Australia: False bipartisan Medicare promises underscore political crisis
Similar pledges, to “save Medicare,” have been made in every election for decades, only to be broken by Labor and Coalition governments alike once the polls closed.
Mike Head•
The Socialist Equality Party (Australia)
Bipartisan electoral laws rammed through to prop up Australian political establishment
Making a mockery of parliamentary democracy, the “Electoral Reform” bill was rammed through without even giving MPs a chance to read its final details, let alone members of the public, after a backroom deal between Labor and the Coalition.
Mike Head•
Australian polls show Labor paving the way for a possible minority Coalition government
The YouGov survey points to the Liberal-National Coalition being in a slightly stronger position than Labor to cobble together a fragile post-election government.
Mike Head•
Australian Labor government roiled by Trump tariff threats
Albanese touted the possibility of an exemption on Tuesday, before being repeatedly slapped down over the following hours.
Oscar Grenfell•
Mike Head•
Mike Head•
Mike Head•
Mike Head•
Oscar Grenfell•
Australian electoral authorities reject Socialist Equality Party’s registration, despite it meeting membership requirements
The decision was made as the looming election is characterised by mass hostility to the official parties and a growing desire among workers and young people for a genuine alternative.
Failed media-Zionist provocation at Sydney restaurant as witch-hunt of Bankstown nurses continues
While the media and politicians have pilloried two young nurses for making stupid and politically backward comments about Israel, another incident last week pointed to the manufactured character of the purported “antisemitism crisis.”
Oscar Grenfell•
Australian establishment seizes on backward comments by nurses to escalate phoney antisemitism witch-hunt
Politicians have made inflammatory interventions, prejudicing the legal rights of the nurses involved and using their backward comments to crack down on civil liberties.
Oscar Grenfell•
Australian PM Albanese refuses to condemn Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza
Labor is signalling its support for ethnic-cleansing, colonialism and unbridled imperialist criminality, under conditions of war developing globally.
Oscar Grenfell•
Australian cricket commentator sacked for noting mass deaths in Gaza
Zionists ludicrously claimed that hearing Peter Lalor’s voice as he commentated Test cricket would make them feel “unsafe.”
Oscar Grenfell•
Mike Head•
Oscar Grenfell•
Mike Head•
Andre Damon•
Oscar Grenfell•
David North addresses book launches in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia
David North, the chairman of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site and of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the United States, spoke at book launches in Sydney and Melbourne over the past week. The events were part of a visit by North, who has played a leading role in the world Trotskyist movement for more than 50 years, to the SEP in Australia.
Stop the political frame-up of Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The fraudulent charge of treason brought against Syrotiuk is aimed at intimidating and suppressing growing opposition among Ukrainian workers and youth to the imperialist-backed Zelensky regime and the escalating war against Russia.
David North•
Free Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Six months after his arrest, Bogdan Syrotiuk, the courageous Ukrainian socialist arrested for opposing the war, remains in prison awaiting a drumhead trial in a legal travesty.
Johannes Stern•
Report to the SEP (US) Eighth National Congress
The campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk and the fight against war
This report introduced the discussion and vote on the resolution "Free Bogdan Syrotiuk", which was passed unanimously by the delegates of the Eighth Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US).
Clara Weiss•
More statements demanding freedom for Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk from Australia and New Zealand
“We need to stand with Bogdan now, because it’s easy to imagine the alternative: if Ukraine is able to imprison socialists and ban the WSWS without protest, what’s to stop the UK, Germany or the US, from doing the same?”
Our reporters•
Our correspondents•
Our reporter•
Our correspondents•
Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee•
Our correspondents•
Contact the SEP!
Phone: (02) 8218 3222
Email: sep@sep.org.au
Facebook: SocialistEqualityPartyAustralia
Twitter: @SEP_Australia
Instagram: socialistequalityparty_au
TikTok: @SEP_Australia
PO Box 75
Kingsgrove, NSW, 1480
Capitalist breakdown, the fight against war and the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party
This resolution was adopted by the Seventh National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia), held from October 3-6.
Australia: Build rank-and-file committees against accelerating assault on public education!
The CFPE calls on teachers and school workers to join our ranks to fight for decent conditions and wages for all educators, and a public education system that provides the highest quality schooling for all students.
Committee for Public Education•
Australian Labor governments place Whyalla Steelworks under administration, announce huge bailout
The carefully orchestrated state-federal operation reflects the strategic importance of the 60-year-old facility to the Australian ruling class, amid escalating plans for war against China.
Martin Scott•
Australia: Fair Work Commission shuts down industrial action by rail workers
The more-than-four-month suspension clears the way for a sell-out deal to be cooked up by the Labor government and the union bureaucracy, which has already been boasting for weeks of being “excruciatingly close” to agreement.
Martin Scott•
Pathology workers have rejected Australian Clinical Laboratories’ wage cut—a new strategy is needed!
ACL’s offer would have locked us into a wage deal with annual “increases” as low as 0.24 percent.
Pathology Workers Rank-and File Committee•
Oscar Grenfell, Richard Phillips•
Martin Scott•
Our reporters•
Martin Scott•
Martin Scott•
Put the SEP on the ballot! Become an electoral member of the SEP! Take up the fight against genocide, war and inequality!
This campaign is essential to ensure that the Socialist Equality Party’s name appears on the ballot papers for the next federal election, as the only party fighting for the socialist alternative to capitalist barbarism, war, inequality and dictatorship.
To stop fascism and war, young people must fight for socialism!
The IYSSE is the only political tendency that advances a genuine socialist perspective based on the lessons of history and the interests of the working class.
International Youth and Students for Social Equality (Australia)•
Australia: Oppose the attack on students’ right to political freedom of expression at Victoria University!
Under the guise of a new privacy policy, the administration of the university in Melbourne is seeking to control all political interactions among students.
International Youth and Students for Social Equality VU•
Australian state Labor government undermines Arts curriculum in schools
The Labor government is seeking to impose budget cuts and further narrow the curriculum in line with big-business demands for a pliant and readily employable youth workforce.
Kaye Tucker•
The Platypus Affiliated Society: A pro-imperialist trap for students and young people
The pseudo-left group combines multiple strains of bankrupt middle-class politics, including open support for imperialist war, the promotion of the anti-Marxist Frankfurt School and of the Pabloite Spartacist League.
Owen Howell, Oscar Grenfell•
Jack Turner•
Mike Head•
Eric Ludlow•
Our reporters•
Oscar Grenfell•
This report includes videos of speeches delivered by SEP members at the October 27 meeting, explaining the Labor government’s administration of the construction union and outlining a perspective to fight it.
Australia: Build rank-and-file committees to fight Labor’s attack on construction workers and the entire working class!
The past three months have demonstrated that the fight against Labor’s administration of the CFMEU requires a rank-and-file movement independent of the ousted union leadership.
Socialist Equality Party (Australia)•
Queensland building workers protest Liberal government attack on safety, wages and conditions
The scrapping of Best Practice Industry Conditions in Queensland was enabled by the federal Labor government’s action in August, placing the construction division of the CFMEU into administration.
Martin Scott•
Australia: More than 2,000 Sydney workers protest Labor government takeover of CFMEU
While the two previous strikes were national events, this time, workers in Sydney marched alone, cut off from the majority of building workers.
Martin Scott•
Workers and young people speak out against CFMEU administration at SEP (Australia) meeting
“The government is going for the strongest section of the trade unions on purpose, for strategy. I think the goal is just straight-up austerity against the working class and this is part of it.”
Our reporters•
Our reporters•
Our reporters•
Martin Scott•
Martin Scott•
Socialist Equality Party (Australia)•
Beams pointed to the roots of the pseudo-left in tendencies that broke from the Trotskyist movement and rejected the revolutionary role of the working class.
Chinese warships off the Australian coast trigger militarist outburst
Notice of a Chinese live-fire naval exercise in international waters between Australia and New Zealand set off hyperbolic warnings about the “Chinese threat” and demands for greater military spending.
Peter Symonds•
After 3 years of war in Ukraine, imperialist war propaganda collapses
Three years after the start of the Ukraine war, the narrative used by the imperialist powers to justify their provocation and escalation of the war is being exposed as a pack of lies.
Andre Damon•
Rubio hosts Quad meeting with Japan, India and Australia, directed against China
The meeting, bringing together representatives of the four largest militaries in the Indo-Pacific, was a clear signal that the Trump administration will intensify military preparations and threats directed at China.
Oscar Grenfell•
US-backed Pacific Policing Initiative directed against China
While seeking to lock China out of the Pacific, the Australian-led operation establishes a rapid deployment force for police-military interventions against unrest in the region.
John Braddock•
Oscar Grenfell•
Oscar Grenfell•
Tom Peters•
Alex Lantier, Johannes Stern•
Peter Symonds•
Australia: Macquarie University meeting issues strong call to oppose Zionist witch hunt against Randa Abdel-Fattah
A rank-and-file meeting voted unanimously in favour of a resolution calling for a campaign throughout the universities and working class to defend the victimised Macquarie University academic.
Macquarie University Rank-and-File Committee•
Australian artists demand immediate reinstatement of Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino to Venice Biennale
The sudden decision to dump the acclaimed artist and curator occurred soon after the Albanese Labor government’s arts minister phoned Creative Australia’s chief executive officer.
Gabriela Zabala, Richard Phillips•
Australia: Messages of support for campaign against Zionist witch hunt of Randa Abdel-Fattah
This is a test case for the defence of all those, including academics, journalists, students and workers, being slandered and vilified as antisemitic for opposing the ongoing Zionist atrocities throughout Palestine.
Macquarie University Rank-and-File Committee•
Zionist lawsuit initiated against two anti-genocide Australian academics
This case is a major attack on basic democratic and legal rights, seeking to set a wider precedent to suppress any dissent against the escalating Israeli mass killings in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.
Jack Turner•
Eric Ludlow•
Eric Ludlow•
Oscar Grenfell•
Eric Ludlow•
Martin Scott•
Book launch with David North and Evan Blake: Two works, on Trotsky and the pandemic
At an event in Sydney, Australia on Thursday, May 25, World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North launched his new book Leon Trotsky and the Struggle for Socialism in the Twenty-First Century. He was joined by Evan Blake, a leading member of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States, who presented another new title from Mehring Books, COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic.
Julian Assange is free, but the struggle to defend democratic rights continues
On Monday, Julian Assange walked out of the UK’s Belmarsh Prison a free man, following five years of imprisonment and nearly 15 years of persecution by a cabal of imperialist governments led by the United States which hounded him for exposing their crimes.
Statement of the World Socialist Web Site editorial board•
The Australian Labor Party’s record in the Assange case
The Australian government's involvement in the plea deal arrangements was the result of mass popular pressure. It followed years of Labor actively assisting the persecution of Assange.
Oscar Grenfell•
Australian spooks and their media mouthpieces bemoan Assange’s freedom
The complaints have a pathetic character to them, but also underscore the fact that the assault on democratic rights associated with the persecution of Assange persists and deepens.
Oscar Grenfell•
Julian Assange arrives in Australia free
In a press conference, Stella Assange hailed a global support movement for creating the conditions for Assange's freedom, while warning of an ongoing assault on press freedom that had to be fought.
Oscar Grenfell•
Oscar Grenfell•
Thomas Scripps•
Laura Tiernan•
Oscar Grenfell•
Thomas Scripps, Chris Marsden•
Australian Labor government quietly acknowledges likely COVID holiday surge, but no public health measures
Entering the sixth year of the pandemic, Australian governments continue to maintain a “let it rip” policy, amid rising infection numbers.
Gary Alvernia•
Australian COVID inquiry promotes “let it rip,” denounces public health measures
The report, riddled with lies and misinformation, is a crude justification for the subordination of public health and lives to the profit interests of the corporate and financial elite.
Oscar Grenfell•
The spread of H5N1 bird flu among animals and the growing possibility of a pandemic
The developing avian influenza panzootic and the growing possibility of a pandemic bring to the fore the existential questions for humanity of climate change and the destruction of public health, both of which must be stopped in order to control the growing threats.
Frank Gaglioti•
Australia: Hospital-acquired COVID infection caused more than 6,000 cases and almost 300 deaths in NSW last year
This is a direct product of the conscious and planned abolition of virtually all public health measures to prevent the spread of COVID, including the removal of mask mandates in hospitals.
John Mackay, Martin Scott•
Martin Scott•
John Mackay•
Oscar Grenfell•
Frank Gaglioti•
Benjamin Mateus•
Put a socialist, anti-war party on the ballot! Join the SEP (Australia) as an electoral member today!
Socialist Equality Party assistant national secretary Max Boddy calls on workers and young people in Australia to sign up as an SEP electoral member.
Apply for electoral membership of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia)
The SEP has launched an energetic campaign to register with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) as a political party. This will enable us to field candidates with the party name on the ballot paper in the next federal elections. We are currently excluded from this basic right due to anti-democratic electoral laws jointly rammed through the Australian parliament by the Labor and Liberal parties on August 26, 2021, which tripled the required membership number to 1,500. This is to block ordinary people from choosing to vote for a socialist candidate.
The working class must have a conscious political voice. Join the SEP today.
Our party fights for:
● Social equality for all!
● An immediate end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
● An end to all militarism and war.
● A scientific program to eradicate the coronavirus pandemic. No to the mass death policies of the ruling elite.
● Against nationalism and racism. For the unity of the international working class.
● Quality, free education and healthcare for all. A decent, full-time job with permanent conditions for those able to work.
● A workers’ government and socialism—democratic control of the wealth that workers produce, for human need, not corporate wealth.
There is no solution to the crisis confronting the working class except by ending the capitalist system. The slaughter being carried out in Gaza is the latest and most bloody expression of the drive by imperialism to World War III. We advance a socialist program that calls for the abolition of a society based on corporate profits, the establishment of democratically-controlled public ownership over big business, and the dissolution of the vast military-industrial complex.
Fill out this form to apply to join the SEP as an Electoral Member.
Membership is free.
Fight the bipartisan attack on democracy—join the SEP as an electoral member!
In a blatant act of political censorship, the Socialist Equality Party has been deregistered. Nevertheless, the SEP will stand candidates in the federal election, if and when it is called, and conduct the broadest possible campaign for a genuine socialist alternative.
Read more
Australia: Fight the climate change disaster, become an SEP electoral member
What is required is the struggle for socialism, based on a turn to the working class, the social force whose fundamental interests align with reconstructing society to address the climate crisis.
Mark Wilson•
Australia: Workers and youth in Melbourne explain why they support the SEP’s electoral member campaign
The SEP has received an important initial response, amid widespread hostility towards the major parties and an anti-war politicisation fuelled by outrage over the ongoing US- and Australian-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Our reporters•
VIDEO: Workers and young people sign up to put the SEP (Australia) on the ballot
“The Socialist Equality Party are the only ones presenting an alternative to capitalism, imperialism, genocide and the normalisation of mass death.”
Our reporters•
Long-time Australian Labor Party member resigns to become SEP electoral member
A retired nurse and longtime Labor Party member explains why he has quit that party to join the Socialist Equality Party as an electoral member.
Mike Head•
Our reporters•
Our reporters•
Mike Head•
Socialist Equality Party (Australia)•
Mike Head•
Defeat of Australian Labor’s Voice referendum highlights stark class divide, not racism
The Voice voting patterns demonstrate the intensifying hostility of working-class people to the entire political establishment.
Mike Head•
Indigenous Voice leaders denounce Australian voters
An open letter, issued by a privileged layer of indigenous figures who led the Voice Yes campaign, further highlights the immense class chasm shown in the referendum’s overwhelming defeat on October 14.
Mike Head•
Australian pseudo-left slanders population as racist after defeat of Voice referendum
Socialist Alternative’s analysis of the referendum is an attack on the working class, exposing this organisation as a rightward moving representative of privileged layers of the affluent upper middle-class.
Oscar Grenfell•
Australian workers oppose the Voice, call for better conditions for Aboriginal people
“The Labor government is not working class, it is an elite group of people, setting up a puppet called the Voice.”
Our reporters•
Socialist Equality Party (Australia)•
Our reporters•
Socialist Equality Party (Australia)•
Oscar Grenfell•
Max Boddy•
Resolution adopted at the Sixth Congress of the SEP (Australia)
The COVID disaster and the political crisis of Australian capitalism
“The criminal ‘let it rip’ pandemic policies of governments—invariably enforced by the labour and trade union bureaucracies—have exposed the brutality of capitalism, and its readiness to sacrifice lives for corporate profit and private wealth accumulation.”
Socialist Equality Party (Australia)•
Resolution adopted at the Sixth Congress of the SEP (Australia)
Build an international movement of the working class against imperialist war!
“The same contradictions and crisis of world capitalism are also propelling the working class into struggle, providing the basis for the building of an international anti-war movement.”
Socialist Equality Party (Australia)•
Build the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees!
A mass network of interconnected rank-and-file committees can and must serve as the foundation for the fight for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a workers’ government based on a socialist program.
Socialist Equality Party (Australia)•
Free Julian Assange!
The ongoing persecution of Julian Assange is bound up with imperialist war, escalating online censorship and a broader turn to authoritarianism.
Socialist Equality Party (Australia)•
Historical Foundations
The program of the Socialist Equality Party is of a principled, not a conjunctural and pragmatic, character. It is based on an analysis of the crisis of world capitalism and an assimilation of the strategic revolutionary experiences of the working class and the international socialist movement.
The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party was adopted by the Founding Congress of the SEP in Sydney in 2010. It traces the historical events and strategic experiences of the working class and Marxist movement spanning more than a century.
Principles
Membership in the Socialist Equality Party is based on agreement with its Statement of Principles. The principles of the SEP incorporate the essential experiences of the revolutionary upheavals of the twentieth century and the corresponding struggle waged by Marxists for the program of world socialist revolution.
Lecture series: Why study the history of Trotskyism?
The lectures, now all available online, reviewed some of the fundamental lessons of the protracted struggle by the Trotskyist movement for socialist internationalism.
Leadership
Crisp was a founding member of the Socialist Labour League, the forerunner of the SEP, in 1972, and has played a leading role in the Trotskyist movement in Australia for more than four decades. She was elected National Secretary at the Fifth National Congress of the SEP in 2020.
Max was elected to the position of assistant national secretary at the 2020 SEP National Congress. He writes regularly for the WSWS on issues facing asylum seekers and their inhumane treatment at the hands of Australian governments. He completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Newcastle, majoring in Aboriginal Studies.
Authorised by Cheryl Crisp for the Socialist Equality Party, Suite 906, 185 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000.