Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies www.daviesart.com

It’s awesome. The front of Sydney’s march for peace arrived back at Hyde Park while tens of thousands of people were still waiting to join the march. We’re talking twelve city blocks here. As I write, people are still leaving Hyde Park on the walk half an hour into the speeches at the march end!

A colleague who marched in Sydney in the 1985 Palm Sunday march (170,000 people) and the Sydney Harbour bridge walk for reconciliation (200,000 people) said it was even bigger. Some are saying 250,000, the biggest protest in Sydney’s history. Some are saying it could be closer to 500,000! City shoppers were dumbstruck, hundreds lining the march route eyes wide, mouths open.

At the head of the protest marched three old, battle scarred men of Australian politics – Laurie Brereton, NSW Labor right hard-man and an opponent of any Australian ground troops if the UN gives the US the tick, Green icon Bob Brown and Peter Baume, Fraser Government minister, all shouting “No war”. The trio summed up the incredible diversity of people there in the stinking, sweating heat – North Shore matrons rubbing shoulders with skinheads, young families with strollers, groovy trendoids angsting over which anti-war T shirt to buy.

A friend of said on Friday she knew it would be big because friends kept calling to say, “What do you wear to a protest?” How Sydney.

It’s easy to get carried away at the sight of the people of Sydney reclaiming the city to make their point, but something this big has to have an effect. As does a turnout of 5,000 in the country town of Armidale – a quarter of its population.

It’s now hard to see Labor finding a way to support the war if the UN doesn’t endorse George Bush’s war – even if only one country exercises its veto. Simon Crean wasn’t scheduled to speak at any march this weekend, but it looks like the 150,000 people marching in Melbourne on Friday night changed his mind. This weekend could be one of those “turning points”, where suddenly the earth moves, the mood shifts, and politics is transformed in an instant.

This morning on the Sunday program, Laurie Oakes said to foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd: “Carmen Lawrence is out there giving fiery speeches to these demonstrations. Why aren’t you and Simon Crean addressing rallies as well?”

“Well, Simon will be speaking to the rally here in Brisbane today, Laurie. I’ll be attending that rally as well,” Rudd replied. Labor is getting locked in. It can’t afford not to, unless it wants to throw votes to the Greens.

Rudd also added another refinement to Labor’s policy. Before, it would consider agreeing to a unilateral US strike if one country vetoed a UN resolution for force. Now it will also require the very thing the United States has been unable to deliver so far. “If it gets to the stage where the United States was seeking to advance a case outside the framework of the United Nations Security Council that case would have to rest on establishing a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq and the events of September eleven,” Rudd said. “Or secondly, that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability and threat represent a real and present danger not just a theoretical danger to our security today. As of today, no such case has been made.”

That’s very close to a no. Very close. The stage is set for a rip roaring political battle in Australia where the NSW election could become a defacto referendum on the war. Howard’s very legitimacy could be at stake if he defies public opinion to join a unilateral strike. Soldiers do not die for the Prime Minister, of for the Australian government. They agree to risk their lives for the Australian people. If the Australian people say no, there will be calls for the Senate to bring down a government which wishes to defy the people’s will on war.

Sydney rarely matches the activism of Melbourne on the really big issues, let alone beats it hands down. Right at the front of the march, behind Laurie Brereton, walked two of his factional opponents, Labor left shadow ministers Daryl Melham and John Faulkner. If the people’s voice isn’t enough, the threat of a split in the Labor Party is. Labor will now take on this cause. John Howard’s work will have just begun when he gets home from his “peace mission”.

Laurie Brereton’s speech to parliament on the war, where he argues against any Australian ground troops even in a UN sanctioned war, is at webdiary