THOUSANDS of Aborigines demonstrated in Canberra, Australin, yesterday, playing didgeridoos (aboriginal pipes) and stamping on the Australian flag, as Mr John Howard's conservative coalition government introduced a budget containing savage spending cuts to welfare, job schemes and indigenous Australian programmes.
Yesterday's demonstration followed the most violent scenes the Australian capital has seen when protesters stormed Parliament House on Monday, battled with police and left the building's marble entrance hall covered with blood and broken glass.
Although the Aboriginal protest was more subdued, its target was the same as that of the 25,000 union members who marched on Canberra on Monday to protest against Mr Howard's economic strategy of curbing union powers and slashing eight billion Australian dollars (£4 billion) from public spending over the next two years.
Aboriginal affairs, higher education, the unemployed and public broadcasting through the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the federal civil service will bear much of the cuts.
In the Liberal National government's first budget since it ended 13 years of Labour rule five months ago, Mr Peter Costello, the finance minister, undertook to balance the budget by 1999.
"If we avoid the hard decisions now, we will be leaving Australia on a path of debt and deficit into the next century," he said.
The budget he presented to the House of Representatives last night was a blueprint for a government that intends to end what it sees as the special treatment for groups such as Aborigines, environmentalists and the cultural lobby. It wants a smaller government which will impose greater self reliance on Australians for their health care, education and retirement.
Mr Howard had hoped to soften the political blows from last night's budget by announcing the most controversial spending cuts in advance. University funding will be cut by 5 per cent and students will be made to contribute more to the cost of their education by paying it back in extra taxes after they graduate.
The federally funded ABC will lose 15 per cent of its budget over the next two years and has already announced that it will have to cut programmes and merge radio networks.
About 30,000 federal bureaucrats will lose their jobs.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, which, controls spending on Australia's indigenous and underprivileged minority, will have a $400 million cut over four years.
Unemployed Australians will suffer even more. The government will cut almost $2 billion from job creation.