As many as 40,000 protesters brought Melbourne to a standstill on Thursday to demand that the Abbott government abandon its scheme to slash the budget.  The demonstrators say the cuts would see fewer people employed, and those with jobs would be forced to work harder, for longer, and for less money. 

Beginning at Trades Hall and marching to parliament house, the crowd stretched back for at least a kilometer.

“We have never before seen a government try to destroy the jobs of Australians like this government has,” Michael O’Connor, national secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union told the trades people and other workers.  “They are trying to change our commitment to a fair go, our commitment to justice, our democratic right to organize.  They think they are going to get away with it.  We say they ain’t.”

ACTU secretary Dave Oliver described the cuts as an attack on the Australian way of life.

“Generations of Australians have fought hard to establish working conditions and dignity at work,” Oliver said.  “They have struggled hard to build a better life and a decent society, to educate our children and to care for our sick and to look after our elderly.”