Melbourne gets ring of steel for G20 summit

METAL barricades to keep up to 10,000 protesters separate from police have been erected around the venue for this weekend's G20 summit in Melbourne.

METAL barricades to keep up to 10,000 protesters separate from police have been erected around the venue for this weekend's G20 summit in Melbourne.

Up to 10,000 protesters are expected to attend an anti-G20 rally on Saturday at the Grand Hyatt hotel where finance ministers and central bank governors from 19 countries plus the European Union will be meeting.

Police last night installed the barriers - a series of metal cages about two-square-metres and more than a metre high - on roads around the hotel and traffic is being diverted onto alternative routes.

A police spokeswoman said the barriers were designed to separate police and protesters and it was the first time they had been used in Australia.

An underground network of activists held a secret conference in Melbourne yesterday to plot a series of “radical actions and interruptions” to this weekend's G20 summit.

As Treasurer Peter Costello urged protesters to not to turn to violence, the underground group promised a day of corporate confrontation on Friday and even renounced campaigning rockers Bono and Bob Geldof as it separated itself from the mainstream Make Poverty History campaign.

Church leaders, who issued a statement yesterday in support of the Make Poverty History campaign, called on developed G20 member nations to commit to investing 0.7 per cent of national wealth in overseas aid by 2015.

The 21 church leaders also called for debt relief for developed nations and the resumption of World Trade Organisation Doha Round negotiations.

But a breakaway activist network, calling itself A Space Outside, urged direct confrontation and labelled the mainstream campaign ineffectual. “Its solution is to buy a wristband, attend a music festival for a few hours, and let Sir Bono and Sir Geldof (sic) fix the rest,” the group said in a document penned by organisers.

The Space Outside group is being closely monitored by police. Its conference yesterday - at which the brother of “Jihad” Jack Thomas was one of the speakers - was organised with the underground precision of a rave party.

Activists had to meet at a appointed spot on the street in Melbourne's Abbotsford, where they rang a mobile telephone and were then met by a Space Outside representative, who walked them to the conference's covert location.

The Australian attended the appointed meeting place yesterday but conference organisers said the paper was barred from entry to the conference.

The collective has declared Friday a day of “corporate engagement”, where office buildings in the CBD will be targeted by small groups of guerrilla-style protesters who will aim to occupy buildings.
Mr Costello said yesterday that “there were protesters coming out of the woodwork on every issue”.

“I mean there are some demonstrators who want a communist society,” he told Southern Cross Radio. “Do they have a legitimate point? Well I don't think they have. I don't think the Australian public thinks they have.”

The G20 meeting will be attended by Finance ministers and central bank governors from 19 countries plus the European Union. A street march to demonstrate against the summit is planned on Saturday, but police said they will not barricade the area around the Grant Hyatt, where the meetings will take place, unless it is necessary.

Premier Steve Bracks said security put in place for the summit will be of the same magnitude as that instituted for the Commonwealth Games in March.

- with AAP