The livestreamed event provided a much-appreciated forum for democratic discussion about the election result, Labor’s right-wing program, and the class battles now unfolding in Australia and internationally.
Phone: (02) 8218 3222
Email: sep@sep.org.au
Facebook: SocialistEqualityPartyAustralia
Twitter: @SEP_Australia
Instagram: socialistequalityparty_au
TikTok: @SEP_Australia
PO Box 574
Strawberry Hills, NSW, 2012
The outcome reflects, in distorted electoral terms, a political radicalisation of workers and young people that is already finding expression in a development of working class struggles.
“This submission does not suggest that across-the-board, wages should automatically increase in line with inflation,” the Albanese government stated.
Penny Wong has visited the Pacific Islands twice in a fortnight, threatening its governments with “consequences” if they turn to China, and functioning as an emissary of the Biden administration.
The pseudo-left is seeking to subordinate workers and young people to a right-wing government that has already made crystal clear its agenda of war and austerity.
The Socialist Equality Party is standing candidates in the Australian federal election to provide workers with the political weapons and organisational means to fight for their social and democratic rights.
“It’s not good enough to vote for the lesser evil, that’s just stupid. Labor’s not even lesser evil anymore. Both parties are exactly the same” – Max, at Inala polling booth.
“The unity of the working class is a must. There’s power in numbers and it’s better to be backed up by different people and groups that all want the same thing. That’s where we get our real power” – Jorella, a Sydney railway worker.
Keith, a manufacturing worker who voted for the SEP, said: “Everything is now skewed towards the rich in this country. Things are getting too hard for the average worker to make ends meet.”
The Socialist Equality Party is the only party standing in the May 21 federal election which fights in the interests of youth and students, and the working class as a whole.
Enthusiastic participants at Sunday’s meeting peppered SEP candidates with a broad range of questions about the party’s anti-war and revolutionary socialist program.
That the US and NATO are prepared to take the world to the brink of nuclear war, with all its horrific consequences, testifies to the staggering level of recklessness and aggressiveness that now prevails in all the centers of world imperialism.
The war between Russia and Ukraine, now well into its third week, is rapidly and dangerously escalating.
A principled, left-wing opposition to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine requires uncompromising opposition to US/NATO. Absent that, claims of being “anti-war” are hypocritical and deceitful.
Albanese’s speeches are part of his pitch to the ruling class to support a trade union-backed Labor government to suppress the growing discontent throughout the working class.
Students and young people responded enthusiastically to the discussion, describing it as “eye opening” and “informative.”
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.
The floods have laid bare the failure of governments—Coalition and Labor—to protect the population from such disasters and the necessity for the socialist transformation of society.
Morrison, his staffers and the police went to great lengths to prevent working people devastated by the floods from getting anywhere near the prime minister.
This fortnight’s dysfunctional parliamentary session saw Prime Minister Scott Morrison virtually accuse Labor Party leaders of being treasonous agents of China.
The by-elections were the first electoral test of the government decisions made to scrap most pandemic safety restrictions.
This is the main resolution that was discussed and adopted unanimously at the Fifth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia) held on August 14-16, 2020.
The homicidal policies of the ruling classes everywhere are finding stark expression in Australia, where governments have completely abandoned previous mitigation measures and are presiding over an unparalleled increase in COVID-19 infections.
Albanese’s infection exposes the lies promoted by both major parties to justify the ending of public health measures and the endangerment of millions of working people in the interests of corporate profit.
“Is the ‘vibrant on campus experience’ worth the health of the #ourANU community? It’s only Day 2 of semester! We are not meeting our duty of care for students.”
In this third year of the global pandemic, a rational and scientifically-based approach to the virus is more urgent than ever before.
The meeting, addressed by a health worker in the US, a nurse in Sydney and Socialist Equality Party leaders, opened up a discussion on the burning need for workers to form rank-and-file committees throughout the health sector.
Rank-and-file committees must be formed to fight for the unification of all workers in an industrial and political struggle for real improvements to pay, safe working conditions, a high-quality public health system and an end to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The AEU bureaucracy is attempting to quickly ram through the deal by mid-March under conditions of an unprecedented explosion of COVID-19 infections within the schools.
The PWRFC calls on postal workers to reject the “opening up” drive by governments, both Coalition and Labor, backed by the unions, which puts working people at risk of infection every day.
The cutting edge of the fight for all of the rights of educators is to close the schools for the year so that no more teachers or students are infected with a disease that could claim their lives or leave them with dire medical issues.
Watch: Meeting commemorates decades-long Australian Trotskyist Barry Jobson
At a meeting on January 17, Socialist Equality Party speakers reviewed Barry Jobson’s contribution to the fight for socialist internationalism, in the context of the deepening crisis of Australian and world capitalism.
“Assange’s salvation has never been the British judiciary. His freedom and defence have always depended on a mass movement of the international working class.”
The case will now be sent to Home Secretary Priti Patel to give a final decision, barring further appeals by Assange’s legal team.
The files exposed the lawless global network established by the US and its allies as part of their “war on terror.”
The SEP’s recent National Congress committed to “intensifying the fight for the unconditional freedom of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange” and the defence of all persecuted journalists and whistleblowers.
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.
The working class must have a political voice, which the ruling class through its latest legislation is seeking to stifle. The opposition to the dictates of big business and its political servants needs to be guided by a socialist program that puts the social needs of working people—above all their health and lives—ahead of the private profits of the wealthy few. The SEP alone fights for this perspective.
Our party fights:
● For a scientific program to eradicate the coronavirus pandemic against the criminal, “herd immunity” policies of the ruling elite.
● For an end to militarism and war.
● Against all forms of nationalism and racism and for the unity of the international working-class.
● For the social rights of the working class, including quality, free education and healthcare for all, and a decent, full-time job with permanent conditions for those able to work.
● For a workers’ government and socialism, that is a society in which the working-class democratically controls the wealth that it produces, not the banks and the billionaires.
Fill out this form to apply to join the SEP as an electoral member. The membership fee is $5 (waged) or $2 (unwaged/student).
The lectures, now all available online, reviewed some of the fundamental lessons of the protracted struggle by the Trotskyist movement for socialist internationalism.
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.
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.
The start of 2022 has brought young people around Australia face to face with the cruel reality of the ruling elite’s criminal policies amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
One first year student in the working-class city of Newcastle said: “Capitalism has some very obvious flaws, the 1 percent getting richer at the expense of everyone else. You end up looking for an alternative, and socialism is very enticing.”
”I guess the government is looking at it as ‘We saved enough people, it’s time to just move on and whoever suffers now, it’s too bad.’ It’s so depressing.”
The studies highlight that living conditions and financial security for young people in Australia were declining even before the pandemic, which has further exacerbated this trend.
