More than 300 people gathered at Brunswick Town Hall in Melbourne on Friday evening to launch the Victorian Socialists’ campaign for the federal election.
The party will contest four lower house seats in Victoria in the election on 3 May and run Jordan van den Lamb, aka purplepingers, for the Senate.
Hundreds of people have already been involved in the campaign, either by attending forums in Melbourne and regional towns or by helping to distribute letters, yard signs and socialist arguments to working-class people across the state.
Friday’s launch brought some of these people together, and many new faces, to hear our socialist platform for the federal election.
Kath Larkin, candidate for Cooper in Melbourne’s inner north, spoke at the launch about rising inequality and poverty. It’s an indictment that, in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, demand for food banks and homelessness services is increasing.
The major parties don’t care about this pain; they’ve helped facilitate it. Under federal Labor, we’ve seen a massive transfer of wealth to the richest at the expense of workers’ living standards. 
Victorian Socialists are fighting to increase taxes on big businesses and the ultra-wealthy to take back what they’ve stolen and to pour that money into cost-of-living relief and public housing, healthcare and education. 
The housing crisis is the sharpest edge of Australia’s cost-of-living crisis. Evidence for this is the popularity, both online and at campaign forums, of van den Lamb, who has tapped into widespread discontent among renters with his “shit rentals” videos targeting dodgy landlords and developers. Speaking at the launch, he outlined a socialist solution to the housing crisis:
“We’re not here to beg for crumbs. We’re here to demand housing for all. We’re here to demand the empty homes be taken off speculators and distributed to the people who need them ... We’re here to fight for an end to this system that treats our homes like poker chips in a casino.” 
It’s this fighting anti-capitalist approach to politics that sets Victorian Socialists apart. We need to see more of it in parliament, not another do-nothing, pro-capitalist moderate.
Omar Hassan, candidate for Scullin in Melbourne’s outer north, spoke about the rise of the far right globally and the response we need in Australia. Labor is sucking up to Trump, while Dutton and the Liberals are seeking every opportunity to blame migrants for the problems we face. 
“It’s only socialists who know how to fight right-wingers, the far right and fascists”, he said. “All around the world we’re seeing that the mainstream cannot defeat the far right. Vote socialist to fight that scum—whether in the White House, or here in Australia.”
Despite the economic and political challenges, the mood was not despair but hope—and determination to fight for something better. 
“We know that society can be better”, said Jasmine Duff, candidate for Fraser in Melbourne’s west. “We can live in a world that puts people before profit. And that’s because working-class people have at their core the empathy and sense of solidarity that can make that world possible.”
Most hopeful of all is the feeling of standing alongside hundreds of people who aren’t going to accept the current state of politics. We’re going to fight in this election and beyond to force a much-needed socialist perspective into Australian politics that puts people before profits—on doorsteps, voting booths and wherever else we can get that message.

James Gallagher

‘We know that society can be better’: Victorian Socialists launch federal election campaign

No matter who wins the federal election on 3 May, most of us will lose. This election is about the rich vs. the poor, and both major parties are firmly in the camp of the former.
Since the Albanese government took office in May 2022, Australian workers have suffered their steepest decline in living standards in modern history. Household disposable income has dropped by 8 percent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Every cent of real wage growth made in the 2010s has been obliterated. Property website Domain’s rental reports show that the median rent for a house in a capital city has increased by 26 percent. Those who took out the average mortgage for a new home were spending $2,218 to $2,694 on monthly repayments back in 2022—now they’re spending $4,096, according to ABS data.
Food is more expensive. Bills are more expensive. Clothes, shoes, flights, coffee, petrol, brunch: everything is more expensive.
Some, however, have done very well for themselves over the last three years. The 200 parasites who grace the Australian Financial Review’s Rich List have increased their combined wealth from $520 billion to $625 billion. That $105 billion is enough to wipe all outstanding HECS debt and have enough left over to raise the rate of welfare payments to $88 a day, lifting 2.3 million people—including 840,000 children—out of poverty. 
Instead, Australia’s billionaires have hoarded their wealth, grown their share portfolios and expanded their property holdings. An article about the luxury property market on the National Australia Bank website sums it up well: “Despite broader economic uncertainties, the high-end property segment remained largely insulated due to resilient demand in high-net-worth individuals”.
The Labor government has done basically nothing to try to rectify this startling rise in inequality. It handed out tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich and has refused to touch the generous concessions provided to landlords. “We’re not trying to bring down house prices”, Labor Housing Minister Clare O’Neil declared on ABC radio in November. At least she’s honest. Albanese’s solution to the housing crisis? Purchase a $4.3 million clifftop mansion with timber-lined cathedral ceilings and sparkling ocean views. 
Labor has allowed supermarkets, airlines and energy companies to price-gouge while dismissing calls to hit them with a super profits tax. The minuscule increases it has made to poverty-inducing welfare payments have been eaten up by inflation.
And there is no illusion that the Liberals would do anything differently. Peter Dutton proved where his loyalties lie when he flew to Sydney to attend a lavish fundraiser hosted by billionaire pub-and-club boss Justin Hemmes as Cyclone Alfred approached his hometown of Brisbane. A new mural hanging in the reception of Australia’s top billionaire Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill mine depicts a banquet on her 70th birthday with Dutton seated next to the mining magnate herself. 
Now that the election campaign is well underway, what are the major parties offering to entice our vote? For Labor, it’s a $5-per-week tax cut. For the Liberals, it’s 25 cents off a litre of petrol. That’s the extent of the choice we have in this election.
While it’s pennies for us, billions are spent on the most odious industries. Both major parties have committed to doubling military spending, from about $50 billion in 2022 to $100 billion by 2034. Federal subsidies to fossil fuel companies totalled $14.5 billion in 2023-24, an increase of 31 percent on the $11.1 billion recorded in 2022-23, according to the Australia Institute think tank. 
We deserve much better than this. It’s no wonder that combined support for the major parties has been steadily falling over the last twenty years—in 2022, a third of all votes went to candidates not from Labor or the Coalition. But we also deserve better than what’s on offer from the existing minor parties and independents. 
A small chunk of the vote is going towards crackpot right-wingers who’d love to see a MAGA movement in Australia. The Teal independents are, broadly speaking, “lapsed Liberals” targeting the wealthiest electorates with a conservative economic framework and girl-boss energy. 
Then there’s the Greens, who had their best run yet in 2022. Across the board, their policies are better than Labor’s, and they’ve done some heavy lifting in calling out the government on the housing crisis, renters’ rights and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But despite having the numbers to block shitty Labor policy in the Senate for the last three years, they’ve waved through some of the worst—from do-nothing housing programs to climate policy that ensures the continued destruction of the environment. 
Recently, the Greens announced that ending native forest logging will be a key demand put to Labor in negotiations to form a minority government following the upcoming election (no other “key demands” have been raised). Worthy as this is, it hardly gets to the heart of the assault on living standards, the fossil fuel industry, Labor’s brutal refugee policy or rising militarism. 
We need a socialist political alternative that takes on the major parties and fights for a world that puts people before profit. In Victoria, this means a vote for Victorian Socialists in selected lower house electorates, the Socialist Alliance’s Sue Bolton in the seat of Wills and Jordan van den Lamb (aka “purplepingers”) in the Senate. Elsewhere, vote socialist where possible. 
But we also need to get organised beyond the federal election—socialist activism is not a once-in-three-years activity. If the last three years has taught us anything, it’s that no-one is coming to save us but us.

Eleanor Morley

Labor and Liberals rule for the rich—we need a socialist alternative

1. Because the super-rich in Australia are taking the piss—and the piles of cash 
Back in 1983, the wealth of the hundred richest people in Australia totalled $3.2 billion. If that wealth had increased in line with inflation, today it would be nearly four times more—an obscene $12.5 billion. 
But this would be viewed as chickenfeed by today’s super-rich. The wealth of the one hundred richest people last year was 163 times greater than that of the richest 100 in 1983, according to the Australian Financial Review—an extraordinary $524 billion. 
If we include the AFR’s full annual “Rich List” of the 200 wealthiest people in the country, we get to $624 billion, 24.7 percent of Australia’s annual gross domestic product. 
To call this wealth “stratospheric” is a massive understatement. If piles of $100 notes were stacked up to the value of $624 billion, they would reach 878 kilometres into the sky: the stratosphere runs out after about 50 km. And as Red Flag
has <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/annual-rich-list-200-ugly-faces-australian-capitalism">pointed out</a> in the past, the wealth of the billionaires is only the very public tip of the iceberg of wealth that the capitalist class accumulates from the labour the rest of us perform.
If Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest took a month off, or a year, their money would continue to accumulate. This is because it’s the work of others—in the mines these billionaires own, but also the vast network of communications, transport, education, finance and health, throughout the country and around the world—that creates the vast fortunes of the rich. So no-one would notice if Rinehart et al. dropped off the planet—but if enough of those workers stopped working for just a few days, the flow of wealth would stop stone cold dead. 
What’s the correct word for those who accumulate this sort of wealth from the labour of others? “Capitalists” is accurate. So is “parasites”. And it’s about time they faced a serious challenge.
2. Because the rest of us are sick of being ripped off
As Albo and his treasurer sprinkled a few crumbs on budget night to a standing ovation from Labor MPs, and most of the rest of us scratched our heads wondering just how we’ll spend our $5 weekly tax cut from the middle of next year, Victorian Socialists crunched the numbers. As our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18g2mgZsmo/">budget reply</a> stated: 
“In 1974, Australian workers (aka the people who create all the wealth) received 55.9 percent of GDP in wages. Today it's 47.9 percent. If that share increased back to 1974 levels, it would mean workers would, collectively, be $220 billion better off (more than $15,000 per employee, per year). Keep that in mind when Labor politicians are spruiking $5 a week tax cuts, 5 cents off a pint of beer, or modest cuts to HECS debts.”
And imagine what we could do with that $220 billion—equivalent to around $10 per hour for every employee. Maybe we could take a well-deserved pay raise and a greater share of the wealth we create. Or maybe we could take some of that wealth back in the form of transformative public infrastructure. A massive new hospital costs <a href="https://www.vhba.vic.gov.au/health/hospitals/new-footscray-hospital">$1.5 billion</a> to build; <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/energy-transition-will-likely-need-400b-renewables-marshall-plan-20230719-p5dph9">official estimates</a> of what the country is spending on our criminally slow transition to a renewables-powered electricity grid are currently around $10 billion per year. You can work out the maths from there. 
3. Because housing for profit means people without homes
It’s obscene, but it’s true: as far as anyone can tell, there are more empty houses than homeless people in this country. On census night in 2021, there were a million empty houses in Australia—eight times the estimated number of people experiencing homelessness. 
Of course, even during the lockdowns of 2021 some homes would have been empty due to people travelling or visiting or being in hospital. But a much more conservative 2023 <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Prosper_SpecVac11_July2024-web.pdf">estimate</a> by the think tank Prosper Australia found 27,000 houses in Victoria didn’t use any water at all for the entire year—so were almost certainly empty for the whole year. 
This pretty much matches the estimate of 30,000 people experiencing homelessness in Victoria right now. Prosper points out that another 70,000 houses appear to be entirely or very largely vacant, judging from a level of water use consistent with a couple of dripping taps, or a bit of watering from an occasional visiting gardener. 
Similarly, the Tenants Union of Tasmania has used water use data to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-29/census-finds-1-million-empty-houses-amid-affordability-crisis/101190794">show</a> that 2,000 homes in that state have been unoccupied for three years or more—pretty much matching the official homelessness figure of 2,350. 
It’s no mystery why: there’s no profit to be made from matching empty houses with people who desperately need them. 
Many investors find it more convenient to leave a house empty while the value steadily rises, rather than renting it out as a home. The law of the land allows this outrageous situation, even encourages it through tax incentives. Property—and profits—are sacred, while people are left to sleep rough (or pay through the nose for a <a href="https://www.shitrentals.org/">shit rental</a>). 
The solution? Do what Victorian Socialists candidate Jordan van den Lamb (aka purplepingers) <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DHXkKUNTkya/?hl=en&amp;img_index=7">advocates</a>: take over houses left vacant for twelve months or more and use them as homes. And we should shift Australia’s construction sector to building public housing rather than ever glitzier shopping malls.
Once we remove the profit motive and organise ourselves to do what’s needed, everything becomes a whole lot simpler.
4. Because we need more strikes
There. We’ve said it. No-one else apart from the socialists are stating this blindingly obvious fact. 
If we don’t fight, we lose. The figures from recent decades show that, over the last few decades, the less we’ve fought, the more we’ve lost.
So while the mainstream parties either denounce industrial action, or perhaps drop in to a picket to murmur some polite nothings for a few minutes, or post an Instagram or two, socialists do our best to turn up, in numbers, when it matters most. 
One example was Victorian Socialists bringing a couple of hundred members and supporters to the pre-dawn picket line at Dandenong South in Melbourne during the Woolworths strike in December last year.
Other parties see parliament as the be-all and end-all of politics. In contrast, socialists want to use election campaigns and any representation we win to build active participation by ordinary people in activities that can actually change things: protests, activist campaigns and strikes.
5. Because bigotry and oppression: capitalism counts the cash 
Some of the benefits that capitalists get from sexism, racism and other forms of oppression are staring us in the face. 
A swathe of Australian employers get a massive cash discount on wages due to the gender pay gap. If we use Australian Bureau of Statistics <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/employee-earnings-and-hours-australia/latest-release#data-downloads">figures</a> for non-managerial employees, a gender pay gap of $4.10 per hour translates to a $700 million cash discount on wages for employers every week. This is more than $36.5 billion in discounted wages each year, straight to the bosses’ bottom line, due to sexism. 
Unpaid labour in the home to raise the next generation of workers, estimated at up to half of GDP, is disproportionately done by women—another handy cash benefit for the ruling elite, flowing from the sexist oppression that affects half the population. 
Other benefits for our rulers from bigotry and oppression are harder to measure exactly, but no less real for that. For instance, it’s hard to quantify the benefit the system gets from having young men buy into the foul, blatant sexism of Andrew Tate. Tate’s gross objectification and contempt for women is the central plank of his thoroughly dog-eat-dog world view. The point of life, according to Tate, is to be out for yourself: everyone else on the planet, and especially women, are just objects to be used. It’s impossible to put a dollar value on the benefit to the rich and powerful from this perfectly pro-capitalist world view being propagated—but it’s substantial.
Similarly with racism. It’d be a difficult task to calculate the “worth” to Australia’s bosses from having <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Migrants-in-the-Australian-workforce.pdf">at least 7 percent</a> of Australia’s working class on some sort of inferior or insecure visa status, generally bound to their employers and therefore reluctant to speak up about <a href="https://www.migrantworkers.org.au/lives_in_limbo">wage theft</a>, health and safety or a punishing pace of work.
It’d be possible to put a dollar value on all the straight-up theft of land from Indigenous people (e.g. the estimated $700 million owed to the Gumatj people in the Northern Territory for a bauxite mine imposed on them in the 1960s, according to a recent High Court <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/14/high-court-native-title-ruling-may-affect-compensation-claims-nationwide-experts-say">decision</a>). But it’d be much harder to calculate a figure for the value our rulers derive from the racist political campaign drummed up against Aboriginal people around the Voice referendum—which has helped Dutton drive politics in this country in a more right-wing, dog-eat-dog direction, undermining solidarity to the benefit of the capitalist class.
Which gets us to Trump.
6. Because fuck Donald Trump and the horse he rode in on 
The modern world has never seen a more blatant example of the rule of the rich. The thirteen billionaires appointed to cabinet posts by President Trump are <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-net-worth-cabinet-billionaires-b2654841.html">reported</a> to be worth US$340 billion—more than the annual gross domestic product of 169 countries, combined. 
This government by the obscenely rich, for the obscenely rich, tells us a lot about what capitalism, at its core, is all about. 
It’s about whipping up bigotry and fear. Just one example is the extraordinary US$215 million that Trump and his allies spent during last year’s presidential election campaign whipping up hatred against trans people—<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/republicans-spent-nearly-215m-on-tv-ads-attacking-trans-rights-this-election/">calculated</a> at US$143 for every trans person in the US. 
It’s about vicious anti-migrant politics and the repression of democratic rights: snatch squads from Immigration and Customs Enforcement stalk the streets of US cities, grabbing pro-Palestine activists and whoever else they can for deportation. University administrations and media outlets have rushed to drop any pretence of seeking the truth without fear or favour, in compliance with Trump’s directives.
Of course, a government of billionaires is about trashing workers’ rights: Trump’s <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/15/business/nlrb-trump-musk-workers/index.html">gutting</a> of the National Labor Relations Board is the start of rolling back the legal protections won by workers in the 1930s. This is a gift of love to Amazon owner Jeff Bezos (the second-richest person in the world), and to every other employer who has been troubled by their workers forming new unions in recent years.
And perhaps the most terrifying of all—behind the chaos of Trump’s economic and tariff policy is the cold hard logic of rebuilding US industry to rapidly prepare for war with the US’s fast-rising imperialist rival, China.
And in Australia? Billionaires like Gina Rinehart and Anthony Pratt love Trump just as much as their US counterparts. The Liberals want to copy as much of his agenda as they can. Labor can’t bring itself to make even token criticisms, sending Foreign Minister Penny Wong to applaud Trump and his billionaire sieg-heiling mates at the presidential inauguration. 
Why is this an argument to vote socialist? Because it’s only the socialists who say that every single one of these policies—and the whole system and logic behind them—have to be rejected. And it’s only the socialists who are consistent about building a politics of hope and resistance based on the one power that, throughout history, has shown itself capable of challenging the rule of the rich: ordinary people, and in particular workers—organised, mobilised and armed with radical politics. 
The world needs a socialist movement as a living, breathing, organising, fighting opposition to Trump and to the system he rode in on. 
This means plenty of hard work over the next five weeks, and far beyond. But <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/victorian-socialists-putting-socialism-on-the-political-map">putting socialism back on the political map</a> during the current campaign is an important contribution to the movement that we need.

Jerome Small

Six reasons to vote Socialist

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

Why do socialists run in elections?

The National Defence Strategic Review, released in 2023 by the federal government, notes “only a remote possibility of any power contemplating an invasion” of Australia. This is the federal government’s official position, formulated by, among others, Army Major General Richard Vagg and Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, a former head of the armed forces. 
It is astounding, then, that the Greens have launched <a href="https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/4-billion-sovereign-defence-capacity">a policy to develop Australia’s military-industrial base</a>, which would allocate $4 billion to “sovereign manufacturing capabilities” of drones and missiles, purportedly to “defend” Australia. When not even the military can outline a plausible scenario in which a foreign invasion threatens this continent, why are the Greens suddenly positioning themselves as defenders of the realm against an undefined enemy? 
Australian governments have a history of lying and fearmongering about national security threats. But they usually at least provide scenarios or statements capable of being critically evaluated, such as, “Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction”. The Greens don’t offer even this level of phantom to critique.
Last year’s National Defence Strategy, which outlines the Defence Department’s evaluation of “security risks”, didn’t even mention the possibility of an invasion of Australia. But it did discuss the need for a military “more capable of the impactful projection” of power and for “a sovereign defence industrial base” to manufacture weapons and drones, among other things, to aid this “force projection” (otherwise known as invasion and interference operations in the Pacific and Southeast Asia). 
The Greens’ brains trust says its proposed military-industrial base reinvigoration will be used “for strictly defensive purposes only”—presumably unlike the similar-sounding military-industrial base the war hawks at Defence have proposed. Are the Greens really so naïve as to think that increased domestic military production capacity will not be used for force projection—the bread and butter of Australian statecraft since Federation? What will their next policy announcement be? A program to rebuild Australia’s derelict pubs “for purposes strictly related to sobriety”?
“We see this as the first step ... we don’t pretend this is the beginning and the end of the significant reorganisation required for Australia’s defence force”, Greens spokesperson David Shoebridge <a href="https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/4-billion-sovereign-defence-capacity">told ABC defence correspondent Andrew Greene</a> on the weekend. Greene noted that the party has never before released “a formally costed policy to fund new military programs”.
Responding to the announcement, Euan Graham, a director at the hawkish and pro-US Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Sky News that the Greens’ “willingness to talk about increased defence spending and production” is a sign of “positive change” in the party.
Of course, it would be unfair to describe the Greens as a bunch of warmongers. The new policy, announced last Saturday, also calls to “decouple” the Australian armed forces from the US military and comes as the party <a href="https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/end-aukus">urges the federal government to withdraw from the AUKUS pact</a>, a military and technology-sharing partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom through which Australia will obtain a suite of nuclear submarines. 
The Greens propose funding social programs from the savings gained by scrapping the pact—some $70 billion over ten years. Further, the party’s policies would likely reduce Australia’s military spending by perhaps half a trillion dollars over several decades. 
Scrapping AUKUS is a supportable policy. But it is not particularly progressive, nor all that controversial. Even former foreign minister Bob Carr, and former PMs Paul Keating and Malcolm Turnbull have rubbished the pact. Indeed, sections of the old Labor right were the first to criticise it. Yet the key issue in all this is not the precise locations from which Australia’s military sources its weaponry or the price it pays to obtain its hardware. 
The Greens’ shift comes as we enter <a href="https://redflagnewsletter.substack.com/p/note-5-europes-military-spending" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a period of global rearmament</a> in which two superpowers, China and the United States, are preparing for a confrontation. President Trump demands greater military spending by European members of the Western imperialist alliance and is shifting the US posture towards a range of states. 
In many cases, this has given militarism a new colour. Countries that fear losing Washington’s backing bow to Trump’s demands while selling the rearmament programs as some newfound independence. <a href="https://redflagnewsletter.substack.com/p/note-6-adam-tooze-and-the-liberal" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">It’s progressive liberalism’s imperial revenge</a>: build the military to resist the far-right ogres in the White House and in the Kremlin. 
The Greens have tapped into this sentiment to sell their own policy shift. In this context, they are floating with the tide when every left-wing organisation ought to be swimming against the current. 
First, they float along with the liberal conceit that decoupling rearmament programs from “Donald Trump’s military” (as the Greens press release refers to US imperialism) is progressive or “independent”—as though the Australian ruling class is qualitatively different from others around the world. 
Second, they float along with the China panic by proposing a significant boost to “defensive” military-industrial capacity when, in reality, Australia’s military force posture and structure are being aggressively reconfigured for a confrontation with China. 
The Greens say they oppose military operations that “threaten our neighbours”. But the AUKUS pact, the renewed Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving Australia, India, Japan and the United States, and Australia joining NATO as an “Indo-Pacific partner” are manifestations, rather than causes, of the underlying dynamic toward war in the western Pacific. While objectionable, these mini pacts are not the main thing. Nor is Donald Trump, the widespread distaste for whom the Greens are leveraging to build support for their military policy. 
Australia’s steadfast political alliance with the United States is far more important than its technical and logistical incorporation into US military planning. The alliance is foundational to Australia’s foreign affairs, not simply its defence policy. As such, the Greens’ talk about developing an “independent foreign policy” is risible when the party proposes little more than haggling around military procurement. So is the talk about “not threatening our neighbours”, which is a fantasy when Australia is a strategic base for and an unbending ally of US imperialism. <a href="https://greens.org.au/magazine/closepinegap-13-years-later">Former Senator Scott Ludlam understood this</a>. It’s not clear that David Shoebridge does—what’s his position on closing Pine Gap?
Without a commitment to breaking the US alliance in all its forms, expelling all US military forces from Australia, and dismantling all US intelligence-gathering installations, “peace”, “non-alignment”, “neighbourly respect” or other feel-good phrases are nothing but foreign policy bromides. Yet the Greens’ position is not to tear up the ANZUS treaty, considered the foundational document of the alliance, but to “renegotiate Australia’s position” within it.
Yet even a commitment to breaking the US alliance is not enough. Given the global dynamic, left-wing parties cannot settle for “detachment”. We have to fight against all manifestations of military aggression, whether they emanate from the new far-right aligned with Donald Trump or from the liberal alternatives. This is particularly true in imperialist countries such as Australia, which has joined criminal invasions or interfered in the domestic affairs of several countries in the region and beyond.
All this is too much for the Greens. Being tolerated as a “reasonable” party capable of forming government means accepting a range of capitalist non-negotiables, such as the state’s need for a competent military. “Self-defence” is the immediate argument to legitimise the new defence policy. But the party is probably also signalling that it should be considered a potential partner in the event of a hung parliament in the upcoming election.
To resist the new militarism and to prevent more war, we have to call bullshit on the rhetoric of “self-defence” used by governments to justify rocketing arms spending. And we have to build an international alliance of working-class and oppressed people—not an alliance of states and their rulers. On this front, the Greens’ new defence policy points in the wrong direction.

Ben Hillier

A criticism of the Greens’ defence policy

In a <a href="https://www.afp.gov.au/news-centre/media-statement/afp-deputy-commissioner-national-security-krissy-barrett-statement">bombshell press conference</a> on 10 March, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and NSW Police shredded the entire story that we have been fed about a supposed tsunami of antisemitism gripping society and leading to a wave of violent attacks on Jewish people and property. It has all been based on a pack of lies, a “criminal con job”.
For more than a month, attention has been focused on the discovery in January of a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/dural-caravan-nsw-police-find-explosives-in-caravan-synagogue-targeted-20250130-p5l87g.html">caravan in Dural, Sydney, filled with explosives</a>. It was described as a terrorist plot targeting a synagogue. We now know that it wasn’t.
“Almost immediately, experienced investigators within the Joint Counter Terrorism Team believed that the caravan was part of a fabricated terrorism plot—essentially a criminal con job”, AFP Deputy Commissioner National Security Krissy Barrett said. “Today, I can reveal that the caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit.” 
For this reason, the police never classified the caravan as a terrorism incident. But that didn’t stop the politicians. On 30 January, NSW Premier Chris Minns <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/radio-interview-abc-sydney-10">told ABC radio</a>: “This is the discovery of a potential mass casualty event. There’s only one way of calling it out and that is terrorism”. This is the exact opposite of what the police thought, in their own words, “almost immediately”. It is inconceivable that Minns did not know by this point that he was telling bald-faced lies. In the six weeks since, Minns has never corrected the record nor apologised for his dishonesty. 
In the same ABC interview, Anthony Albanese was asked, “Do you classify this as terrorism as well, prime minister?” He answered, “I certainly do. I agree with Chris Minns. It’s clearly designed to harm people, but it’s also designed to create fear in the community. And that is the very definition”. 
Except that the prime minister surely also knew that the police had immediate and serious doubts and believed it to be a “fake plot” with no plan nor prospect of the caravan or its cargo of 40-year-old explosives harming anyone.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton called it a “grave and sinister escalation in this insidious rise of unchecked antisemitism in our country”. He later <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/feb/06/australia-politics-news-live-labor-anti-hate-speech-laws-mandatory-sentences-federal-election-campaign-anthony-albanese-peter-dutton-ntwnfb">claimed</a> that it was “believed to be the biggest planned terrorist attack” in Australia’s history. 
None of this is true. 
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-11/burke-says-dutton-conned-by-caravan-hoax/105033778">accused</a> Dutton of deliberately avoiding police briefings so that he would have more freedom to “continue to make the most outrageous claims. He wanted to make sure that he could stoke the most fear”, Burke said. Dutton’s claims were outrageous, but so were those of Albanese and Minns, who cannot pretend they didn’t know the truth.
Beyond the caravan, the police said they believed all of the high-profile antisemitic attacks in recent times in Sydney, which have resulted in dozens of arrests under Operation Pearl, had a “common source” with the caravan plot. “The caravan job was orchestrated by the same individual or individuals that were orchestrating the Pearl incidents”, said NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson. “None of the individuals we have arrested during Pearl have displayed any form of antisemitic ideology”, he said.
This is an extraordinary revelation, although one that the police had been repeatedly theorising about in press statements for weeks. In the first press conference NSW police gave about the caravan, they speculated that it might be a “set-up”. This was ignored by politicians and the bulk of the media, who instead breathlessly reported that an antisemitic “terrorist” massacre “with a blast radius of 40 metres” had been imminent. 
Indeed, the biggest hoax has not been the one carried out by a few organised criminals looking for bargaining chips with the legal system. The main hoax, the biggest con job of all, has been carried out by the entire political and media establishment. They have cynically used this plot to whip up fear, suspicion and hatred for Muslims and Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement, to justify a hysterical witch-hunt and purge of Palestine supporters throughout many institutions, and to rush through a new set of draconian anti-protest laws.
This campaign was on full display at the recent Sky News
Antisemitism Summit, a conference of right-wing and far-right politicians, activists, media outlets and the pro-Israel lobby. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), Australia’s main pro-Israel lobby group, presented a <a href="https://www.ecaj.org.au/15-steps-to-defeat-antisemitism/">fifteen-point plan</a> for combating antisemitism, beginning with a call to “declare the existence of a National Emergency and establish a Joint Counter-Terrorism Taskforce [to] fight against antisemitic terror”. This was followed by a wish list of extreme censorship, attacks on free speech and the right to protest, and purges of pro-Palestine students and academics. 
ECAJ and other pro-Israel lobby groups, who routinely propagandise in support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and promote the dehumanisation of the Palestinian people, have been given tens of millions of dollars by the Australian government as part of its so-called campaign of combating antisemitism. Jewish organisations that are critical of Israel have not received a cent. 
The attempt to tie what has been confirmed as a criminal plot to the Palestine solidarity movement reached its zenith with the passing of a series of new <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/new-anti-protest-laws-target-opponents-of-genocide">anti-protest laws</a>, especially in NSW. The laws were justified with constant reference to the “antisemitic terror” gripping Australia. 
We now know that Minns, and at least several other senior ministers, clearly knew that they were rushing through these laws based on complete lies. Perhaps they were rushing to beat these revelations coming out. Not only were the attacks not motivated by antisemitism—being in fact, according to the police, a “criminal con job”. There was absolutely no link between these attacks and any protest activity.
Chris Minns must apologise to the people of NSW, and to the Palestine solidarity movement, for using lies and distortions to trample on our democratic rights. He should repeal these laws immediately, and he should resign.
Minns should also apologise to Jewish people in this state. Antisemitism is real and must be opposed, and the actions of these crooks caused legitimate fear among Jewish people. But Minns’ lies, along with those of the media and pro-Israel lobby, who have all made the most of this criminal hoax, have falsely portrayed these criminal acts as a result of a rising tide of antisemitism in society. 
They have deliberately exaggerated the threat posed to Jewish people in a reprehensible and cynical ploy to whip up fear in order to attack and silence opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They were, in effect, the accomplices in this entire hoax.

Josh Lees

The great antisemitism con job

This International Women’s Day, the Labor government has tried to reassure Australian women that things are moving in the right direction by pointing to all the ways it has supposedly made life better for us since 2022.
“This Government has achieved many firsts”, federal Minister for Women Katy Gallagher said in a press release on 3 March, “including the lowest gender pay gap, 11.5 percent, and a Federal Parliament with over 52 per cent women”. Similarly, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reminded women at an IWD breakfast that Labor had changed the single parent payment to help single mothers get by.
Awkwardly for Gallagher, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) reported that the gender pay gap in 2023-24 was actually 21.8 percent on average. The WGEA calculation includes base salary, overtime, bonuses and additional payments. It also accounts for part-time and casual work—categories in which women are disproportionately represented. According to its report, “this offers a more complete picture of the real remuneration differences between women and men in Australia”. 
Gallagher appears to have quoted the pay gap calculated by the Bureau of Statistics, which reports only base salaries for full-time employees, a much more limited statistic. But hey, why let accuracy get in the way of some election spin?
Single parents can now access support payments until their youngest child turns 14, up from 8. This is a welcome change given the cost-of-living crisis affecting many single mothers. However, let’s not forget that it was former Labor (and first woman) Prime Minister Julia Gillard who lowered it from age 16 in 2012. That the Labor party hasn’t even expanded the scheme back to 2012 levels doesn’t exactly make it an anti-sexist hero.
In New South Wales, public sector nurses have been campaigning for a 15 percent pay rise, taking strike action against the Labor state government. This overwhelmingly female-dominated workforce is among the lowest paid in the country. The union is specifically highlighting this fact in its fight with the government, linking the struggle to raise wages in the sector with addressing pay disparities between female- and male-dominated industries. 
Premier Chris Minns has so far refused to meet the pay demand, claiming there is not enough money in the budget to raise nurses’ salaries. However, Minns somehow found a few extra million down the back of the couch to raise police salaries by up to 40 percent. But don’t despair, ladies, this doesn’t mean that Minns isn’t absolutely dedicated to gender equality; for the first time ever, 50 percent of the NSW cabinet is made up of women! Slay.
If Labor was serious about increasing the standard of living for women in Australia, implementing measures to ease the housing crisis would make a huge difference. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute highlighted in a <a href="https://www.ahuri.edu.au/analysis/brief/what-are-real-costs-australias-housing-crisis-women">brief</a> last year that lower weekly earnings translate into single women taking longer to save for a deposit on a home, being less likely to find an affordable rental, having less superannuation to pay for housing in retirement and facing a higher increased risk of homelessness than men. 
Labor has refused to cap or freeze rents, or abolish regressive tax concessions for wealthy investors. Its centrepiece housing policy, the Housing Australia Future Fund, involves a limited spend on social housing in partnership with private investors who are guaranteed to make a profit out of renting to low-income people, instead of directly investing in new, publicly owned affordable housing. 
And finally, the Labor government has refused to stand up to, or even blandly criticise, the new Trump administration, which is decked out with misogynists who are determined to claw women’s rights back to the 1950s.
Gallagher, Albanese and Minns would have us believe that a vote for Labor is a vote for women’s equality. But don’t be fooled. Labor governments, like their Liberal counterparts, are nothing but bad news for women.

Clara da Costa-Reidel

Women are no better off under Labor

Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred has finally dissipated after rampaging across south-eastern Queensland and northern New South Wales for days. It has caused significant flooding, destruction to homes, widespread power outages and, tragically, the death of a 61-year-old man near Dorrigo.
Last week, as the cyclone approached the Queensland coast, Peter Dutton had his “Scomo moment”. He fled his home electorate north of Brisbane to the relative safety of a Liberal Party fundraiser in Sydney. Held in the deluxe mansion of billionaire Justin Hemmes, whose Merivale Group was recently sued by its staff over $129 million in alleged unpaid wages (roughly the value of Hemmes’ house), Dutton’s flight was a reminder that the rich live by different rules to the rest of us. In the face of disaster, they can use their money and connections to keep themselves safe. Most of us cannot.
Anthony Albanese was keen to emphasise that politics should be left out of these disasters. When asked about the possibility of calling an election this week, he responded that “this is not a time for looking at politics”. In the context of a warming world though, where the increasing frequency of extreme weather is intersecting with issues like growing inequality, housing insecurity, and the steady erosion of essential public services, these events are thoroughly political—whether politicians like Albanese admit that or not.
The exact development and path of Cyclone Alfred cannot, of course, be attributed to climate change—cyclones have struck south-east Queensland before. But the growing frequency of such disasters on a global level can be. Increases in ocean temperatures are <a href="https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2024/10/15/hurricanes-supercharged-by-climate-change.html">supercharging</a> cyclones and increasing their occurrence further from the equator. They are lasting longer, moving more erratically, and dumping more rain. Whatever the exact balance of “normal” and “climate change-fuelled” in Cyclone Alfred’s impact, governments like Albanese’s that fail to act on the climate crisis should be seen as sharing some of the blame for it.
The calls to “keep politics out of it” are part of an effort to conceal this reality, and the fact that instead of doing anything about climate change our leaders are bent on further fuelling it. Last September, Labor Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek approved three new extensions to coal mines in Queensland and New South Wales. The mines will now operate until at least 2070. By then, global average temperatures could be at 7.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, according to the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/05/temperature-climate-change-greenhouse-gas-niche-emissions-hot/#:~:text=If%20greenhouse%20gases%20emissions%20increase,times%2C%20the%20study%20authors%20predict">World Economic Forum</a>. Such a rise in temperature would make large parts of the world uninhabitable. 
Then there’s the massive Scarborough gas project, soon to be constructed off the coast of Western Australia by one of Australia’s premier polluters, Woodside Petroleum. Labor approved the project even though, according to <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org.au/article/woodsides-new-scarborough-gas-project-is-really-risky-business/">Greenpeace</a>, it will lead to up to 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over its lifetime. This would make it the worst single emitter in Australian history. 
In addition to bringing the climate crisis to the fore, extreme weather events like Cyclone Alfred expose other failures and crises of capitalism. One of these is the chronic underfunding of government services. A worker involved in the Queensland government's Community Recovery program, who spoke anonymously to Red Flag in the days before Alfred made landfall, said the state was still scrambling to provide support to victims of the recent North Queensland floods. "There are people in Townsville who’ve lost almost everything”, they said, “and [they] are still waiting for government grants”.
More frequent flooding means less time for communities to recover before the next disaster hits. In the northern New South Wales town of Lismore, which saw devastating flooding only three years ago in February 2022, up to 1,200 people were still living in emergency or temporary accommodation as of last December, <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8533085/lismore-still-recovering-two-years-after-record-flood/">according to the Canberra Times</a>. Others are still homeless or have been forced to return and squat in ramshackle houses in flood-prone areas. No effort has been made to permanently house or relocate these people, who now face another round of flooding. 
Residents of towns in south-east Queensland, such as Logan, face similar issues, as many there also lost their homes in 2022. Now parts of Brisbane are flooding again, raising the possibility of homelessness for thousands more people. 
Labor under Albanese has done nothing to fix the housing crisis for anyone, let alone flood victims. What little remains of public housing stock in Australia is being demolished, rents have skyrocketed, and developers and landlords have been given free rein to make massive profits. Rather than spending more money on things—like more secure housing built away from flood-prone areas—that might actually help in a disaster, Labor has other priorities.
Shockingly, subsidies (aka. handouts) to fossil fuel companies increased by more than 31 percent in 2023-24 to $14.5 billion, according to the Australia Institute. This money could have gone towards emergency services, or investment in renewable energy, housing or welfare. Instead, it went to lining the pockets of fossil fuel bosses. 
On current trends, we can expect the frequency and severity of disasters like that of Cyclone Alfred to increase in coming decades. Unless we get organised and fight back against the likes of Albanese, Dutton, and the fossil fuel bosses they serve, it will be the working class and the poor that continue to bear the brunt of them. Whoever wins the next election, we need to bring back the climate war. Only this time we should see it, and fight it, as the class war it fundamentally is.

Connor Knight

Tropical Cyclone Alfred and the politics of ‘keeping politics out of it’

West Australian voters have returned Labor to office in another landslide. Labor won 42 percent of the primary vote, compared to the Liberal’s 28.5 percent, making this the second largest Labor vote ever—topped only by the party’s stomping 2021 victory.
At the close of counting on election night (8 March), Labor had secured 40 of the 59 seats in the state’s Legislative Assembly. The Liberals had secured five and the Nationals four, with ten seats remaining in doubt. 
Labor is now set for a third term in office. Only in the 1980s did WA Labor enjoy such a long period of government, beginning with the election of Brian Burke and ending with the stench of the <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/6661">WA Inc. scandal</a>. 
Since the Pilbara iron ore industry came to dominate the state’s economy in the late 1960s, successive state governments—both Labor and Liberal—have dutifully served mining interests. The Cook Labor government has been no exception. Premier Roger Cook <a href="https://www.perthnow.com.au/entertainment/music/premier-roger-cook-slams-singer-peter-garrett-for-sowing-seeds-of-hatred-with-gina-rinehart-rant-c-17901693">lashed</a>
Midnight Oil singer Peter Garret for “sowing seeds of hatred” a week out from the election, after Garrett sledged Australia’s richest person, mining magnate Gina Rinehart, at a Perth Festival gig.
In 2017, Labor came into office under the leadership of Mark McGowan. In that election, the Liberals suffered a 16 percent swing, their worst <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/node-5719">electoral defeat</a>
on record. The outgoing Barnett government had presided over the largest mining boom in the state’s history. However, it had been an opportunity squandered. When the Liberals proposed to sell 50 percent of the state’s electricity corporation to pay off mounting state debt, voters gave them a drubbing.
In 2021, Labor secured nearly 60 percent of the primary vote, while the Liberals faced near <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/smashing-wa-liberals">annihilation</a>. Labor won 53 Legislative Assembly seats, the Nationals four and the Liberals just two. The Liberals faced the shame of losing their opposition party status.
<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/mark-mcgowans-legacy-serving-big-capital">McGowan’s strategy</a> of insulating the state from the ravages of Covid-19 behind tightly controlled borders proved a winner with voters. While the measures provoked ire from Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Qantas chairman Alan Joyce, and a High Court challenge from Queensland mining magnate Clive Palmer, they were popular with mining bosses in the West. Hancock Prospecting, BHP, Woodside and Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) profited handsomely from having mine workers work the Pilbara mines non-stop without the interruption of lockdowns that had plagued industry elsewhere.
McGowan quit unexpectedly mid-term, in May 2023, handing the baton to deputy leader Roger Cook. Back in 1986, during his Murdoch University student days, Cook became the National Union of Student’s first president before becoming a staffer for various Labor politicians. In 2008, he entered state parliament as the member for Kwinana, an industrial suburb south of Perth. Cook became deputy Labor leader ten days later and held senior ministerial posts during the six years of the McGowan government.
When Cook became premier, the state’s mining industry was once again booming. In the wake of the disruption to global trade during the pandemic, commodity prices were sky high. So were mining royalties. The state recorded a $4.2 billion surplus in May 2023 and a $3.2 billion surplus last year.
Spending splurge amidst a cost-of-living crisis
With cash in the bank, the Cook government has been spending heavily on infrastructure. Last year’s budget committed $12.1 billion, including an expansion of Perth’s rail network (Metronet) and spending on healthcare and school infrastructure. 
Election promises included a major upgrade to Royal Perth Hospital, another round of student assistance payments for families with school-age children and an expansion of the school breakfast program. Property developers have been offered substantial subsidies to construct large apartment complexes to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-18/build-to-rent-scheme-western-australia-explainer/104946158">boost rental availability</a>. <a href="https://www.apimagazine.com.au/news/article/wa-premier-announces-home-equity-scheme-expansion-to-improve-access-to-property-ownership">Keystart</a>, a shared equity scheme to assist home ownership, will also receive a funding boost.
However, none of these measures have eased the spiralling costs for working-class people. Under two terms of a Labor government, house prices and rents have soared, making WA an increasingly unaffordable place to live. Since Labor was elected in 2017, <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/western-australia/wa-s-housing-crisis-in-numbers-what-s-changed-since-labor-took-office-in-2017-20250213-p5lbv5.html">average house prices</a> in WA have increased from $564,000 to $913,000. <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/western-australia/wa-s-housing-crisis-in-numbers-what-s-changed-since-labor-took-office-in-2017-20250213-p5lbv5.html">Rental vacancy rates</a> have slumped from 4.7% to 1.4%, resulting in a median rent hike from $365 to $660 per week.
Social housing unit numbers dropped in McGowan’s first term and are now barely above 2017 levels. Forty-four thousand social housing units make up just 3.7 percent of all housing stock in the state. Consequently, Perth has become one of the <a href="https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/perth-now-one-of-hardest-cities-in-the-world-to-find-a-rental-20240612-p5jl5w.html">worst cities in the developed world</a> for finding a rental, with tenants often bidding well above the advertised rent to secure an abode. 
According to <a href="https://www.shelterwa.org.au/new-figures-support-peak-bodys-election-asks-to-scale-up-on-housing-and-homelessness-solutions/">Shelter WA</a>, 61 people are turned away from emergency accommodation each day, the highest rate in the country. And more working people are experiencing homelessness: 15 percent of those accessing emergency accommodation in WA are employed, up from 10 percent five years ago. 
Liberals anti-woke agenda
Unable to differentiate themselves from Labor on economic policy, the Liberals attempted to mimic Dutton and Trump’s “anti-woke” agenda. Liberal leader Libby Mettam promised to defund the <a href="https://www.edo.org.au/our-funding/">Environmental Defenders Office</a>, stating that “taxpayer money should not be spent propping up activists”. She also <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-17/wa-liberal-leader-libby-mettam-aboriginal-flag/104829360">declared</a>
that she would not stand in front of the First Nations’ flags during media conferences. 
Mettam also <a href="https://www.waliberal.org.au/state-news/wa-liberals-will-ban-harmful-gender-treatments-for-children/">promised</a>
to “ban the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatments and surgical intervention for children under the age of 16 for the purpose of gender transition”.
This stance backfired spectacularly.
Several Liberal candidates found themselves in hot water for racist, sexist and homophobic comments. The Liberals’ Kimberley candidate, publican Darren Spackman, was forced to stand down after a slew of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-20/wa-liberal-candidate-darren-spackman-withdraws-from-election/104963082">racist social media posts</a> denigrating Aboriginal people were uncovered. 
During an awkward press conference at which the Liberals were set to unveil new domestic violence policies, Darling Range candidate Paul Mansfield was <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-22/wa-liberals-endure-bruising-week-as-election-race-gets-tough/104951020">confronted</a>
with what the ABC described as “a series of derogatory social media posts, including homophobic slurs and two lewd posts about women”.
Albany candidate Thomas Brough was <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-15/wa-liberal-candiate-thomas-brough-workplace-training-lgbtqi/104090148">ordered</a>
to take workplace training with the Australian Human Rights Commission after making statements linking LGBTQIA+ people with paedophilia. The Medical Board also <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-24/wa-liberal-candidate-thomas-brough-referred-to-medical-tribunal/104975970">referred</a>
Brough, a doctor, to the State Administrative Tribunal for his comments.
Unsurprisingly, none of this helped the Liberal Party’s electoral fortunes. While Labor suffered a negative 18 percent swing, the Liberal vote was up only 7.3 percent (after the previous electoral wipeout). The National Party vote climbed only 1.1 percent and One Nation was up 2.4 percent. The Greens’ vote was up 3.6 percent, and votes for independents increased by 2.9 percent.
Labor’s Fremantle upset
Nowhere was voter discontent more starkly demonstrated than in the electorate of Fremantle, where sitting Labor member and industrial relations minister Simone McGurk faced a 22 percent swing against her. Traditionally a working-class seat, Fremantle has been held by Labor for a century—apart from a 2009 byelection upset when it was lost to Greens candidate Adele Carles. Labor regained the seat at the next state election in 2013.
Today, Fremantle is not the working-class suburb it once was. A once lively port city, its old warehouses have been converted into expensive, trendy apartments. Despite its gentrification, however, it has been the site of protests around issues such as homelessness, fracking, AUKUS ship visits and Palestine. 
Though the seat is still too close to call, it appears that McGurk is set to lose to independent Kate Hulett, a Fremantle business owner. Hulett <a href="https://www.kateforfremantle.com/priorities">campaigned</a> on climate action, expanding public and affordable housing and transparency in government dealings with industry. Hulett won support from both traditional Labor and Greens voters for advocating a statewide ban on fracking, a ban on new or expanded fossil fuel projects, the retention of Fremantle as a nuclear-free zone, and opposition to AUKUS. 
While Hulett tailed McGurk’s primary vote, she looks <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/wa/2025/guide/frem">set to win</a>
on Greens preferences. McGurk won 33 percent of the primary vote, compared to 29 percent for Hulett and 16 percent for the Greens. McGurk’s re-election prospects hang narrowly on a flow of Liberal party preferences.
A business-friendly government
The morning after Cook’s thumping election victory, the state’s business tycoons lined up to congratulate the premier and cash-in their election donations. Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA CEO Rebecca Tomkinson and Wesfarmers boss Rob Scott each praised Cook for his contribution to the profitability of their businesses. Cook’s seat of Kwinana is home to Wesfarmers’ new lithium hydroxide refinery.
Scott <a href="https://thewest.com.au/business/manufacturing/praise-for-premier-roger-cooks-storming-election-victory-comes-with-red-tape-warning-from-wa-business--c-17978740">told</a>
the West Australian he looked forward to working with the premier to ensure “competitive, reliable gas for domestic industry”.
“With a seat that covers the Kwinana industrial strip, one of Australia’s leading manufacturing hubs, the premier understands the important role that gas and WA can and will play, to support the climate transition”, Scott said.
Tomkinson <a href="https://thewest.com.au/business/manufacturing/praise-for-premier-roger-cooks-storming-election-victory-comes-with-red-tape-warning-from-wa-business--c-17978740">called on</a> the premier to unlock cheaper electricity and more land, telling the West that Cook must advocate to the federal government for policy that includes “repealing productivity-killing industrial relations reforms and changes to improve and streamline project assessment processes, enhancing environmental outcomes while eliminating duplication and providing certainty over timeframes”.
Cook has already proved his worth to the big end of town, having advocated strongly to kill federal Labor’s proposed (and largely symbolic) “nature positive” legislation that would have enabled the creation of a federal Environmental Protection Agency. In January, Cook <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/wa-premier-warns-east-coast-latte-sippers-over-nature-positive-laws-20250129-p5l83v">lashed out</a> at Labor backbenchers who continued to push the legislation, telling them:
“Your standard of living, the reason why you can afford your long mac and your lattes, is because of WA industry and the WA economy. Do not for a moment think that we will stand by idly and allow you to damage our economy because, ultimately, it will damage your standard of living. I think the prime minister is highly attuned to the issues which impact on Western Australia’s economy and Western Australian industry.” 
In August 2023, in the middle of the Voice referendum campaign, Cook <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/wa-labor-capitulates-racist-campaign-against-aboriginal-heritage-law">bowed to</a> mining and pastoral industry pressure to roll back the state’s newly introduced Aboriginal cultural heritage legislation. Acting on behalf of mining interests, the Cook government has also advocated for a watering down of already threadbare native title rights for traditional owners. The Australian
<a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/wa-seeks-changes-to-native-title-act-to-protect-miners/news-story/6a9cd1c05161397ff31818b47ac1e7e4">reports</a>
that current and former state mining ministers have written to the federal government urging amendments to the Native Title Act.
As the dust settles, Albanese will look to WA Labor’s win as an opportunity to spruce up Labor’s credentials in the upcoming federal election. However, Labor has never been and will never be a party that represents the interests of working-class people. The challenge remains to build a serious political alternative.

Nick Everett

Liberals walloped, Labor returned in WA state election

A raft of new laws, purportedly to combat the antisemitism “crisis” in Australia, have been passed federally and by some state governments. The Human Rights Law Centre <a href="https://www.hrlc.org.au/reports-news-commentary/2025/02/21/hate-speech">summed up</a> the situation, saying that the laws have “been introduced under the guise of protecting against hate speech and vilification [but] on closer inspection, these laws are likely to have a chilling effect on our democracy while failing to stamp out hate speech and discrimination”. 
The same political leaders who in sucking up to Donald Trump have refused to condemn his calls for ethnic cleansing in Gaza, or the recent Nazi salutes by Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, are now pontificating about “racist hate” to pass laws that undermine our democratic rights. This is occurring in the context of a McCarthyite-style witch-hunt of Palestine supporters across media, educational and cultural institutions.
At a federal level, the new laws mostly increase sentences for existing offences, while also introducing new offences of threatening to use force or violence against protected groups, and either advocating or threatening damage to, or destruction of, places of worship. The Labor government performed a spectacular backflip, capitulating to Peter Dutton and the Liberal opposition by including mandatory minimum sentences of up to six years’ imprisonment for some offences, while ramming through the legislation in less than 24 hours. This is despite Prime Minister Anthony Albanese just weeks earlier describing mandatory prison terms as “fraught” and “unproductive”. 
Mandatory sentencing explicitly goes against the Labor Party’s own official policy platform, given its disastrous history of resulting in mass incarceration of marginalised and oppressed people. This didn’t stop Albanese and every Labor MP voting for these laws.
In NSW, the Chris Minns Labor government has gone further, passing three new sets of laws. The first targets the display of Nazi symbols and graffiti near synagogues, Jewish schools or the Sydney Jewish Museum. The second and third are explicitly targeting protesters, despite there being no link between protests and the recent spate of antisemitic attacks—which the police have theorised were likely coordinated by organised crime networks.
The NSW government’s Crimes Amendment (Places of Worship) bill 2025 creates an offence with a potential two-year imprisonment and/or a $22,000 fine for blocking, impeding or hindering access to places of worship. It grants NSW police the extraordinary powers to arrest and move on people in or near a place of worship for any reason. As the NSW Council for Civil Liberties <a href="https://www.nswccl.org.au/news">argues</a>, “these offences could be used to charge members of the faith protesting their own organisation, sexual abuse survivors demanding justice and any snap rally or assembly that happens within a vicinity of a place of worship, such as Town Hall”. The laws are extraordinarily broad, especially given that almost everywhere in the Sydney CBD is “near” a place of worship, all of Sydney’s most common protest locations being close to a church. 
Minns has made no secret of the fact that he is a staunch supporter of Israel and wants to stamp out the mass Palestine movement that has mobilised tens of thousands against the genocide in Gaza for more than sixteen months. These laws follow a wave of other anti-protest laws passed in NSW in recent years, many targeting climate protesters, and could be used against people protesting for any cause, including the union movement.
The third law passed by Minns makes it a criminal offence to incite racial hatred, with a maximum penalty for an individual of two years’ imprisonment and/or fines of up to $11,000. In Victoria, new anti-vilification laws have also passed, although they include other protected categories besides race, and potentially some protections from the laws for political speech.
The danger of these laws is that a concerted effort is being made by supporters of Israel to define criticism of or opposition to the state of Israel as inherently antisemitic. Pro-Palestine activists have been falsely accused of antisemitism for decades to silence opposition. Now they want to make opposing Israel a crime. In a similar vein, Universities Australia recently adopted an official definition which says that calling for the abolition of the state of Israel is antisemitism, potentially opening up thousands of academics and students to disciplinary proceedings.
Decisions about who should be prosecuted under these laws will be in the hands of the police and public prosecutors—that is, the very institutions of power that uphold racist inequalities and the interests of Australian capitalism. For that reason, no-one should be under any illusion that these laws will be used to prosecute vicious racists like Peter Dutton, Sky News or the pro-Israel lobby, who have dehumanised the Palestinian people, supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza and systematically demonised the Arab and Muslim population. In fact, all these racists are clamouring for even more draconian “hate speech” laws to try to outlaw dissent. 
All progressive causes, including the union movement, should unite in opposing these undemocratic laws.

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