has been characterized as a “right wing small business revolt” (Tim Fischer); “an earnest attempt at democratic government” (Sir Robert Menzies); “the birth of Australian democracy” (Doc Evatt); “a demand for fairness and equality” (Robert Doyle); “similar to the Tiananmen Square massacre” (Bernard Barrett); a quest for “independence, freedom, unity, hope” (Clare Wright); “the finest thing in Australian history – a revolution, small in size but great politically” (Mark Twain); “a fight for human rights, justice and tolerance” (Steve Bracks). The historian Geoffrey Serle observed that “no final conclusion can be drawn” about the meaning of Eureka. That great political pragmatist Gough Whitlam said that its “importance lies not in what happened but what later generations believed to have happened”. The common theme in many of these observations, and the undeniable historical fact, is that it involved a demand for a fair go and a demand for democratic representation. Certainly, it was a protest against the unfairness of a harsh tax imposed on people who had no opportunity of a voice in government. The roots of Eureka lie deep in the soil of many other nations. The miners who