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Solidarity with Iranian workers and the democratic movement

Socialist Alliance stands in solidarity with the millions of Iranians who are bravely demanding their rights in the streets despite huge state-sanctioned repression. These are the biggest protests in Iran since the 1979 protests in which the US-backed Shah was deposed.

Millions of people, old and young, ethnic and religious minorities, have taken to the streets, day in and day out since the disputed election on June 12. They have bravely defied the repressive regime of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to demand the most basic of rights: the right to freely and transparently elect their representatives.

Some 27 people, including a young woman Neda Agha-Soltan whose death was captured on video, have been killed in the crackdown on protests. Several hundred have been injured, and a leading student activist is in a coma. Government officials on June 24 announced that there had been a total of 645 arrests in Tehran since June 13, 2009. Activists say that several hundred more, including journalists, editors, students, professors, party officials and unionists have also disappeared.

Download this leaflet as a PDF

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One lesson of an awful death: no to prison privatisation!

Sanna Andrew & Dick Nichols

21 June 2009

In January 2008, in Western Australia, Aboriginal elder, highly respected community leader and grandfather Mr Ward died of heatstroke in an oven-hot prison van driven by employees of prisons operator Global Solutions Ltd, now taken over by Group 4 Securitas (G4S).

In New South Wales in June 2009, G4S, which also runs all immigration detention centres in Australia and on Christmas Island for the immigration department, is lining up to bid for the contract to run Parklea prison, marked for privatisation by the Labor government of Nathan Rees.

Parklea prison officers and their supporters have been maintaining a protest picket against the privatisation outside Rees’s electoral office in the western Sydney suburb of Seven Hills.

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Restore democracy in Honduras!

A statement from the Socialist Alliance, Australia, July 2, 2009

The Socialist Alliance strongly condemns the June 28 coup d’etat by the military, members of the oligarchy and their political agents in Honduras. The violent kidnapping and expulsion to Costa Rica of democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya Rosales is an attempt to deny the people of Honduras their fundamental human rights to determine their own government and political future.

The coup took place as millions of Hondurans were preparing to exercise their right to vote for the first time in a consultative referendum on the future convening of a constitutional assembly to reform Honduras’ constitution. The Zelaya government’s proposal to draft a new constitution is the culmination of other measures under his presidency that have come under attack by conservative forces, including a significant raise in the minimum wage, measures to re-nationalise energy generation plants and telecommunications, signing a bill to greatly improve labour conditions for teachers, joining the Venezuelan Petrocaribe program, and delaying recognition of the new United States ambassador after the Bolivian government implicated the US embassy in supporting paramilitary groups destabilising Bolivia.

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Open letter to delegates to the 2009 ACTU Congress

Socialist Alliance National Trade Union Committee

Distributed by Tim Gooden, Secretary, Geelong Trades Hall Council (pictured), as a contribution to debate at the 2009 ACTU Congress

Dear fellow unionists,

As delegates to this ACTU Congress you have piles of policy before you, but one basic decision to make.

Should you back the ACTU leadership’s support for Rudd’s Fair Work Act or oppose it?

The Congress papers say that “the Fair Work Act sees the end of the direct legislative assault on organised labour” and “represents a substantial, albeit imperfect, transition of the 2006 ACTU Congress policy into legislation.”

That’s just spin! Read the Congress’s own Industrial Relations Legislation Factsheet and the truth comes out (see the basic facts about the Fair Work Act over the page, mainly taken from this Factsheet). Workers are still losing.

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New government, same old racism

Sam Watson, Socialist Alliance Indigenous Rights Spokesperson

28 May 2009

In his Sorry Speech, delivered on February 13, 2008, Kevin Rudd said "We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians."

More than a year later, the Rudd government has joined this list of successive governments, having not only failed to end Howard's racialist Northern Territory Emergency Response, but also expanding it and forcing Aboriginal housing agencies to sign away their land or miss out on much needed funding.

Download the Socialist Alliance leaflet for the June 20 protests

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Socialist Alliance welcomes historic Greens win in Fremantle

Sunday 17 May 2009 - For immediate release

Socialist Alliance candidate Sam Wainwright has hailed the victory of Adele Carles in the Fremantle by-election as "A breakthrough for the entire progressive movement and a testament to the Greens’ consistent efforts to raise a progressive alternative to Labor."

"We in the Socialist Alliance have long known that workers deserve better than Labor but the Greens’ victory in Fremantle has proven that this is possible to achieve," said Wainwright.

"Labor’s choice of running millionaire investor Peter Tagliaferri as their candidate, against the wishes of the rank and file of their party, just goes to show how far removed Labor is from the concerns of ordinary workers," said Wainwright.

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Genocide of Tamils and atrocities in Sri Lanka while Australia looks on

STATEMENT BY DR BRIAN SENEWIRATNE (MD, FRCP, FRACP)

May 7, 2009

I am a Sinhalese from the majority community in Sri Lanka, not from the brutalised Tamil community. I have campaigned for some five decades for the right of the Tamils to live with equality, dignity and safety in the country of their birth. I am releasing this media briefing as a concerned Australian (here for 32 years), and as a member of the Socialist Alliance, the only non-Tamil organisation to support the struggle of the Tamils for justice.

Last week the Sinhalese-dominated Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) succeeded in its immediate aim of ending the armed resistance of the Tamil people, who live in the North and East of the country. "Bloodbath on the beach" was how the United Nations described the battle and we are yet to see the full extent of this major humanitarian catastrophe.

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Defend jobs, not profits! - A working-class response to the economic crisis

The current economic crisis comes after 14 years of boom conditions, which have delivered a profits bonanza to the bosses. Workers’ share of the national income has declined from 60% in 1978 to 51% today. At the same time, the cost of living has risen significantly.

The bosses are using the global financial crisis as a cover to slash jobs. As the Australian economy heads towards recession, unemployment is rising. The official unemployment figure is predicted to rise to 9% by the end by 2010; the real level of joblessness will be far greater.

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Succumbing to the big polluters, Rudd and Wong gamble with our climate and the environment

May 5, 2009

The Socialist Alliance has condemned and totally rejected the Rudd Government’s modified proposal for a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). "It is fatally flawed", the Alliance’s National Environment Coordinator David White said today.

"The retention of the unconditional 5% target reduction, the new $10 cap on carbon pricing and more free trading permits for big polluters make the proposed CPRS more unacceptable than ever", White said.

Sign on to the NSW Nature Conservation Council's statement on the CPRS amendments

See the model letter to the ACF, demanding it withdraw its support for the CPRS Mark II

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Community Must Join Indian Students' Rallies

MEDIA RELEASE 1 JUNE 2009 - Socialist Alliance Victoria

Socialist Alliance commends the strong protest action called yesterday by the Federation of Indian Student Associations (FISA) following a recent spate of violent attacks against students of Indian origin. Similar attacks against students and cab drivers have been happening for far too long – with no adequate response from the government and police.

Socialist Alliance condemns the police use of force to break up the protest and arrest people. The police actions are a violation of the right to protest peacefully.

We call on trade unions and community organisations to support these protests and mobilise supporters to attend. The largest possible peaceful rallies send a powerful message to the community to stand up against racism.

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Rudd’s White Paper shows we’re still not serious about climate change

Media Release, Dec 15, 2008

The Rudd Government’s emissions reduction target of 5 -15 % by 2020 and its decisions to accept a target of 450 ppm CO2e (parts per million, carbon dioxide equivalent) and to give free permits to the worst industrial polluters, are appalling and disgraceful. It must be roundly condemned by the 80% of Australians who realise that immediate and emergency action is essential if we are to save our environment for future generations.

A target of 450ppm is not even a firm +2°C target, as statistically there is a 78% chance of exceeding 2°. The Socialist Alliance says that GHG emissions must peak by no later than 2015, then fall by at least 5% annually, to achieve a target of 300-325 ppm CO2 and have any chance of stopping the most severe impact of climate change.

The laws of science aren't interested in political compromises and steering "a balanced course". Climate targets must be set according to the scientific imperatives, and putting them through political filters can only imperil the planet.

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Tim Gooden: What union response to job losses?

Under the present industrial regime the union movement is fighting with one-and-a-half arms tied behind its back, argues Tim Gooden, Geelong and region Trades and Labour Council secretary. If working people and their communities — the vast majority of the Australian population — are to defeat the dragon of recession, they will need their unions to be as strong and as organised as possible. [MORE]

Sam Watson: Lex Wotton jailing a 'total disgrace'

Sam Watson, the Socialist Alliance spokesperson on Indigenous Rights said that the custodial sentence of six years that Lex Wotton received yesterday for “inciting a riot” on Palm Island in 2004 following the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee was “still a total disgrace”. [MORE - 1 COMMENTS]

Time to stand up for refugee rights!

Bea Bleile, Margarita Windisch & Dick Nichols

24 April 2009

The recent tragic explosion and loss of life on board an asylum seeker boat off Ashmore Reef has put refugee issues back near the top of the Australian political agenda.

Predictably, the Coalition and its attack dog immigration shadow minister Sharman Stone have jumped at the opportunity to revive John Howard’s successful “wedging” tactic from the days of the Tampa.

The Rudd government immediately retreated: indeed, when PM Kevin Rudd invites people-smugglers “to rot in hell” he already sounds like 2001-vintage Howard.

Download the Socialist Alliance petition on refugees

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