When Victoria Police Commander Wayne Cheeseman huffed into his media conference on 19 October, armed with a box of rocks allegedly thrown by anti-fascist protesters, he engaged in a piece of theatre intended to malign anti-racists and praise far-right protesters. Cheeseman was also doing his bit for the wider campaign, supported by the Melbourne City Council, the Liberal Party and the mainstream media, to crack down on protests in Melbourne. 
That day, there had been two opposing rallies in the city centre. One was a far-right protest, attended by angry, racist nationalists waving flags and demanding an end to immigration. This protest was led and addressed by Matt Trihey, a member of the National Workers Alliance, a fascistic organisation with links to the Nazi National Socialist Network. A similar protest a few weeks before had ended in violent attacks on Camp Sovereignty, an Indigenous protest camp in a city park.
The other demonstration was an anti-racist counter-march. It involved at least 1,500 people marching against nationalism and white supremacy, the vast, vast majority of whom did so entirely peacefully. The police chose to target their fire on just one of these protests. 
Cheeseman ranted and raved at his press conference, about “issue-motivated groups” (left-wing people who are opposed to racism), and praised the far right who “protested by example”. This celebration of the well-behaved racists gave a predictable boost to the far right, some of whom called on social media for Cheeseman to become mayor. 
The mainstream media amplified the police commander’s calls, building on many months of campaigning about the need to restore “order” in the city. Chip Le Grand, political writer for the Age, quoted beleaguered business owners as part of his argument for scrapping democratic rights: “Prominent restaurant owner Chris Lucas wants the CBD to be declared protest-free for the rest of the year. While this would temporarily impinge on the right to assembly guaranteed by Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, it would protect the countervailing rights of business owners, residents and ordinary visitors to the city”. 
The reality is that this anti-protest campaign was under way well before the anti-racist protest over the weekend. Cheeseman was saying what most of the establishment were already thinking, and some doing. Rock throwing and other counterproductive tactics simply gave the police and their allies more authority to pursue it. 
Their real gripe is the Palestine movement, remarkable in its scope, depth and longevity, and which has organised weekly rallies in Melbourne throughout Israel’s stepped-up genocide. This show of internationalism and solidarity against Western-backed violence is part of what had motivated the far right to organise. And it has been the catalyst for the authorities, in particular the Melbourne City Council, to call for restrictions on the right to protest, such as exist in New South Wales. The permit system there gives police the ability to veto the right to demonstrate, and while activists can sometimes overturn this in court, it requires access to lawyers and costs time and money, which left-wing activists often don’t have. 
Already, the Melbourne City Council has approved a plan to request state and federal governments to restrict protest rights in the city. This would <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-20/city-of-melbourne-councillors-vote-amendment-protest-disruption/105674980">include</a>
altering the routes of protests, moving them to parks or “stronger police intervention to minimise disruption”. 
Brad Battin, the Liberal leader, has likewise called for limits on the right to protest. Battin has pledged to introduce a permit system if the Liberals are elected at the coming state election. A Liberal press statement has Battin saying, “Under a government I lead, law abiding citizens will be prioritised ahead of those who seek to disrupt the activities of Victorians or endanger public safety”. The Liberals sleight of hand includes discussing protests and demonstrations in the same breath as machete crime and gang violence. 
Premier Jacinta Allen has so far resisted calls for a permit system, but her government has introduced other laws restricting protests. These include harsher penalties for people who lock on or glue themselves to surfaces—things that mainly environmental and anti-war activists engage in. 
Whatever happens, we have to defend the right to protest. We can’t let the very forces we are often protesting against take away our ability to challenge them. And we can’t let profit making for city businesses trump democratic rights. The best way to uphold and defend the right to protest is to keep getting out and protesting, and to make it impossible for the authorities to stop us.

Anneke Demanuele

Cops huff and media puff—we need to defend the right to protest in Melbourne

The WA Socialists achieved a solid result in their first electoral foray—into local council elections, which were completed on 18 October. Despite launching only in June this year, the party ran ten candidates across eight local councils, with grassroots campaigns concentrated in Bayswater, Canning and Fremantle. 
In Bayswater’s South ward, teacher Lewis Todman finished second with 15.8 percent of first preference votes. Also finishing second was nurse Rachel Goldsbrough in Canning’s Mason ward, with 24 percent. Finally, Nick Everett—longtime socialist and secretary of Friends of Palestine WA—finished third in Fremantle’s East ward with 19.7 percent of the vote. 
Among them, these campaigns mobilised more than 100 volunteers, many of whom were on the hustings for the first time. Together they knocked on 18,000 doors and spent countless hours getting the word out to voters. The message was straightforward: residents deserve a council that will put the interests of people ahead of the profits of developers and big business. 
This means, among other things, that councils should use their power to tackle the cost of living and housing crises head on. WA Socialists candidates argued for expanding or in some cases setting up council-run services, ranging from child care to aged care. Candidates also called for increasing council rates on vacant homes and for increased investment in community spaces. 
Over the course of the campaign, candidates also took up the big political issues. In Cockburn and Fremantle, we argued against the transformation of Perth’s southwestern suburbs into a hub for the AUKUS alliance. And in every ward, WA Socialists candidates argued for local governments to take up the issue of the genocide in Gaza. 
This message found an audience beyond those reached by our volunteers. With little more than a candidate statement sent out to voters along with their ballots, WA Socialists candidate Zoe Stevens won 17.7 percent of first preference votes in Armadale’s River ward. In Cockburn, where the field was heavily contested, Grace Redfern finished fourth out of eight with 10.1 percent of first preferences. With most other WA Socialists candidates winning between 7 and 10 percent of the vote in similar circumstances, it’s clear there’s an audience for socialist politics in WA. 
We can’t be content, though, with a couple of thousand people reading our policy and voting for us. We need more active socialists to keep up the fight for all the things we argued for in this election and to continue to establish WA Socialists as a radical left alternative to the political mainstream.

Christopher MacFarlane

Impressive result for socialists in WA council elections

Australia’s climate future is horrifyingly bleak. Already the continent has warmed by around 1.6 degrees, increasing the frequency and intensity of heatwaves, floods and bushfires. The recently released <a href="https://www.acs.gov.au/pages/national-climate-risk-assessment">National Climate Risk Assessment</a> estimates that, at 3 degrees of warming, 1.5 million people will be at risk of coastal flooding. 
As we barrel towards catastrophe, the federal Labor government has its foot firmly on the accelerator. Since taking office in 2022, it has approved 31 new fossil fuel projects. <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/fossil-fuel-subsidies-in-australia-2025/">According to a report commissioned by </a>the<a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/fossil-fuel-subsidies-in-australia-2025/"> Australia Institute,</a> in the past year, state and federal governments provided the fossil fuel industry with $14.9 billion in subsidies—equivalent to $28,381 per minute. 
From 27 November to 2 December, thousands of people from across Australia will join <a href="https://www.risingtide.org.au/pb2025">The People’s Blockade of the World’s Largest Coal Port</a> at the port of Newcastle. Rising Tide, the event organiser, argues that we need to step up our defence of the climate by taking mass direct action to stop the coal ships. At <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/turning-the-tide-the-fight-to-blockade-the-worlds-largest-coal-port">last year’s blockade</a>, people power prevailed over repeated government attempts to shut down the protest. Seven thousand people mobilised over ten days; 173 people were arrested while obstructing the shipping channel.
Zack Schofield, an organiser with Rising Tide and recently awarded Young Environmentalist of the Year by the Bob Brown Foundation, spoke to Red Flag about the upcoming action. 
--------------------
What led you to get involved in Rising Tide?
Climate activism has always been part of my political background. It has an outsized presence in Newcastle, where I grew up. The city is home to the world’s largest coal port, which alone is responsible for about 1 percent of total global carbon emissions, which is pretty extraordinary. Rising Tide and the people’s blockade also have a history in the town: the original iteration was active in Newcastle from 2005 until 2012.
After the pandemic, one of the Rising Tide core organisers pitched their idea to me: restart the organisation with a long-term strategy, principles and a desire to grow beyond a small clique of radical environmentalists. I found this compelling and decided to throw my lot in. In the last three years, it’s grown into something that I think fills a serious gap in the Australian climate movement. And I’m really proud that it’s based in my hometown.
Rising Tide seems to revolve around the annual blockade of the coal port. What’s so special about the blockade as a form of protest? 
The blockade of the port of Newcastle is a phenomenal tactic. A tactic doesn’t make a movement or a strategy, but it can underpin it in some important ways. For one, mobilising a significant number of people is relatively easy. Newcastle has a progressive population, and it’s pretty accessible for folks in the metropole. The city is also, conveniently, right next to the source of the problem: the coal port. You can see it with your eyes, it’s easy to access, and there are several infrastructural choke points. Lastly, being on the water adds a certain X-factor in terms of participant experience. The photos that come out of these actions are broadcast around the world—it just looks a bit more interesting and joyful than other actions. 
At the moment, the blockade is a form of civil disobedience, or storytelling with a material target. We’re putting ourselves in the way of the problem to tell a story about why there’s a problem and why people should do something about it. We impact the company’s bottom line a bit, but not enough for it to really matter. The objective is to build that mass of organised people to the level of civil resistance, where we become a force to be negotiated with, rather than policed away. By growing our numbers, we can make a material impact and actually stop business as usual.
What are your thoughts on the Labor Party in power?
I have dropped to new levels of cynicism that I didn’t think were achievable. They’re either utter cowards or the most nihilistic bastards imaginable. But even an ALP true believer would have to acknowledge at this point that external pressure is the only way to secure better climate policy in this country. So, whatever your take on the Labor Party, Rising Tide welcomes you to come along and take action with us. 
You’ve been active in the Palestine movement in Sydney and were arrested recently alongside former Greens candidate Hannah Thomas outside SEC Plating. Do you think the issues of climate justice and Palestinian liberation are linked?
Absolutely, they are linked by two problems: colonialism and profit seeking. The colonisation of the global South created the extractive industries we see in Australia, which is why First Nations people have always been at the forefront of the fight against fossil capital. And we know there are massive, untapped gas reserves just off the coast of Gaza. It’s one reason why Gaza is an attractive bit of land to claim for the apartheid Israeli state. 
Capitalist profit seeking is destroying the planet, but it’s also the engine room of fascism and war. Israel is very good at both of those things. And Australia, similarly, is not only a major exporter of fossil fuels, but it also has serious ties to that profit-making machinery of war. That’s why we were outside SEC Plating, it’s a company that contributes to the F-35 program, producing jets used to bomb children in Gaza. 
You really do just have to follow the money to understand the politics of power in this world. It’s why the fossil fuel industry wields influence over our government, it’s why Israel is so influential in the Middle East, and it’s why they have committed genocide against the Palestinian people. 
Last year, the Minns government tried to stop the blockade. Do you know what the government will throw at Rising Tide this year?
I don’t want to speculate because I expect they’ll come up with something we’ve never heard of before. But the fact of the matter is, this is a fight. I’m really happy that Rising Tide is prepared to run at fights, because frankly, that’s what it takes to make change—and it is in the fighting that people get inspired to join us. And the more people join us, the easier those fights are to win. 
Last year, 173 people were arrested. Some were dragged from their kayaks, others had their paddles stolen by police, and some were assaulted. But everyone who was arrested knew exactly what they were getting into; they knew it had to be done, and it can be an empowering experience to break bad laws. I think it’s time for activists of all kinds to stop justifying themselves and become the immovable object—the thing that’s going to happen, one way or another—and dare our opponents to live with the consequences of their climate vandalism. 
What do you think socialist politics has to offer in the fight for climate justice?
I think materialist politics are critical to understanding how the world works and how change happens. Socialism also has a tradition of organised mass action, which is what’s required to make change. Socialists understand that change doesn’t come from ideas alone or radicalism alone; it comes from actually becoming powerful enough and accessible enough to as many people as possible to shape the dominant politics of the day. 
Rising Tide is also a part of reviving these traditions. And I think this commitment to mass politics is one of the things that has stood us in good stead. We live in unprecedented times. I think people involved in politics today need to be open to experimenting with the traditions of the past and taking what works from them to meet the moment that we face.

Lily Campbell

Zack Schofield on the upcoming people’s blockade of the Newcastle port

Fascists in Australia are trying to build a movement. We have to stop them. On 19 October, we will be counter-protesting the next round of “march for Australia” demonstrations—protests that are trying to capitalise on fascism’s international success. 
The far right is no longer just small bands of drunken neo-Nazis praising Hitler and organising small marches and pub gigs. Across the globe, fascists have entered the political mainstream, and far-right groups have become ruling parties. They are in government in the United States, India, Italy, Argentina and across Europe. If elections were held in the United Kingdom, Germany or France today, fascists would likely take key ministerial posts in far-right governments. 
In Australia, the far right has organised some of the largest street demonstrations in decades, and One Nation has gained in the polls. Inside the Liberal Party, there is a battle between the right and the hard right—Andrew Hastie quitting the shadow ministry to further campaign against migrants and climate targets and for increased militarism, and to build the far-right brand as the future of Australian conservatism.
The growth of the far right is, in many ways, inevitable under capitalism. The ideas of the far right are the ideas of capitalism taken to their logical extreme. And the program of the far right can suit the needs of the ruling class. That’s why, in the United States, the Trump regime is not meeting much opposition from the capitalists. 
What isn’t inevitable is the nature of the response to this growth of the far right. The Labour Party in the UK and the Democrats in the US offer one path: acquiesce, do nothing, and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-remarks-at-immigration-white-paper-press-conference-12-may-2025">repeat the core messages of the right</a> and by doing so legitimate them. Trump, in <a href="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-speech-department-of-defense-leaders-quantico-september-30-2025/">a speech</a> to the army top brass, as good as called out the Democrats for their lack of political response to his agenda: “I thought it would be met with fury on the left, but they’re sort of giving up, I must be honest with you. They’ve had it. They’ve had it with Trump”.
Where the centre parties do nothing, we have to stand against the growth of the far right. We need to build mass movements on the streets and take them on in other areas of our society. 
We need to make use of all political arenas that we can. That means organising forums and town hall meetings. It means postering campaigns, painting the town “anti-fascist”. We need left-wing political parties, like the Socialists, to grow everywhere and provide an anti-capitalist alternative to both the status quo and the far right. In 2023, we were able to deny Melbourne neo-Nazis their organising space, a gym in Sunshine, using protests and community pressure. Campaigns like that should be repeated when the far right attempt to set up spaces to build their movements. 
In Australia, we have the chance to push back against the far-right street movement because it still lacks coherent political leadership. 
We have to grow a confident and militant working-class movement. This is central because we cannot defeat the far right without taking on the capitalists. Only by getting rid of the system that breeds fascism can we ensure that this kind of politics cannot rear its head again. We may not be able to defeat the politics of the far right within the framework of capitalism, but we can challenge their current political organisations and build a left-wing alternative.
In Italy, a far-right government is currently in power. Despite this, a mass strike wave has developed against the genocide in Gaza, and crucially against the government’s support for it and its opposition to working-class action. As workers continue to develop their struggles, they can start to create a crisis for the far-right government and hopefully remove it from power. 
This shows us a pathway for defeating the far right. We have a responsibility to build these kinds of movements everywhere. The fight against the far right has to be a fight against this brutal system. 
In Australia, 19 October will be a crucial opportunity to build an anti-fascist movement and build the confidence of our side to take on the whole racist, rotten system.

The far right is organising—we have to resist

On a sunny Saturday in September, more than two dozen volunteers gathered at a park in Samson, in Perth’s south. As on many afternoons and weekends before, they were meeting there to doorknock for the WA Socialists’ candidate in the City of Fremantle council election. Between them on that day, they managed to knock on more than 1,000 doors, talking to voters about local issues and making the case to vote to elect a socialist to the council.
Victorian Socialists members voted in June to expand their electoral project across Australia, and the WA Socialists was launched in July. It immediately found an audience among those who were eager for a left-wing alternative to the parlous state of politics in Western Australia. Since then, more than 500 people have signed up, and many have gotten active in the council campaign—with good reason.
WA is possibly the worst state in Australia in which to be a renter. According to a recent report from the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, the median weekly rent in WA has increased by 76 percent since 2020 and now sits at $740. Anglicare WA’s 2025 Rental Affordability Snapshot found not one single room in the whole of the state, let alone a property, is affordable for people on Jobseeker, youth allowance or the disability support pension.
Investment in public housing has been criminally low. As of May 2025, there were 21,480 current applications for social housing. If you’re one of those applicants, you can expect to wait on average 148 weeks, or just under three years. And in its recent budget, the Cook Labor government wound up several key cost-of-living relief measures, such as electricity credits.
While workers and the poor are struggling, for those at the top it’s a boom time. According to the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation, WA’s iron ore sector generated $128 billion in sales in 2024, of which $36 billion was profit. And politicians themselves are among the winners. They were recently awarded a 4 percent pay rise, increasing a backbencher’s annual pay to $173,393. For comparison, the starting salary for a WA state school teacher is $78,397. 
It’s in the context of this one-sided class war being waged by the rich and their political servants that WA Socialists has embarked on its first serious campaign. Council elections are taking place across the state in October, in most places by postal ballot. With a total of ten candidates running across eight council areas in Perth, the party has presented voters with a genuine, fighting, anti-capitalist platform—proudly taking up issues like housing, the environment, workers’ rights and solidarity with global struggles like that for peace and justice for Palestine. 
Nick Everett, the WA Socialists’ candidate for East Ward in Fremantle, is a long-time socialist activist, former chair of Friends of Palestine WA and a union delegate. In Fremantle, wealth and poverty often rub shoulders. The median rent for a house has increased by nearly 60 percent in the last five years, and public housing levels have sharply declined, replaced with expensive new apartments. 
The state government plans to relocate Fremantle’s 100-year-old port, shedding hundreds of local jobs and destroying the heart of the community. Everett and the WA Socialists are firmly opposed to this, as well as to the plan to turn the nearby suburb of Cockburn into a base for US nuclear submarines as part of the AUKUS deal. Fremantle declared itself a nuclear-free zone in the 1980s. Everett wants to keep it that way.
“Fremantle’s identity is being sold off to developers while working-class people are squeezed out”, Everett says. “We need a council that treasures Freo’s unique working-class history and prioritises housing and services for all, not just the rich.”
In Canning in Perth’s east, the dilapidated Brownlie Towers site has sat empty for years despite its potential to provide much-needed public housing. Rachel Goldsbrough, a public hospital nurse and the WA Socialists’ candidate for Mason Ward in Canning, has made the redevelopment of the towers a key part of her platform. “We need 100 percent public housing at Brownlie Towers, and we need it yesterday”, she says. “The government has ignored this project for too long. It’s a disgrace.”
Rents in Canning have skyrocketed by 84 percent in just five years, and council rates were raised by 6 percent this year—among the highest increase in the state. Among other measures to address the housing crisis, Goldsbrough is calling on the council to impose penalties on owners of properties left empty long-term.
In Bayswater in Perth’s north, gentrification is setting in. The median house price in parts of the suburb has risen 70 percent, with many renters evicted to make way for short-term rentals and Airbnbs.
Lewis Todman, a longtime socialist organiser and pre-service teacher, is running as the WA Socialists’ candidate. “If elected, I’ll be the only renter on the Bayswater council”, Todman says. “We need a local government that stands up for the rights of renters, not the rights of Airbnb owners looking to make a buck from the housing crisis.”
Across all campaigns, the issue of Palestine resonates with voters, with many declaring that their vote will go to the WA Socialists on the basis of the party’s unwavering opposition to the war in Gaza.
While doorknocking in Fremantle, a volunteer met Sally, who said she had been a communist in her younger years. At the end of their conversation, Sally went inside her home and returned, handing the volunteer a pin that said “No Conscription”—a relic from her husband’s days as a draft dodger during the Vietnam War. She explained that she had been uplifted and inspired by some of the young people leading the WA Socialists’ campaign and their anti-war stance.
Whatever the results of this election, the WA Socialists project has significant momentum. It has already achieved the membership required to register as a party with the Western Australian Electoral Commission—a task to which it will turn in the coming months. By bringing issues like housing, public services, and global solidarity to letterboxes, doorsteps and community centres, WA Socialists offers a chance to seriously shake the rotten status quo of capitalism in WA and build a movement to win real change.

Miranda Wood

On the campaign trail with WA Socialists

Jerome Small

Fair Work Commission plans giant pay cut for community sector workers

On 1 September, the Maribyrnong City Council in Melbourne’s west initiated a six-month “security” program in central Footscray. The program involves two private security guards patrolling local streets for 24 hours a week at a total cost of $100,000.
The program was initiated at a council meeting on 22 July, at which councillors (including Labor Party and Greens members and one independent) voted to hire the guards. In the lead-up to the meeting, twenty businesses in Footscray lobbied the council to have an ongoing security presence after they trialled hiring guards for themselves. <a href="https://www.yourcityyourvoice.com.au/footscray-cbd?fbclid=IwY2xjawMrQDJleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFVSWExRlpKQ3FIWEUyWVhHAR6tsKtoj-fGc_iDIR2oDoimSVrtMvY6tbnHNGwp4uBpAB-73kZcgjXR0jT37Q_aem_Fih4j4xF4FbOTk2cdzD-vA">Maribyrnong Council argues</a> that having private guards in Footscray will “shape a CBD that is safe, welcoming and reflective of Footscray's growing community”. Recently, the council also declared that CCTV systems in the area have been upgraded so they link directly to Victoria Police for faster police responses. 
Maribyrnong isn’t the only council hiring its own security force. It took its lead from the City of Melbourne and its “Melbourne Model” of security. This was recently made permanent by Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece after an initial three-month trial. It involves eleven hired guards patrolling the streets of Melbourne’s CBD at a cost of $2 million a year. In June, Wyndham City Council in Melbourne’s outer west also hired guards for a 12-month trial at a cost of $372,000. As in Footscray, these measures have been justified on the basis of protecting community safety. 
Why do local councils see it as necessary to build up their own private armies of security guards in a context where police funding in Victoria has <a href="https://www.budget.vic.gov.au/keeping-communities-safe">increased by 88 percent in the past ten years</a> (from $2.4 billion in 2014-15 to $4.5 billion in 2025-26)? If that increase of more than $2 billion (along with more restrictive bail laws and other boosts to police powers) hasn’t been enough to combat so-called “anti-social behaviour” and petty crime in places like Footscray, why would anyone think an extra $100,000 on security guards will make the crucial difference?
It appears, in fact, that no-one much does. The police have used councils’ hiring of private security guards to push for yet more funding from the government. Police Association of Victoria chief executive Wayne Gatt recently told the Age, “[A]reas of high crime or where large groups of people commonly gather, were once areas of high police visibility via patrols, but due to capacity issues for Victoria Police, they’ve become areas where crime now flourishes”.
The reality is that neither more private security nor more police will address crime and its underlying causes, the main ones in a place like Footscray are poverty and homelessness. Not only does the beefing up of the state’s punitive functions on a local level do nothing to address these issues, but by targeting the most vulnerable people in the community, they are likely to make things worse. 
Take the homeless. According to <a href="https://chp.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/230614-Homelessness-in-your-area-2023-Footscray.pdf">Australian Bureau of Statistics data</a> from 2023, on any given night there are 694 people in Footscray without a home. These people will be among the first victims of the council’s security blitz. Council-hired guards will work with police to enforce local laws, including fining people for begging, “offensive behaviour”, having an open container of alcohol, drug use or sleeping rough in a way that interferes with local businesses or pedestrians.
In the absence of measures focused on broader issues of social welfare, fining and harassing the homeless and other vulnerable people will only contribute to entrenching them as a permanent underclass. Councils may prefer this to the status quo to the extent that it could temporarily push the homeless away from high-traffic areas, but it’s dubious to claim this will have any real impact on crime. The most common type of crimes occurring in Footscray, according to <a href="https://www.aucrimetracker.com/vic/footscray/#:~:text=As%20of%20Year%202025%20Mar,2241">recent data</a>, are theft and burglary. This isn’t something that a couple of security guards walking the streets handing out fines for begging or drinking alcohol are likely to do anything much about.
To see where the logic of constantly pouring more money into policing and security leads, we need only look at the US. US police are among the best funded and well armed in the world, and it’s the world leader in locking people away in prison. Spending on private security is also <a href="https://www.riotimesonline.com/the-rise-of-private-security-a-global-shift-in-law-enforcement/">high and rapidly increasing</a>. 
Despite that, signs of extreme poverty, homelessness, mental illness and addiction are visible almost everywhere in major US cities, along with the kinds of petty crime and “antisocial behaviour” that can go with that. And, of course, instead of thinking a change of course might be necessary, US politicians only ever use the scenes of destitution as an excuse to advocate more
violent police repression and more prisons.
The ever present threat of state-sponsored violence in the US only helps create a more violent society overall, and it’s Black Americans and other oppressed groups that are the main victims. To the extent we go down that path, it will be the same here. We’ll see more incidents like the murder of Somali Australian man Abdifatah Ahmed, who was shot by police in Footscray on 17 April. And—just as in the US—the knee-jerk response to such incidents by those in power will be racism and repression rather than policies that might help those in need. 
What places like Footscray need is investment in community spaces, more public housing, a rise in social welfare and wages, and caps on food prices. For a fraction of the extra $2 billion that’s been poured into the Victoria Police budget over the past ten years, the people experiencing homelessness in Footscray and across Melbourne’s west could have been given permanent shelter. That’s the kind of solution we need—not more police and prisons, or councils spending money hiring private guards.

Oskar Martin

Council-hired security guards waging local war on poor

Community members in Sydney’s Inner West are furious at the local council’s proposed “Fairer Future Plan”. The plan is anything but fair. It is a massive handout to developers, aimed at building expensive high-density housing, which will only worsen the Inner West’s housing crisis. Hundreds have mobilised against the plan over the past few months, culminating in a 200-person protest at a council meeting on 22 September. 
Opposition to the plan is being driven by the Better Future Coalition, a group of community activists and organisations including NSW Socialists and Action for Public Housing. The Labor-dominated council dodged community anger on Monday night by refusing to allow hundreds of people in and stacking the start of the hours-long meeting with Labor Party stooges (including paid ALP staffers) and pro-developer “YIMBYs” (“yes” in my backyard). A few developers showed up to ask for the right to build even higher apartment complexes, and their concerns were immediately noted by council members. 
Mayor Darcy Byrne is pitching his plan as a solution to the housing crisis. His supporters repeated the argument in the council meeting. The housing crisis, they say, is caused by a lack of supply, so the only solution is to build. But this is a myth. There are roughly 8,000 empty homes in the Inner West, according to the 2021 census. The Australia Institute reported in March that the construction of new dwellings has outpaced population growth for the past ten years. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are almost 1 million more residential properties in Australia than there are households. 
The housing crisis is a crisis of affordability, not a lack of houses. The Inner West Council’s plan will only exacerbate that crisis. Replacing lower-cost rentals with luxury apartments will affect all prices in the area, putting upward pressure on existing house and rental prices, and pricing many people out of the Inner West. This is a plan for gentrification, not a “fairer future”.
In a slap in the face to the community, and despite thousands of submissions demanding more affordable housing, the council revised its original promise of 5 percent affordable housing down to just 2 percent. “Affordable housing” in this context is something of a misnomer, as it would be priced at 80 percent of the current market rent, which was <a href="https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/dcj.statistics/viz/Rentandsales_16849924917120/Rent?publish=yes">$700 as of December 2024</a>.
Tellingly, the plan will not build any public housing. Meanwhile, in Waterloo, Glebe and Banksia, the Chris Minns state Labor government is busy tearing down what little public housing does exist. 
The Fairer Future Plan contains no provision for new green and community spaces, despite promising to increase the population by upwards of 70,000 people. There is no thought put into the increased need for public transport and schools. The plan will create a developer bonanza in the Inner West, not deliver services to the community. 
Mayor Byrne has tried to dodge blame by pointing to the state housing targets set by the Minns government. But his council, a bastion of the ALP, is reaching for double the targets for the Inner West, from 15,000 to 31,000 new dwellings. Byrne, Minns and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are all part of the same rotten party with the same neoliberal approach to housing.
In fact, the council’s plan is a continuation of the Minns state government’s attempt to boost the profits of developers across the state. In the 2025 NSW budget, Treasurer Daniel Mookhey announced that the government would guarantee developers’ profits by buying apartments if they can’t pre-sell enough of them. As Martin Barker <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/nsw-labor-builds-profits-not-housing">put it in Red Flag</a> in July, “They can build overpriced apartments in developments so risky even the banks wouldn’t fund them, secure in the knowledge that the government will bail them out if they can’t find buyers at the price and profit margin that they want”. 
The details of what will be built and how will largely be left up to developers. Some fear that developers will drip-feed the release of dwellings onto the market to avoid a glut that could lower prices. This habit of “land banking”, getting development approval to increase the value of land without delivering new dwellings, is already widespread. The Daily Telegraph
reported in February 2024 that “almost one billion dollars’ worth of housing in one of Sydney’s most affordable local government areas is yet to be built despite the DAs being approved up to five years ago”. There is nothing in Labor’s plan to prevent developers from playing these games to boost their profits. In fact, the plan encourages it. 
How convenient that Labor’s solution to the housing crisis doesn’t challenge developers, investors and banks but instead makes them richer. Real solutions would require a departure from decades of government policy and a fight against the wealthy elites who benefit from the commodification of housing. It would require that every level of government build public housing, end tax concessions to investors, requisition empty homes and cap rents. 
NSW Socialists and the Better Future Coalition will continue to fight this neoliberal development plan. The next big event will be a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/s/protest-inner-west-council-exp/1105656097935592/">protest</a>
against the council vote on the plan on 30 September. The Inner West doesn’t need a plan that is purpose-built for developers; we need one purpose-built for ordinary people.

Emma Norton

Community fights pro-developer housing plan for Sydney’s inner west

Student union elections are taking place on university campuses across the country. Given that only a minority of students vote in the elections nowadays, it’s fair to say that most students probably don’t know this is happening—or even know the first thing about their campus union.
This year, for example, in the RMIT University Student Union elections, about 6,000 students voted out of a student body of more than 60,000. While that level of suffrage might have been standard for nineteenth-century Prussia, it’s a sign of the general decline of student unionism in Australia.
Student unions used to be famous—even notorious—as political and activist bodies that organised and fought to improve students’ lives and the wider world around them. Today, most student unions don’t organise much more than some pretty sad free food events and occasional parties that are even sadder. 
It’s not as though there’s nothing to fight for. Financial precarity is increasingly common for university students. More and more students take on full-time work while they study to make ends meet. And the average student in their 20s leaves university with more than <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/the-crushing-cost-of-a-university-education-hungry-sleep-deprived-students-loaded-with-debt/">$30,000 of debt</a>, compared to $12,600 in 2006. 
Young people are also tuned in to the world around them: the genocide in Gaza has thousands of us outraged, horrified and wondering what on Earth we can do to stop it.
The need for fighting student unions could hardly be more urgent. So why do our unions spend so much time on glorified sausage sizzles?
Student unions and radical politics
Students have always been involved in politics and activism, but it was in the 1960s with the anti-Vietnam War movement that Australian university students burst onto the stage of history. The campuses became a major front in the battle against brutal imperialist war.
In 1971, a mass meeting of Melbourne University students declared their student union building a sanctuary for people evading conscription into the army—the so-called draft dodgers. The next year, Sydney University followed suit. Radicals at Monash University caused an uproar when they started to collect money for the “enemy” in Vietnam, the Communist-led National Liberation Front, in effect committing treason. In the political ferment, the notion that student unions should stay out of politics and focus instead on providing services seemed preposterous.
After the US and Australia withdrew in defeat from Vietnam and the anti-war movement ended, students remained a force to be reckoned with. In 1973, the peak student union body, the Australian Union of Students (AUS, precursor to today’s National Union of Students), declared itself in favour of “the building of a socialist Australia”. The AUS Women’s Department, established in 1975, became an important national forum for the women’s liberation movement. In his essential book It Can’t Happen Here, author Graham Hastings writes: 
“The culture of vigorous theoretical debate inside the Women’s Department played a vital role in the development of Australian feminism in the second half of the seventies and papers produced by the Department were cited at international women’s conferences.”
Back when university was still free, the Liberal Fraser government tried twice to introduce fees for higher education, first in 1976 and then again in 1981. Both times it was defeated by national student union campaigns that brought thousands of students into the streets. 
In the end, it was the Hawke Labor government that got the better of free education in 1986, introducing a $250 “administrative fee” that paved the way for the system we have today. But Hawke met serious resistance, including a coordinated boycott of the new student fees. Thousands of students across the country refused to pay and risked being unenrolled.
Their capacity to move students into militant action and beat back government attacks made the student unions major targets of conservative lawfare campaigns aimed at destroying them as a political force. Some of the Liberal Party’s most odious creatures—like Tony Abbott, who was president of the University of Sydney student union in 1979—cut their political teeth in these battles.
Young Liberals aren’t highly active in student unions these days, probably in part because, whenever more than two Young Liberals are put together in a room, <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/video/breaking/x98ehm0/liberal-students-rip-up-red-zone-rape-report-at-university-of-sydney/">misogyny happens</a>. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Liberal students led major campaigns against unions taking left-wing political stances. Sometimes the Liberals formed an alliance with right-wing Labor students. Catholic crusader Tony Abbott complained in a student publication:
“When AUS champions the women’s movement; homosexual liberation; the anti-Uranium campaign and anti-Kerr [the governor-general who sacked Whitlam] campaign, it is moving beyond the scope of unionism.”
But among those who did support the existence of student unions—from small-l liberals to Labor students to revolutionary socialists—there were very different ideas about how unions should operate. 
Socialists and radicals thought the unions’ strength lay in their ability to mobilise students to fight to improve their lot and combat oppression and injustice. It was under radical control that the AUS took up its call for a socialist Australia. 
Moderates in the union argued that the focus should be on welfare provision and student services. This was considered the best way to keep university management on side. Polite advocacy on behalf of students behind closed doors was preferable to disruptive protest. 
For many of these moderates, the union was their gateway to a political career, especially to high office inside the Labor Party. Labor is and has long been the dominant force in student union politics. Anthony Albanese got his start at the University of Sydney. His defence minister, Richard Marles, was the general secretary of the National Union of Students in 1989. The 1983 Australian Union of Students president was a Melbourne University student named Julia Gillard.
Student unions today
The decline of militant student unionism has tracked with the broader decline of radical politics and class struggle in Australia. The “service provision” model of student unionism has come to dominate—and with it, a generation of student union leaders for whom the unions are about beers, barbecues and building their careers. 
This dovetails with a vision of student unions as partners of the corporate executives who run our universities, even as they push through major cuts to jobs and courses. For example, the student-led <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/fighting-course-cuts-at-anu">No Cuts at ANU campaign</a> fighting against massive attacks at the Australian National University has received virtually no support from the ANU student union, ANUSA. The union accepted management’s dubious justifications for $250 million in cuts and, rather than fight, instead argued that the union should consult with management on how to minimise the impact of the cuts on students’ mental health. 
So it’s little wonder that most students today don’t vote in student union elections. Years of moderate and “apolitical” student unionism have lowered expectations so much that barely anyone expects much from their student representatives anyway. This situation ultimately benefits moderate student union groups, who are much more comfortable in elections fought out through social networks and backroom deals rather than open political debate. 
And while they often deliberately cultivate an “apolitical” image, student unions, like the ANUSA and many others, are still dominated by the Labor Party machine. Most unions are run by one faction or another of the ALP, particularly the right-wing Student Unity faction, which opposes free education and has an appalling record of reactionary political positions. The student unions are a perfect training ground for <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/7263">aspiring ALP operators</a> to learn the grimy arts of factional warfare and using people to gain power. It’s hardly the sort of environment that might attract young left-wing students who want to fight the system. 
Labor’s national dominance is also reflected in its control of the National Union of Students. This year, during the federal election, the NUS ran a barely concealed (and barely noticed) “vote Labor” campaign, telling students to “put the Liberals last”. 
The ALP machine’s control over the unions puts it well to the right of many students, a large proportion of whom vote for the Greens, a party that supports free education and other progressive policies, such as climate change and Palestine. 
The history of student unionism in Australia proves that this terrible state of affairs can be turned around. The state of the world today demands it. University students are a bigger chunk of the population than we ever have been—there are around 1.6 million of us in the country. We need student unions that can turn us into a force to be reckoned with and revive the best traditions of student activism: fighting against war, oppression and the corporatisation of our universities.

James McVicar

The sad story of student unions in Australia today

Take a stroll through the halls of a campus student union office and you’ll likely find it half empty. And you’re much more likely to see an elected student union representative handing out a free breakfast once a week than you are to see them organising a political campaign. It’s no surprise then that socialists are sometimes asked why we would bother with student unions at all.
Despite their current state, student unions have the potential to foster campus activism, give important leadership to students on political questions and even sometimes to make an impact on Australian politics overall.
The first reason for this is students themselves. They are a critical social group drawn together on campuses and encouraged to learn about the world, interrogate the ideas of the system, and develop their capacity for critical thought. While this doesn’t ordinarily result in students being politically active, in exceptional times a minority can explode into protest activity. 
Every significant social movement of the modern era has featured student activism—catalysing struggle in other social groups, leading youthful, militant and passionate demonstrations, and planting the flag for a different sort of society.
In Australia, student unions are at the heart of student politics and can be key to effective student campaigns. Campus-based unions, and the National Union of Students (NUS), have the authority to call demonstrations, the bank accounts to finance the necessities of activism and the affiliate structures and communication networks that can reach and influence tens of thousands of students. 
They also draw together the different currents of student political thought and are often the centre of debates. Those student factions, some of which are intimately linked to Australia’s main political parties, have been the training ground for generations of political activists, both in the trade union movement and in federal and state politics. 
So any serious socialist organisation needs a foothold on campuses and a presence in the political institutions of campus life if it has any chance of being part of the “real world” of Australian political life.
Over the last decade or so, the student unions, like the trade unions, have atrophied due to a declining activist culture, legal attacks and the approach taken by the mostly ALP-aligned representatives in the unions’ leadership positions. For the most part, the current student union leaders find various excuses to do little—citing the fact that many students are apathetic or that student unions rely on university administrations for continued access to funding. Campaigning against university management or encouraging student activism, it is said, would imperil the unions. So, under the leadership of these students, our unions mostly confine themselves to social events and food pantries dressed up as “mutual aid”. 
University administrators are currently on a national spree of course and staff cuts and a campaign to suppress campus Palestine solidarity activism. Limiting the actions of student unions to what these managers consider acceptable—as has happened at the University of Melbourne, where the student union has been reluctant to stand consistently for Palestine, or at Western Sydney University, where the student union is voluntarily cutting its activist positions in an effort to safeguard its funding—is a road to nowhere. 
The socialist approach is different. While we know we can’t simply wish a radical campus culture into being, we also know that if student unions took a lead on social justice issues, we could start to rebuild a more left-wing campus culture. Socialist students fight for their unions to take a stand on social issues, even if they are controversial, because doing so helps to win wider layers of students to a particular cause and gives them opportunities to become activists themselves. 
Student unionism is also important for building the ranks of the revolutionary left. Students have always played a substantial role in revolutionary socialist organisations. Student unions can organise campaigns that draw more people into political activity and provide opportunities for debate with other political forces. Student revolutionaries have to both debate and work alongside students from Labor’s left and right factions, the Greens and coalitions of independents. This means gaining experiences that are invaluable for members of a socialist organisation—like running election campaigns, learning when to compromise or hold firm and dealing with obstructionist bureaucracies. 
Student politics
Socialist Alternative is the largest and most active left political group in Australian student politics. Our organisation has maintained a consistent presence in the student unions for more than twenty years. Currently, we have more than 30 elected student union representatives across the country. There are Socialist Alternative clubs at twenty campuses, which has allowed us to become the second most powerful faction in the National Union of Students, after the Labor right. Over the last five years we have polled 21-29 percent of the NUS delegate positions elected on campuses around the country. This year, our members hold the NUS Education, LGBTQI+ and Vocational Education office bearer positions.
Socialist Alternative has a long history of pushing support for Palestine within the student unions. While student unionists from both Labor right and left have taken sponsored trips to Israel almost every year, our members have prevented the national union from adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and spent years arguing to the other student political factions that our default position should be a support for freedom of speech and democratic rights on campuses.
This year, through the NUS Education Office, we have organised an inquiry into censorship of Palestine supporters on the campuses, and a national student referendum in which more than 5,000 students voted in support of Palestine. The latter engaged many students in the Palestine solidarity campaign for the first time, with some becoming ongoing campaign activists.
For the last two years of the genocide, we have fought to drag our union into action. We have organised several student strikes for Palestine, in which thousands of university students have walked out of class for Gaza. In 2009, we established Students for Palestine, an activist campaign group. Last year, working with others in SFP, we organised student general meetings to vote on subjects like university ties to weapons companies and support for sanctions against Israel. These were the largest on-campus events for Palestine in Australia’s history, sometimes the largest meeting on any topic since the 1970s. In many places, the motions passed were required to become official student union policy. 
We faced significant opposition from others in the unions. At Melbourne University, student unionists from other factions attempted to prevent the meeting by calling in a law firm. The meeting went ahead only after socialists made it clear that it would happen with or without the union. At Adelaide University, the hard-right international student faction running the union attempted to prevent the meeting by refusing to convene the union council, where the forms to call an SGM must be approved. Socialist Alternative members scoured the constitution and found they could go over the heads of the union—as long as they found 300 students to support their efforts. They did, and held Adelaide University’s largest student meeting in years.
In May 2024, with SFP, we brought the Gaza solidarity encampment movement to Australian campuses. After initiating the campaign at Sydney University, we organised solidarity encampments at Monash, RMIT, Latrobe, Deakin, Adelaide, Curtin, Wollongong and the University of Queensland. We refused to allow the inaction of our student union leaders to hold us back.
We also know that one of the most basic functions of student unions ought to be a defence of their members. Ten years ago, when a Liberal government attempted to raise the cost of degrees, the student movement, led by a Socialist Alternative NUS education officer, used the infrastructure of the unions to roll out a national campaign of protest. While doing so was not appreciated by the government or university managements, the campaign contributed to the defeat of the planned fee hikes, drew many students into union politics and raised the profile of the student unions to a height not equalled since.
We have led too many other campaigns to note in one article. But we do so because we know that activist, left-wing student unions can stop right-wing attacks, draw students into campaigns, build a culture of protest and inspire other social groups. However, this won’t happen if the careerism and conservatism currently dominant in the leadership of student unions go unchallenged. Someone needs to go in to bat for activism, social justice and a combative approach to the government and university managements that are more interested in making money and serving power than delivering a quality education. 
This is why socialists contest student elections, attend student union meetings, fight to win positions in the national union and organise against conservative union bureaucrats.

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