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Sydney. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott were bundled out of a Canberra building on Thursday after it was besieged by Aborigines angry at Abbott’s call for the 40-year-old “Aboriginal Tent Embassy” to be demolished.

What is little more than a hut near Parliament House is a totem of Aboriginal activism and a must-see building for tourists visiting the national capital.

Gillard slipped and almost fell as she was hustled out of the building by security personnel and through a cordon of protesters chanting “shame” and “racist.” The prime minister lost a shoe as she was dragged to her car by security officers. The demonstrators chased the car, banging on the hood and the roof.

No one was injured and no arrests were made.

Tent embassy founder Michael Anderson accused Abbott of “inciting racial riots” by picking Australia’s national day to call for the site to be cleared.

Australia Day symbolically marks the arrival of white settlers in 1788 and the proclamation of British sovereignty over what was then claimed to be an uninhabited island.

“You’ve got 1,000 people here peacefully protesting, and to make a statement about tearing down the embassy — it’s just madness on the part of Tony Abbott,” Anderson said.

Indigenous Australians number around 500,000 out of a population of 23 million.

Suicides are twice the national average, murders are six times as high and Aborigines are 11 times more likely to be imprisoned than other Australians.

Most live on welfare and 60 percent of Aboriginal pupils do not finish high school and only 12 percent go on to some form of higher education.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur