Trouble on Gay Street

“Uh-huh we’re not talking about wages
We’re sitting right here ’til we get our land“
– Vincent Lingiari

Gay Street is a story about violence that underpins a deceptive insistence for a home on other people’s land. The events described below took place on Yuggera country, land never ceded, onetime. – Ian Curr, Editor, 30 October 2025.

TESTIMONY

Okay. I was walking down Gay Street, Coopers Plains, and I saw an Australian flag flying outside the front of Heat Treatment Australia HTA, Brisbane. I took down the flag. It was crudely wired to an electricity pole near HTA’s entrance.

I felt the shock of being handcuffed from behind by a police officer. He had chased me down without me even seeing. I did not run, fearing injury in the gully nearby where a fit copper would have inevitably caught me. Truth is, my arrest so early in the demonstration, FFS! The flag was litter on the ground. There was no one to claim it. I know the government has made the Israeli flag sacrosanct in Australia, touch it and you labelled an anti-semite. But really, the Australian flag? Why is a cop so precious about a relic of British colonialism? It is only one of many.

Sergeant David TATTS then claimed that I had wilfully damaged the Australian flag. It was lying on the ground. There was no damage to it.  TATTS then asked Ian for the flag as he had picked it up from his trike. I have to admit Ian was pretty nimble on that trike. He appeared on the scene before TATTS could clasp the metal handcuffs on me. TATTS asked Ian to give him the flag.

Ian refused point blank: “Well, you’ve got no right to ask me for anything yet because you’ve just arrested this person without saying what they have done wrong. “

Affixing a flag to a power pole is a safety risk to sparkys doing maintenance work. I told TATTS the flag is made out of polyester and is a fire hazard, especially hanging like that, from an electricity pole.

Officer TATTS grabbed the flag by placing his foot on the flag, roughly tugging me by the handcuffs up against Ian’s bike and wrestling with him for the flag wired to Energex pole 44012 the night before by self-styled Australia’s Sons.  It was as if TATTS was retrieving the Aussie flag from the rubble of Gaza. I was slightly off balance with the Saorise keffiyeh draped over my shoulder. Maybe TATTS is a Shankill Road boy? He was behaving like the Ulster constabulary. TATTS wouldn’t know my keffiyeh is the embodiment of the Irish and Palestinian struggle woven together.

TATTS took me across the road and put me into a police car, imprisoned in the rear passenger seat with my arms handcuffed behind my back. I was chuckling at the absurdity of my situation, but on the inside, I was angry at police complicity in protecting an arms factory. HTA had moved from hardening motor mower blades to heat treating F-35 parts with heaps of government subsidies.

To my surprise Ian then opened the car door where I was detained. Police immediately asked him: “What are you doing?”

Jim Dowling, behind the car, explained simply: “We’re trying to stop mass murder.”

David TATTS got out of the front passenger seat to tell Ian: ‘You’ll  get into trouble if you open the police car door again.’ Ian told both TATTS and another cop, MCGUINNES (not his name), that the arrest was unlawful because “we were part of an authorized assembly.”

A picket police liaison person then asked: “What’s the charge?” and TATTS replied “I don’t have to tell you that.” Police liaison replied: “but you have to tell them,” indicating me seated in the back seat of the police car. Other picketers began yelling: “You are overreacting!” McGuiness backed up his mate saying, “She’s arrested for wilful damage” as he came around the back of the car towards Ian who responded “Get a grip, that’s not wilful damage!”

At a later stage, Ian asked another cop, Sgt MCGUINNESS, “Where are you taking them?” meaning both me and their other prisoner, Dave. MCGUINNESS had arrested Dave while TATTS detained me. McGuiness wouldn’t tell Ian where they were taking us.

TATTS said to Ian, “I’ve got nothing to do with you. I’m just dealing with this matter.” I had become a ‘matter‘. Police put Dave and me into a police van. I overheard them talking to each other about going to Acacia Ridge Police Station. They wouldn’t say what was happening, TATTS spoke with Sergeant Tim MCGUINNESS and another police officer with serial number 444134 who drove us away in the police van.

From little things big things grow.

END OF TESTIMONY.

Later, Sergeant TATTS  took a facial recognition shot of every person in a crowd of about 40 people at the picket.

To make things worse, Snr Constable GUNG HO unclipped his glock pistol when Ian opened the police car door. Coward. They say Glocks don’t have a safety. If true Snr Constable GUNG HO was armed and dangerous. Picketers told police that they had overreacted in arresting the two people protesting the genocide in Gaza. It may have been worse if these cops were moonlighting in the IDF. How low would they stoop, given that they were protecting a weapons factory in Coopers Plains heating F-35 parts that are used directly by Israel in the genocide? Police can’t claim ignorance when they have been streaming the genocide on their phones for the last two years. You’d think one of them would object to being used?

Whatever our deficiencies in tactics, our numbers were strong.  We had both police and HTA on the defensive. All up, a couple of dodgy arrests and some fines for defective vehicles were not a bad result.

You often hear people say that if they were in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, they would have opposed the Holocaust. But would they? Just look at history. The principle of Never Again arose from the ashes of the Holocaust yet here we have Israelis backing it to the hilt again while Albo wears his Joy Division t-shirts. Surely he must know who Joy Division were?

If Labor controlled unions won’t do the tough grind at the shop floor convincing our members that weapons factories are not the way to go, who is? Labor and Liberal politicians are still yelling from the rooftops of weapons factories “Jobs Jobs Jobs!” No one can claim lack of knowledge. The evidence is live streamed. Boeing, Elbit systems, Ferra engineering, Lockheed Martin, HTA and Rheinmetall are complicit in mass murder.

Witness Statement of Ian David Curr
These are contemporaneous notes made by Ian Curr moments after the arrests of Emma Walton and David Sprigg outside the weapons manufacturer, HTA in Gay Street Coopers Plains.

I was riding down Gay Street, and I saw an Australian flag flying outside the front of HTA in Gay Street, Coopers Plains in Brisbane. A person (they/them), Emma Walton, took the flag off the pole and was immediately handcuffed by a police officer by the name of Sergeant David Brait (sp?). David Brait claimed that Emma had wilfully damaged the Australian flag.

The flag was lying on the ground. I could see no damage to it. David Bratt then asked me for the flag. And I said, “Well, you’ve got no right to ask me anything yet, because you’ve just arrested this person without saying what the charge is or what has really happened.” Then David Brait stood on the flag and pulled it off me. He then took Emma across the road and put them into a police car.

I persisted asking questions about the validity of the arrest. I opened the police door where Emma was, and he, David Brait, told me he would arrest me for obstruct. And then I asked him, “Well, what’s the charge and where are you taking them?”

Neither this police officer nor any other that I asked would tell me what they were doing with their prisioers (David Sprigg had been arrested while this kerfuffle was going on. Brait said, “I’ve got nothing to do with you. I’m just dealing with this matter“. “And then he put Emma and David in a police van. Other police took them away. They wouldn’t say what was happening, but he told Sergeant Tim Mcfinney and another police officer who had a serial number, 444134. Sergeant took them to the Acacia Ridge police station, and then Sergeant David Brait came around the entire crowd with his body cam, took a facial recognition shots of every single person at the picket.

I was later alerted by a cameraperson that another police officer had unclipped his glock pistol during the exchange.

Conclusion
There has been no attempt by police or the authorities to bring to account the lawless Aussie Sons led by Ben Shand who put up Australian flags on power poles, itself unlawful and dangerous, scorned publicly and regularly by Energex management.

Police and government have escalated political repression of people seeking to stop weapons exports to Israel by Ferra and HTA. Courts have turned a blind eye to the reasonable excuse of activists charged attempting to stop Ferra and HTA participatin in the global supply of weapons to Israel.

Ian Curr
1 November 2025