No Taxes to Kill Bougainvilleans On Monday 18 October 1993, members of Australian Humanitarian Aid for Bougainville (AHAB) and people who support the war tax resistance campaign arrived at the new tax office in Melbourne for the annual 'tax action'. This year marked the tenth year that I have refused to pay part or all of my income taxes because they are spent on the military. I had decided that, like last year, I would pay my resisted taxes - in the form of medical supplies - to the people of Bougainville. I had asked if I could work with AHAB so that we could plan an action which would highlight the Australian government's military 'aid' program. I attended three AHAB meetings to plan the action as well as the evaluation meeting which followed the action. At the first planning meeting we prepared an outline of some street theatre to be performed at the tax office, brainstormed a list of tasks and then divided them between us. At subsequent meetings we refined details of the action, checked progress on the tasks - including liaison meetings with the police and tax office security personnel - and, the day before, roleplayed the action. On the day itself, the action went precisely as planned. In essence, the street theatre highlighted the role played by Australian taxpayers and the Australian government in financing and equipping the Papua New Guinea military for its war against the Bougainvilleans. I had decided that this year I would not be paying ANY of my taxes to the government. After listening carefully to my conscience, I have decided that I will no longer financially support a system of government which, in collaboration with powerful corporate interests, is systematically destroying the lives of ordinary people. This system of government (which includes the federal and state parliaments together with their respective legal and bureaucratic institutions) is sponsoring - despite rhetoric to the contrary - a massive rise in unemployment, homelessness and poverty while cutting services in health, welfare and education. And yet, this same system of government still finds the money to kill - directly or indirectly - many people in Third World countries, including the people of East Timor and the people of Bougainville. It is this military 'aid' component of the Australian government's budget that AHAB and I particularly wanted to highlight during this year's action. Every year, the Australian government gives about $100 million - in the form of weapons, training and intelligence - to military forces in other countries. The largest share of these weapons goes to the government of Papua New Guinea. In recent years, this has included helicopter gun ships, patrol boats, mortars and machine guns. Many of these weapons have been used by the government of Papua New Guinea to fight a war against Bougainville and to enforce a military blockade. This war has killed some 5,000 Bougainvilleans since 1990. As I explained during my news conference at the tax office: "I am not willing to pay for atrocities such as these and, more fundamentally, I am not willing to pay for the government which commits them. Therefore, unless my conscience tells me otherwise, in future I will pay ALL of my taxes to groups that are committed to creating a just, peaceful and ecologically sustainable society. For that reason, I have chosen to pay my taxes for 1992, in the form of medical supplies, to the people of Bougainville and I have asked the group Australian Humanitarian Aid for Bougainville to assist me to do so. I am pleased that Lillian Crofts, a Bougainvillean whose own family continues to suffer on Bougainville, is here today in order to receive these medical supplies on behalf of her people." "Firstly, Lillian, I declare my solidarity with the people of Bougainville. I support the right of your people to determine their future without fear of military violence sponsored by the Australian government. Secondly, I make a commitment to you that I will never pay taxes so that the Australian government can kill Bougainvillean people in my name. And thirdly, as a symbol of my solidarity with your struggle, please accept my tax payment for 1992: medical supplies for the people of Bougainville." Lillian responded by describing the suffering of her people and the need for individuals and groups to take action so that governments were forced to halt the war. The street theatre was very effective in highlighting the connection between Australian taxes and military violence in other countries and the action was well reported in the alternative media. However, while the evaluation meeting identified the usual list of minor points that could have been improved, there was one major item which drew particular attention: the complete absence of any reporter from the mainstream media (despite the telephone calls following our news release which suggested that there would be considerable media interest in the story). Of course, publicity is not the reason that I resist paying taxes. Nevertheless, it is one vehicle for conveying my concerns and the reasons for them to a wider audience. For an activist group like AHAB, publicity helps to raise awareness of their campaign and to create an environment in which this type of action helps to produce results for the people of Bougainville. Therefore, media coverage is obviously an important consideration in planning many of their nonviolent actions. One sympathetic reporter that I contacted suggested that it was a 'busy' news day and that because it was well known that these war tax resistance actions had been done before, they were less likely to be reported again. This observation was interesting, particularly given that each of the last three war tax resistance actions has received virtually no mainstream media coverage (although the court cases arising from these actions have received extensive coverage). If this is true, then it suggests that it is time (perhaps it was several years ago) to shift the focus and location of the actions (for example, from the tax office to a munitions factory). But there are other factors at work here and I would like to highlight just one of them. It would be naive not to recognise the mainstream media's interest in NOT covering stories of this nature. Both war tax resistance and efforts to subvert the Australian government's military spending (including its military 'aid' program in support of the PNG Defence Force) are powerful anti-militarist actions which run counter to the interests of national elites. However, it is not necessary to believe that there is a conspiracy to exclude reporting of this type of nonviolent action. It is enough to recognise that most people involved in the mainstream media (and particularly those who make choices about what is not reported) accept the dominant patriarchal-capitalist-militarist social cosmology and, in making choices about what stories to cover, they are less likely to report actions which challenge the very essence of that cosmology. Much has been written about the role of the media in this context.1 For those activists who plan nonviolent action campaigns, the lessons to be learned from this point are relatively simple: most importantly, plan actions that are empowering for the activists involved; make sure that the actions are creative and clearly focused (so that the media has no tangential issue such as 'activist violence' to report); build links with the alternative media; and recognise that mainstream media coverage - when you get it - is nothing more than a bonus. Robert J. Burrowes References 1. See, for instance, Noam Chomsky. Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. London: Pluto Press, 1991; E.S. Herman & Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon, 1988.