Mel Barnes, candidate for Denison

The candidates that the Socialist Alliance is fielding in the coming federal election are just a small selection of the committed socialist activists urgently needed to build a new social movement for real change. There are many more such people out there - people who are already helping transform the unjust and unsustainable society we now are forced to live in – and only some of them are in the Socialist Alliance. We are working to unite all the social activists who are critical to mobilising the people's power that is required to wrest society away from the corporate rich.

We will direct our our first preferences to the Greens as a general rule and, though we don't think that the Labor party is much better, we will preference Labor ahead of the Liberal-National Coalition and other right-wing parties.

Melanie Barnes is a 26-year-old climate change activist who has been working for an environmental NGO. She has a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Indonesian and political science from the University of Queensland. She is the Hobart organiser of the socialist youth group Resistance. She has also studied in Indonesia and represented Tasmania in an educational solidarity tour of Venezuela. She has also been a leader of Students Against the Pulp Mill protests, Walk Against Warming actions, as well as anti-war, refugee, education and women’s rights campaigns.

"'Capitalism' and 'sustainability' are mutually exclusive concepts. Only socialism is sustainable. But it is necessary to stop the destruction of our world now, as a matter of urgency.

“Socialist Alliance calls for an end to logging in old growth forests and an end to clearfelling in all other native forests. We should ban the export of woodchips from native forests.

“We stand for a publicly owned timber industry based on sustainable plantations with access to specialty timbers ensured for crafts people (subject to ecological considerations). We should replant forests in dry-land and other salt-affected regions.

“We need to build a political alternative so that change can happen. In Tasmania we have so much potential to be able to deliver the things people really need and care about – a healthy environment, fulfilling jobs, community democracy and good healthcare and housing. But we need accountable people's politicians who are community activists who will put these issues ahead of big business interests.”

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