Red Rag

The Howard Government is running scared on VSU. Really scared:

Australian Federal Police chiefs told Mr [Brendan] Nelson his life would be in danger if he went to the University of Technology Sydney, because it coincided with a student rally.

Did you get that? His life would be in danger — students are so angry they are prepared to assassinate the education minister.

Or perhaps not:

The peaceful protest against Government plans to make university union membership voluntary was over by the time Mr Nelson was to have taken the podium at UTS.

Far from being violent, the march had a dance party theme. Students sang union chants such as Solidarity Forever and were kept in order by self-appointed “rally marshals.”

The only time police spoke to protesters was to keep them inside the road markings on George St for their own safety.

Ooh, scary.

Brendan Nelson’s not the first minister to bottle out of a speaking event because of student protests. Tony Abbott refused to debate Julia Gillard because he’s a big chicken. Peter Ruehl explained in the Fin Review yesterday:

Abbott … said he cancelled on advice from the police. He had a letter from Bob Waites, the assistant commissioner [of NSW police], telling him it “is the only prudent course of action and any other decision will place the safety of students, members of the public, police and yourself at risk.”

[…]

Tony got cheesed and accused the police of “siding with thugs” and failing to protect the right of a “minister … to speak in public”.

[…]

Then it turned out that one of Abbott’s staff members had asked the police to put the warning to Abbott in writing “in the strongest terms” or Abbott would have gone ahead with the debate.

In other words, Abbott’s office leaned on the police to make things sound worse than they were, and to give Abbott an excuse to wuss out without losing too much face.

To give you some idea of just how little it takes to spook the cops and the Coalition these days, here’s a security bulletin circulated a few weeks ago to the SEN-Senators and SEN-Staff mailing lists by Mark Andrews, Director Security Operations, Parliament House (first published by Crikey):

Open source reporting indicates that student groups are planning a week long campaign to Dial a Senator and have published a list of conservative Senators they hope to focus their attention towards.

Yes, the AFP considers it a security risk that someone might place a telephone call to a conservative Senator. A telephone call.