Students of more than 100 schools are celebrating a day off today as their school teachers went on strike against the new Industrial Relations law, which is about to be legislated within a week or so. The teachers are joined by other unions of employees from different sectors, including the public service, education, healthcare, etc. An estimate of 175,000 in total turned up for the protest.

While coming out of the Parliament station this morning, I saw this commution taking place. I also found out that the train station’s ticket checkpoints were all open! If only I knew that earlier, I would’ve for a free ride to the city.

You’ll need them to control the scene.

The crowd of protestors at Carlton Gardens, where the rally ends.

Human traffic jam on a crossing at Casseldon Place.

One of the protestors carrying a flag.

I’ve never seen a rally or protest of such a massive scale. Never. There’s been a lot of conflicts between the public and the Howard government, especially at their work places. The disagreement which caused the recent protest is Howard’s new Industrial Relations (IR) legislation, which was touted as unfair by the opposition leaders as well as the masses.

As ACTU president Sharan Burrow said in the rally, “The government tried to hide the facts. They’ve called their IR laws WorkChoices. WorkChoices! Rubbish, deceitful rubbish!”

Well, I don’t know about this mate, coz I’ve nothing to do with all these mess.