DOZENS of chanting rioters stormed Australia's Parliament House in Canberra yesterday, smashing its front doors and leaving its public entrance hall sprayed with blood.
They threw acid and urine at more than 300 riot police who were called in to control the violence. It erupted when about 25,000 trade union members and Aborigines marched on Parliament House to protest at the federal government's plans to cut public spending and reduce union power.
More than 60 police officers were injured, 50 people were arrested and the Parliament House entrance, marble hall and souvenir shop were turned into a battle zone.
A visibly shaken Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, whose conservative Liberal National coalition government is due to deliver its first budget today, condemned what he described as a very sad and unhappy day in the life of the Australian parliament.
"I want to make it perfectly clear that never, under any circumstances, will my government buckle to threats of physical violence or behaviour of this kind."
Later Mr Howard cancelled talks he had been due to hold on the forthcoming budget with the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the union umbrella body. He said that although he did not blame the council "directly", it had sponsored the rally that sparked the violence and he was not prepared to sit down with the union leaders under such conditions.
Thousands of members of unions and other community groups from all over Australia arrived by train and bus in Canberra yesterday for what had been billed as one of the biggest union protests the capital had seen. It turned into a violent and bloody end to 13 years of industrial peace, which had accompanied the former Labour government's series of accords with the union movement.
Since its election last March, Mr Howard's coalition has announced plans to reform industrial relations radically by replacing collective wage bargaining with individual workplace contracts.