Australian government orders police raids on union offices
In two highly-publicised raids, scores of Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers suddenly arrived at the Sydney and Melbourne offices of the Australian Workers Union (AWU) on Tuesday afternoon, executed search warrants, and carted away documents.
Australia increasingly resembles a police state, with stage-managed raids conducted for blatant political purposes. The pretext for the police operation was political donations made a decade ago, and officially recorded at the time, but allegedly not properly noted in AWU minutes.
Efforts are being made, at the highest levels of the state, to criminalise regular political activities such as making donations. The internal affairs of trade unions and political organisations are being subjected to massive surveillance and control.
As has become customary with police raids, including “counter-terrorism” operations, media outlets were alerted by the government, so television cameras were on hand to broadcast the images far and wide.
Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/10/26/poli-o26.html