The Socialist Alliance platform

As amended by the Second National Conference of the Socialist Alliance, Melbourne, May 10-11, 2003

The Socialist Alliance stands on a platform of total opposition to the profit-driven economic rationalist agenda of social austerity, privatisation and deregulation. By empowering communities and redistributing the wealth of society we can create jobs, expand public services, and improve welfare and services.

Millions of us face declining services, transport chaos, low pay, job insecurity, homelessness, racism, sexism and environmental destruction, while the tremendous wealth of Australia is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority. Only by ending the concentration of power in the hands of that minority can the wealth that exists be used for the benefit of working people. Every major industry should be re-organised on the lines of social provision for need, publicly owned, and democratically controlled by the workers and the community.

The Socialist Alliance will stand candidates in the next federal election to give a voice to working-class struggle and highlight the need for working-class political representation. We will stand to offer an alternative that Labor is not. We recognise that on issues such as the GST, health and education, Labor is offering far less than what traditional Labor voters want. The Socialist Alliance stands in complete opposition to the racist and right-wing Pauline Hanson's One Nation party.

If elected, a Socialist Alliance candidate would reject the perks and personal pay-outs of parliamentary office and accept only the average worker’s wage. In parliament, Socialist Alliance candidates would use their position to give a voice to workers’ struggles and social movements, fight reactionary policies and promote the mass campaigns that can defeat the attacks on jobs and living standards.

A movement for change must be built by developing policies, campaigns, industrial struggles and co-operation with all workers, environmental, anti-racist, and other social movements and to put forward an alternative to corporate control of society.

A sustained mass campaign of total opposition to the ruling class offensive can bring together the forces to replace capitalism with a socialist society, based on co-operation, democracy and ecological sustainability.

SCRAP THE GST, TAX THE RICH

  • Tax the rich and slash the defence budget to fund free universal provision for health, education, and care of children, the aged and people with disabilities
  • Free tertiary education; cancel the HECS debt
  • Free quality childcare
  • Repeal the GST and introduce a highly progressive system of taxes on incomes, profits and wealth of the rich; reverse drastic reductions in business taxation of recent years
  • Free quality aged care
  • Increase social security benefits to a living wage; no work for the dole; no mutual obligation.

    • PUBLIC NEED NOT CORPORATE GREED

  • End government funding of private schools, hospitals and health insurance
  • Fund Medicare not private health funds
  • Expand public services
  • No to privatisation, keep Telstra and Centrelink under public ownership; reverse the privatisation of Qantas, the Commonwealth Bank, airports, electricity and the CES

    • FULL UNION RIGHTS

  • Every worker should have the right to join a union and oblige their employer to recognise and negotiate with the union. Unions should have the right to gain access to workplaces, to inspect company plans and books, to strike, to picket effectively, and to act in solidarity with other unions or social causes.
  • Repeal anti-union laws, the Workplace Relations Act and sections 45 D and E of the Trade Practices Act.
  • No individual contracts
  • Stop the attacks on workers compensation, increase the entitlements for injured workers

    • FIGHT CORPORATE GLOBALISATION

  • For international solidarity, to gain union rights, basic public services, and a living wage for workers around the world
  • Cancel Third World debt. Withdraw Australia from the WTO. The agents of global capitalism, the WTO, IMF and World Bank must be replaced with a global plan of economic reconstruction to end poverty
  • Promote peace and international co-operation
  • Open the borders

    • FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

  • For a democratic republic with representatives receiving no more than a skilled worker’s wage
  • End racist harassment of Aborigines and ethnic groups
  • Disarm the police to stop police killings
  • Decriminalise personal drug use; for safe injecting rooms and prescription heroin trials

    • FOR WOMEN’S LIBERATION

  • Full reproductive freedom. Repeal abortion laws; guarantee access to abortion services; lift the ban on RU 486 (mifepristone, the abortion pill). End legalised discrimination against lesbians and single women seeking access to medically-assisted conception
  • Fully funded refuges for women and children escaping physical, psychological or sexual abuse
  • No cuts to women’s services
  • Equal pay for comparable work; affirmative action to ensure access to non-traditional jobs
  • Free abortion on demand; a woman’s right to choose

    • END DISCRIMINATION

  • Repeal all laws that discriminate against lesbians and gay men; full equality for same sex couples.
  • End all discrimination based on race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, age, disability, political ideology, employment status, sexuality and gender identity
  • Equal pay for equal or comparative work for women, young people, Indigenous workers and people with disabilities

    • FOR ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY

  • Extend and socialise public transport, not freeways
  • Effective action on greenhouse gas emissions; develop renewable energy sources;
  • No uranium mining, no reactor; no logging old growth forests; no genetically modified organism (GMO) crops or field trials
  • Worker-community-green alliances to counter profiteering developers
  • Fund public housing

    • SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS

  • Repeal Howard's ten-point plan and extend native title; restore the right to veto mining on Indigenous land
  • Negotiate a treaty recognising prior ownership and Indigenous land rights
  • Increase funding for, and Indigenous control of, community services
  • Abolish mandatory sentencing
  • Apology and full compensation for the stolen generations

    • FREE THE REFUGEES, MIGRANT RIGHTS

  • Close the detention centres; end mandatory detention
  • Full rights for asylum seekers and migrants; abolish the two-year waiting period which prevent newly arrived migrants accessing social security
  • End all deportations
  • Remove all restrictive and discriminatory immigration regulations; abolish the pro-business “points” system
  • Funding and specialist services for resettlement
  • Unlimited and free English classes
  • Full citizenship rights including the right to vote for all refugees and migrants, with abolition of the temporary protection visa

    • SOLIDARITY WITH WORKING CLASS AND DEMOCRATIC STRUGGLES IN ALL COUNTRIES

  • Opposition to Australia’s imperialist foreign policy, and the export of military hardware, personnel and training
  • Solidarity with Indonesia’s peoples, not its military and police
  • End ANZUS, no to APEC, for a nuclear-free Pacific
  • Close Pine Gap, no to the Star Wars/missile defence shield project
  • Solidarity with struggles against repressive regimes and reactionary forces
  • For the right of oppressed nations to self-determination

    • JOBS NOT PROFITS

  • Shorter working week with no loss in pay; nationalise under workers’ and community control companies that threaten mass sackings
  • Guarantee workers’ entitlements
  • Stop casualisation; for full employment with permanent jobs
  • Stop national competition policy massacring jobs
  • For industry-wide agreements; no trading-off of jobs and conditions.
  • All workers to have access to an award