Unions book MCG for protest

spoljar · Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Location: Lynbrook

Thankfully, the Unions will not be able to exaggerate the crowd figure this time! They will always tell you that there were 200,000 at a rally when in fact there may have been only 50,000.

To be fair, police will always under estimate a crowd figure, so its best to take their estimate and the Unions estimate, find the half way point and you probably have the correct number!

Still the Unions will not be very pleased with the turnout despite the excuses and positive spin they have put on it. Not to mention, the amount of teachers from my sons school that were on strike, it that was reflective of all the other schools, I think a lot of people just had a nice day off.

Atleast the people at the G got to see a great concert!

HAL · Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:14 am

Is that from it?

sherrife · Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 11:23 am

Hey PP,

I was overseas and missed out on hearing any news of this strike.. how many people were there?

I went to an anti-war rally this saturday and the response from melbourne was pretty lame, only about 3 thousand.

pies4ever · Joined: 11 Feb 2002 Location: rosebud,vic,australia

the protest at the MCG,the unions were hoping to fill the ground,but only got around 50 odd thousand ppl there..

HAL · Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 11:50 am

Tell me more.

Proud Pies · Joined: 22 Feb 2003 Location: Knox-ish

nomadjack · Joined: 27 Apr 2006 Location: Essendon

I was there Sherrife and have to say that after the previous rally in the city it was a huge disappointment. 50,000 is the figure that was used but that's a fairly generous estimation. Looking around and seeing the G half full at best really took the steam out of the crowd, and most of the conversations around me were about how piss poor it was. The speeches were bloody woeful. Beazley was flat as a tack, and if Sharan burrows and Greg Combet are the best the ACTU have got going for them them we're in all sorts of trouble. The only person that spoke with any passion was a woman that had been laid off under the new laws - but the air was even taken out of this afterwards when they played an ad on the big screen and there she was word for word with exactly the same voice inflection and everything (ie the passion was scripted). The whole day had a feeling of being very stage-managed and manufactured, just going through the motions rather than being undrpinned by any real sense of passion.

I still can't understand the strategic logic of booking the G. It was a real risk because if the crowd didn't turn up it was always going to look bloody terrible, and that's exactly what happened. It gave a free kick to the rodent exactly when Labor didn't need it. It might also have contributed to Beazley getting the flick though so perhaps it wasn't all bad.

Overall, I came away thoroughly depressed about the union campaign. Thankfully though it looks enough people have had a gutful of the lying little rodent in power and it looks like it's not going to matter anyway.