Jerome Small

Socialist Alternative’s record of workplace organising

1. Because the super-rich in Australia are taking the piss—and the piles of cash 
Back in 1983, the wealth of the hundred richest people in Australia totalled $3.2 billion. If that wealth had increased in line with inflation, today it would be nearly four times more—an obscene $12.5 billion. 
But this would be viewed as chickenfeed by today’s super-rich. The wealth of the one hundred richest people last year was 163 times greater than that of the richest 100 in 1983, according to the Australian Financial Review—an extraordinary $524 billion. 
If we include the AFR’s full annual “Rich List” of the 200 wealthiest people in the country, we get to $624 billion, 24.7 percent of Australia’s annual gross domestic product. 
To call this wealth “stratospheric” is a massive understatement. If piles of $100 notes were stacked up to the value of $624 billion, they would reach 878 kilometres into the sky: the stratosphere runs out after about 50 km. And as Red Flag
has <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/annual-rich-list-200-ugly-faces-australian-capitalism">pointed out</a> in the past, the wealth of the billionaires is only the very public tip of the iceberg of wealth that the capitalist class accumulates from the labour the rest of us perform.
If Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest took a month off, or a year, their money would continue to accumulate. This is because it’s the work of others—in the mines these billionaires own, but also the vast network of communications, transport, education, finance and health, throughout the country and around the world—that creates the vast fortunes of the rich. So no-one would notice if Rinehart et al. dropped off the planet—but if enough of those workers stopped working for just a few days, the flow of wealth would stop stone cold dead. 
What’s the correct word for those who accumulate this sort of wealth from the labour of others? “Capitalists” is accurate. So is “parasites”. And it’s about time they faced a serious challenge.
2. Because the rest of us are sick of being ripped off
As Albo and his treasurer sprinkled a few crumbs on budget night to a standing ovation from Labor MPs, and most of the rest of us scratched our heads wondering just how we’ll spend our $5 weekly tax cut from the middle of next year, Victorian Socialists crunched the numbers. As our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18g2mgZsmo/">budget reply</a> stated: 
“In 1974, Australian workers (aka the people who create all the wealth) received 55.9 percent of GDP in wages. Today it's 47.9 percent. If that share increased back to 1974 levels, it would mean workers would, collectively, be $220 billion better off (more than $15,000 per employee, per year). Keep that in mind when Labor politicians are spruiking $5 a week tax cuts, 5 cents off a pint of beer, or modest cuts to HECS debts.”
And imagine what we could do with that $220 billion—equivalent to around $10 per hour for every employee. Maybe we could take a well-deserved pay raise and a greater share of the wealth we create. Or maybe we could take some of that wealth back in the form of transformative public infrastructure. A massive new hospital costs <a href="https://www.vhba.vic.gov.au/health/hospitals/new-footscray-hospital">$1.5 billion</a> to build; <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/energy-transition-will-likely-need-400b-renewables-marshall-plan-20230719-p5dph9">official estimates</a> of what the country is spending on our criminally slow transition to a renewables-powered electricity grid are currently around $10 billion per year. You can work out the maths from there. 
3. Because housing for profit means people without homes
It’s obscene, but it’s true: as far as anyone can tell, there are more empty houses than homeless people in this country. On census night in 2021, there were a million empty houses in Australia—eight times the estimated number of people experiencing homelessness. 
Of course, even during the lockdowns of 2021 some homes would have been empty due to people travelling or visiting or being in hospital. But a much more conservative 2023 <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Prosper_SpecVac11_July2024-web.pdf">estimate</a> by the think tank Prosper Australia found 27,000 houses in Victoria didn’t use any water at all for the entire year—so were almost certainly empty for the whole year. 
This pretty much matches the estimate of 30,000 people experiencing homelessness in Victoria right now. Prosper points out that another 70,000 houses appear to be entirely or very largely vacant, judging from a level of water use consistent with a couple of dripping taps, or a bit of watering from an occasional visiting gardener. 
Similarly, the Tenants Union of Tasmania has used water use data to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-29/census-finds-1-million-empty-houses-amid-affordability-crisis/101190794">show</a> that 2,000 homes in that state have been unoccupied for three years or more—pretty much matching the official homelessness figure of 2,350. 
It’s no mystery why: there’s no profit to be made from matching empty houses with people who desperately need them. 
Many investors find it more convenient to leave a house empty while the value steadily rises, rather than renting it out as a home. The law of the land allows this outrageous situation, even encourages it through tax incentives. Property—and profits—are sacred, while people are left to sleep rough (or pay through the nose for a <a href="https://www.shitrentals.org/">shit rental</a>). 
The solution? Do what Victorian Socialists candidate Jordan van den Lamb (aka purplepingers) <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DHXkKUNTkya/?hl=en&amp;img_index=7">advocates</a>: take over houses left vacant for twelve months or more and use them as homes. And we should shift Australia’s construction sector to building public housing rather than ever glitzier shopping malls.
Once we remove the profit motive and organise ourselves to do what’s needed, everything becomes a whole lot simpler.
4. Because we need more strikes
There. We’ve said it. No-one else apart from the socialists are stating this blindingly obvious fact. 
If we don’t fight, we lose. The figures from recent decades show that, over the last few decades, the less we’ve fought, the more we’ve lost.
So while the mainstream parties either denounce industrial action, or perhaps drop in to a picket to murmur some polite nothings for a few minutes, or post an Instagram or two, socialists do our best to turn up, in numbers, when it matters most. 
One example was Victorian Socialists bringing a couple of hundred members and supporters to the pre-dawn picket line at Dandenong South in Melbourne during the Woolworths strike in December last year.
Other parties see parliament as the be-all and end-all of politics. In contrast, socialists want to use election campaigns and any representation we win to build active participation by ordinary people in activities that can actually change things: protests, activist campaigns and strikes.
5. Because bigotry and oppression: capitalism counts the cash 
Some of the benefits that capitalists get from sexism, racism and other forms of oppression are staring us in the face. 
A swathe of Australian employers get a massive cash discount on wages due to the gender pay gap. If we use Australian Bureau of Statistics <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/employee-earnings-and-hours-australia/latest-release#data-downloads">figures</a> for non-managerial employees, a gender pay gap of $4.10 per hour translates to a $700 million cash discount on wages for employers every week. This is more than $36.5 billion in discounted wages each year, straight to the bosses’ bottom line, due to sexism. 
Unpaid labour in the home to raise the next generation of workers, estimated at up to half of GDP, is disproportionately done by women—another handy cash benefit for the ruling elite, flowing from the sexist oppression that affects half the population. 
Other benefits for our rulers from bigotry and oppression are harder to measure exactly, but no less real for that. For instance, it’s hard to quantify the benefit the system gets from having young men buy into the foul, blatant sexism of Andrew Tate. Tate’s gross objectification and contempt for women is the central plank of his thoroughly dog-eat-dog world view. The point of life, according to Tate, is to be out for yourself: everyone else on the planet, and especially women, are just objects to be used. It’s impossible to put a dollar value on the benefit to the rich and powerful from this perfectly pro-capitalist world view being propagated—but it’s substantial.
Similarly with racism. It’d be a difficult task to calculate the “worth” to Australia’s bosses from having <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Migrants-in-the-Australian-workforce.pdf">at least 7 percent</a> of Australia’s working class on some sort of inferior or insecure visa status, generally bound to their employers and therefore reluctant to speak up about <a href="https://www.migrantworkers.org.au/lives_in_limbo">wage theft</a>, health and safety or a punishing pace of work.
It’d be possible to put a dollar value on all the straight-up theft of land from Indigenous people (e.g. the estimated $700 million owed to the Gumatj people in the Northern Territory for a bauxite mine imposed on them in the 1960s, according to a recent High Court <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/14/high-court-native-title-ruling-may-affect-compensation-claims-nationwide-experts-say">decision</a>). But it’d be much harder to calculate a figure for the value our rulers derive from the racist political campaign drummed up against Aboriginal people around the Voice referendum—which has helped Dutton drive politics in this country in a more right-wing, dog-eat-dog direction, undermining solidarity to the benefit of the capitalist class.
Which gets us to Trump.
6. Because fuck Donald Trump and the horse he rode in on 
The modern world has never seen a more blatant example of the rule of the rich. The thirteen billionaires appointed to cabinet posts by President Trump are <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-net-worth-cabinet-billionaires-b2654841.html">reported</a> to be worth US$340 billion—more than the annual gross domestic product of well over 100 countries. 
This government by the obscenely rich, for the obscenely rich, tells us a lot about what capitalism, at its core, is all about. 
It’s about whipping up bigotry and fear. Just one example is the extraordinary US$215 million that Trump and his allies spent during last year’s presidential election campaign whipping up hatred against trans people—<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/republicans-spent-nearly-215m-on-tv-ads-attacking-trans-rights-this-election/">calculated</a> at US$143 for every trans person in the US. 
It’s about vicious anti-migrant politics and the repression of democratic rights: snatch squads from Immigration and Customs Enforcement stalk the streets of US cities, grabbing pro-Palestine activists and whoever else they can for deportation. University administrations and media outlets have rushed to drop any pretence of seeking the truth without fear or favour, in compliance with Trump’s directives.
Of course, a government of billionaires is about trashing workers’ rights: Trump’s <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/15/business/nlrb-trump-musk-workers/index.html">gutting</a> of the National Labor Relations Board is the start of rolling back the legal protections won by workers in the 1930s. This is a gift of love to Amazon owner Jeff Bezos (the second-richest person in the world), and to every other employer who has been troubled by their workers forming new unions in recent years.
And perhaps the most terrifying of all—behind the chaos of Trump’s economic and tariff policy is the cold hard logic of rebuilding US industry to rapidly prepare for war with the US’s fast-rising imperialist rival, China.
And in Australia? Billionaires like Gina Rinehart and Anthony Pratt love Trump just as much as their US counterparts. The Liberals want to copy as much of his agenda as they can. Labor can’t bring itself to make even token criticisms, sending Foreign Minister Penny Wong to applaud Trump and his billionaire sieg-heiling mates at the presidential inauguration. 
Why is this an argument to vote socialist? Because it’s only the socialists who say that every single one of these policies—and the whole system and logic behind them—have to be rejected. And it’s only the socialists who are consistent about building a politics of hope and resistance based on the one power that, throughout history, has shown itself capable of challenging the rule of the rich: ordinary people, and in particular workers—organised, mobilised and armed with radical politics. 
The world needs a socialist movement as a living, breathing, organising, fighting opposition to Trump and to the system he rode in on. 
This means plenty of hard work over the next five weeks, and far beyond. But <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/victorian-socialists-putting-socialism-on-the-political-map">putting socialism back on the political map</a> during the current campaign is an important contribution to the movement that we need.

Six reasons to vote Socialist

Socialism is a state of affairs in which the working class governs society over the whole of the Earth. The people whose labour produces the vast bulk of the wealth— the people who build, operate and maintain the extraordinary productive network that spans our globe—will rule. 
As soon as we describe such a society, it’s clear that it will never come into existence by merely voting for it. Regardless of the outcome of elections, the Gina Rineharts, the Elon Musks, their political servants like Albo or partners like Trump and the totalitarian rulers of China, are not going to simply hand power to the billions of workers who work to create the wealth they control.
So if elections aren’t going to usher in socialism, what’s the point of socialists participating in them?
Measuring forces, building forces
Good ideas don’t just grow legs and start wandering around in the world, changing things for the better. History, for good and for ill, is made by organised political forces. Helping to build such a movement that can fight for socialism is one important reason for running electoral campaigns.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels talked about socialists participating in elections in order to “measure our forces”. This is good advice in general, but there’s not a great benefit in following it if our forces are small enough to fit into a single, not-very-large room. And more fundamentally, there’s something that isn’t quite captured by the idea of elections being a passive “measuring” of socialist forces or a “thermometer” of the class struggle, as Engels put it.
Part of the joy of Victorian Socialists is that the party involves enough dedicated socialist campaigners to actually win a credible vote. Most recently, we won 7.2 percent in the by-election in the Victorian state seat of Werribee, with booth results as high as 14 percent.
This matches our results from the 2022 Victorian state election. We won an average of 6.2 percent of votes in the eleven seats in Melbourne’s north (8 percent in Broadmeadows, 7.7 percent in Thomastown, and 8.1 percent in Brunswick), and 5 percent in the eleven seats in Melbourne’s west (including 6.6 percent in St Albans, 6.8 percent in Kororoit, and 9.3 percent in Footscray). In the upper house, we won more than 50,000 votes: our two main candidates won more primary votes than several successful upper house candidates in other parts of Victoria, though both of us missed out on a seat on preferences.
The fact that a socialist electoral project could win this sort of vote—the highest number of votes for a socialist outside of Labor since the 1940s—has been an important contribution to the project of hauling socialism off the margins of political life in this country and into the daily and weekly political discussions of many thousands of people.
Our federal campaign is now kicking off in earnest and is already clearly having the same effect—both through our campaign activities, and through engagement with many of those familiar with our excellent Senate candidate Jordan van den Lamb (aka Purplepingers), the scourge of every scumbag landlord through his shitrentals.org site.
All of our campaigning—letterboxing, doorknocking and talking with voters wherever we can—plays a role in normalising socialist campaigns and building support for socialist political positions. This activity also gives essential training for the campaigners themselves as we engage with all sorts of people with a listening ear and a socialist message of hope and resistance.
In other words, we run in election campaigns not just to “count our forces” but to build socialist political forces. Victorian Socialists has been quite successful in doing so, as the growth of the project—already by far the largest socialist political project in this country in decades—continues to show.
What would a socialist member of parliament do?
Victorian Socialists’ purpose in winning a parliamentary seat is not to be first in line for the daily buffet in the parliamentary dining room, nor to rain socialism down upon a grateful public. In keeping with a long-held socialist principle, our elected representatives will take only the wage of an average worker, with the rest going to build community and worker campaigns.
One of the main jobs of our elected representatives will be to build every act of workers’ struggle and collective resistance outside the parliament. And inside the parliament? We’ll be there to take on the major parties, not just to make pious speeches.
Though socialist MPs are a rarity in Australian history, we can get some idea of what’s possible from past practice.
Percy Brookfield was elected to the New South Wales parliament as the representative for the militant mining town of Broken Hill in 1917, during the greatest social and political revolt in Australia’s history. Expelled from Labor in 1919, he was re-elected as an independent in 1920 despite a statewide red scare against him.
Brookfield worked tirelessly to support the NSW general strike of 1917, and the epic eighteen-month “Big Strike” for shorter hours by 4,000 Broken Hill miners, which started in May 1919. He was outspoken in support of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 and was part of the discussions that led to the formation of the Communist Party of Australia.
In addition to building strikes and socialist organisations outside of parliament, Brookfield used his position in parliament to build the class struggle. He used parliamentary privilege to reveal how police had fabricated evidence against the IWW Twelve, members of the militant Industrial Workers of the World who had been jailed in a frame-up case.
When Labor needed his vote to stay in government after the 1920 election, Brookfield made his support conditional on Labor releasing the IWW Twelve and meeting the strikers’ demands for shorter hours in the ongoing Big Strike in Broken Hill. Both demands were achieved within six months—thanks to months and years of organising and struggle involving many thousands of people, and aided by Brookfield putting his political weight on the scales at a crucial time.
Two decades after Brookfield, in 1944 Fred Paterson became the only member of the Communist Party elected to a parliament in Australia. Paterson represented the seat of Bowen, south of Townsville, in the Queensland parliament. Bowen at this time included major coal centres, a large meatworks, sugar plantations, rail and ports—and twelve CPA branches.
Paterson was on the central strike committee of the massive Queensland rail strike, which started in February 1948, helping to coordinate the distribution of 850,000 leaflets supporting the strikers and visiting the pickets each day before attending parliament. When police tried to disperse the pickets, Paterson pointed to a loophole that allowed the pickets to remain as long as they kept moving.
The Queensland Labor government rammed an anti-strike law through parliament; they described it as the “Paterson bill” because it was designed to undermine the legal strategies he had advised. Paterson returned the compliment, describing the new law as “the greatest scab-herding strike-breaking piece of legislation ever introduced by a Labor government anywhere in Australia”.
On 17 March 1948, while observing workers being dispersed by the police, Paterson was bashed unconscious from behind by a cop. Paterson’s bashing sparked a Brisbane rally of 15,000 to 20,000 in support of the strikers. Protests, stop-works and meetings were held in Townsville, Bowen and Collinsville, and coal miners in NSW struck for 24 hours. The rail strike was settled a few weeks later, with the government conceding wage rises of 77 percent of the initial claim for trades workers and 95 percent for labourers.
Our short roll call of socialists outside of the Labor Party who have been elected to Australian parliaments should also include George Petersen. Petersen was part of a Trotskyist group when he became active in Labor Party politics in Wollongong and was elected to the NSW parliament in 1968. One of the most radical members of an Australian parliament, Petersen was an agitator for homosexual law reform, abortion law reform and prisoners’ rights. He used parliamentary privilege to expose the reign of terror exercised by guards in NSW prisons. Petersen campaigned to expose the frame-up of the alleged Hilton bombers in 1978 and was a staunch supporter of the Palestinian struggle.
Petersen worked closely with union members in the Illawarra, and his reminiscences contain plenty of thoughtful reflections. Petersen developed a political relationship with Brian Phipps, an electrician who was secretary of the Combined Mining Unions committee at Huntley Colliery in Petersen’s electorate of Illawarra. Petersen recalled of Phipps:
“He is a militant socialist and we worked together harmoniously for seventeen years promoting the cause of these workers, and, in return, receiving their total support ... I often thought that the relationship between Brian and me was the relationship I would like to have with all worker militants. That would have required me to be a member of a Leninist-type party, combining my work in a bourgeois parliament with that of fellow party members who occupied the same sort of position in the trade union movement as Brian did at Huntley Colliery. My great problem was that there was no such party to which I could belong.”
In 1987, Petersen voted against the Unsworth Labor government’s attacks on the NSW workers’ compensation scheme. Automatically excluded from the Labor caucus, Petersen contested his seat as an independent but lost despite a spirited campaign.
Of course, circumstances in Victoria in the 2020s differ in various ways from the examples above. Notably, the reformist and Stalinist political forces that dominated working-class politics for the past century have decayed or collapsed. For this reason at least, any newly elected, radical socialist MP will have to focus on building socialist political forces rather than just providing expression to pre-existing forces.
All of this lies in the future, along with the many challenges and opportunities that having a socialist MP will bring. In the meantime, no-one in Victorian Socialists plans to just sit around waiting for a socialist movement to rebuild itself. Rather, this is our central project.
Like many political campaigns and projects, Victorian Socialists includes revolutionaries (such as Socialist Alternative members) as well as non-revolutionaries who are just sick of Labor’s sell-outs, and many people engaging with socialist politics for the first time. We’re an electoral front in which no-one has to hide their politics and in which anyone who wants to help rebuild a socialist political current is welcome to join.
Our party program popularises socialist political positions—for the right to strike, for pulling out of the US alliance, for a punitive tax on billionaires to fund the services we need, for taking over empty houses to ease the housing crisis. Many of us are knee-deep in community campaigns, worker organising and other socialist political projects.
All of us are serious about fighting for the socialist future we need: joining Victorian Socialists and getting active is a positive contribution to that project.

Why do socialists run in elections?

Victorian Socialists (VS) is the largest-scale socialist political project in Australia for decades. There is no other project in which hundreds of socialists—including members of Socialist Alternative and many others—have conversations with literally thousands of working-class people and all comers, over a period of weeks in election campaigns like the one the party just waged in the western Melbourne electorate of Werribee. 
We get some idea of how those conversations have gone by looking at the party’s vote. In the case of Werribee, it was high enough to leave pundits and rival political parties scratching their heads. What unfathomable secret, they wonder, can explain how an area with close to zero history of serious socialist political activity could deliver a very creditable 7.1 percent of the first-preference vote to VS’s Werribee candidate Sue Munro (up from 3.7 percent in the 2022 Victorian state election)? 
The final tally of 3,010 votes was fewer than 200 behind the Greens, who had the benefit of a political profile established over decades (as well as, in the case of Werribee, getting the donkey vote—the number one spot on a ballot paper listing twelve candidates in total). At a couple of booths VS scored 14 percent of all votes cast, coming third behind Labor and the Liberals. “It’s not all great for the Liberals, the socialists got a bigger swing”, the Australian Financial Review moaned in an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15ndxHKFYj/">online headline</a>
reflecting on the Werribee result. 
Melbourne’s Age newspaper described our decent result as a “<a href="https://x.com/vic_socialists/status/1888178135075803397">surprise packet</a>”. But it’s no surprise to anyone involved with VS that a socialist message of rage, hope and resistance can strike a chord among thousands of people in the working-class heartlands of Melbourne, and beyond. 
Campaigning for Victorian Socialists gets us into conversations with rage-filled healthcare workers about the state of our hospitals and the slide to privatised health care; with voters appalled at Israel’s genocide in Palestine and Labor’s complicity in it; and with union members disappointed by the lack of fight from what should be the strongest organisations our side has. 
A minority are already committed socialists, delighted to encounter a party that takes working-class politics and working-class people seriously. Many more have never met an active socialist before but can relate to our sincerity, our political conviction and our basic propositions: that it’s crazy that billionaires keep doubling their wealth when it’s working-class people who do all the work around here; that we shouldn’t tolerate being sold out by Labor, which keeps the capitalists’ profits piling up while throwing crumbs (at best) to the rest of us; that everything is the wrong way up in this society; and though we’re not promising to solve every problem, we’re serious about helping working-class people organise and fight back. 
Our Werribee result was no one-off. In Victoria’s 2022 state election, more than 52,000 people voted for VS in the upper house and 48,000 in the lower house. You have to go back to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Victorian_state_election">1940s</a> to find a socialist electoral campaign in Victoria that got anywhere near that number of votes. As the lead VS candidate in the Northern Metro upper house region in 2022, I received just 300 fewer primary votes than the eventual winner of the final of five seats. In the Western Metro region, VS candidate Liz Walsh came even closer to being elected, though both of us missed out after preferences. 
Given how far socialist ideas have been pushed to the margins in this country, this was a real achievement—and a solid contribution to bringing socialism back into everyday political life. We built on our 2022 campaign in last year’s local council elections—winning 67,296 first preference votes, with an average vote share of 10.8 percent for each ward we ran in. Owen Cosgriff was elected as a VS councillor in Bendigo with more than 40 percent of first preferences.
Our goal in winning positions in local councils and parliaments is not to rain socialism down upon a grateful and passive public. Rather, it’s the opposite: we aim to use those platforms to promote every strike, protest and act of collective resistance, and to build the politics of intransigent opposition to capitalism and to the exploitation, wars and oppression that the system produces and feeds off. 
It’s not like we’re waiting around to win parliamentary seats to play a positive role in the resistance though. In 2022, <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/reproductive-freedom-precondition-equality-interview-liz-walsh">15,000 people</a> answered a call-out from VS Western Metro candidate Liz Walsh to rally for abortion rights after the US Supreme Court scrapped Roe v Wade. We’ve been <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/campaigns/palestine">active in solidarity</a> with the people of Palestine throughout Israel’s Gaza genocide. When Woolworths workers put out a call for <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/protesters-block-entry-to-woolworths-warehouse-as-grocery-shortages-continue-20241202-p5kv0m.html">picket line support</a> during their recent strike, a couple of hundred Victorian Socialist members and supporters <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DDDp0_3Tbhm/?img_index=4">joined</a> the pre-dawn picket line at Dandenong South. 
All this activity sits alongside Victorian Socialists’ success in waging large-scale and effective electoral campaigns, as a contribution to rebuilding socialist political forces. Our next major opportunity to do this is in the rapidly approaching federal election. 
High-profile housing activist Jordan van den Lamb (aka purplepingers) has become the hero of renters and the scourge of Australia’s landlords through his <a href="https://www.shitrentals.org/">shitrentals.org</a>
website and his viral <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@purplepingers?lang=en">tiktoks</a>. Victorian Socialists is proud to have Jordan as our lead Senate candidate. Anyone across the state of Victoria can play a role in the <a href="https://pingers4parliament.com/">pingers4parliament</a> campaign. We’re also running lower house candidates in the seats of Fraser in Melbourne’s west, Cooper and Scullin in the north, and the regional seat of Bendigo.
We’ve already kicked off the campaigning. Whatever your level of experience, there’s an important role for everyone—letterboxing, doorknocking and helping organise events. <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/join">Signing up to be a member of Victorian Socialists</a> is the best way to contribute and to get involved. Find an event on our <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/join">website</a>
or <a href="https://www.instagram.com/vic_socialists/?hl=en">socials</a>, and bring your friends.
Anyone serious about fighting for socialism needs to take opportunities to expand the reach of socialist ideas, to inspire more resistance to capitalism and to convince more people to become active socialists. Victorian Socialists makes a valuable contribution to each of these projects—so jump on board and get active!

Victorian Socialists: putting socialism on the political map

Woolworths workers strike a blow against corporate power

It’s a sight for sore eyes. 
For the past two weeks, a news cycle usually dominated by trivia, tragedy and paid talking heads has featured an unusual sight: striking workers. The people whose labour makes society function, who are most of the time ignored and invisible, are walking out of their workplaces, into the streets and onto the nightly news. 
There have been <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-27/thousands-rally-queensland-against-qld-governmnet-suspend-bpic/104652842">construction workers</a> in Brisbane and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/nurses-took-to-the-streets-after-insulting-pay-offer-next-stop-court-20241113-p5kq80.html">nurses</a> in New South Wales taking action. But, more than anyone else, it’s the 1,800 warehouse workers striking in Victoria and NSW who have pushed working conditions, corporate greed—and, crucially, workers’ power—onto the political agenda. Organised by the United Workers Union, these workers have seriously disrupted the super-profitable “business as usual” of Woolworths supermarkets—one of the biggest, most ruthless, and fiercely <a href="https://thenightly.com.au/business/coles-woolworths-continues-fall-from-grace-to-now-be-among-nations-top-three-distrusted-brands-c-16973063">hated</a> companies in the country. 
Two weeks into the strike, the outcome still hangs in the balance. But win lose or draw, the warehouse workers’ strike is likely to be the most significant industrial dispute in Australia this year. As Red Flag has <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/woolies-distribution-workers-strike-for-everyone">argued</a>, every worker in the country has a stake in its outcome. 
Perhaps the most powerful moment of the strike so far came on Monday 2 December. Up until that point, management’s policy seemed to be one of sucking the energy and momentum out of the dispute. Management locked the gates of the strikebound facilities on day one, ramped up alternative supply chains, harassed workers by phone and text, and waited for demoralisation to set in. But faced with significant and growing gaps in supermarkets, and gaping holes in the stock at Dan Murphys, management decided to take a chance. 
On Sunday 1 December, Woolworths CEO Amanda Bardwell put out a statement claiming that only a minority of workers at the giant Melbourne South Regional Distribution Centre in Dandenong South were union members; that the vast majority of workers were keen to scab on the strike; that management had reached a deal with the Shop Distributive and Allied union (which is notorious for undercutting other unions, and even <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/5320">legal minimums</a>, in their enterprise agreements); and that as a result, full production would resume at South Dandenong from 6am Monday morning. 
Anyone aware of Woolworths management’s commercial practices, such as allegedly <a href="https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-takes-woolworths-and-coles-to-court-over-alleged-misleading-prices-dropped-and-down-down-claims">lying about their own prices</a>, will not be surprised to learn that this statement was, to put it mildly, a little shy of the truth. Out of slightly more than 300 workers at the Dandenong centre, the UWU have a membership of more than 240 (and growing). The SDA, by contrast, have seven members at the facility. Unsurprisingly, Bardwell’s statement neglected to mention this relevant fact.
Perhaps Bardwell and team believed their own bullshit. Perhaps they thought that one day of transparent PR spin would be enough to demoralise the workers and their supporters. If so, management were in for a shock. By 5am on Monday, a crowd of around 100 workers and more than 200 community supporters—a large number of them mobilised by Victorian Socialists—were assembled, ready to turn back any scabs. 
An hour passed. Then another. And then another. 
Spirits were high on the picket as workers, students and well-wishers chatted, chanted, and practiced our picket drills. Rumour was that the would-be strike breakers had been put on a bus, then taken off, then put back on, then taken off. 
It wasn’t until 12 hours after management’s supposed start time that a tiny crew of would-be scabs turned up, only to be turned away from the facility with no great drama. Management’s grand reopening turned out to be just another Woolworths fake news story. 
As word of the victory spread, workers on other pickets celebrated. Rhys, a worker at the Erskine Park distribution centre in Sydney, told Red Flag, “Hearing about this big Melbourne story on Monday. They [management] failed, you know, this morning they failed. And today they’re trying to get an injunction through Fair Work to open that site. And it just makes you laugh. You know, it’s not scary. It’s just funny.”
Workers mercilessly mocking their management as the company flail around looking for a way to neutralise worker power and worker solidarity, is an unparalleled, and much too rare, joy. 
Of course, the future is unwritten and so far, though the company has moved on some issues, the strikers are yet to fully win their main demands. It’s encouraging though that some heavy artillery of the union movement is taking an interest, with the Victorian Building Industry Group of unions <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Do4MDWWWU/">declaring</a> that they will support the striking warehouse workers “industrially, politically, and financially until these workers win this dispute”. But with pressure increasing on all sides, it’s impossible to tell how the dispute will resolve. 
Even at this stage though, the strike—as with any serious dispute—has shone a revealing light on politics and society. 
Predictably, the Liberals, though willing to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/dutton-to-supermarkets-rein-in-prices-or-we-ll-force-you-to-sell-off-stores-20240702-p5jqh1.html">mouth off</a> once in a while about a “big stick” approach to taking on the big supermarket companies, have not uttered a single word to support the people actually taking on these same companies—the striking workers. 
Labor politicians have barely been more visible, with Cabinet ministers’ <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-04/woolworths-union-dispute-government-uwu-woolies-shelf-dan-murphy/104682096">reported comments</a> falling well short of any actual support for the workers’ demands. The Victorian Greens have finally crept out of witness protection on the issue, posting two Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/victoriangreens/">reels</a> in support of the strike in the past day or so. 
By far the most prominent political party supporting the strike has been Victorian Socialists. The party’s support extends not just to social media <a href="https://www.instagram.com/vic_socialists/?hl=en">posts</a>, but to party members and supporters doing one of the most important things in politics: turning up. The Melbourne Age (in a rare <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20241202092230/https:/www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/protesters-block-entry-to-woolworths-warehouse-as-grocery-shortages-continue-20241202-p5kv0m.html">sympathetic report</a>) noted the presence of many VS supporters at Monday’s early morning picket: 
“Activist and Victorian Socialists federal Senate candidate <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20241202092230mp_/https:/www.theage.com.au/link/follow-20170101-p5k5fq">Jordan van den Lamb</a>—known as purplepingers online—issued a call-out to followers on social media on Sunday, urging them to attend Monday’s action in Dandenong South. Party member Ryan Stanton said activists, students and trade union members were among those who turned out with the party to support Monday’s protest. ‘Woolworths is one of the main drivers behind the cost-of-living crisis,’ Stanton said. ‘They’ve been price gouging...but what a lot of people don’t know is that they’re also doing their best to make working lives harder for the workers who actually pick the stock that goes to the stores.’”
It’s no surprise that socialists, for whom workers’ struggles are at the centre of social change and the vision of a new world, are also some of the most active supporters of those struggles when they erupt. 
But the strike reveals much more than the real values of political parties. Like any major dispute, the strike makes it obvious who does all the goddam work around here—and who doesn’t. Without workers’ labour, it turns out, none of us have toilet paper, pasta, frozen goods, chilled goods, beer—or anything else. Anyone who doubts this can wander through one of hundreds of Woolworths supermarkets or liquor stores in Australia’s most populous states. The strike shows anyone who cares to look that even in this automated age, workers and our labour underpin everything. 
What a contrast to Woolworths management. 
Throughout the strike, Bardwell and her extensive team of executives, HR goons, lawyers and spin doctors are no doubt working as hard as they ever do. The stream of dishonest press releases, legal threats and fake-welfare harassing phone calls to striking workers is testament to that. But nothing at all of any value to human beings results. The billable hours rack up, but not one extra roll of toilet paper gets to the stores.
To put it plainly: this layer of CEOs and executives and their well-paid flunkies is parasitical. They contribute nothing of value to society, but feed off the rest of us. In even simpler terms: they need us, but we don’t need them. 
The Brad Banduccis, the Amanda Bardwells and their bought-and-sold servants in politics and the media can wander around as if they’re the most important people on the planet. A major strike, however, makes it abundantly clear whose labour really matters—and who would have nothing without it. 
The essential nature of the work millions of workers do every day, to society and to the capitalists’ profit-based “business as usual” set-up, gives workers enormous power. But it’s obvious that this power can only be exercised collectively. 
This mundane fact has important consequences. Any strike points in the direction of solidarity and collective action, and an ethos directly at odds with the dog-eat-dog individualism fostered by the system. Even a quick look at the scope of the warehouse strike, and its demands, shows this. 
Everyone on strike knows that warehouses commonly shut after 20 years, sometimes more, sometimes less. Each time this happens, Australia’s current system of enterprise-by-enterprise bargaining (introduced by Labor in the early 1990s) allows a company like Woolworths to set up a new shelf company, and dictate a new enterprise agreement on favourable terms. The gains won by previous rounds of struggle are largely wiped out, and workers in the new facility (many of whom have come from an older facility) have to start on lower pay. 
This is why one of the strike’s main demands is for a national agreement or at least for a series of nationally applied minimums, which Woolworths has to meet for existing and new sections of its supply chain. A minimum pay rate of $38 per hour is one key part of this. 
In other words, each of the Woolworths strikers knows that the only way to secure their own long-term interests in having decent wages, is by fighting for many thousands of workers they have never met to get a minimum pay rate of $38 an hour. A secure victory for one, it turns out, can only be achieved by a victory for all.
Not just the demands of the strike, but also its scope, show the same dynamic of expanding solidarity. If one warehouse goes on strike, it’s a major hassle for Woolworths management. But this impact is multiplied, and multiplied again, with each warehouse that joins in the action. 
This is why the elected officials, organisers, delegates and members of the UWU have put years of effort into lining up the expiry dates of the enterprise agreements covering the distribution networks of the major supermarkets. “United we stand, divided we fall” is not just a pleasant-sounding slogan. It reflects a class logic: the logic of working-class people in struggle for their own interests is to fight in ever-widening circles of solidarity. 
And this logic intensifies once the actual strike starts. Ask a striking worker about their experience of the strike. You’ll get an answer about how great it is to see and feel their own power in the flow-on effects from their strike. You’ll get an answer about the joy of forming a bond with people who share the same workplace and the same task but who have never had a chance to meet and talk, let alone establish a connection in common struggle. 
And you’ll get an answer about overcoming the sort of “divide and conquer” between shifts and job roles that management thrives on and promotes. Rhys, one of the strikers at Sydney’s Erskine Park distribution centre, explained to Red Flag how significant it is to see one of the main divisions in the shed—between day shift and afternoon—simply dissolve during the strike. “To see how together we are, it’s like it’s not two shifts, there’s just one shift” he said, “There’s just one way out—and it’s great to see that it’s everyone supporting everyone”.
This logic of working-class struggle, the logic of “everyone supporting everyone”, can extend beyond shifts, and beyond sheds. Far beyond, in fact.
One of the most generous and moving acts of solidarity with the warehouse strikers comes from refugees, a group of people who have been vilified and demonised in Australia for decades. A large group of refugees recently held an epic 100-day protest camp outside the Department of Home Affairs in Melbourne’s Docklands area, demanding the dignity and security that Labor promised them ahead of the 2022 election. 
This extraordinary protest received invaluable support from the UWU, whose Victorian office is located nearby. Many of the refugees involved are now returning that solidarity in the most practical way imaginable: by assisting the strike kitchen. As the refugees explain on their <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RefugeeWAVE">Facebook page</a>:
“Striking workers are heroes. They challenge the divisions created by bosses and prove that unity can overcome the barriers keeping us apart. Their struggle inspires us all to fight for a more equal and just society. In solidarity with these workers, Rathy and Maki have decided to start a Strike Kitchen called Meals for Equality. Starting Monday, they will prepare meals for the striking workers, showing that refugees and migrants stand united with the workers. When politicians like Dutton and Albo blame refugees and migrants for problems they created, we must counter this divisive narrative.” 
This is not just a gift to the striking workers. It’s a concrete example of solidarity that in months and years to come we can throw back in the face of anyone who buys into the lie that migrants and refugees are a threat to workers in this country. This example proves the exact opposite: while one of the biggest companies in the country was trying to starve and bully striking workers back to work, refugees were on the pickets, helping to keep the strikers fed. 
This sort of industrial action, and the solidarity it inspires, is far too rare in Australia today. In the 1970s, Australian workers had one of the highest strike rates in the world. Millions of workers struck to win decent wages and conditions, and an important minority of militant, political unionists led industrial campaigns to support other workers, to preserve low-cost housing, to win equal rights for women, against the Vietnam War, for Aboriginal Land Rights and against Apartheid in South Africa. 
This tradition of industrial action was deliberately <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/node-7266">broken</a> by the Labor governments of the 1980s. The result of this defeat has been the decline in union density and living standards. Along with that, the low level of strikes had led to a breakdown in the sense of solidarity and common interest on display at the picket lines outside distribution centres right now.
It is this solidarity that, when able to develop fully, points to a new and different sort of society, one which puts ordinary people in the driver’s seat. Workers can become so used to accepting society’s injustices and atrocities because they feel deprived of the power to change it. Strikes, and the solidarity they spark, can lead in the other direction, by demonstrating in practice that workers actually do have power, and that there is an alternative to this resignation. Any serious strike shows this potential power of our side. And once conscious of this power, workers are not necessarily content to stop at a wage rise or better conditions. 
The outcome of the warehouse strikes is still in play. But it’s clear that the warehouse workers and their struggle are an inspiration, and an education, to us all.

Hope on the picket line

What’s driving Israel’s wars?

Chants of “One, two, three, fuck the ALP!” rang out across Sydney in late September as several thousand striking construction workers protested in city streets. Around 5,000 workers struck and rallied in Sydney and Brisbane. But the construction unions in Melbourne once again put the biggest crowds on the street—upwards of 25,000, according to police estimates. 
It’s just over a month since the federal Labor government appointed a barrister to take total dictatorial control over the main construction union, the CFMEU. It is the most draconian attack on a union in living memory. All elected positions in most state branches have been replaced with a single unelected administrator who has publicly committed to strict adherence to Australia’s restrictive industrial laws. 
The strikes and rallies in response, and the stationary tower cranes dotting the skyline that formed their backdrop, illustrated a fundamental truth that no amount of spin from Labor ministers or highly paid administrators can wish away: it is construction workers, not overpaid administrators, cabinet ministers or Fair Work commissioners, who keep the whole industry going—and who can stop it in an instant. 
This industrial strength is sorely needed. 
Part of Labor’s attack, via the Fair Work Commission, has been dramatically slowing the approval of new enterprise agreements (EAs) in Victoria. This has sent a signal to employers, some of whom are now clearly dragging their feet about signing and lodging these new EAs. Several thousand Victorian CFMEU members who were already getting the first 5 percent pay increase under the new pattern EA have now had those pay increases withdrawn.
Over the past two weeks, an average of just one new Victorian EA per day has appeared on the dedicated Fair Work Commission <a href="https://www.fwc.gov.au/work-conditions/enterprise-agreements/find-enterprise-agreement/cfmeu-construction-agreements">web page</a> showing new CFMEU agreements being lodged. This is a fraction of the number usually lodged as a new EA gets rolled out. 
All of this poses a serious threat to a core piece of the architecture of the CFMEU’s industrial strength: the “pattern” enterprise agreement governing the wages and conditions of tens of thousands of construction workers. Without this pattern EA in place, a “race to the bottom” could quickly take hold in the core of the commercial construction industry. 
A battle to get the EA over the line in Victoria will take various forms. 
The last serious attempt to break the pattern EA in Victoria was Daniel Grollo’s ill-fated 2002 attempt to win a non-union ballot at his Grocon company. The CFMEU organised an industry-wide publicity campaign and targeted doorknocking, CFMEU members doorknocking members in their own language. T-shirts with the slogan “I’m not Daniel’s Donkey” were a popular fashion item, off and on the job. 
The union campaign was a huge <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/grocon-workers-say-no-20021219-gduydw.html">success</a>, 75 percent of the workforce voting “no”. Renewing this sort of detailed organising work will be important to defeat any similar employer ballots this time around.
Industrial action, protected or unprotected, aimed at particular employers will also be crucial in forcing recalcitrant bosses over the line—as will further industry-wide stop-works and rallies. The chair of the Melbourne rally, Electrical Trades Union Secretary Troy Gray, got the biggest cheer of the day when he threatened to shut down the industry with a three-day strike if there were “an orchestrated, continued attack on the working conditions and the living standards of Victorian construction workers”.
The rest of us have a stake in this fight as well. 
The break-up of industry bargaining into myriad enterprise-level agreements, pioneered by Labor in the early 1990s and continued by every government since, has fragmented solidarity and allowed conditions to go backwards. 
In contrast, the CFMEU and other construction unions have been more effective than any other private sector industry in maintaining a common standard across different employers. Enforcement is often a problem. For instance, the “finishing trades” such as plastering and painting have been a basket case in Victoria since 2005, even on unionised commercial sites: many workers flying a union flag don’t actually get the union rate.
Nevertheless, the construction unions have demonstrated in practice that it is still possible, despite enormously restrictive industrial laws, to achieve the most basic union goal of taking wages and conditions out of competition by imposing a common standard across the core of an industry. This living, breathing example of effective unionism is what’s now under threat from Labor’s attack.
The government claims its attack is necessary in response to a series of media stories in recent months. These have included serious allegations of corruption and criminal gang involvement in the structure of the Victorian and NSW branches of the CFMEU. We shouldn’t fall for the government’s spin. 
As Red Flag has <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/labor-knives-out-against-cfmeu-workers-rights-on-the-chopping-block">previously noted</a>, these problems can be tackled only by a revival of union democracy: regular election and re-election of all on-site delegates, full accountability to the membership regarding any allegations (and actions taken to address them) and most importantly a revival in the industrial action and politically informed debate that are the lifeblood of any real union democracy. 
But of course, the Labor government moved in the opposite direction—<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/labor-set-to-impose-dictatorial-powers-over-construction-union">abolishing</a>
all democratic rights for CFMEU members in five states, and appointing an unelected administrator with dictatorial powers over the union and with precisely zero obligations to report to any member. 
The only serious “crime” of the Queensland CFMEU branch in the eyes of Nick McKenzie, the main journalist who broke the stories, was <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/cfmeu-members-are-right-to-rage-but-they-re-railing-at-the-wrong-people-20240827-p5k5t9.html">failing</a>
to prevent “ugly scenes in public streets” in Brisbane. This is a reference to a picket at the crucial <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/strike-shows-stakes-for-queensland-cfmeu">Cross River Rail dispute</a> in Brisbane—probably the most important dispute in the country right now. In other words, the real “crime” in the eyes of the political establishment and their mouthpieces is effective unionism.
Whatever the public justification for Labor’s attacks, they have led directly to a growing assault on workers’ wages and conditions—especially in Victoria over the new pattern agreement. 
For decades, many union causes in Melbourne and beyond have benefited from the solidarity of construction union members. Rallies for workers’ compensation or for better industrial laws, pickets large and small for all sorts of workers—all of them have benefited when the CFMEU turned up. Without that practical solidarity, and without that living example of a union that has maintained significant industrial strength when so many have let it peter out, we’d all be that much poorer. 
It’s now our turn to show up for the CFMEU. Anyone who values effective unionism in this country has a stake in this fight.

High stakes for all workers in construction battle

“Here’s some good news”, I announce. I’m standing on a planter box outside the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, one of many hundreds of protesters jammed into an awkward corner between cops, horses and the giant conference venue.
Inside, a cabal of war practitioners and war profiteers—the military and the monetary—is meant to be settling in for an exclusive breakfast buffet, the prelude to three days of wheeling and dealing in the tools of mass killing. It’s the first morning of Land Forces, the country’s biggest get-together and money-making opportunity for the booming business of war.
Usually, the masters of war get to waltz around every part of the Earth as if they own it. But today, they have a problem: us.
To counter the planned protests, the cops have done 90 percent of our job for us by constructing a vast ring of fences around the venue. The underground car park has been closed, along with the tram route that those staying at city hotels might use. Conference participants have to guess, second guess and triple-guess the activities of the protesters to gain access. 
It’s just after 7am, and a rapidly growing crowd is determined to disrupt the conference’s opening day. We’ve already marched a couple of kilometres around the city, away from the cordon of cops and barricades at the front door, to another of the venue’s entrances.
Folks are a little hesitant at first, but we soon get ourselves organised to block the steady trickle of Land Forces participants coming through this particular gate. Police bring horses, but a row of planter boxes makes it difficult to clear the crowd.
It’s a standoff. It’s all a bit chaotic. No one really knows what’s happening or what we should be doing. It seems important to explain that this is what an effective protest looks like, so I clamber onto a planter box. The megaphone is creaky, but it does the job.
I’ve got some good news, I say. It’s just past 7am. Which means that the masters of war are supposed to be inside this venue, rubbing shoulders and gawping at tanks, settling themselves down to a profitable three days of buying and selling the tools for mass murder without a worry in the world.
Instead, they’re under siege.
This is a lot of things. Chaotic. A little confused, perhaps. But it’s definitely not business as usual for the people inside. And outside, we’re sending a message around the world that people in this town are prepared to disrupt the machine that wages war.
We’re doing great. And we’re only just getting going.
I repeat the short speech to a different section of the crowd, this time emphasising that we’re walking (literally) in the footsteps of many other protesters. Exactly 24 years ago, on 11 September 2000, tens of thousands of protesters blockaded a meeting of the World Economic Forum. The WEF is the exclusive club for the world’s billionaires and their political servants, usually held in Davos, Switzerland, but staged at the nearby Crown Casino 2000.
On the first day of these “S11” protests, the protesters were more powerful than the most powerful people on Earth—who couldn’t get into their own conference. The event continued on subsequent days, thanks to an extraordinary level of brutality from Victoria Police, urged on by Labor Premier Steve Bracks. But the protest contributed to a worldwide movement against corporate greed, which jumped from Seattle to Genoa to Melbourne to Porto Alegre and beyond. The WEF retreated to Doha, and then back to the hidey-hole in Switzerland.
Jump forward a couple of decades to 2019. Around 700 of us blockaded the front entrance of the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre—the same venue as Land Forces—to disrupt IMARC, the biggest mining and fossil fuel conference in the country. The conference went ahead, thanks to an extraordinary level of brutality from Victoria Police, urged on by Labor Premier Daniel Andrews. But civil disobedience as part of the climate movement was the talk of the town. IMARC moved cities the following year.
So even if our protest is five different sorts of chaos at any one time, that means ten different sorts of chaos for the conference participants and organisers as they try to work out what we’re doing and how to get around us. They’re relying on their drivers to get them through, but the cops have closed the car park and their limousine is stuck in traffic due to the protest. They’re expecting to get off a tram in their $10,000 suits to wander in unhindered to discuss the business of war and genocide—but the cops have blocked the tram route, so they end up lost and bewildered, wandering right through the protest. They’re usually the masters of war. Today, they have to contend with us. We should be proud that all over the world, people will see that there are thousands of us right here, stopping the “business as usual” so necessary for mass killing.
By the time I finish my speech, marshals had noticed the cops are moving to kettle us, so we were on the move. For a while, the crowd occupies one of the main intersections in the area. We try a rush one way or another but police horses are much quicker than us. Nevertheless, the mood is upbeat. No doubt plenty of Land Forces cars, buses and limousines are stuck in traffic.
I get talking to an old friend and comrade, another veteran of S11. He reminds me that years before S11, there were protests against US President George H.W. Bush, who visited Melbourne in January 1992. The Bush demo built on massive anti-war protests sparked by the US-Australian invasion of Iraq in early 1991. And just a few weeks earlier, thousands of protesters had blockaded the AIDEX arms fair in Canberra.
The police of Labor Premier Joan Kirner had turned the venue for the Bush visit—a convention centre just across the river from the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre—into an armed camp. So the protesters roamed the city. This forced George Bush’s motorcade to repeatedly change routes as more than 1,000 protesters marched, danced and finally ran around the CBD. Kirner’s cops gave us a beating with batons and horses, but we’d sent a message of resistance to the US-Australian war machine around the world.
Our reminiscences are interrupted by the crowd getting on the move again. As we return to the conference venue’s front entrance, there are probably a couple of thousand of us. Still intent on disrupting the war profiteers, a section of the crowd discovers that the sturdy-looking fence surrounding the conference venue is not so sturdy. A chunk of the fence comes down, with cops pouring out of the breach spraying everyone with OC spray and briefly separating a section of the crowd.
Meanwhile, the rest of us find an increasing number of conference attendees—military, monetary, and functionary alike—wandering around the protest area, trying to gain access to the conference.
Usually, the workings of capitalism are disguised under layer after layer of bullshit and mystification. Our rulers and their flunkies are special people, we’re told, with special skills, far beyond the comprehension of us mere mortals who do the work.
But a protest like Land Forces brings them down to earth. All of a sudden, the masters of war are up close, some aggressive but mostly bewildered, unable to function without all the protections they usually enjoy.
The more expensive the suit, and the more arrogant the attitude, the more pointed the crowd. A few of us position ourselves near one of the places where the cops let a trickle of Land Forces attendees through. It’s not often we can get in the face, or the ear, of someone actually engaged in the business of profiting from genocide.
“So, how many millions will you make from killing babies today? Or perhaps you’re more in the ‘munitions that slice up parents’ business? Ah no—got it—you’re one of those ‘loitering munitions’ people aren’t you—so you can keep counting the profits while your handiwork keeps killing.”
By this time, the cops had usually hustled the war profiteer through. The more we were doing this button-holing, the more work the cops had to do. Often enough, the cops did the blockading themselves with riot cops and horses.
By now, it is well after 9am, the official kick-off time for the giant conference. And still, hundreds, or even thousands, of delegates are clearly having a hell of a hard time even getting to the building. There is no business as usual for the usually smooth business of genocide and war.
The police use of OC spray is becoming increasingly frequent. I mainly dodge it, but need a bit cleared off my neck and face.
“Are you ok?” asks one of the medics. “Fuck. Yes. 100 percent”, I reply. “How often do we get to get in the face of, or in the ear of, someone who is organising and profiting from the business of genocide? How often do we get to send a message around the world—to Palestine and the places where the genocide is armed from—of thousands of ordinary, extraordinary, people totally wrecking the ‘business as usual’ of genocide, even for a short time?”
But most of the crowd seems to be feeling the same way. We are all standing a few inches taller. And, of course, the point isn’t just to feel good; the point is to build the power we need. The long history of civil disobedience shows that the direct action of disruption can change individuals, build movements and challenge our rulers.
Which is why the cops couldn’t just let it continue.
If there was a trigger, I didn’t see it. But the obvious bottom line was that we were succeeding way too much in disrupting the business of war, in building strength and spreading a message of hope and strength and solidarity—not just in sentiment but in the physical fact of disruption.
Rows and rows of cops filed out from behind the barricades—general duties cops, riot cops, horse cops, cops with a<a href="https://mals.au/2020/11/25/victoria-police-weapon-id-guide/"> </a><a href="https://mals.au/2020/11/25/victoria-police-weapon-id-guide/">substantial arsenal</a> including OC spray, guns (perhaps the “baton-round launcher”), and cops with grenades (perhaps the “stinger grenade”).
Then they charged.
I’ve seen the violence unleashed by the police of Labor premiers Joan Kirner, Steve Bracks and Daniel Andrews against disruptive mass protests. The cops of Liberal premiers Jeff Kennett, against protesters defending Richmond High School in 1993, and Ted Baillieu, who turned much of the city into an armed camp to crush the Occupy protests of 2011. Those moments were also milestones in police brutality against disruptive protest in this town.
But the brutality of Labor Premier Jacinta Allen’s police yesterday was something else.
Stun grenades. Plastic bullets. Oceans of OC spray. Batons. Fists. All unleashed on protesters trying to get the hell out of the way. An army of charging cops deploying the violence they judged necessary to ensure business as usual—both for the armies of war and genocide, and the army of profiteers that supply them.
We scrambled away as best we could. Pushed back a hundred metres or more, and facing overwhelming force, it was clear that the main business of the protest was done for the day. 
Of course, already, everyone was talking about what we’d achieved.
After my planter-box speeches, a couple of younger protesters asked me how the day’s rally compared with the S11 protests of 24 years earlier.
S11 caught the rising wave of a global movement. We couldn’t control the timing of Land Forces. Perhaps if the masters of war had gathered in November or December last year, we could have got more protesters.
Regardless, that we put thousands on the streets despite an extraordinary media campaign against us, and despite the public threat of a police riot, is a testament to the organising groups and to everyone who turned up. We were easily twice or three times the crowd that had disrupted the fossil fuel profiteers at the same venue in 2019.
Despite an army of cops unleashed by Victoria’s Labor government, despite media lies and a string of defamatory articles—despite everything, the masters of war had to contend with mass, disruptive opposition to their agenda and their activities.
These are meant to be some of the most powerful people on Earth. On many days, they are. But on the streets around the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, thousands of us demonstrated in practice—to the world and to ourselves—that their “business as usual” can be challenged and derailed. That’s a win that can never be taken from us, and one that we can build on in the weeks, months and years to come.

Inside the Land Forces protest

Worldwide, <a href="https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2024/global-military-spending-surges-amid-war-rising-tensions-and-insecurity">military spending</a> hit a record US$2.4 trillion last year. If our rulers were serious about ending world hunger, just over a tenth of this amount could <a href="https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/how-much-money-would-it-take-to-end-world-hunger/">do the job</a>, spent over a decade. If our rulers were serious about tackling climate change, this sort of money could have had us well on the way to solving the problem already. 
But instead, our rulers are serious about war—so we get Land Forces. 
Do you want a target for rifle practice depicting an armed man wearing a keffiyeh, the Palestinian scarf? Get to Land Forces, where <a href="https://aal-manual-prod.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/Production/exb_doc/397/2202/nDR7Uz34OscY1663677172pdf.pdf">GlowShot Targets</a> should have one in stock. (GlowShot was on the <a href="https://exhibitors.landforces.com.au/land-forces-2022/Exhibitor/ExbDetails/NDM0?&amp;c=SXNyYWVs">2022 exhibitor list</a>—the organisers are a little shy about publishing this year’s list.)
If you want to buy the Rafael Spike missile, which <a href="https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/04/02/strike-that-killed-world-central-kitchen-workers-bears-hallmarks-of-israeli-precision-strike/">most probably</a> killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom in Gaza this year, head to Land Forces. The 2022 exhibitor list linked directly to Rafael’s promotional material, which <a href="https://aal-manual-prod.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/Production/exb_doc/397/2594/yIECWowJKf5B1661958613pdf.pdf">boasts</a> (as many Israel-based weapons companies do) that their products are “combat proven”. On aid workers, among many others.
If you want to buy the Elbit Hermes drone, which <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/04/04/zomi-frankcom-elbit-systems-airstrike-drone-900-million/">most probably</a> fired the Spike missiles into three successive cars until Zomi Frankcom and all her six aid worker colleagues were dead, you can talk it over with the Elbit rep at Land Forces. 
While you’re there, you can hang out with reps from Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the F-35 planes that Israel uses; HTA, whose co-CEO Karen Stanton is a <a href="https://www.3cr.org.au/fridayrave/episode/friday-rave-9-feb-2024-more-hta">key link</a> in the Australian F-35 supply chain; and General Dynamics, which manufactures the 2,000-pound bombs the F-35s often drop on the people of Gaza. 
Of course, you won’t find the survivors of these attacks at Land Forces. There will be no stall where you can talk with <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/protest-target-melbourne-weapons-manufacturer">Suleiman Salman al-Najjar</a>
about the 24 family members he lost, killed by a 2,000-pound bomb dropped on his home (most likely) by an Israeli F-35 in October 2023. Nor will medic <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/dozens-killed-israeli-strikes-displaced-people-khan-younis">Mohammed Al Khatib</a> be there, talking about treating the victims of three 2,000-pound bombs dropped by Israeli F-35s on the supposed “humanitarian zone” of al-Mawasi in the central Gaza strip in mid-July. And Umm Mahmoud will not be there to recount an almost identical Israeli bombing raid on al-Mawasi <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/al-mawasi-attack-people-were-torn-pieces-most-them-women-and-children">just this week</a>—10 September 2024—where her neighbours “were torn into pieces, most of them women and children”. 
Israel’s war in Gaza, with all its genocidal carnage, is being fought for <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/australia-israel-and-us-imperialism-explaining-bloody-embrace">profit and power</a>. And the profit and power to be gained from that war, and from supplying the means to fight that war, outweigh the horror and heartbreak endured by the family of Zomi Frankcom, Suleiman Salman al-Najjar, Mohammed Al Khatib, and Umm Mahmoud—along with the millions of Palestinians whose lives have been scarred or destroyed forever by the current genocide. 
This week, the release of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide final report prompted former soldier Kat Rae to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/radionational-breakfast/families-respond-to-veteran-suicide-royal-commission/104329802">reflect</a> on Radio National about how well the “military-industrial complex” had done out of the wars of the past twenty years. Meanwhile, the help provided by Veteran’s Affairs to her husband Steve (also a former soldier) to deal with crippling back pain was a $7 per fortnight prescription. This was cut to $5 and then cut altogether just two weeks before Steve took his own life. 
And the costs of war, the costs of the preparation for war, the costs of a society geared increasingly to war, spread far beyond those who are killed under the bombs or die later from the aftereffects. Our government can find $368 billion for nuclear-powered submarines—some of the most sophisticated killing machines so far devised—but claims it can’t afford to fund schools and hospitals properly.
And then there’s the nuclear weapons. Land Forces participants Lockheed Martin, Thales and BAE are on the <a href="https://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Producers.pdf">select list</a> of companies that make the most destructive weapons known to humanity.
All of this is meant to be normal. The monstrous, mundane. 
And usually, the masters of war get away with it. Usually, they’re able to conduct their brutal business as if it’s entirely divorced from the human slaughter and the sickening waste of human capacities that the arms trade represents.
Earlier this year, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz described the scene at the Singapore Airshow, the biggest and most important arms trade show in Asia. “The Gaza war”, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-05/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/at-singapore-airshow-the-gaza-war-was-a-selling-point-for-israeli-weapon-manufacturers/0000018e-aa7f-dc75-afde-faff383b0000?dicbo%3Dv2-dyCUtCK%26utm_source%3Dtraffic.outbrain.com%26utm_medium%3Dreferrer%26utm_campaign%3Doutbrain_organic&amp;sa=D&amp;source=docs&amp;ust=1726092009666407&amp;usg=AOvVaw1LvBTAXcSUkfktO7QsMXp6">Ha’aretz reported</a>, “was a selling point for Israeli arms makers”. It described how “the Asian clients took an interest in systems that have proved themselves on the battlefield, and the efficacy of the Israeli weaponry showcased here was backed up by evidence fresh from the battlefields in Gaza and Lebanon. Some of the buyers were eyeing defense systems that have intercepted thousands of missiles, while others were drawn to attack drones and tiny, advanced loitering munitions”.
Thanks to the thousands of protestors who have taken to the streets of Melbourne this week, media reports from Land Forces will be very different. Although the mainstream media will attempt to denigrate the protesters and sanitise war, they will not be able to hide that there is mass resistance to one of the great obscenities of capitalism—the trade in the weapons of war and genocide—as our rulers gear up for yet another brutal redivision of the world for profit and power. 
And just as importantly: for many of the protestors, this will be an important experience of ordinary (extraordinary) people making their voices heard, in a world designed to leave us silent and powerless. The protests are one step among the many needed to retake our world, from the warmongers and profiteers who currently treat it as theirs to exploit and destroy.

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