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Defend the right to strike! (sign on statement)
Please sign on to this statement to support the campaign for the right to strike. You can email your name,contact details, organisation and trade union position (if any) to Susan Price at pricesusan9@gmail.com
Australian law has never provided for the unrestricted right to strike.
The first Australian industrial law, the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1904, penalised Australian striking workers with fines and jail sentences.
Before that, Australian workers had to comply with the British Master and Servants Act of 1837, which meant that a worker could face jail if they were absent from work for an hour without permission!
Successive Australian governments, both Liberal and ALP, have sought to restrict the right to strike, in contravention of International Labour Organisation (ILO) principles:
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May Day greetings from the Socialist Alliance
Dear comrades and friends,
The Socialist Alliance in Australia sends warm comradely greetings for May Day 2012.
May Day this year takes place in tumultuous conditions: the multiple crises confronting global capitalism are deepening, while mass resistance to its brutal rule grows. Taken all together, the people’s uprisings across the Arab world, the mass demonstrations and strikes occurring in Europe, the Occupy actions in the United States and the ongoing efforts of Latin American revolutionaries to construct socialism of the 21st century pose a huge challenge to the capitalist system.
The capitalist class is desperately striving to force working people and the entire Third World to pay for the worldwide economic, social and ecological crises it has created, but the momentum towards change and the creation of a system that puts the needs of people and the environment before private profit cannot be easily stopped.
In Australia, the federal Labor Party government is itself in crisis, plagued by corruption and a growing backlash to its neoliberal economic policies and regressive social policies, which are benefitting the big corporations and the wealthy at the expense of the most disadvantaged. In Australia today, the disparities between rich and poor are widening at a rapid pace: for example, while more than 600,000 (official) unemployed people live on less than $35 a day, Australia’s Labor prime minister has just received a $2,192 a week pay rise.
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Letter of protest against torture of Baba Jan, 'prisoner of climate change' in Pakistan
May 3, 2012
To:
His Excellency Mr Abdul Malik Abdullah
High Commissioner for Pakistan
4 Timbarra Crescent, O'Malley
ACT 2606
parepcanberra@internode.on.net
Dear Sir,
We have been informed by the Labour Party of Pakistan that Baba Jan, Waqar and other activists in Gilgit district jail were severely beaten and tortured by dozens of Rangers, Police and Frontier Constabulary in the early morning of April 28, 2012.
We are especially concerned for the fate of Baba Jan, who was taken from the Gilgit district jail by security personnel and transported to a place unknown.
We strongly protest against this violence and object to the prison authorities’ ban on visitors to these political activists. It would seem that the responsible authorities have failed in their duty to maintain safe custody of these persons. This kind of treatment of political activists should not be acceptable in a democratic Pakistan.
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Beyond Australia’s carbon price
Saturday, April 21, 2012
By Simon Butler
Liberal and Labor agree the fossil fuel juggernaut must keep rolling on, when the science says this is disastrous.
Over the past few years it appears that debate and conflict about climate policy has dominated Australian politics. But the appearance is different to the reality.
There is no serious debate between the two big parties about climate change. A serious debate would be grounded in the climate science, which says we must move to a zero carbon economy at emergency speed.
Liberal and Labor agree the fossil fuel juggernaut must keep rolling on, when the science says this is disastrous. There is no debate between them on plans to double Australia's coal exports — an insane choice given what we know about the closeness of climate tipping points, the points of no return.
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Stop Toyota’s anti-union attacks, job cuts
Ian Jones said security guards “marched in like Nazis”, rounded up the targeted workers one-by-one “like cattle” and ferried them in white vans with darkened windows to a “reception centre”.
The workers were sacked on the spot. The reasons given for their dismissal included workplace productivity measures that were applied retrospectively.
Workers say Toyota has treated them like “dogs and slaves”. Union officials have called the process a “primitive” cattle cull.
Unionists and the injured targeted
Toyota claims the sacked workers were chosen based on maintaining company values and the workers’ attire, punctuality and safety record, but there are clear signs union activists and injured workers have been targeted.
Toyota has axed 10% of its workforce, yet Jones said more than half of the union’s shop stewards and health and safety reps had been sacked. The union said workers who were injured or raised injury-related issues were also targeted.
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Don’t let the Tasmanian government make us pay for their crisis
Thursday, April 19, 2012
By Susan Austin, Hobart
Tasmania is currently facing a series of big interlinked problems. These include:
* A health system in crisis.
* Job losses also in other public services causing major service inadequacies and unacceptable workloads and stress on frontline staff.
* Bleeding of skilled professionals and new graduates to other states.
* The highest unemployment rate in the nation. * An economic recession.
* Rising cost of living.
Premier Lara Giddings’ Labor Party, with full support of their coalition partners the Greens, have stubbornly continued to slash money from public services as part of their neoliberal budget.
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Keep the pressure on Gillard to pull all troops out of Afghanistan
By Pip Hinman
19 April, 2012
Prime minister Julia Gillard’s April 17 speech on Afghanistan was widely heralded as a change of policy. It is and it isn’t.
It does set out a schedule for a partial withdrawal of troops — thereby bringing Australia belatedly into line with the US drawdown of troops by 2014. But it also affirms that Australia, like the US, will not withdraw all its troops.
Gillard’s speech was full of doublespeak, but it does represent a shift in the pro-war camp. It is an implicit recognition that the war is not going well — even on their terms — and that its unpopularity at home is becoming a serious political risk.
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'Fight return to bad old Bjelke-Petersen days' - Socialist candidate for Sth Brisbane by-election
"Within two weeks of taking office, Premier Campbell Newman and his Liberal National Party (LNP) government show signs of returning to the bad old days of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen regime," Liam Flenady, Socialist Alliance candidate for the South Brisbane by-election, said on April 11.
"They have begun to make serious cuts in funding to the arts, environmental programs and the public sector. In the name of 'cutting red tape,' the new Queensland government is preparing to give open slather to their mates in the property development industry by abolishing key environmental regulations on new building projects.
"They are giving Liberal Party heavies plum jobs in the state bureaucracy. Clive Palmer and his cronies in the mining industry are rubbing their hands together at the prospect of even more new coal mines, and possibly even uranium mining for the first time in Queensland.
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Qld Labor wipeout means left must unite & organise
By Jim McIlroy, Brisbane branch co-convenor
The Australian Labor Party (ALP) in Queensland is in its deepest crisis in its 120-year history following the disastrous defeat in the state elections on March 24. A swing of more than 15% to the Liberal-National Party (LNP) has resulted in the Queensland ALP's record lowest primary vote of 26.5%.
Labor is likely to win seven, or at most eight, seats in Queensland's parliament of 89. The LNP will take 77 or 78. This is a worse position for the ALP than the Joh Bjelke-Petersen regime's high point in 1974, when Queensland Labor was reduced to 11 seats.
There is no doubt that the “Time for Change” theme of the LNP was a factor in the ALP's defeat. Queensland Labor had been in office for 20 of the past 22 years, interrupted only by a 1996-98 National-Liberal government.
Some Labor figures have said Premier Anna Bligh's narrow election win in 2009, when the ALP came from behind in the last couple of weeks of the campaign to snatch victory, probably produced a term too far for Labor.
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Socialist Alliance campaigns strongly in midst of ALP disaster
By Jim McIlroy, Qld co-convenor
Socialist Alliance pushed ahead strongly with its campaign to put socialist politics before the Queensland electorate, as the ALP government faced annihilation in the state election held on March 24. Although everyone knew the government was unpopular, the sheer size of the LNP win took all commentators by surprise.
The political fall-out from the electoral disaster, which has left Labor with only seven or eight seats compared to the LNP's probable 78 in an 89 seat House of Assembly, after a record two-party swing of 15 per cent away from the Bligh government, will be felt for many years to come -- federally as well as on a state level. For a fuller overview of the Queensland election, see next week's Green Left Weekly.
Meanwhile, SA held its own, and experienced a modest swing in its favor in the three seats it contested. In South Brisbane, with around 70 per cent of the vote counted on Saturday night, our candidate Liam Flenady had gained 2 per cent. This compares with a final vote for Sam Watson, our candidate in the 2009 state election in the same seat of 1.5 per cent.
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No more corporate tax cuts!
Spend the money on public services and a real investment in a sustainable future instead
Socialist Alliance statement, March 15, 2012
Billions of dollars — desperately needed for public health, education, transport, closing the shameful gap between Aborigines and non-Aborigines and a real response to the climate change crisis — will be wasted if the Gillard Labor government hands out another 1% cut in the corporate tax rate.
Successive federal governments, beginning with Labor, reduced corporate tax rate from 49% (as it was until 1988) to a low 30%. Now another labor government wants to reduce it to 29%. On top of this the richest individuals have been given additional tax cuts.
The latest 1% cut will mean that the company tax has been reduced 20 percentage points over the last two and a half decades. The latest 1% cut will cost the public an estimated $1.6 billion a year. Do the maths yourself and calculate how much has been handed over to the corporations. (It’s hundreds of billion of dollars wasted over 25 years.)
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Troops out of Afghanistan now!
Make the Kandahar massacre a tipping point
Socialist Alliance statement March 13, 2012
The 1968 My Lai massacre of at least 500 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam was a turning point in the US war on Vietnam. Most of the victims of the US platoon outrage were women, children (including babies) and elderly people.
It wasn’t until the following year when investigative journalist Seymour Herch broke the news of this until-then-hidden atrocity that it became one of the tipping points in finally ending the US-led war on the Vietnamese people.
Fast forward to the March 11, 2012 massacre in the Alkozai village of Panjwayi district in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan where at least 16 people – mainly women and children – were shot and burned in their beds by at least one US special forces soldier assigned to “village stability operation”.
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Women must still struggle for real equality
Socialist Alliance statement, 8 March, 2012
This International Women’s Day, on March 8, falls at a time when the environmental and economic crises of global capitalism are making life even harder for most women and the communities they live and work in.
Capitalism’s crisis is hitting hard in the US and across Europe. It is particularly dire in Greece where school teachers and other essential service workers are being thrown out of work or being forced to take pay cuts of between 40-50%. Working class women are being hit especially hard.
The European-wide austerity drive of the 1% is designed to get the 99% to pay for their greed. However, as the huge protests by workers, students and the unemployed in Greece and across Europe reveal, the 99% is not giving in without a fight.
These mobilisations represent the continuity between the struggles of today and those of the early 20th century — struggles that gave rise to International Women’s Day 101 years ago.
Horrendous working conditions faced by women entering the workforce before and during World War I gave rise to militancy among women workers determined to struggle for an end to gender segregation, for better conditions and equal pay. A century later, these remain critical concerns for the majority of women across the world and in Australia.
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Union and Community Action Needed to Fight O'Farrell's IR Attacks
29 February, 2012
The NSW Socialist Alliance condemns the latest step in the attacks on NSW public sector workers and their unions, announced by Premier Barry O'Farrell on February 23.
O'Farrell used question time to announce that he intends to introduce a Bill to NSW Parliament on March 6 which will increase penalties for industrial action in defiance of IRC orders, or 'wildcat strikes'.
The penalties will rise from $10,000 per day for a first "offence" to $110,000 per day. The new penalty for a "repeat offence" would be $220,000 per day!
While details are still vague, it is clear from O'Farrell's comments in parliament that the Bill is clearly aimed at curbing the fightback by public sector unions against the coalition government's attacks on NSW teachers, nurses, firefighters, and public service employees.
As part of his IR Bill, O'Farrell intends to change the law to allow the State government to sack public servants who are currently designated as surplus to requirement, but who are filling temporary positions across the NSW public service, while awaiting permanent roles.
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Qld election: Former ALP candidate Jason Briskey to run for Socialist Alliance in Dalrymple
MEDIA RELEASE: Embargo February 24, 2012
Former Labor Party candidate Jason Briskey has been endorsed to run for Socialist Alliance in the northern Queensland seat of Dalrymple.
Briskey, 28, a devoted sole parent to daughter Shakira, 9, works at RB Communications in the main street of Charters Towers.
A long-term Charters Towers resident, Jason's family has had strong ties with the area for more than 90 years. Jason is a committed worker for his local community.
Jason has a strong political background. Having been involved in every state and federal election since the age of 14, Jason has been an ALP branch president and the ALP candidate for the area in the last state election. Jason has also attended state conferences and youth parliament. More

Jobless need a living wage not just a $50 rise to the dole
Socialist Alliance statement February 23, 2012
"The Socialist Alliance calls for the Newstart Allowance to be immediately raised to the level of the aged pension and then both benefits should be raised to the level of a living wage automatically indexed to real cost-of-living rises."
The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) is running a campaign to raise by $50 a week the pittance that the unemployed are expected to live on through the $243/week Newstart Allowance.
But an extra $50 won't even bring the 600,000 Newstart recipients above the official poverty line!>
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NSW electoral funding reforms favour the wealthy 1%
NSW Socialist Alliance statement, 18 February 2012
The NSW Socialist Alliance condemns the latest state electoral funding reform bill as a direct attack on democratic rights and collective organising in this state.
In what is already an inherently undemocratic electoral system, the Liberal party bill (which passed through NSW parliament with the support of the Greens on February 16) does nothing to 'level the playing field’ but instead serves to further tips the scales in favour of the wealthy 1%.
Under the new funding laws, organisations such as community groups and trade unions are banned from donating to political parties, while severe and anti-democratic restrictions are imposed on their right to run political campaigns.
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Nationalise the car industry!
Labor & Liberals protecting profits not jobs
Re-tool the car industry for public transport vehicles and renewable energy
Socialist Alliance statement, February 11, 2012
Ford and Holden have recently announced hundreds more job cuts which in turn put at risk the jobs of workers in the components industry. They argue that due to declining international confidence and consumer demand, workers in the industry should bear the risk and sacrifice while industry bosses and shareholders are protected.
When Ford and Toyota CEOs shamelessly put their hands out for more government subsidies to shore up their profits this was not in return for guarantees to save jobs. Yet the federal government was happy to pitch in, and federal manufacturing minister Kim Carr defended this by saying that the government gets a good bang for its buck. But car industry workers are being left high and dry.
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Syria needs solidarity not Western intervention!
Socialist Alliance statement, February 9, 2012
Socialist Alliance supports, and expresses its full solidarity with, the Syrian people’s democratic uprising against the tyrant Bashar al-Assad.
We also condemn the interference by Western imperialist powers and the threats of military intervention. Further, we call on the Australian government to extract itself from the US alliance and its involvement in aggressive multinational military operations.
The death toll in Syria is now more than 6000. We condemn the Syrian government’s military repression of protests and Assad’s refusal to yield to the wishes of the Syrian people to step down. We also condemn the four decades of repressive rule by Assad and, before him, his father Hefaz al-Assad.
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Left-Green unity is an objective necessity
By Peter Boyle
Rupert Murdoch’s flagship newspaper, The Australian, has been on a campaign to destroy the Greens because it is a major – and growing – electoral break from the “Lib-Lab”, two-parties-for-capitalism, system that has dominated politics in this country for more than a century. In the last two weeks this campaign has hyped into McCarthyite Cold War hysteria.
Lurid headlines like “Secret past of Greens senator Lee Rhiannon”, “Rhiannon’s secret rendezvous with ‘agent-running KGB officers’” and “NSW Greens ‘riven by branch warfare’” sought to vilify progressive Greens MPs.
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Sam Watson: Racist hysteria shows Tent Embassy still 'deadly relevant'
Media statement: February 2, 2012
“The racist hysteria about the Aboriginal Tent Embassy protests against PM Julia Gillard and Opposition leader Tony Abbott on January 26, prove that the Tent Embassy is as relevant as it was in 1972 when it was established, said Sam Watson, the Socialist Alliance national spokesperson on Aboriginal affairs.
Sam Watson, a respected Murri activist, filmmaker and playwright, participated in the 1972 Tent Embassy protest and was in Canberra with about 2000 Aboriginal people and their supporters for the 40th anniversary march and corroborree.
“Abbott's racist and ignorant statement that the Embassy was no longer relevant provoked an angry but non-violent protest at Canberra function attended by Abbott and Gillard just 100 metres from our gathering.
“Aboriginal people got good reason to be angry today. We still face deadly racism in this country that was stolen from us, as the statistics show."
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Qld election: socialist candidates call for radical change
By Jim McIlroy, Brisbane
Following Queensland Labor Premier Anna Bligh’s announcement that a state election would take place on March 24, the two Socialist Alliance candidates issued an initial joint statement.
Mike Crook, who will contest the seat of Sandgate, and Liam Flenady, who will stand in South Brisbane said on January 27: “The major parties in the upcoming Queensland election stand for the neoliberal status quo. What the people really need is a radical transformation of the system.”
After an almost unbroken reign of 22 years, the Queensland ALP appears to be facing an electoral rout in the coming poll. The latest opinion poll, released in the January 27 Courier-Mail, shows Labor making up some ground, but still trailing the Liberal-National Party (LNP) by 59 to 41 percent on a two-party preferred basis.
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Alliance to hold public consultations on socialism in the 21st century

SYDNEY - The 8th national conference of the Socialist Alliance in Australia decided to take a draft document entitled “Towards a socialist Australia” through a nation-wide public discussion and consultation process to promote a wide discussion about socialism in the 21st century.
This was part of the Alliance's response to its assessment that in addition to the challenge for socialists today to immerse themselves in the new wave of struggles that have and are erupting, it is equally important challenge for socialists is to take full advantage of the expanded political opening created by this new wave of popular anti-capitalist sentiment and mobilisation to win many more people to socialism.
“The global capitalist economic and environmental crises and the now global Occupy movement have opened a big public discussion about alternatives to capitalism,” said Susan Price, newly elected national co-convenor of the Socialist Alliance.
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Greetings to 8th national conference of Socialist Alliance
Greetings were received in person from Patrice Nyembo, President of the Congolese Community of Australia, Hom from the Nepalese People's Progressive Forum, Victor-Hugo Munoz from the Latin America Social Forum and from NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge.
Shoebridge's appearance at the conference has since become the subject of muckraking and red-baiting by Rupert Murdoch's The Australian newspaper which is trying to sow abd amplify left-right divisions within the Greens.
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Reviewing a year of struggle
Saturday, January 14, 2012
By Paul Benedek
The global economic meltdown is yet to hit Australia hard, but 2011 was still a busy year of struggle in this relatively sheltered, wealthy country.
The year began with an Australian citizen on the global centre stage. WikiLeaks cables embarrassed governments worldwide, revealing war crimes and treachery, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested without charge. He was detained for all of last year. His supporters fear he will be extradited to the US, where conservatives have openly called for his assassination.
The federal government joined the attacks on Assange, but public sentiment has been overwhelmingly on Assange and WikiLeaks’ side.
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Socialist Alliance members prepare for 8th national conference
January 11, 2012
By Peter Boyle, Socialist Alliance National Convenor
After an intense year of political activity in 2011, Socialist Alliance members have been preparing for the organisation's 8th national conference which will be held in Sydney January 20-22.
Delegates are being elected from branches and already 10 volumes of Alliance Voices, the public discussion bulletin have been filled with discussion about our political work, proposed resolutions, policy amendments and documents for the conference. More volumes will probably be produced between now and the conference.
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US bases in Australia a setback for peace
November 30, 2011
By Tony Iltis
The increased US military presence in Australia, announced by PM Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama during Obama’s November 16-17 visit, is a setback for peace. Australia should be closing existing US military bases in Australia and put an end to existing joint military exercises with US forces.
Australia should stop taking part in US-led military aggression. In particular, it should withdraw Australian soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq.
The new Australia-US deal will allow for 250 US marines to be stationed in Darwin next year, increasing to 2500 by 2016. There will be increased US military ship visits to Darwin and other ports in northern Australia. There will be more US warplanes, including B-52 bombers, based in Darwin. More joint US-Australian military exercises will take place on Australian soil.
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‘Intervention mark II’ a new whitewash
The Socialist Alliance released the statement below on November 25.
* * *
The federal government, through its “Stronger Futures” bill and associated legislation, seeks to lock in “intervention mark II” — for 10 years.
Far from being the end of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (as the NT intervention legislation, due to expire in June next year, is officially known), the government plans to force paternalistic, controlling and assimilationist policies on to NT Aboriginal people for a decade — twice as long as the original intervention introduced by the Howard Coalition government in 2007.
Again and again the Labor government is whitewashing Aboriginal voices, riding roughshod over communities and ignoring evidence.
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Isolate Egyptian military regime! Power to the people!
Socialist Alliance media release
Thursday November 24, 2011
"The Australian government should come out and support the Egyptian people in their demand that the Egyptian Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) return the government to the people who successfully ousted the former dictator Hosni Murbarak in February this year," Socialist Alliance national convenor Peter Boyle said today.
"PM Julia Gillard and Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd should condemn the bloody crackdown by the Egyptian military regime, and support the protestors’ call for genuine democratic change including the immediate resignation of Field Marshall Tantawi, the head of SCAF.
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Socialist Alliance condemns PM Gillard's backflip on sale of uranium to India
Calls for closure of all uranium mines and total end to uranium exports Media release November 16, 2011
"PM Julia Gillard's policy backflip on the sale of uranium to India, a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), is yet another sorry betrayal of ALP policy on the mining and export of uranium," said Socialist Alliance National Convenor Peter Boyle today.
"This will become yet another reactionary bi-partisan policy, in a parliament dominated by two big parties for the corporate rich.
"It also exposes Gillard's talk of supporting reform and democratisation the ALP as a lie."
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Reject Baillieu government’s bullying tactic
Support nurses, teachers, state public sector workers
Before Ted Baillieu’s Coalition state government was elected, Baillieu made many promises – that he would not do anything extreme like the previous Kennett government of the 1990s, he would make Victorian teachers the best paid in Australia and that he would maintain the nurse-patient ratios that the Australian Nursing Federation had won through hard battles.
Many workers voted for Baillieu government in disgust at the pro-corporate agenda of the Brumby Labor government, only to find that the Baillieu government has a similar pro-corporate agenda.
What has been Baillieu’s record?
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How to overcome the power of the 1%
Sunday, November 13, 2011
By Dave Holmes
The global Occupy movement has focused the spotlight on the 1% versus the 99%. Who are the 1%? In the United States, the 400 richest individuals have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million. A similar picture applies in all the large capitalist countries.
Economy owned by the 1%
The source of their power derives from their ownership and control of society’s economic infrastructure. A relative handful of people own the means of production, distribution and exchange. They own the corporations that own the mines, factories, banks, transport networks, supermarket chains, media empires, and so on.
This is monopoly capitalism. Each sector of the economy is dominated by a few giant corporations. They are continually engaged in ruthless competition — against each other and against their workforces.
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Time to put Qantas back in public hands
Saturday, November 5, 2011
By Sam Wainwright
If you speak out against the widening gap between wages and CEOs’ salaries, the corporate media will accuse you of stoking the “politics of envy”. Workers who dare take industrial action to get a few more crumbs from the bosses’ table are cast as class war dinosaurs.
The Occupy protesters? We’re told they are naive rebels without a clue. But the Qantas lock-out proves otherwise.
Along with lots of guff about how Labor’s “Fair Work” laws “swung the balance too far” in workers’ favour, the corporate elite have been falling over themselves to sympathise with poor Qantas CEO Alan Joyce who, with a $2 million pay rise in his back pocket, had “no choice” but to lock out his entire workforce.
The pilots had worn special neckties, the engineers imposed work bans, and ground staff struck for just eight hours in eight months. Pretty mild stuff.
If that’s going too far then you get a pretty clear picture of just how much bargaining power these employers think you deserve: zero.
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People power is key to our future
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Socialist Alliance national convenor Peter Boyle gave the speech below at the recent Climate Change Social Change activist conference, held in Melbourne over September 30 to October 3.
* * *
The idea of this session follows on from something Ian Angus mentioned this morning, where he said there are two things we should be going for in building a revolutionary ecosocialist movement — a movement to transform this society in a fundamental way.
He said we have to respect the best possible science and we have to learn from experience. I thought this was quite a profound statement because it sums up a non-dogmatic, practical and collaborative approach to building the kind of organisations and alliances that are necessary to transform society.
We hoped this session would be part of the sharing. Of course, the whole conference is this sharing — a sharing of experiences between representatives of a number of projects to build such a movement for change in a number of countries.
Groups that have been working together, collaborating, sharing experiences and staying in touch over a number of years. So it’s an ongoing conversation that we want to have in front of everybody and with the participation of everybody here.
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Socialist Alliance condemns violent police attacks on Melbourne and Sydney occupations
Date: October 23, 2011
Socialist Alliance condemns the violent police dispersal of peaceful protesters at Occupy Melbourne (October 21) and Occupy Sydney (dawn, October 23) and pledges its full support for the re-establishment of these occupations against the tyranny of the world's richest 1%.
The experience around the world has been whenever one of these Occupy movement camps has been attacked, even more people have rallied to support them in response. We are confident the same will happen here.
We call on all people who share the Occupy movement's rejection of the gross injustices and global ecological vandalism being carried out around the world to make the richest 1% even richer to join the occupations and lend all possible solidarity and assistance to their re-establishment.
Occupy Melbourne and Occupy Sydney will be back stronger because the 1% and their enforcers cannot arrest the truth. They cannot handcuff ideas. They cannot beat the people's spirit of resistance or throw it into a paddy wagon.
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Occupy to put human need before corporate greed
The Socialist Alliance released the following statement on October 14, 2011.
The Occupy Wall Street protest started small. But it has now become a global movement, with occupy events planned in about 1500 cities worldwide.
It’s born out of the recognition that, in country after country, ordinary people are being made to pay for an economic crisis caused by the super-rich. The 99% are being told they must surrender their livelihoods, their future, their security and their dignity to keep a broken system afloat.
In contrast, the 1% are having a wonderful crisis. The world’s biggest corporations have emerged stronger, more profitable and more powerful than ever before.
To add insult to injury, the 1% want to convince us that we, the 99%, are to blame for the crisis. They say our wages are too high and that we don’t work hard enough. They say our social security systems are not affordable and that our rights at work are should be done away with. They say our public education and health systems are not efficient and that our public services must be privatised.
The occupy movement is raising a challenge to the power of the 1%. Its strength lies in its diversity, breadth, unity and grassroots democracy.
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Climate change social change conference attracts hundreds
Saturday, October 8, 2011
By Viv Miley
More than 500 people gathered in Melbourne over September 30 to October 3 to take part in four days of stimulating talks and discussion at the second Climate Change Social Change conference. The conference, which featured five plenary sessions, 39 workshops and more than 90 speakers, was organised by Green Left Weekly, Socialist Alliance and Resistance.
The conference brought together activists, academics and unionists from Australia, Asia, North America and the Pacific to share ideas and experiences from the movements for indigenous sovereignty, against environmental destruction, for women's rights, for queer rights, for peace, social justice and workers’ rights.
The conference opened with a September 30 public meeting. More than 360 people crowded into the Carrillo Gantner theatre at the University of Melbourne to see the opening presentation by US author and academic John Bellamy Foster. His talk was titled “Capitalism and the Accumulation of Catastrophe”.
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'Anti-Semitism' slander ridiculous
Sunday, September 25, 2011
By Tony Iltis
Green Left Weekly, Socialist Alliance, and other left-wing groups have received more attention than normal in recent weeks in the mainstream media and even in state and federal parliamentary debates.
This attention has mainly been in response to the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid and has mostly consisted of nasty allegations of anti-Semitism, with endless colourful references to Hitler and the Nazi’s Holocaust.
There is nothing new in opponents of Israel being slandered as anti-Semites. Since its foundation, Israel has claimed to be the state for all Jews and dismissed any opposition as Jew-hatred.
The recent attacks on the left and the BDS movement in Australia are part of a broader campaign by the Coalition and the Murdoch media aimed at smearing and dividing the Greens.
Misuse of the term “anti-Semitism” is getting ridiculous, and not just in Australia.
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Letter to Pakistan High Commissioner for Australia re Baba Jan and political prisoners
September 22, 2011
Dear Mr Abdul Malik Abdullah,
We are writing to ask for your urgent intervention with the government of Pakistan to secure the release of Mr Baba Jan and five other political prisoners currently detained in the region of Gilgit-Baltistan. Mr Baba Jan is a leader of both the highly respected Labour Party Pakistan and the Progressive Youth Front in the region.
During a peaceful demonstration on August 11 by local residents of Gilgit-Baltistan demanding the payment of compensation allowances due to them following the devastating flood and landslide in the valley of Hunza on July 4, 2010, the police opened fired on the protesters, killing Afzal Baig (22 years old), then his father, Sher Ullah Baig (50 years old) who was trying to protect him. The following day, the population of Aliabad and other localities of Hunza rose up, clashing with the police. On August 19, in an attempt to silence the protesters and conceal these murders from public view, 36 people were picked up by police, then another 33 were picked up on September 16.
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Labor and Coalition unite to destroy refugee rights
Saturday, September 17, 2011
By Jay Fletcher
Now that the Labor government has almost entirely reneged on its 2007 election promise to end Australia’s sickening abuse of refugees, the two big parties are united on an issue they have so vehemently pretended to disagree.
Unhappy with the High Court’s interpretation of the law — that Australia must uphold fundamental human rights when making policies on refugees, and that deporting them to a country that does not have such rights violates the law — the Labor government is cajoling the opposition to agree to water down Australia’s refugee protections.
The proposed changes would make expelling refugees to other countries, opening offshore detention camps and turning boats around lawful under Australian law.
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Liberals attack workers' rights, public services
Saturday, September 3, 2011
By Susan Price, Sydney
The day after the Barry O’Farrell Coalition government was elected in NSW in March, NSW Business Chamber CEO Stephen Cartwright said he wanted action in the first 100 days of the new government.
He said business wanted O’Farrell to cut government spending, sign up to the weaker federal occupational health and safety laws (OH&S), appoint a Small Business Commissioner, establish Infrastructure NSW, and produce the first report card on the progress of the Pacific Highway upgrade.
These priorities reflected the chamber’s "10 Big Ideas to Grow NSW", which was released in June last year.
Well, the NSW Business Chamber got its wish and then some.
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