Australia

Workers' Liberty newsletter No 71 (August 2019)

In this issue * School students reach out to labour movement for climate action * Losing the climate election * Radical union leader Bob Carnegie loses Queensland MUA election * RAFFWU Fighting cuts to penalty rates , interview with Hayden Walsh * Tax and wealth after the election , interview with Dick Bryan * Reviews: Pamphlet on climate change , a book about the GFC and its aftermath , a documentary about Brazil and the Workers’ Party . * Corbyn is reactionary on Europe * International Socialist US collapse, and Socialist Alternative, abridged from ISO: Losing the thread * Palestine – Israel...

Climate change activist: "This pamphlet helped me understand how socialism can drive change"

Daisy Thomas, who recently became a climate change activist in Brisbane, discussed the Workers’ Liberty pamphlet For workers’ climate action with Janet Burstall. I was aware of socialism as an idea. This pamphlet gave me more understanding of how socialism can be used as a driver for change. It made me realise the importance of tapping into workers as a social mobilisation force that can be part of their own solution, including in fossil fuel industries that are going to be phased out. I’ve also started reading a book on the Green Bans. The opening article by Neil Laker is persuasive, it sets...

Losing the “climate election”

The Australian Labor Party’s climate action platform for the May 2019 Federal Election was the most ambitious yet. Pre-election polls showed climate change was a high priority for voters. The Liberal-National coalition was divided on climate action. Climate-change deniers controlled the party room, and had elected Scott Morrison as leader, an MP who had famously cradled a lump of coal in parliament to show his support for coal-fired power. Yet Labor lost the election. Both major parties lost about 1% of their first-preference voters with minor parties, especially right-wing parties, picking up...

Losing the thread: ISO’s collapse

The veteran Marxist writer Paul Le Blanc has written the most substantial and critical account yet of the collapse of the USA’s International Socialist Organization, of which Le Blanc was himself a member, though not a central one. The ISO was the most active revolutionary socialist organisation in the USA, with 800 or 900 members. At its convention in late February 2019, opposition groups displaced its longstanding leaders with a platform promising wider activism. Le Blanc (who was outside the USA at the time) reports “at the convention’s conclusion there seemed among people I trust...

Tax and wealth after the election

Dick Bryan spoke to Janet Burstall for Workers'Liberty about Labor's tax policies and the federal election results. Dick researches the significance of financialisation, for capital, labour and households. He is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Sydney University and co-author of the book Risking together. Q: Is it possible that policy changes initiated by Labor in the 1980s and 1990s (and then built on by Howard) that were designed to increase household savings and their financial exposure, have altered the perspectives of traditional Labor voters on taxes targeting wealth? If so...

Surprise victory for the right in Australia

The ruling conservative coalition won a surprise victory in Australia's federal election on 18 May. People are asking: how could Labor lose on a platform with a bigger offer of reforms than any other in recent times? Labor promised to turn government policy towards meeting some of the concerns of trade unions on workers rights, of climate activists on the need to reduce carbon emissions, and of the left more broadly on inequality. But the underlying theme of class was not addressed by anyone other than the three Victorian Socialists candidates. The conservatives gained especially in Queensland...

Making campaign wider?

Extinction Rebellion, after eleven days of ambitious, disruptive, relatively widespread, and extensively covered actions in their “International Rebellion”, (15-25 April), have moved into a “regenerative, resting phase". They have been celebrating wins so far: media coverage, politicians seeming receptive, changes in public narratives towards recognising the gravity of the situation; reportedly huge expansions of local XR branches. Socialist environmentalists should continue to get involved, and to push it towards the radical conclusions that its environmental commitments point towards. They...

Students, young workers and climate change

Interview with Daisy Thomas by Janet Burstall Daisy Thomas is an example of young climate activists, workers, and students soon to become workers, who have the potential to join up the power of workers’ action with the urgency of the issue of climate change and the need to drastically cut fossil fuel consumption. Daisy is a young public sector worker who became an activist for action against climate change earlier this year. Janet Burstall spoke with Daisy for Workers’ Liberty to find out how she became active, and how she sees the relationship between workers, unions and climate change. Daisy...

Victorian Socialists election campaign May 2019

After an impressive campaign in the 2018 Victorian State Election, the Victorian Socialists are running in the same region of Melbourne in the Australian federal election of 18 May 2019. The election platform ( https://www.victoriansocialists.org.au/election_platform ) has a generally OK grab bag of demands, essentially left reformist, but including traditional socialist demands for nationalisation, with variations of calls for community, workers' or democratic control. These include: tax the corporations and the rich; public ownership and investment; defend workers rights to organise...

A turn to class by Australian Labor?

Between the two major contenders – the Australian Labor Party (ALP) versus the conservative Liberal Party-National party coalition (LNP) - the coming federal election in Australia (18 May 2019) brings much more differentiation on class grounds than recently seen; and also a significant difference on climate change. This is no turn to socialism by the ALP, but one by a right wing leadership that sees moderate social democratic reforms as in the best interests of capital. These reforms are aligned with perceptions of the Reserve Bank and other highly conservative financial institutions that...

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