AusROC had $56k in the bank while letting a social centre close down

Wildcat Wob April 28, 2026 2 minutes read

Cover via https://chuffed.org/project/keep-black-spark-alight

The political marxist entryist colonisers of the Australian IWW aren’t, as we say around here, the sharpest tools in the shed. While able to run online pileons, doxxings and purges, they can’t (and apparently don’t) do much else. They sure as shit can’t hold onto branches, since they don’t appear to have any left.

They can and do set up political barriers to new members, refusing membership applications where they don’t knock them back on the most spurious of grounds. They can’t stop those of us they discriminate against from infiltrating them and gathering intel though–like their financial statement for 2024-25:

This seems like a lot of resources to leave idle over two years of genocide and authoritarian creep, not least if at least some of it represents funds returned to AusROC by folding branches. If the AusROC AGM minutes (4 months late in coming out, for the record) are anything to go by, the Adelaide GMB is the last casualty of Bunner-led entryism.

Of particular interest on this count is the fact that the Black Spark cultural center in Melbourne closed in December 2025 apparently after not being able to sustain rents. As AusROC’s self-appointed leader, Tristan Bunner in particular was happy to use the Black Spark cultural center in Melbourne for events, but apparently not so much to help keep it open. Not even with $56k in the kitty.

Maybe purity politics isn’t an inspired model for the sustainability of long term-movement politics to start with. If it also means your nominal comrades are also the kind to let you tilt over and fold when they can help but don’t, maybe it’s also something of a bargain with the devil. According to the AusROC minutes, Bunner had motions passed to introduce paid office positions to the Australian IWW, so presumably he intends to siphon off those funds at the rate of a few thousand dollars a month himself.

At least AusROC is free of moral bad apples though.