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Socialist Alliance 2013 federal election campaign
Take back the wealth!
Put the mines, banks and energy companies in the hands of the people!
Socialist Alliance says:
Bring the mining industry, the big banks and the energy companies under public/community ownership and control, so that they can be run in a way that respects Aboriginal rights, the environment and social justice.
The urgent need to address climate change alone demands that these industries be immediately taken out of the hands of the billionaires and their global corporations and operated as not-for-profit public services under the democratic control of the majority.
From Greece to Australia, the whole world has witnessed the moral bankruptcy of capitalism as it has destroyed the lives of billions of people through the wholesale privatisation of our collective wealth and socialisation of their losses.
We cannot afford to leave our future to the likes of Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and the faceless bankers. If we do so, we won’t have a future worth leaving to future generations.
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Public education needs full funding
Saturday, May 25, 2013
This statement was released by Socialist Alliance on May 25.
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The Gonski review into school funding showed the need for an immediate injection of funds into public schools.
The independent Gonski review into school funding reaffirms what many teachers and parents already knew. Current school funding arrangements are dysfunctional and inequitable. The failure to reform the way we resource our public schools has come at a big social and economic cost.
Gonski’s recommendations are far from perfect — it recommends continued public funding of elite private schools.
But they do highlight the need for an immediate injection of funds into public schools.
Decades of underfunding
For decades, public schools have been denied the resources they require to ensure high-quality education for every child. The Gonski review has provided an opportunity to redress some of these inequities and better meet the needs of the most disadvantaged students in our communities.
There is also an urgent need for an extra investment in special education and in public school buildings and facilities.
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Nationalise Ford plants to save jobs!
Re-tool the car industry for public transport vehicles and renewable energy
Socialist Alliance media statement by Sue Bull, May 23, 2013
Ford's announcement that it will close its last vehicle manufacturing plants in Australia - in Geelong and Broadmeadows - destroying the jobs of 1,200, is "totally despicable", said Sue Bull, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Corio.
"It is especially despicable as this giant multinational has collected huge public subsidies year after year - supposedly to save jobs".
"The Australian people have been played for suckers," said Bull, a long-time, Geelong-resident, socialist and trade union activist who won 10,000 votes when she ran for Geelong Mayor last year.
"Socialist Alliance says enough of this billion-dollar racket!
"The remaining Ford plants should be immediately nationalised and the industry re-tooled to manufacture public transport vehicles, electric cars and infrastructure for a rapid shift to renewable energy.
"And the federal government should probably anticipate and pre-empt a similar move by GMH and Toyota.
"Workers in the car industry have the skills and expertise in logistics, production engineering, designing for production and quality control that could be applied to production which helps us break from a fossil fuel dependent economy. This is urgently needed to address the climate change crisis.
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Equal marriage rights: Tell the PM to say: ‘I’ll do it’
Socialist Alliance media release May 23, 2013
“The Gillard government should quit stalling. ALP MPs should vote en bloc for the Greens MP Adam Bandt’s equal marriage rights bill on June 6”, said Peter Boyle, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Sydney.
Boyle is a long term campaigner – having radicalised around issues of war, racism and class as a migrant to Australia in the 1970s.
“I don’t believe that it is at all fair for the ALP to have a policy that allows its MPs a ‘conscience’ vote. Equal rights – in this case the right to get married – should not be left to the individual 'conscience' of Labor MPs. “While equal marriage rights are denied to a section of Australians, bigotry and discrimination continues – as we hear again from the Christian lobby in response to Kevin Rudd’s conclusions.
“While this discrimination continues, and the stigma remains, youth are particularly vulnerable. Australia has one of the highest suicide rates among youth, and social inclusion – or exclusion – is a powerful factor driving youth depression.
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Long live May Day! Workers of the world unite!
May Day message from the Socialist Alliance, 1 May 2013
As workers around the world take to the streets to celebrate May Day, we are sharply aware that the capitalist system has reached a point of development where it threatens the habitability of the planet on which we all live.
Last month, for the first time in three million years, the carbon concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere reached 399.7 parts per million (ppm) at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. In several other parts of the world that day, the reading exceeded 400 ppm.
When CO2 concentrations were last above 400 ppm it was the Pliocene era, when temperatures were 3-4 degrees and sea levels were 5-40 metres higher than they are today. Capitalism is throwing our planet into dangerous climate change.
Sadly this is no surprise. Capitalism has already devastated the lives of billions of people through exploitation, war and poverty.
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Socialist Alliance campaign inspired by Venezuela's example
Speech by Peter Boyle, Socialist Alliance candidate for Sydney, at Sydney Town Hall Square emergency rally on April 19 Global Day of Solidarity with Venezuela.
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Sadly, we have been witnessing over the last few days a course of events that has been all too familiar in our time, especially in Latin America.
The world's richest state, the one that has just 5% of the population but consumes 25% of the world's fossil fuels, produces 72% of the world's waste and accounts for nearly half of the world's military spending - yes that state! - conspires to destabilise a democratically elected progressive government through violent means.
Revolutionary Venezuela, which has been and inspiration to billions around the world, now faces a new wave of US-sponsored violence and destabilisation following the victory of Nicolas Maduro in the presdiential elections forced by the death of the immensely popular socialist President Hugo Chavez.
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Conference builds hope for united socialist left
Saturday, April 6, 2013
By Peter Boyle
The overwhelming majority of the 1140 people who attended some part of the Marxism 2013 conference would have agreed with Socialist Alternative national executive member Vashti Kenway at the opening session: “I am feeling extremely hopeful of developments here in the left in Australia.”
The hopes for closer unity of the revolutionary left infused the conference with excitement in the wake of the March 28 merger of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and Socialist Alternative and the participation in and endorsement of the conference by the Socialist Alliance and Green Left Weekly.
What is now ahead is a serious attempt to try to unite the Socialist Alternative and the Socialist Alliance, the two biggest groups on the revolutionary left in Australia.
If the two groups can unite in a way that builds on each others’ strengths while establishing the democratic conditions for the two groups to enrich each others’ political understanding, political culture and political practice, there will be a significant advance for the socialist cause in Australia.
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A salute to Bernie Rosen (1924-2013)
Speech for the funeral of Bernie Rosen by Peter Boyle, national co-convenor Socialist Alliance (April 5, 2013).
Bernie Rosen really was a man for the people.
He battled for the rights of the exploited and oppressed ever since he was a teenager before WWII and then right to the very end of his life last week.
I am deeply touched and honoured that Bernie requested in his Will that Raul Bassi and myself, two of his comrades in the Socialist Alliance, say a few words at his funeral.
I have a collection of letters from Bernie, each in his increasingly spindly handwriting and each packed in a little envelope. Every letter is an encouragement to his comrades to carry on the struggle and advice on how we should do so.
In particular, Bernie kept reminding us about the importance of patient work in our local communities and about the importance of addressing the urgent bread and butter issues facing the ordinary folk: health, education, housing and so on.
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Socialist Alliance pre-selects Peter Boyle for federal seat of Sydney
By Pip Hinman, Sydney
“While ALP politicians are fleeing in terror from factional and media accusations about using ‘class war rhetoric’, the reality is that there is an ongoing class war that is about to be dramatically escalated if Abbott wins the September 14 elections”, said Peter Boyle.
Boyle was preselected on April 3 by the Socialist Alliance to run in the federal seat of Sydney. He’s a national co-convenor of the Socialist Alliance and has been an active socialist in the early 1970s, becoming radicalised around war, race and class issues. He has two daughters and two grand children.
“The class war isn’t some left-wing ideological invention. It is simply a reality. A small group of extremely wealthy and powerful people run this country and they are determined to squeeze even more sacrifices out of the majority in order to keep increasing their profits”, Boyle told Green Left Weekly.
“There is a class war but today but only one side is on the offensive: the rich and powerful 1% against the 99%.
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Left unity now more urgent than before
March 23, 2013
By Peter Boyle
The abortive leadership spill in the Labor party on March 22 was yet another demonstration of its total political bankruptcy.
Kevin Rudd's leadership ambitions may now be in the dustbin of history but Prime Minister Julia Gillard has won a pyrrhic victory.
The public watched this gross display of principle-free power play in disgust. It seemed to make a government led by Liberal leader Tony Abbott a virtual certainty.
If Labor had changed its leadership, perhaps it would have enjoyed a bounce in the polls. But nothing would have really changed. Australia would still have a Labor government with the same conservative, neoliberal, pro-imperialist, pro-war, racist and sole parent-bashing policies.
Even with an electron microscope, you would be hard pressed to find a sliver of political difference between the Gillard and Rudd camps.
The only ruling political "principle" in the Labor party is self-interest, as the NSW Labor Right's Eddie Obeid coolly admitted in the ongoing corruption inquiry into his family’s dodgy dealings.
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Still to be fought for: Equality, justice and freedom from violence for women
International Women's Day 2013 statement by Socialist Alliance
Friday, March 8, 2013
The demands of the first-ever International Women's Day Rally in Australia, in 1928, were: equal pay for equal work, an 8-hour day for shop assistants, the basic wage for the unemployed and annual holidays on full pay.
A lot has been won through struggle since 1928 yet women in Australia today still have to struggle some of these issues:
* The average pay gap between women and men is 17.5% (worse than it was in 1984) on average full-time earnings but is greater in different sectors. For example, in the finance industry (where many women work) the gap is 32.7%! Women still work in jobs that underpay and undervalue their work and make up the vast majority of workers with few conditions and little job security.
* After a strong Equal Pay campaign of mass action led by the Australia Services Union, last year Fair Work Australia awarded pay rises of 19-41% to 150,000 mostly female workers in the social and community services sector. However, state and federal governments have yet to provide full funding for these pay increases.
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Hugo Chávez Frías – visionary, fighter, compañero
Statement of the Socialist Alliance (Australia)
March 5, 2013
The Socialist Alliance in Australia expresses its deepest sympathies with the people and government of Venezuela on the death of Compañero Hugo Chávez Frías on March 5. His passing is a huge loss for all peoples, across Latin America and the globe, struggling for a world free of inequality, exploitation and oppression.
It is testament to Hugo Chávez’s great leadership that, while mourning his death, we are also confident that the Bolivarian revolution and the new movement for socialism of the 21st century that Chávez inspired will be continued by the mass of people, to whom he worked so hard to give power.
Hugo Chávez emphasised repeatedly that the people, not he himself, were the motor force of revolution. But his visionary leadership, and his uncompromising battle for the fundamental social transformation that is needed to save humanity and the planet was history changing, and inspired millions of people in their day to day struggles for justice, peace and freedom.
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Why overseas workers deserve rights – not 457 visas
Saturday, March 2, 2013
By Susan Price
The federal government said on February 23 it would introduce several changes to the 457 temporary visa program, to take effect from July. The proposals were applauded by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and criticised by big business.
The 457 visa system is a highly exploitative, insecure and discriminatory visa system, originally introduced under the former John Howard government. Once elected, the ALP kept the visa class in place as a favour to big business, tinkering with it rather than abolishing it in favour of strengthening permanent skilled migration.
Jennifer Westacott, chief executive of the Business Council of Australia, challenged the government's decision, asking for proof that the scheme needed reform. Innes Willox, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group said that the changes will make it tougher for employers.
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Death on Grocon site – industrial manslaughter laws needed says socialist councillor
Statement by Sue Bolton, Socialist Alliance
Moreland City Councillor
Experienced crane driver and union activist Billy Ramsay was killed on the Grocon construction site in central Melbourne on February 18. This news was buried many pages inside the Murdoch-owned Herald Sun daily tabloid.
There has been no investigation by the Herald Sun into the dangerous state of the Grocon site. And yet, in August and September 2012, the Herald Sun ran daily front cover stories for at least a week with screaming headlines describing construction workers and their union, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union as "bullies" and "thugs".
This was because the CFMEU organised a 16-day demonstration by building workers outside the site (see picture) to protest Grocon's practice of the company picking the health and safety reps and union reps. The fact that the union and the workers weren't able to pick their own reps, has made it easier for Grocon to operate its sites with terrible health and safety issues.
Grocon workers report that anyone who raises a health and safety issue on site gets stood over and bullied.
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Unifying conference sets plans for 2013
Sunday, January 27, 2013
By Susan Price
The ninth National Conference of the Socialist Alliance was held in Geelong over January 18-20. More than 150 people took part in the conference, including Hashim bin Rashid representing the newly formed united party of the left in Pakistan, the Awami Workers Party.
The conference was opened by local Wathaurong elder David Tournier, who welcomed delegates to country, and by Tim Gooden, Geelong Trades Hall Secretary, and was followed by educational workshops and talks, covering a range of topics from imperialism to a Marxist understanding of women's oppression, race and class, economics, the transitional method, and challenges in building a party of the revolutionary class.
Over the next two days, delegates discussed international and domestic politics and campaigns, Socialist Alliance's plans for this year's federal election, reflected on the achievements and challenges in building the Socialist Alliance today and the prospects for greater unity of the left in Australia.
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Reverse the attacks on sole parent benefits
Saturday, January 12, 2013
By Sue Bolton
Australia became one of the first countries in the world to introduce a single mothers’ benefit in 1973. This was extended to single fathers in 1977. The single mothers’ benefit was an important reform, helping many women escape from difficult or violent relationships and reducing poverty among children.
However, since neoliberal economic policy became the new “normal” in the 1980s, both the Liberal and Labor parties have made it increasingly difficult for people to receive welfare payments, have deliberately kept payments below a liveable amount and have increased the number of people excluded from benefits and pensions.
The sole parent pension used to be paid to sole parents until their youngest child turned 16. The John Howard Coalition government changed this so that new applicants on sole parents payments would be paid only until the youngest child turned eight.
The Julia Gillard Labor government has now extended this to include existing sole parents who receive the parenting payment, so that they too are forced onto the lower Newstart Allowance when their children reach the age of eight.
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No to sexual assault!
Socialist Alliance statement in solidarity with the international movement against violence against women
January 4, 2013

The Socialist Alliance stands in solidarity with the growing movement in India fighting violence against women. Progressive forces in that country have braved police brutality and repression, mobilising massive turnouts at protests against gender violence.
The wave of protests was sparked by the horrific rape on December 15, and the consequent death, of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi.
Indian activists report that a significant new movement against sexual violence has risen up and is putting serious pressure on the government to eliminate the institutionalised gender bias in laws and investigation mechanisms. Young and old people, women and men, who have never before participated in public protests are taking to the streets to demand gender justice.
The mass mobilisations in India’s capital, and across the country, express an outpouring of anger at the endemic and growing prevalence of sexual violence experienced by women. Since 1971, incidents of rape in India have increased by 791%, while conviction rates have dropped to a mere 27%.
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Socialist Alliance to endorse and participate in Marxism 2013
Joint statement by Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative
December 13, 2012
The National Executives of the Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative agreed on December 13 to terms under which Socialist Alliance and Green Left Weekly will endorse and participate in the Marxism 2013 conference to be held in Melbourne, March 28-April 1.
This first significant national co-operation between our two organisations is a product of discussions that began between the two organisations on November 4 to explore the possibility of closer collaboration and unity.
Socialist Alliance and Green Left Weekly will be promoting Marxism 2013 as an important opportunity for all socialists and other progressive activists and thinkers to discuss how we can advance our common cause.
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WA socialists announce candidates for campaign to nationalise mines
Monday, December 10, 2012
By Alex Bainbridge
Socialist Alliance will run three candidates in the March 9 elections in Western Australia. The main message of the campaign is that the state government should take steps to bring the big mining companies operating in the state into public ownership. This will make it possible to fund urgent social justice and environmental projects in WA.
"The mining boom has brought tremendous wealth to the Gina Rineharts of the world," Socialist Alliance candidate for Perth, Farida Iqbal, told Green Left Weekly. “But while the 1% are counting their profits, a lot of people in WA are doing it tough.
"Perth faces a rising homelessness problem and all over the state people are suffering from high rents or mortgage stress. We need more public housing and the money should come from the mining billionaires."
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How to change a destructive system
Sunday, December 9, 2012
By Sam Wainwright
Sam Wainwright is a Socialist Alliance councillor in Fremantle. Below is a talk he gave on the topic of how to achieve social change in Australia.
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It's pretty obvious for anyone that cares to look that capitalism is a socially destructive and ecologically unsustainable system.
Based on the unequal distribution of wealth, it condemns billions to living in poverty worldwide.
In more wealthy places like Australia, where workers have much higher incomes, capitalism invents products for us to spend money on just as quickly as we win a wage increase. That we have one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world is but one proof that it doesn't provide people with a meaningful existence.
Now the worsening climate crisis - caused by capitalism’s endless accumulation of profit and wealth - threatens the very basis of life on earth.
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What politics to unite Australia's left?
Saturday, December 8, 2012
By Peter Boyle
Once again the question of left unity is on the agenda in Australia. There have been exploratory talks between the Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative and also between the Socialist Alliance and the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). The Socialist Alliance and the CPA worked together in a Housing Action election ticket in the Sydney City Council elections earlier this year.
A merger process between Socialist Alternative and the Revolutionary Socialist Party is far advanced and due to be finalised by Easter. While this is minor regroupment between organisations that claim 250 and 25 members, respectively, it is the first experience of left unity by Socialist Alternative with a group coming from outside its International Socialist tradition.
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Why we should put mining in public hands
Saturday, December 8, 2012
By Graham Matthews
Where to start with an analysis of the mining boom in Australia?
Perhaps ironically, with the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). It is now holding an inquiry into the dealings of former NSW resource minister Ian Macdonald, his mate and Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid, and another mate, John Maitland, former president of the Construction, Mining, Forestry and Energy Union (CFMEU), and part owner of the new coalmine in Doyle's Creek, to the tune of $9.8 million.
In his opening address to the ICAC hearing, the counsel assisting the commission, Geoffrey Watson, compared the level of corruption to the NSW rum corps in the early 19th century.
He also said: "The people of NSW had been robbed of tens of millions of dollars, that have passed to the ownership of third parties for a comparatively trivial return, during what was supposed to be Australia's mining boom.”
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Democracy must apply to mining
Friday, November 30, 2012
By Chris Williams
The mining industry in Australia has boomed from about 4% of GDP in 2004 to about 9% today. Mining exports in the year to March last year were worth $155 billion, or 53% of Australia's total exports. Mining profits in 2009-10 amounted to $51 billion, and the estimated pre-tax profits over the next 10 years will be about $600 billion.
But who is the wealth benefiting and what are the costs of mining? And who makes the decisions about if, where and under what conditions mining takes place, and how the wealth is distributed?
The mining industry portrays itself as “important to Australia”. According to the Australian Mining website — whose members include BHP, Xstrata, Peabody and Rio Tinto — “The mining industry... supports communities all across the country, today and into the future. We work hard, we look after each other and we are committed to Australia”.
There certainly are those that benefit from the mining boom; mining workers and shareholders, for example. But for most people the benefits are less clear.
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Scrap the GST, tax the rich
Saturday, December 1, 2012
By Chris Pickering
Federal independent MPs, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, have put pressure on the Julia Gillard's government to raise the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and to slash so called “middle class welfare” entitlements.
In a November 15 article in the The Australian Financial Review, Windsor said he supports raising the GST and widening the application of the tax. Apart from raising the tax from 10% to 11%, the government’s recent GST review recommended the tax also be applied to fresh food, health and educational services.
Windsor also argued that Australia needs to cut middle-class welfare “handouts”, including the baby bonus, to get the federal budget into surplus.
The GST was first introduced by the John Howard government in 2000. It is a regressive tax, which imposes more burden (relative to resources) on the poor than on the rich. Those on fixed incomes, unemployed or living on the age pension, and those who do not pay income tax, pay the same GST rate as a billionaire.
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Gaza bombing: Australia should side with the Palestinians
By Tony Iltis
The violence currently happening in the Gaza Strip is not a war.
On the one hand there is a highly militarised state, with one of the best equipped armed forces in the world, generously subsidised by billions of dollars in Western military and non-military aid. On the other hand there are 1½ million people, subjects of this state, which has herded them into a walled ghetto on which it imposes a starvation siege.
Some Israeli government ministers been open about the reasons for the current massacres being perpetrated against civilians in Gaza by Israeli forces. “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages”, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said. Transport Minister Israel Katz called “for Gaza to be bombed so hard the population has to flee into Egypt”.
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Budget shortfall reveals system failure
Friday, November 16, 2012
By Susan Price
Reporting on the release of the mid-year budget update in the Canberra Times on October 22, Peter Martin wrote that “Tax collections from both wages and the GST are running ahead of projections. Dramatically lower company tax collections account for most of the $21 billion write-down.”
Included in that $21 billion is a revenue downgrade of $4.3 billion dollars over four years in resource rent tax from petroleum and mineral extraction from a projected $13.4 billion.
The Federal government's rationale for the expected losses is weaker corporate profits, but the full year results for the so-called “big four” banks (CBA, Westpac, ANZ and NAB) tell a different story. The Sydney Morning Herald said the combined full year cash profits of these banks has increased by 4% to $25.2 billion.
In August this year, the Commonwealth Bank reported a full-year profit of $7.09 billion. This was the largest result by a non-mining company in Australia.
Westpac held its annual general meeting on November 13. The bank's full year cash result reported a full-year profit of $5.66 billion, up 6% on last year.
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Socialist Alliance councillor condemns Israeli violence in Gaza
Moreland City Councillor Sue Bolton calls for people to attend Melbourne solidarity rally on Saturday (GPO, Bourke St, 12:30pm)
“Civilians were the overwhelming majority of the more than 1400 people Israel killed in it’s 2009 assault on Gaza. Today, Israel is beginning another assault. A quarter of the Palestinians killed so far are children, including babies,” Sue Bolton, newly elected Socialist Alliance member of the Moreland City Council said.
“But Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is already following the lead of the US and EU in condemning Palestinian armed resistance and retaliation while excusing the Israeli aggression. Contrary to media reports, no Palestinians fired rockets from Gaza this week until after Israel killed a civilian who strayed too close to the besieged territory’s border and a teenager playing football outside his home.”
Councillor Bolton was one of 16 activists acquitted by the Melbourne Magistrates Court in July after being charged for protesting outside a Max Brenner chocolate shop, calling for a boycott of the Max Brenner brand because of its links to the Israeli army. She called on people in Melbourne to attend the solidarity protest at the GPO in Bourke St at 12:30 on Saturday 17 November.
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9th national conference of Socialist Alliance
The Ninth National Conference of the Socialist Alliance will be held in Geelong (Victoria), from January 18-20, 2013. It is open to all Socialist Alliance members and invited guests.
The national conference is our highest decision-making body, and delegates are elected from each branch to participate and vote at the conference on a number of resolutions on international and Australian politics and campaigns, party building and the plans of the Socialist Alliance for the coming year. The conference also considers any proposed changes to the Constitution and elects the incoming National Executive and national office bearers.
Pre-Conference discussion
Between now and the conference, Socialist Alliance branches will be organising local pre-conference discussions and members are encouraged to read and discuss the key documents being considered by the conference, which include:
* The draft Socialist Alliance Perspectives Resolution;
* The draft document, Towards a Socialist Australia;
* Plus the range of policy submissions, amendments and proposals for the conference which will be published regularly in Alliance Voices.
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Report on discussions between Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative
Joint statement by Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative representatives
November 4, 2012
A meeting was held in Melbourne on November 4 between Peter Boyle, Sue Bolton and Susan Price (representing the leadership of Socialist Alliance) and Mick Armstrong, Sandra Bloodworth and Corey Oakley (representing the leadership of Socialist Alternative), to explore the possibility of closer collaboration and unity between the two organisations.
The meeting was comradely and constructive, and both sides agree that the basis exists to begin a process of discussion to clarify our respective political positions and engage in collaborative work, with the aim of establishing if unity is possible.
It was acknowledged that there are real political differences between the groups, both historic and to do with immediate questions of day-to-day politics and a conception of what kind of organisation the left needs. We had only the most provisional discussion of these issues, and it is clear that we are just at the start of a lengthy process of clarification.
We both consider that, in a context of global capitalist crisis and an increasing offensive by the ruling class in Australia, it is incumbent on the left to try to work towards unity where it can. Nonetheless, neither organisation wishes to rush the process. We do not want unity at any cost, but unity that will be able to take the socialist movement forward.
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