2025 will go down as the year of the bridge marches. The historic 300,000-strong March for Humanity across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The march across the Commonwealth Bridge in Canberra. On 7 December, it was the Illawarra’s turn, with a procession of several hundred across the scenic Sea Cliff Bridge in Coalcliff. 
Chances are you’ve seen this bridge before. It has featured in dozens of car ads and the film clip for Guy Sebastian’s song “Choir”. In 2011, it was the location for an impressive thousand-strong mobilisation to stop coal seam gas exploration in the region. 
The organising group, Wollongong Friends of Palestine, organises regular rallies in Crown Street Mall and community pickets against Bisalloy Steels, which manufactures armour for Israeli military vehicles. After a series of successful pickets and a great demonstration at the beach in October, we decided it was time to do something bold and take the bridge for Palestine.
Just days before the demonstration, Israel launched a drone strike on a refugee camp at al-Mawasi, burning five Palestinian refugees alive in their tents. The Labor government has accepted the so-called ceasefire as a gift to wipe its hands clean of any complicity in the genocide. US President Donald Trump is orchestrating a process that will allow international armies to occupy Gaza. 
The message at the demonstration was clear: we need to keep the pressure on. Our movement will continue to call for sanctions on Israel and an end to the arms trade. The march across the bridge was one of the largest demonstrations for Palestine in the Illawarra for several years. It brought people from all walks of life: Palestinian uncles and aunts, parents, preschoolers, skaters, nurses, leftists, socialists and community activists. Some keen beans even had the foresight to make it to the top of the escarpment and wave the flag down at us as we crossed the bridge. 
There are several lessons to draw from this experience. One is about existing attitudes to the situation in Gaza. As the genocide enters a new phase, our side will likely lose some momentum. The ceasefire, by design, has taken the heat off Israel. Unlike in August, the media no longer has wall-to-wall coverage of starving Palestinians. It can be easy for people to feel despair at the situation. But many people refuse to let Gaza slip out of their consciousness. These are the people who can keep the movement alive and build greater numbers when the next controversy or atrocity occurs.
Another is the importance of demonstrations to any campaign. The late Marxist art critic John Berger wrote, in “The nature of mass demonstrations”: “Demonstrations are essentially urban in character, and they are usually planned to take place as near as possible to some symbolic centre, either civic or national. Their ‘targets’ are seldom the strategic ones”. As far as we know, the Sea Cliff Bridge has no connection to the state of Israel. Nor did blocking it cause any significant disruption to profit-making and capitalism. But as the slaughter rages on, the cause of the Palestinians should be highlighted everywhere, all the time. Taking this landmark meant we could put the issue front and centre in our region. 
A third is the importance of being prepared to tackle a controversy head-on. Blocking a piece of infrastructure is a divisive thing to do at the best of times. For some residents of the northern Illawarra, who are very rarely inconvenienced, a two-hour traffic delay seems the worst human suffering they can imagine. In any case, this obviously cannot compare to the constant, inescapable suffering of Palestinian men, women, and children in Gaza. 
We maintained that we have as much right to our bridge as any popstar, car company or bike race. What helped was reaching out to gain support: the South Coast Labour Council endorsed the event, we gained support from sitting pro-Palestine councillors, and it was promoted by the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association and the NSW Greens. 
A lot of legwork went into spreading the word about the rally far and wide. Local communities were letterboxed, posters were pasted across town, and we even found some friendly lefty baristas who were happy to display a poster in their workplace after a simple ask. We discovered groups we didn’t know existed, like 2508 Parents for Palestine, from the small northern community of Helensburgh. 
It was clear this promotional work would be necessary even before we saw the numbers on the day: the police authorised our protest to march on the road only after weeks of public outreach. As the political right becomes more assertive, the left should be confident that we can stand up to their arguments and can carry working-class people with us. 
Megan Guy is a member of Wollongong Friends of Palestine.

Megan Guy

Hundreds take the Wollongong Sea Cliff Bridge for Palestine

The University of Adelaide and University of South Australia will be folded into a single mega-institution next year: Adelaide University, projected to be the largest in the country. For years, the state Labor government and senior university managers have sold this as a leap towards “global competitiveness” and a “top-100” ranking. But behind the glossy rebrand, a corporate giant is being built on cuts, restructuring and the degradation of education.
The chaos already engulfing students and staff has been widely <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-09/sa-adelaide-university-merger-challenges/105981104">reported</a>. Enrolments are a mess, degree structures have changed without warning, and many staff still have no clarity about their future roles. Deloitte, the consultancy overseeing the merger, has pushed to slash 3,000 course offerings at both universities. Hours and in-person components are being stripped from many subjects, while staff are being worked into the ground as management attempts to build a new university on top of their existing workloads.
But the administrative meltdown is not the core problem. It is a symptom. The merger is a significant step in the ongoing corporatisation of higher education, in which universities are run according to market logic rather than on the basis of teaching and research quality.
Management has announced that lectures will be replaced with “asynchronous digital activities”. They boast that the new institution will <a href="https://adelaideuni.edu.au/content/dam/adelaideuniversity/documents/about/pdfs/our-journey/AU%20Strategic%20Ambition%20and%20Direction%202024-34.pdf">“deliver online education to more students than any other Australian university”</a>. Students who struggled through online learning during and after the COVID pandemic know exactly what this means: lower engagement, and what the National Tertiary Education Union has warned will be the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/sep/13/adelaide-university-dumps-face-to-face-lectures">“death of campus life”</a>.
Alongside this, the merger will introduce trimesters—<a href="https://www.indailysa.com.au/news/archive/2024/07/04/new-adelaide-university-academic-calendar-under-fire">opposed by 83 percent of staff</a>—which compress teaching into shorter blocks, intensify workloads and, as at the University of New South Wales, pave the way for course cuts and job losses. Trimesters fit neatly with the broader shift to generic, common-core subjects and “stackable”, modular degrees designed to minimise contact time, recycle content and allow management to teach more students with fewer staff.
These changes are not about improving education. They entrench a market-driven model that has already produced sector-wide casualisation, chronic overwork and wage theft, including the University of Adelaide’s <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-24/adelaide-university-underpayment/105911148">admission that it underpaid over 800 </a><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-24/adelaide-university-underpayment/105911148">casual staff</a><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-24/adelaide-university-underpayment/105911148"> by $1.25 million</a>. Rather than addressing these crises, the merger exacerbates them.
Worse, Adelaide University offers a bleak preview of Labor’s national agenda for higher education. Education Minister Jason Clare insists that qualifications must be “quicker and cheaper”. University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Bill Shorten has promised to <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/shorten-demands-end-to-tyranny-of-three-year-degree-20250918-p5mw59">“break the tyranny of the three-year degree”</a>. Despite overtures to “access” and “equity”, Labor’s direction is clear: reshape universities to serve Australian capitalism—especially the technology and national security industries. In Clare’s words, higher education is “rocket fuel for the economy”.
At Adelaide University, staff working overtime to design courses have reported being told to ensure they have little continuity so they can be chopped into “micro-credentials”. Lectures—sorry, “asynchronous digital activities”—may be broken into smaller segments that can be watched in any order, presumably to fit Gen Z attention spans. The real purpose is obvious: maximise profits and the number of fee-paying consumers. This is the “modular future” Shorten champions.
The merged university also aligns neatly with Labor’s military priorities. <a href="https://adelaideuni.edu.au/about/news/2025/defence-partnership-primed-for-the-future/">Adelaide University’s recently announced partnership with Saab</a>, whose parent company supplies components to the F-35 fighter jets used in Israel’s war on Gaza, is just the latest example of universities deepening ties with the war industry. Every degree is to be “industry-aligned”, including compulsory “work-integrated learning”.
Whether or not this corporate behemoth succeeds on its own terms remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: Adelaide University’s priorities serve the interests of profit, not students and staff.

Nix Herriot

Raphael Duffy

Adelaide’s university merger: built for business, not students

The view was wonderful. But the signals from the Fair Work Commission’s (FWC) “expert panel” were far from reassuring. In late October, I sat in on two days of public hearings in Sydney. The commission was taking submissions on its April interim decision to rewrite the pay scale and classifications of workers in the Social and Community Services (SACS) sector. 
The commission’s stated intention is to address “gender undervaluation”. So it’s astonishing, as well as appalling, that 73 percent of roles in this female-dominated sector would face pay cuts if the interim decision were implemented in full, according to an analysis commissioned by the Australian Services Union (ASU). 
I’ve previously written, in <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/fair-work-commission-plans-giant-pay-cut-for-community-sector-workers">September</a> and <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/sharpening-the-knife-fair-work-takes-another-step-towards-community-sector-wage-cuts">October</a>, about this gob-smacking attack on pay rates in the community sector. But in the last week of October, I had a chance to see how the process works up close. In a way, there was nothing dramatically new. But the hearing provides insight into what to look for when the commission issues its final decision, likely sometime in the next week or two. It also shows something about the workings of the commission—and what’s needed in the fight ahead. Here are four things I learned.
1. The view is pretty nice from the fifteenth floor of the Fair Work Commission building in Sydney
It’s probably even nicer if you’re paid $10,000 per week to enjoy it—which, according to the remuneration tribunal, is the <a href="https://www.remtribunal.gov.auhttps://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/2025-09/FTO%202025%20-%20Compilation%20No.%202.pdf">total annual remuneration</a>
for deputy presidents of the commission. The FWC expert panel for this case is made up of three deputy presidents on $533,550 per year, one vice-president on $659,000, and President Adam Hatcher, whose total package is $661,000, plus
a judges’ pension. They’ve all had a pay rise of at least $12,000 in the past year—around $240 per week. 
It all feels a long way from a disability support worker with five years’ experience and no formal qualifications, whose award pay rate is threatened with a $107 cut (to just $1,248 per week) under the FWC interim decision. Or a caseworker in a community mental health, alcohol and other drug service with five years’ experience and a Cert IV, whose award rate faces a cut of 20 percent—some $364 per week. Or any of the other 138,000 workers in the community sector whose award pay rate will be cut if the commission’s interim decision is implemented in full. 
In serious court cases, we might expect our fate to be decided by a jury of our peers. But in this case, the decision makers are paid five or ten times the rate of those who will cop the consequences. 
2. Some members of the Fair Work Commission seem to believe that many community sector workers are “over-classified” rather than under-classified, among other concerning views. 
There was a series of concerning opinions expressed by members of the commission at the hearings in late October. Everyone agrees that the existing classification structure in the SACS sector is a mess. There’s a lot of woolly and ambiguous language involved—more than 6,000 words of it, in fact. Workers can be classified at a particular level (and therefore at a particular pay rate) according to four distinct criteria: their formal qualifications; their experience; the extent of supervision the worker receives from their manager; and the amount of supervision the worker gives to others. 
A study commissioned by the ASU as part of its “<a href="https://www.skilledrespectedequal.com.au/">Skilled, Respected, Equal</a>“ campaign found that two-thirds of all staff in the sector are under-classified on at least one of these measures. But, notably, the FWC’s April interim decision describes this problem not as “under-classification” but as “misclassification”. And in the public hearings in late October, FWC Vice-President Ingrid Asbury took this a step further. 
Asbury said that, “at first blush”, some of the workers in case studies tendered as evidence by the ASU “appear to perhaps be over-classified”—that is, paid at a rate that’s higher than they should be, based on the SACS classification schedule in the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services (SCHADS) award. 
It shouldn’t surprise us that this alleged “over-classification” worries Asbury. After all, she was a senior manager at a pro-business lobby, the Australian Industry Group, before being appointed to various industrial tribunals from 2000, and to the Fair Work Commission in 2013. 
But it’s a concern for anyone who cares about maintaining or even improving pay rates in the community sector. And it’s doubly concerning that FWC President Adam Hatcher commented along similar lines in the October hearings, saying that “the current structure in effect allows the employer to pick the classification and then justify funding on the basis that it’s an award classification without any objective criteria actually applying”. 
The horror. Imagine workers in a demanding, not-well-paid industry being paid a bit more than the absolute minimum interpretation of what’s allowed under the award, without “objective criteria actually applying”. Presumably, “objective criteria” were “actually applied” in setting Hatcher’s pay rate of well over $600,000 per year.
Funding in the community sector is often based on what’s needed to pay staff an award wage at a particular classification level. So Hatcher’s comment, if carried into policy, would justify a large cut to both pay and funding across the sector. It’s appalling that someone who espouses these views has a central role in setting minimum wages for the entire country. And it tells us a lot about “Fair” Work. 
At one level, Hatcher’s fixation with supposed “objective criteria” for setting wages is just make-believe. The most important “criteria” determining what workers get paid is simple: their class power. The rich and the powerful make sure that they’re amply rewarded, along with their most important functionaries (including FWC members). For most of the rest of us, if we’re getting more than a bare minimum, it’s because our unions have fought for and won it somewhere along the line. 
At another level, though, Hatcher’s comments go to the issue at the heart of the current case: the ambiguities in the existing SACS classifications and what to do about them. As the ASU points out, the existing SACS classification descriptors are “archaic, complex and ambiguous”. Anyone who takes a look at the 6,000 words piled up in <a href="https://awards.fairwork.gov.au/MA000100.html#_Toc209531566">Schedule B of the SCHADS award</a>
will probably agree. Hence, the union’s wish to embark on a government-funded process to rewrite the schedule to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the risk of under-classification. 
As anyone who has followed this case knows, however, the FWC has rejected this course. At the hearing in late October, Hatcher delivered a minor tirade involving rabbits and hats when barrister Leo Saunders, appearing for the ASU, advocated setting aside the commission’s April interim decision and waiting until the classifications could be rewritten in a way that didn’t cut pay. 
Instead, the commissioners have taken a chainsaw to the whole structure—removing ambiguities in a way that will cut pay. The main way this has happened is by making qualifications the main criterion for determining a worker’s pay level. This would spell dramatic pay cuts for many thousands of community sector workers, many of whom have years or decades of practical experience but little in the way of degrees or higher qualifications. 
A few hundred words of nerdy analysis are <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wnfbQymGudn5V-aD0IwqC3AlVHskfFrlf-vDmHWnXNg/edit?usp=sharing">available here</a>, detailing how this works. The short version is that the commission’s war against “ambiguity” in the name of “objective criteria” is, in large part, a war against clauses that workers, and sometimes employers, can use to justify a worker getting a living wage. 
The ASU’s solution to workers going backwards (beyond urging the FWC to scrap their whole approach) is threefold: raising the rates, introducing greater progression across the various levels and including “equal remuneration order preservation clause”. This would apply not just to existing employees but to all employees. It would ensure that the applicable award rate is whichever is the higher of the new schedule and the existing schedule, plus the equal remuneration order won by a union campaign in 2012—adjusted for future wage increases. This idea didn’t get any five-star reviews from the commissioners. And Saunders freely admitted it would be “extraordinarily difficult to apply in practice”.
None of this, to put it mildly, is at all encouraging for workers in the sector. 
3. There are still bad and not-as-bad results possible from Fair Work’s decision
As I’ve <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/sharpening-the-knife-fair-work-takes-another-step-towards-community-sector-wage-cuts">previously reported</a>, and as was evident in spades at the commission five weeks ago, the commissioners aren’t at all inclined to accept the ASU’s primary submission. This is to abandon entirely the commission’s wage-cutting interim decision and instead start on a work value case, which the ASU hopes will lift wages in the sector. 
So unless something dramatic has happened during the confidential conferencing process in November, we’ll see some version of the FWC’s interim decision, or the ASU’s secondary submission, or some mash-up of the two, emerge in the next couple of weeks. Everything we know about these proposals suggests there will be cuts to award rates across large parts of the sector. 
There’ll be a fair bit of work to do sifting through the final decision to work out the details—how porous or rigid are the barriers between the levels? How strict is the wording regarding qualifications as the main factor in determining classification? Are there minimum classifications for particular roles? 
Without detailed modelling, it will be very difficult to work out the overall impact of the final structure across the sector. But it should be possible for everyone in the sector to look at the FWC’s revised decision when it’s released, work out where they would be classified and compare that to their current pay rate. It’s not science, but it will give an indication of how things will play out for each workplace and each part of the sector when the implementation date arrives. 
The implementation date of the new schedule is a crucial piece of the picture. The idea of a start date of July 2027, rather than 2026, for any new schedule setting SACS classification and pay was canvassed in the hearings in late October. Several parties, including both unions and the Australian Industry Group, favoured a later start date.
A later start date might enable the ASU’s work value case to be completed before the implementation of any changes to the current SACS schedule. At least in theory, this would have the potential to undo some or all of the damage to workers’ pay rates from the outcome of the case, even before the new schedule is implemented. 
Regardless of the start date, though, if the result includes any pay cuts—which seems certain—the ASU campaign will have to continue and ramp up. This should mean city protests; more delegate training to work out what the best pitch to members is, and how to battle against the effects of the decision in every workplace and across the sector; more collective spaces like delegates’ and activists’ meetings in which debates can be had. 
Which gets to the final thought that kept distracting me on the fifteenth floor of the Fair Work Commission in late October.
4. We need more Zelda D’Apranos—and need to revive the movement she was part of
It’s perhaps the most famous worker action that’s ever happened in protest against a miserable result doled out by the Fair Work Commission or its predecessor organisations. It’s also the most dramatic and visible moment (so far) of the decades-long campaign for equal pay for women in this country.
On 21 October 1969, <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/node-6222">Zelda D’Aprano</a> chained herself to the doors of the Commonwealth building in Melbourne, which housed the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. Like community sector workers protesting today, she was appalled at the outcome of an award review, which had the supposed objective of ending the gross, sexist underpayment of women. 
The award in question was the meat industry interim award. The female rate was $35.85 a week, compared to $44.25 for men. The ACTU and the Meatworkers Union ran a test case to abolish the lower, female, rate in the award and lift everyone up to the higher rate. 
D’Aprano was a Communist Party member and a staunch unionist. Like many community sector workers today, she’d helped to organise demonstrations outside the hearing. She’d sat in on the sessions. But any hopes of justice from the arbitration system were in vain. 
Socialist historian <a href="https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/australian-unions-and-the-fight-for-equal-pay-for-women/">Katie Wood</a> writes that the decision in the 1969 equal pay case “was a bitter disappointment for those involved in the campaign”. The Arbitration Court laid down nine principles to be considered when deciding which women would receive equal pay, which meant the decision would benefit only a minority of women. And each union had to apply separately, meaning it would be several years before the limited benefits flowed through via the arbitration system. D’Aprano records in her autobiography:
“[A] feeling of dejection and what can we do now prevailed ... knowing how people had become so despondent, [we] discussed the need for more dramatic action. I made a decision to protest against pay injustice meted out to women by chaining myself to the doors of the Commonwealth building, holding a placard which read: no more female and male rates – one rate only.” 
It’s this moment which is now immortalised in bronze by a statue of D’Aprano outside Melbourne’s Trades Hall building. D’Aprano’s dramatic demonstration was part of making history. And the most crucial part of that struggle, of course, was in a very different arena to the Arbitration Court. Katie Wood records: 
“The next battleground was not the courts but the metal shops. This reflected the limitations of the equal pay decisions and hostility from the bosses. Amalgamated Engineering Union members began local shop strikes to win equal pay, resulting in 90 percent of women members of the union receiving equal pay before the 1972 deadline. A corollary was of course the increase in female membership and activity in the union. The AEU journal declared:
“‘Large numbers of female workers in unorganised shops became interested, and as a result our female membership has increased by 300 over the last two months, and a number of new shops organised. We now also have an increased number of female shop stewards ... [A] feature of the activity was the readiness of the women concerned to take industrial action to support their demand.’”
All of this was in keeping with the times. Earlier in 1969, a mass strike had rolled around Australia, freeing union leader Clarrie O’Shea and smashing the anti-union penal powers. These laws had been used for decades to levy punitive fines on unions that dared to strike. In 1970, an epic five-week <a href="https://files.libcom.org/files/Chapter%203%20-%20the%201970%20margins%20strike.pdf">mass strike</a> by builders’ labourers paralysed the construction industry in New South Wales. The result was possibly the fastest “work value” case in the history of the arbitration system, with building industry bosses begging the commission to quickly approve a massive pay rise to avoid further industrial unrest.
Of course, we can’t just close our eyes, click our heels and transport ourselves back to those times. But we can keep our eyes open, study those battles and apply the lessons in the here and now. 
The experience of militant unionists and socialists in the ASU in 2009-12, when mass union protests played a crucial role in winning the equal remuneration order that significantly lifted wages in the community sector, contains many lessons. Veteran socialist and ASU member Adam Bottomley’s <a href="https://www.3cr.org.au/sticktogether/episode/equal-pay-campaign-asu">recent talk</a> to a meeting of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/asusocialists/">ASU Socialists</a>, and <a href="https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/still-fighting-for-equal-pay/">an article</a> co-authored by Adam with Cecilia Judge, are important material for both education and inspiration. 
Adam and Cecilia wrote in 2012: “We have won an important legal and moral victory, but the campaign also shows that even in a sector with little union tradition it is possible to organise and make important gains”. It’s up to a new generation of unionists to make this history again.

Jerome Small

Community sector pay cuts: four things we learned at the Fair Work hearings

There’s a lot the National Union of Students, the peak representative body for tertiary students in Australia, should be fighting for. We are witnessing a genocide in Palestine, a housing crisis that has particularly affected young people, unfolding climate and environmental crises worldwide and the horrifying growth of the far right. 
Right now, Labor governments—federally and in most states—are continuing arms shipments to Israel, approving planet-destroying expansions of fossil fuel projects and refusing to cap rents or pour desperately needed funds into public housing. We need the NUS to campaign against governments that have picked the wrong side of every major political question facing students. That means overturning the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/labor-students-lock-out-left-from-the-national-union-of-students">pact struck by student members of the Labor Party</a> to block Palestine solidarity activists from holding office-bearer positions in the union.
The genocide in Gaza hasn’t ended. In fact, the entrenching of Israel’s occupation of Gaza is underway, and the Israeli military carries out atrocities daily. Some 350 or more Palestinians have been killed since the “ceasefire” was signed. Just last week, two young brothers, 8 and 10 years old, were killed in a drone strike while gathering firewood. The assassination of Fadi and Juma Abu Assi is just one more heart-wrenching reason why the campaign for Palestine needs to continue.
We have a democratic mandate to continue to fight for Palestine. Polling over the last two years has shown a huge increase in the number of people who believe that the Australian government failed to act adequately to prevent Israel’s genocide in Gaza. More than two-thirds of people think Israel should stop its attacks on Gaza. Substantial majorities support Australia stopping all arms trade and agreements with Israel, and allowing peaceful pro-Palestine protests without penalties, according to recent <a href="https://www.deepcutnews.com/p/australians-overwhelmingly-back-sanctions">YouGov polling</a>. Young people are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/08/albanese-government-israel-gaza-war-response-guardian-essential-poll">significantly more likely</a> than other sections of the population to be critical of the government’s failure to act against the genocide.
Students have an important role to play in fighting for a free Palestine. Universities are up to their necks in the genocide. Every major campus in the country has partnerships with weapons companies and Israeli institutions involved in carrying out the genocide. University managers have spent the last two years implementing new anti-protest laws that restrict free speech, as the <a href="https://www.palestineinquiry.com/home"></a>people’s i<a href="https://www.palestineinquiry.com/home">nquiry</a> into campus free speech has clearly demonstrated.
Yet Labor students in the NUS are demonstrating that they would prefer, like their fellow Labor members in state and federal governments, that we forget about Gaza. Some of these Labor students claim to oppose the genocide. But the fact that they are willing to defend a right-wing plan to lock Palestine solidarity activists out of union positions, based on their criticisms of the government, tells the real story. 
This is why Socialist Alternative is campaigning for the education officer position in the National Union of Students—and it’s why I want to use that position to keep building our history-making movement. The education officer position could be used as a national coordination hub for campaigns to kick weapons companies off our campuses and to pressure our government to cut ties with Israel. If the current deal between the Labor student factions to lock out Palestine solidarity campaigners stands, we know that the union will lead no such campaigns. The failure of Labor students to use their numerous positions to make any serious criticisms of the Albanese government is evidence enough. 
It’s impossible to engage with students on the political issues that matter if you aren’t willing to fight the government currently causing the problems. Albanese’s government continues to make weapons deals with Israel, like the $20 million “iron fist” agreement with Elbit Systems this year. There have been at least 68 shipments of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel since October 2023, according to <a href="https://declassifiedaus.org/2025/10/01/secret-cargo-f35-parts-pipeline/">Declassified Australia</a>. 
And Foreign Minister Penny Wong recently <a href="https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/foreign-minister-penny-wong-says-donald-trump-only-world-leader-who-could-have-minted-israelgaza-peace-plan/news-story/b8be2bd5e761774ec45c02b3d08fe4d4">told Sky News</a> that US President Donald Trump’s disastrous plan for the occupation of Gaza “has been the greatest contribution to peace in the Middle East for a generation or more”. The appalling right-wing positions aren’t limited to the question of Palestine, either. The Labor Party demonstrates the same approach when it comes to questions of ending climate destruction, addressing the housing crisis and adequately funding higher education. 
This year, we’ve had a chance to see what we can achieve when steadfast pro-Palestine activists hold offices in the NUS. Students for Palestine activists held the education, queer and vocational education officer positions, and used them to engage and mobilise students in campaigns against weapons ties and Australian complicity in the genocide. 
Political institutions like the NUS must be prepared to take controversial and dissenting stands against the prevailing line in the political mainstream. In doing so, they can help give others the confidence to stand with us. We are going to need more of this attitude in a climate of increasing repression on campus and in society more broadly. 
We need a national union that’s up to the challenge. The NUS could spend the next year as a cheer squad for the Labor government. Or it could highlight the role our universities are playing in the injustice in Gaza, fight for the rights of students and staff to speak up about Palestine without fear and organise student protest action. This means standing up against the growing far right, which wants to push back movements against racism, and fighting the government, which has backed Israel’s genocide from the start.

Yasmine Johnson

We need a socialist NUS education officer who’ll stand up for Palestine

A coalition of Labor and self-described independent student unionists across Australia is planning to lock out pro-Palestine and socialist activists from the National Union of Students (NUS) at the body’s upcoming National Conference.
The conference, taking place in Ballarat on 8–12 December, will elect NUS office-bearer positions for 2026. This year, Socialist Alternative members hold three of those positions: queer, vocational education, and education (which I hold). We have used those positions to fight for a left-wing and activist national union. In particular, we pushed for the NUS to take an uncompromising and principled position of solidarity with the Palestinian people as our own government colluded in the Gaza genocide.
Ahead of the National Conference, student Labor members of the right and left factions, along with nominal independents (for example, the group that runs the student guild at Curtin University) have signed a deal that will totally exclude socialist pro-Palestine activists from any office-bearer positions for 2026, even though Socialist Alternative has nearly 30 percent of the delegates at this year’s conference and is the second biggest faction in the NUS. 
The point of the lock-out, I was told by one of the Labor students who arranged it, is to have a national student union that won’t criticise or embarrass the Labor government but will instead cheer it on from the sidelines. They told me that Labor ministers wouldn’t want to meet with the NUS if it were anti-government. 
For starters, I consider it a job well done if our work in the NUS this year has made government ministers feel nervous at the prospect of meeting with us for fear of being publicly criticised. To any student who’s been living under the Albanese government rather than under a rock, it’s obvious that Labor deserves no praise from us. 
From the first, Labor has stood by Israel and its genocidal campaign in Gaza. More than just rhetorical support, the Australian government has continued to supply key components for Israel’s fleet of F-35 fighter jets as the bodies of Palestinians pile up. In Australia, Labor state governments have ramped up police powers and attacked the right to protest. They <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/29/as-melbournes-public-housing-high-rise-towers-await-demolition-some-residents-hold-out-against-relocation">tear down public housing</a> while hundreds of thousands, many students among them, struggle to keep a roof over their heads. 
The role of unions—on university campuses and in workplaces—should be to organise against any attack on our collective rights, wherever it comes from. Unions are meant to fight for a better world and to stand in solidarity with the struggles of the oppressed, be they students, workers, migrants, Indigenous people, or Palestinians. 
Today, that means campaigning against the Anthony Albaneses and Penny Wongs of the world. If the national student union refuses to even criticise the government—especially one so bankrupt as our current Labor government—it is fighting with both hands tied behind its back. More accurately, it is refusing to fight at all. That is what Labor students have set out to establish at this year’s National Conference.
It makes sense when you remember that these students are
the future Anthony Albaneses and Penny Wongs. For them, student unions are about building their careers and honing their craft as political operators. Those careers depend on their ability to shield the ALP from criticism, especially from the left, and build up the Labor Party machine on the campuses. It’s been harder to do that when socialists in the National Union of Students have spent the last year publicly condemning Labor for its complicity in a genocide.
Socialists in the NUS 
This past year, the socialists in the NUS co-convened a People’s Inquiry that publicly exposed attacks on free speech by university bosses. We called a nationwide student strike that led university and high-school students off their campuses and into the streets to demand justice for Palestine. 
Most significantly, we organised the National Student Referendum on Palestine, in which more than 5,000 students voted on campuses across the country to condemn our universities’ and our government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide. This was the first nationwide student vote in decades, as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozskma2Zxyc">reported</a>
on SBS program The Feed. 
Compare this with the achievements of our fellow NUS office-bearers in the ALP. Welfare Officer Lucy Fawcett, a member of the Labor right faction Student Unity, gave a presentation at the NUS Education Conference in July, which revealed that, after seven whole months in the position, all she had accomplished was launching a Student Wellbeing Survey that not even 100 students completed. 
This is typical of Labor students in the unions. Run some pointless survey that no-one will ever read so you can say you’ve been hard at it, “advocating” for students. Throw a couple of free food events into the mix and you can say you’ve been “<a href="https://www.airmaster.com.au/post/airmaster-s-partnership-with-rusu-combats-student-food-insecurity-at-rmit-university">combating food insecurity</a>“. The only thing close to an actual campaign initiated by Labor students in the NUS this year was a<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DFww_NZyr7d/?hl=en&amp;img_index=1"> thinly veiled “vote Labor” campaign</a> for the federal election.
It’s a tale of two strategies. The socialist approach to student unions is to build them up as activist bodies that mobilise students to put them in the best position to defend their rights and win more. Labor students and other aspirational types see the unions as stepping stones to a career in parliament or in the trade union officialdom, so they suck up to university bosses and Labor politicians in particular.
Student life today
Sadly, Lucy has yet to publish the results of the Student Wellbeing Survey, so we can only imagine what fascinating insights it might contain. Let’s be real, though: you don’t need a Google Forms questionnaire to know that life is shit for students. 
The cost-of-living crisis is hitting young people like a ton of bricks, and university life gets worse every year. On several campuses, university bosses are planning <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/24/australian-university-course-cuts-jobs">major cuts to courses and staff</a>. The very idea that higher education should be a fulfilling experience is giving way to a transactional and corporatised university model based on the grim accumulation of microcredentials.
Broader political questions affect students, too. Globally, the far right has risen, and in Australia, it is increasingly setting the tone. Hatemongers like Pauline Hanson, whose One Nation party is now polling around up to 18 percent, are growing their base with a hardened racism that blames migrants, including international students, for the housing crisis.
And then there’s Gaza: the crime of the century, carried out with the backing of the Albanese government. Students have watched in horror as it unfolded, and we have also thrown ourselves into the Palestine solidarity movement. We have protested, petitioned, donated, camped, rallied, locked on, turned up, fundraised, organised, learned, and educated—done everything we can to demand an end to the slaughter. 
Our universities have responded with <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/peoples-inquiry-exposes-university-censorship-on-palestine">surveillance, censorship, and repression</a>. When challenged on their connections with the weapons companies that made the desolation of the Gaza Strip possible, our sandstone institutions have acted like tin-pot dictatorships.
It is hard to imagine a situation in which an activist and left-wing student union movement—one that organised students into a force to be reckoned with—could be more sorely needed. Students don’t occupy the same position of strategic strength that workers do, but we do have power. In our numbers, we can disrupt, kick up a fuss, shut down a busy street. Our actions can inspire broader numbers in society to fight. Student unions are in a position to mobilise that potential and show students their power.
Through our efforts in the NUS and in local student unions, socialists have shown what that could look like. We fought to make Palestine a live issue on the campuses. We pushed back on university attempts to silence political speech. At the ANU in Canberra, socialist students organised an impressive anti-cuts campaign this year, which toppled Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell and forced the university to shelve a planned “restructure”. 
Rebuilding our unions
Labor students like to tell socialists that the ordinary student isn’t interested in protests or activism. They defend their conservative approach to student unionism behind the claim that they’re much more in touch with the needs and interests of real students, who supposedly want nothing more than an occasional sausage sizzle.
Yet for every single student who filled in the NUS Student Wellbeing Survey, 50 turned up to vote in the National Student Referendum on Palestine, so the idea that “ordinary students” aren’t interested in protests just doesn’t hold water. In addition to the SBS report, the vote was featured on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVUYyNoiw3A">Al Jazeera’s live news broadcast</a>, giving the NUS more high-profile media coverage than it has had in years. 
And while it’s true that not every university student wants to attend a rally these days, our unions should see this as a challenge to overcome, not a situation to gloat about. Any student unionist worth their salt should be seriously thinking about the next steps we need to take to rebuild an activist culture on the campuses where students feel empowered to fight for their rights and to demand more from a system that offers us less and less. That’s the approach that socialists take.
And that’s exactly why the Labor students and their mates have teamed up to keep socialists out of the NUS next year. With two state elections in 2026 and the possibility that the Albanese government will send <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/australian-troops-gaza-deployment-plans/barxp3cbw">Australian troops to occupy the Gaza Strip</a>, Labor students don’t want an NUS that can bring students out onto the streets to publicly condemn their own party. Their vision for the NUS is a troop of aspirational cheerleaders for the party of government. 
The campaigns organised by the socialists and pro-Palestine activists in the NUS, like the National Student Referendum on Palestine, demonstrate the potential for rebuilding a combative left-wing tradition on the university campuses. The situation in Australia today demands it. That is the goal that Socialist Alternative members in campus clubs across the country are working towards, inside and outside the NUS.

James McVicar

Labor students lock out left from the National Union of Students

Against the backdrop of the sham “peace plan” for Gaza endorsed by the UN Security Council, student activists from across Australia gathered on 22 November to discuss the future of the movement for Palestine on our campuses. 
Students for Palestine’s first ever conference, held at Brunswick Town Hall, brought together 270 people for a day of panels, workshops and a planning session for the group’s future actions. Delegates from Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra and Brisbane joined activists from seven Melbourne universities and numerous high schools. 
Between the opening and closing panels—“The Gaza genocide and the mass movement for Palestine” and “Freedom for Palestine: what kind of movement do we need?”—organisers reflected on the positive lessons of the past two years, in which unprecedented numbers took to the streets in support of the Palestinians. Discussion was tempered by a recognition of the ultimate inability of the movement to force the genocide to a halt, and the need now to organise on new terrain as the immediate horror of daily bombardment and starvation is pushed out of the news cycle.
Closing panellist Amal Naser, from Sydney’s Palestine Action Group, posed the challenge to activists: that we must go from being a reactive to a proactive movement, not just waiting for the next massacre, but convincing people to join the fight now. Naser and co-panellist Monica Sestito also highlighted the importance of harnessing workers’ power, drawing on the electrifying experience of strikes that paralysed Italy’s economy in support of Palestine in October.
Educational sessions, on apartheid in the West Bank with Palestinian filmmaker Mohamed Babai, and on the relationship between the US, Australia and Israel, aimed to give activists a deeper understanding of the structures that oppress the Palestinians and ideas to convince others of why the struggle must continue. 
Workshops also critiqued some “common-sense” attitudes frequently met among activists, such as identity politics—the belief that a person’s identity should be the source of their political authority rather than the efficacy of the strategies and tactics they propose. One salient example discussed was the University of Melbourne Gaza Solidarity Encampment, where attempts by Students for Palestine activists to argue for protest action to defend the camp from attacks were shut down on the basis that a prominent Palestinian disagreed. These were essential discussions for activists committed to establishing a robust culture of debate in our movement. 
As to where next for Students for Palestine, the Freedom Flotilla campaigns featured heavily in conference proceedings. Hamish Patterson and Robert Martin, both of whom attempted to break the siege on Gaza in separate missions this year, spoke alongside veteran flotilla organiser Michael Coleman in a Q&amp;A panel. 
With the last Sumud Flotilla acting as a rallying cry for solidarity with the Palestinians, culminating in explosive strikes in Italy and Spain in late September and early October, SfP activists resolved to make the next flotilla mission a focal point for campaigning into the new year. Just as the last fleet managed to capture the world’s attention with its attempt to bring aid to a starving population, another attempt can highlight the enduring brutality that the population of Gaza suffers under a “peace plan” that entrenches the blockade and occupation and keep the issue of Palestine firmly in the spotlight. 
With the suffering in Gaza ongoing, and escalating raids, settlements and killings in the West Bank, it’s a healthy sign for the future that hundreds came together to sketch out plans to continue the fight for justice on campuses next year.

Jack Mansell

Students for Palestine hold first national conference

<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/community-health-centre-closures-must-be-stopped">Previously in Red Flag, we reported the devastating news</a> that some of the longest running community health centres in the country would close, leaving around 12,500 people without a GP. Since then, a spirited community campaign to defend the clinics in Melbourne’s inner north has won a reprieve. Reprinted below is the 20 November announcement from the Victorian Socialists, whose members played a leading role in the campaign.
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This morning, we woke to the welcome news that the majority of services at the three cohealth community clinics in Fitzroy, Collingwood and Kensington, which were slated to close before Christmas, will remain open until July 2026. 
The Labor Party has buckled under pressure—the pressure of people power. The Fitzroy, Collingwood and Kensington communities, who have fought hard against the government, held mass meetings, protests, pickets and more. Their efforts were not in vain. 
Victorian Socialists acted as soon as we heard news of the closures, which would have left 12,500 people without access to GP services, and left 70 cohealth staff out of work. Our “Socialists In Healthcare” group, alongside local VS branches, helped to transform local anger into collective action. We mobilised hundreds of local community members to bring the issue into the public eye and to put pressure on the state and federal governments. 
Now, federal Labor has announced $1.5 million to keep GP services open until mid-2026 while a review is undertaken. The community has won an important reprieve. Everyone who came to a rally or a meeting, stood on a picket, put up posters or handed out leaflets should be proud: together, we forced Labor to act. 
However, the fight is not yet over. For one thing pharmacy and counselling services are still slated to close on 19 December, including the methadone service for 1,250 people trying to recover from serious addictions. We have to prevent the closure of these lifesaving services. 
Further, an eight-month pause is not a promise to keep the clinics open long term. Nor is it a commitment to maintaining the community health care model. It is possible that Labor is just buying time to hose down the justifiable anger and that its review will ultimately determine that the clinics are “unsustainable”. 
Twenty-five community health clinics across Victoria are still under threat. Those who depend on these clinics include some of the most vulnerable people in the community: refugees, newly arrived migrants, people experiencing homelessness, those living with disabilities and patients managing complex chronic illness. 
These clinics provide vital health services, including pharmacy services, opioid replacement programs, and nursing, counselling and allied health options. Yet they are controlled by private companies and boards. Two such clinics in Melbourne’s south-east have been slated for closure by the Better Health Network Board. 
The coming months will determine whether community health is adequately funded and put into community hands, or cut and further privatised. We must use this time to build a movement against the closure of community clinics and against broader healthcare cuts. We’ve shown that when the community stands together, we can force the government to act. 
To get involved in the campaign or to find out more, follow @socialistsinhealthcare on Instagram.

Community pressure wins reprieve on health clinic closures

With the increasing polarisation of politics and the rise of the far right, socialism is making a comeback as a current. The Socialist Party, the expansion of the Victorian Socialists into a national organisation, currently has more than 5,400 financial members, a significant increase from the 800 members the Victorian Socialists had a year ago. The aim of the party is to unite all major socialist currents in Australia in a broad project. The following letter was drafted by former members of the Socialist Workers Party and Democratic Socialist Party to urge comrades in the Socialist Alliance to join the new project. 
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A plea to old comrades
The success of Victorian Socialists and its growth into a national organisation present socialists in Australia with a much awaited opportunity. Since the demise of the Communist Party of Australia and the failure of numerous unity processes among the socialist left throughout the 1980s and ’90s, the socialist movement has not been in a position where it could aspire to pose some sort of albeit modest mass alternative. The global context demands the socialist movement rise to this challenge. The heyday of neoliberal capitalism is behind us, crises abound, and the far right threatens.
Comrades in the old SWP-DSP tradition who were part of attempts at regroupment in the 1980s will remember that these included a range of party building tactics: the intervention in the Nuclear Disarmament Party, the New Left Party process with the Communist Party, the fusion discussions with the Socialist Party and the work in helping to form the NSW Greens. In none of these were we the obviously larger numerical force. The critical element was the confidence and courage our tradition had accumulated after nearly two decades of party building, which put us in a position of playing a leading role in these regroupment attempts. During our discussion in this period, Jim Percy rightly observed:
“Some [on the left] get caught in the trap of defining their role in ideological terms and general principles while failing to recognise the equally important role of active tactical approaches. Some simply proclaim their program and assume that this guarantees them a big future role. But programs are really products of life itself. They need living verification. It’s no use proclaiming the need for a party in general while failing to take the necessary and possible steps to build one. Such a course reduces formally correct positions to paper abstractions.”
None of the opportunities for regroupment in the 1980s worked out the way we would have wanted, but we did the right thing trying. With hindsight, such ambitions were not likely to bear fruit in the context of a long retreat. Today we are in a very different situation. Difficult, yes, but different. While not all of the decay of the old left is behind us, there are the beginnings of the new. In any case, we haven’t the choice but to try again. Everywhere, the far right is growing, taking advantage of the blame social democracy has for the crises of neoliberalism, and the failure of the revolutionary left to build mass alternatives. We have to win back the language and the practical leadership of discontent.
We have an opportunity now to take the advice Jim Percy put to our old party back in the 1980s:
“What would we, as the SWP, do if a new party comes along more or less fitting our bill? Above all, we’d slip the SWP into idle mode and give the new party our best shot. The most important thing about our best shot will be our attitude. If we join a new party with the view that we have all the answers because of our past experience or theory, we could risk wrecking the whole project. 
“The real test of the organisational viability of the new party will be how soon decisions start to cut across old views and alignments. We have to approach things with open minds and assume that everyone else who joins a new party will do the same … The new party must develop its own life, and institutions that have the confidence of all members. A simple federation of factions wouldn’t last very long.”
A number of us, long-term ex-members of the SWP-DSP tradition, long ago joined Socialist Alternative. We’ve been a tiny minority in an organisation where we have important differences that at some stage may well play out, but we have had the courage to put our perspectives in the context of the class struggle, as it is, which is so much bigger than the small organisations and programmatic positions of the historic tendencies of the far left. You work with what you have, and you put your confidence in the class (the long view of history), even if that puts you in a tiny minority.
The challenge of Socialist Alliance joining the Socialist Party is, frankly, a much more modest ask than the risks the SWP was willing to take in the 1980s. There are already a lot of guarantees in place that were not certain in past regroupment attempts, including the right to maintain and build existing organisations publicly and as tendencies in the Socialist Party. This is simply a beginning, one step at a time without a predetermined path as to where it may lead.
We hope comrades will look back to the rich history of the SWP/DSP and find in that the inspiration to take up this challenge.
Jorge Jorquera, Nick Everett, Kim, Bullimore, Andrew Ian Jamieson, John ‘Togs’ Tognolini, Margaret Perrott, Allen Myers, Helen Jarvis

Editors

An appeal for socialist unity

Teachers in Queensland staged their first strike in sixteen years in August and are set to walk out again on 25 November. This would be the first time in more than three decades that Queensland Teachers Union (QTU) members have struck more than once in a year. 
Within the QTU, a network of radicals has been campaigning for the union to take more strident action to improve our pay and conditions: that network is called Queensland Teachers Fightback. The strikes are occurring against an intransigent Liberal National Party government, which has on three separate occasions offered teachers a desultory 8 percent pay offer over three years, with no improvements to workload.
While the campaign continues, teachers have already scored a significant victory against the government, voting “no” in a significant majority against its offer on 31 October.
But first, some context. During the last decade of successive Labor state governments, teaching conditions in Queensland significantly deteriorated. When the COVID-19 pandemic first broke out, the then Palaszczuk government froze teachers’ pay for eighteen months, costing teachers thousands. This was followed by an 11 percent wage “increase” over three years, which was so far below inflation that it meant a real wage cut for teachers of 6.5 percent. 
Queensland teachers also have the slowest salary progression of anywhere in the country, alongside Tasmania. The situation is so bad that a seventh-year teacher on the Gold Coast could earn $20,000 more by teaching over the border in NSW. Planning time for Queensland teachers is also below the national and OECD average. For high school teachers, our planning time (time when we’re at school but not teaching) hasn’t improved since the 1970s, despite a significant increase in reporting requirements. Our lunch breaks are technically unpaid, but we’re still required to do playground duty. We get two to three student-free days in January (of which only three hours is individual planning time), and then one student-free day in September (which is professional development, not planning time). There is a constant and steady stream of new curriculum updates, program changes and new assessments we write or modify every year without the time in the day to do them. Teachers regularly take sick days just to keep on top of work. 
While other states offer 15 days’ sick leave per year, Queensland teachers get only ten. And in a vast state with many regional cities and towns, the remote incentives are nowhere near enough to retain staff and to address the higher cost of living in those areas. 
What has not helped our situation is the lack of strike action. Fightback began in 2019 during negotiations for our last agreement, when 94 percent of union members voted to strike in support of our demands, yet our leadership didn’t follow through. Instead, members were encouraged to vote yes to an offer that made no serious improvements to wages or conditions. So, we got started by making some basic arguments—that we shouldn’t vote yes to any offers that aren’t worth voting for. Enterprise bargaining periods provide us with the opportunity to take protected industrial action, so we need to make the most of this—by striking! 
Previous offers, which members were recommended to accept by the leadership, would usually pass with 95 percent in favour. In 2019, though, nearly 20 percent of members voted against. This was a significant achievement for a newly formed group with no institutional weight within the union. Fightback tapped into members’ outrage and frustration with the union’s direction and gave them the arguments to use in their schools against the offer. In the past, disgruntled members would have simply left the union. Fightback provided them with a crucial alternative—stay, fight and help organise for something better.
There have been several other industrial campaigns Fightback has been a part of, such as pushing for school closures during the pandemic. In 2023, we ran for the union’s presidential positions on a platform of class struggle and putting our leaders on a workers’ wage. Fightback candidates won between 38 and 44 percent of the vote across the three positions.
But it’s not just industrial questions. Fightback members have made efforts to politicise our workplaces—inviting colleagues to rallies for Palestine, for refugee rights, against the far right and more. We haven’t shied away from speaking out against genocide and bigotry, which sometimes requires a discussion or argument, but is important for deepening our understanding of what fighting for workers’ rights and solidarity is all about. 
It was crucial that our members spoke up in defence of other unionists when the CFMEU was put into administration, and their democratic say overruled by Labor state governments. Solidarity isn’t charity; our rights and conditions are genuinely impacted by our government’s treatment of refugees, their support for Israel’s genocide, dictatorial control of other unions, tolerance for the far right and so on. We’ve had Fightback contingents and our banners at many protests this year, showing we don’t just talk the talk, but we walk it as well, and that has helped us identify and connect with sympathisers and fellow activists.
Fightback began our intervention in the current enterprise bargaining campaign by getting some decent demands into our log of claims. We put together some example motions and provided them to our email list and Facebook group—demands such as 10 percent pay rise per year, doubling planning time and increasing sick leave to fifteen days. The motions were taken up with gusto—more than 30 branches voted for our pay demand to be 10 percent per year, and several branches voted for 15 percent. 
For many, it was their first time going to a union branch meeting. In one instance, three people who didn’t know each other independently printed the Fightback motions and turned up to the same branch meeting to move them!
Pushing for a decent log of claims was important for raising members’ expectations of what we should be fighting for, rather than tailoring our demands to what we think the government considers acceptable. Part of Fightback’s intervention has been to push for the union to adopt a log of claims with teeth. The QTU has adopted an “interest-based” approach to bargaining, meaning that rather than raising specific demands, the union’s negotiators seek common ground with the government. 
Described by the <a href="https://www.fwc.gov.au/issues-we-help/collaborative-approaches-program/interest-based-bargaining">Fair Work Commission</a>
as a “consensus-seeking and cooperative” approach to bargaining, interest-based bargaining stands in contrast with a “traditional” adversarial approach, where parties “approach the process with predetermined positions or a log of claims”. It also makes it much harder for workers to hold their representatives to account during negotiations, and vague demands are much harder to mobilise people to campaign for. Fightback has <a href="https://qldteachersfightback.org/need-more-than-ibb-to-fight-the-lnp.html">pushed back</a> on this approach, and, thanks to our intervention, more members are now arguing against interest-based bargaining.
Fightback has been making the case for strike action and protests across all the union’s official channels. When the union backed away from implementing work bans last year, Fightback called a snap speak-out outside parliament, which mobilised dozens of teachers and supporters, and, importantly, attracted media coverage.
The 6 August strike confirmed the arguments about strike action Fightback members have been making. These include that, when a lead is given, members will follow. The strike was widely observed, with approximately 50,000 teachers on strike. Five thousand mobilised in Brisbane at the strike meeting and rally, and a further 5,000 gathered across the state in other rallies.
The strike also highlighted the union’s relevance to previously unorganised teachers: 2,300 joined the union just before the strike. And the public got behind the strike—disproving the idea that the public resents teachers striking or won’t back the action. As we marched through the city, the support was obvious, from people clapping and cheering for us to fellow unionists on construction sites downing tools to raise a fist and chant with us.
Despite the positive energy from the strike, the QTU state council, comprising 120 delegates, “paused” consideration of further industrial action for four weeks. Fightback members pushed back where we could. We argued on the floor of council against the idea. In one school, teachers turned a members’ “briefing” on the pause into a proper meeting with debate, and won—carrying a motion opposing the decision.
The strike was crucial for what came after: in late October, teachers were presented with another government offer which had a few minor changes, yet the substance remained: 8 percent over three years, no improvements to workload. The strike had helped raise teachers’ expectations and we had 50,000 teachers out on strike saying 8 percent wasn’t good enough. To be presented with the same pay offer felt like a slap in the face.
Fightback activists jumped into action, campaigning against such an insulting offer. We were presented with the offer on Monday; voting closed that Friday. Our members were quick to put together a leaflet, and were circulating arguments about the pay, the lack of workload improvements and the need for strike action. 
While the official position from the union leadership was to request that members give the offer “due consideration”, their communications led with “QTU members secure an improved offer”, claiming it was the government’s “best and final offer” and spelling out the dangers of voting it down. These focused on arbitration: that it’s a lengthy process that would delay any pay increases, and that our existing conditions would be under threat if we voted no. As Fightback (and many other teachers) said in response, given how little there was to lose in the offer, members are ready to “roll the dice” on arbitration. What sitting commissioner is going to gut teachers’ conditions during a teacher shortage?
In a stunning turn, with almost 29,000 members voting, 67 percent voted against the government’s offer. Members shared that they didn’t feel alone and that their faith in their fellow members had been restored.
Union leaders had not been campaigning against the offer. The only voices in the media were the government and a right-wing ex-principal talking about how great it was. But Fightback members campaigned against the offer and carried members with us. Wherever we could, we pushed for special branch meetings. This involved checking the union rules and collecting the small number of signatures required. As of this writing, there have been six special branch meetings called by rank-and-file members in the last two weeks—something pretty unheard of. 
The special meetings have been positive for us for a few reasons. They’ve brought members out to vocalise their opposition to the government’s offers and sharpen their arguments for a better deal. They’ve been very well attended, with a combined total of more than 140 members taking part.
With the prospect of arbitration looming, it’s not obvious why we should strike. The meetings have given union members the space to argue to colleagues about why strike action is still crucial: that it shows how important our labour is; that without us, schools stop. And that the past sixteen years without strike action demonstrate that when business isn’t disrupted, our pay and conditions decline. Strikes also make the point that we don’t have to accept what we’re told we deserve by others: not by the government or the union officials, all of whom enjoy much higher salaries and better conditions than teachers. Instead, we can decide what we deserve and fight for it.
Throughout this campaign, members have had a crash course in how the processes of the union work: meeting procedure and protocol, moving and speaking to a motion; all valuable skills that have been useful in this campaign and invaluable for the fights to come. 
By using every forum available to make left-wing arguments and try to win rank-and-file members to our perspective, Fightback has won considerable influence among a wide layer of teachers. We have also helped to educate a wider layer to be leaders and fighters in their workplaces and branches.
Fightback is here to stay, and we’re growing. Rebuilding class-struggle unionism is not going to happen overnight, but there are no alternatives. Wherever we are, in a big workplace or small, we’re there to make the key arguments, to give a lead to members who want to see the union fight for more and to argue that fighting for a better world involves pushing on any question, industrial or political, and looking to our collective power to win.

QTU member and QTU Fightback activist

Inside QLD teachers’ campaign

It’s hard to think of a starker contrast. 
In Italy last month, Israel’s attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla sparked a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/italys-general-strike-shows-the-way-forward">general strike</a> backed by Italy’s largest union federation and a number of smaller union groups. Strikes and mass blockades shut down the nation’s ports and large sections of rail, logistics, education and other industries. Somewhere close to a million people marched in solidarity with Palestine in Rome the next day, the biggest protest in a generation.
Meanwhile in Australia, record numbers have rallied—most notably 300,000 at the March for Humanity on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in August. 
But the response of the Australian union movement’s official leadership to Israel’s assault on the Sumud Flotilla was largely confined to a couple of <a href="https://x.com/unionsaustralia/status/1974025863126503925/photo/1">tweets</a>. It was moving to see footage of seafarer Hamish Paterson, a member of the Maritime Union of Australia, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/reel/1524377095418162">welcomed home</a> by a crowd of hundreds of supporters at Sydney airport. But the fact remains that not a single branch of a single union in this country has authorised industrial action in opposition to the Australian government’s role in arming Israel’s genocidal military. 
It wasn’t always like this. 
Fifty years ago, Australia’s union movement was <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/when-australian-workers-struck-against-apartheid">famous</a>
for putting bans on companies that did business with the blood-soaked apartheid regime in South Africa. <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C98588">“Stop work to stop the war”</a> was likewise the slogan of the left wing of the movement against the US and Australian war in Vietnam—with many unions turning it into reality. In the 1970s, metalworkers regularly banned jobs connected to <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/6837">uranium mining</a>, and sections of the union movement backed strikes, protests and <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/7540">blockades</a> for Aboriginal land rights. 
<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/recollections-militant">Peter Close</a>, who as a tugboat crew member implemented the bans on South African shipping in Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay, spoke to Red Flag in 2013 about what it was like to be a militant at that time: “Proletarian internationalism, class politics, and class struggle itself was on the menu every day”. 
This doesn’t mean that everything was perfect. I remember Harry Bocquet, a Maoist who had worked on the Melbourne waterfront from the early 1960s, being very critical of the neglect of political discussion and education in that period. On one occasion, wharfies were pulled off a ship by the union leadership—but it was only when the workers got to the pub that they found out the stoppage was a protest against the war in Vietnam. 
The workers were supportive on this occasion, according to Harry. But this downplaying of political discussion and democracy meant any culture of militancy was hard to sustain, especially from the early 1980s, when the Labor government moved systematically to stifle union militancy through the Prices and Incomes Accord. 
The aim of the Accord was to impose sweeping neoliberal “reform”, including privatisations and deregulation of the labour market. This was carried out by the Labor government in partnership with business and almost all of the union movement’s official leadership. 
If you’re a union leader allied to a Labor government imposing neoliberalism on the working class, one thing you definitely don’t want is a politicised, militant current in the union movement. So the sometimes heroic traditions of the 1970s had to be smothered. 
A huge amount of effort was spent—especially by “left” leaderships like the key Metalworkers union—in “educating” union delegates out of militancy and browbeating them into compliance with the class collaborationist approach of the Accord. 
Rates of industrial action fell. Delegate organisation withered. Unions that refused to meekly go along with this shift were smashed, with a key role played by Labor governments. 
The union leadership that sold us this disaster hasn’t improved with time. This is evident from the lack of fight over wages during the recent inflationary surge.
It’s no surprise, then, that Australian unions have overwhelmingly been reluctant even to entertain discussions about Palestine, let alone take industrial action. 
Not wanting to embarrass the Labor government is obviously a factor. Any party that governs Australian capitalism has to respect that holiest of holies—support for the US alliance, and thus for Israel. So long as acknowledging Palestine means criticising Labor, the union leaders will resist.
Added to this, the political forces that led much of the working-class action against war and racism 50 years ago have all but disappeared. The Communist Party helped design and implement the Accord and then voted itself out of existence in 1991. The Stalinist breakaways from the Communist Party also withered under the impact of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the embrace of capitalism by China’s totalitarian rulers. 
Forces to the left of the CPA and its splits were reborn during the late 1960s and early 1970s, but were too small to change the course of the union movement. In more recent years, Socialist Alternative members have compiled an <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/socialist-alternatives-record-of-workplace-organising">impressive record</a> of industrial disputes—including helping to lead the only <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/community-sector-workers-to-walk-out-for-palestine-again">strikes for Palestine</a> in Australia over the past two years. But the sort of active solidarity seen in decades past has so far not been re-created.
This had also been the case in Italy, until the last few months. The wonderful response to the call for a strike in solidarity with Palestine has taken almost everyone involved by surprise.
It’s not hard to understand why. Critical commentary on the state of Italy’s unions isn’t difficult to find. In February this year, the mainstream news agency Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/big-toothless-italys-unions-blamed-wage-stagnation-2025-02-07/">carried a report</a> with the title: “Big but toothless—Italy’s unions blamed for wage stagnation”, noting that Italy is the only country in the European Union where real wages went backwards relative to inflation over the three decades to 2020. 
More than 90 percent of major strikes in Italy last a day or less, while in the US, 80 percent last two days or longer. “Trade unions in Italy have mutated to become mainly service providers”, according to Filippo Barbera, an academic interviewed by Reuters: “They help you do your tax returns and calculate what your pension will be, but they won't take on employers to secure salary rises”.
This is no surprise, given the politics of the three main union federations in Italy (the UIL, the CISL and the CGIL) and the parties they are associated with (respectively the Socialist Party, the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party—whose main political successor is the Democratic Party). Each has been every bit as committed as the Australian Labor Party and the leadership of Australia’s union movement in wanting to work in “partnership” with capital. 
One sign of this is the series of “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2022.2107044#d1e325">social pacts</a>” involving the Italian unions signing on to neoliberal “reform” from the late 1970s onwards. The intention of these pacts mirrored Australian Labor’s approach with the Accord: to assist the restructuring of capitalism along neoliberal lines. Such accords played a role in the ending of automatic wage indexation, the introduction of “flexible” contracts, privatisation of key state assets and cuts to Italy’s previously relatively generous pension scheme. 
This has not always been a smooth process, but overall, the main union federations in Italy have been ineffective in resisting neoliberal “reform”, and at times have been just as actively complicit as Australian unions. 
There is no system of government registration of unions in Italy. And the Italian far left of the 1970s—though plagued with all sorts of <a href="https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/workerism-and-autonomism-in-italys-hot-autumn/">serious political problems</a>—was much larger than the equivalent forces in Australia. These two factors came together in Italy in the formation of “base unions” from the 1980s. Some of these are splits from existing unions, others are the creation of politicised militants who set to work organising the unorganised. 
The main premise of the base unions is to reject union bureaucracy as inherently conservative, and to attempt to build a more combative rank-and-file-driven movement. Even advocates of this approach admit its limitations, however. 
Donato Romito, writing from a sympathetic perspective in 2003 on the anarchist-aligned Libcom website, <a href="https://libcom.org/article/exploring-alternative-forms-workers-organization-anarchist-communists-and-italian-base">noted</a>
that the CGIL “was systematically demonized, but there was never any strategy of dialogue with its members or with its internal opposition”. 
Further, Romito noted that the pressures of having to survive as a union can push towards conservatism, regardless of the formal politics of the leadership. There is also a serious tendency towards fragmentation among the base unions, where “everyone felt they were an alternative to everyone else ... Italian grassroots syndicalism remains trapped between the radicalism of its platforms and the need for bargaining, between its criticism of bureaucratism and the inevitable formation of a leadership class”.
An informative <a href="https://libcom.org/article/port-genoa-first-focaccia-then-class-struggle-article-autonomous-dock-workers-collective">commentary</a>
by Anna Jikhareva from 2022 paints a picture of the Autonomous Port Workers Collective (Collettivo Autonomo Lavoratori Portuali, or CALP) in Genoa. The CALP were key initiators of the recent strikes in solidarity with Palestine as part of the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) federation of base unions. 
Remarkably, in a major port with an on-site workforce of 4,000, including 1,200 dock workers, the CALP has only around 20 or so active members, according to Jikhareva. All of them are the sons of dock workers and continuators of a militant industrial and political tradition in the port of Genoa. 
Despite these small numbers, in the right circumstances the CALP can pull other workers behind them. Jikhareva describes relatively modest numbers of workers and supporters—dozens growing into a crowd of over a hundred—blockading the port in October 2021, as part of a one-day strike of the base unions on economic issues. 
In the extraordinary circumstances of late 2025, however, with a wave of revulsion sweeping the globe against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the modest forces of the CALP helped set something much more substantial in motion. Heading up a rally of 40,000 in Genoa at the end of August, CALP member Riccardo Rudino threatened to shut down the port—and every other port in Europe—if the Global Sumud Flotilla was attacked. Everyone understood that there was at least the potential of real power behind this threat. 
A series of factors were important in turning this threat into a reality. The fact that the Democratic Party (associated with the CGIL) is in opposition, and that unions are sidelined under the far-right Meloni government, probably removed one obstacle to the CGIL falling in behind the USB federation. The fact that there were two Democratic Party members of parliament on the Sumud Flotilla no doubt helped as well. And when Rudino threatened to “block everything” that night in Genoa, he was building on the substantial “block everything” union protests in neighbouring France.
The mass strikes would never have happened without the movement on the streets and on the campuses in solidarity with Palestine. Also crucial was the presence of politicised militants in a string of workplaces, who were capable of leading something. There are valid and important criticisms of the base unions, but they got enough right to make some history. 
Of course, we don’t know what comes next. We make our own history, as Karl Marx once observed, but not in circumstances of our own choosing. The USB has now called for a general strike against the Italian war budget on 28 November. 
In Australia, those frustrating “circumstances” include the disastrous continuing consequences of Labor’s all-too-effective imposition of the politics of class collaboration on the country’s union movement. Rebuilding a different and more combative workers’ movement requires rebuilding the politics of class struggle. After all, which political forces are organised, and to what end, is one of the few “circumstances” we have some control over. 
But if recent events have reminded us of this, they should also remind us of something else—that not every damn thing is predetermined. 
Marco Bertorello, a socialist and writer who works at the port of Genoa, wrote a moving <a href="https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article9157">account</a> of the 40,000-strong protest in Genoa at the end of August, describing how the long-dormant traditions of struggle in Genoa were taking on a mass character before his eyes. His account is a reminder that, though we can be all too aware of the circumstances we’re in, sometimes we can still roll the dice and make history:
“I think it was an important moment for my city. I don’t know what it might mean for the future and for other cities, but it seems to me to be a possible barometer of the social climate. I hope it is not just a passing anomaly. In difficult times, there is always room for the unexpected, the surprising—in short, for humanity.”

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