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Marxism, socialism and climate changeThe impact of global climate change concerns nothing less than the future of human civilisation. The problems are so profound and far-reaching that, to be resolved, they require the mobilisation of all available economic, material, scientific and technical resources. [More] Climate change, emissions trading schemes and the profit systemFor all the media coverage of the opposition Liberal Party’s recent “meltdown” over the issue, virtually no serious analysis has been presented of either the politics or the economics of the Rudd Labor government’s proposed carbon emissions trading scheme—the so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). [More] Liberal party divisions deepen as leader ousted over carbon trading systemThe leadership challenge centred on opposition to proposed legislation for a carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) negotiated between Turnbull and the Labor government. [More] Bipartisan carbon trading deal transfers $6 billion from households to corporate pollutersAn extraordinary deal finalised between the Labor government and the opposition Liberal Party on legislation enacting an Australian carbon emissions trading scheme will strip low and middle income earners of nearly $6 billion previously allocated as compensation for higher fuel and energy costs. [More] The second anniversary of the Rudd Labor government: appearance and realityDuring the past 24 months Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has maintained and intensified the previous government’s right-wing and pro-business agenda, characterised by militarism abroad and attacks on the social conditions and democratic rights of the working class at home. [More] Australian Pabloites prepare NPA-style dissolutionThe Democratic Socialist Perspective will dissolve itself into the ailing Socialist Alliance (SA) electoral front at its national congress in January 2010, a development that the DSP’s national secretary Peter Boyle says will be modelled closely on France’s New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), launched in February 2009. [More] Australian imperialism, the 1999 East Timor intervention and the pseudo-leftIt is a decade since a layer of pseudo “left” organisations organised a series of “troops in” demonstrations just prior to the deployment—performing a vital service for the government of Prime Minister John Howard and the Australian ruling elite. [More] Julian Moti defence counsel attacks Australian government’s “politically driven prosecution”n pre-trial hearings underway in Queensland’s Supreme Court, defence counsel for former Solomon Islands’ attorney general Julian Moti yesterday condemned Australian authorities for “bringing the administration of justice into disrepute” and described the case as “oppressive behaviour [and] politically driven prosecution”. [More] Australia-Sri Lanka deal for joint crackdown on Tamil asylum seekersAustralian foreign minister Stephen Smith and his Sri Lankan counterpart Rohitha Bogollagama signed a statement in Colombo on Monday agreeing to launch a joint crackdown aimed at preventing Sri Lankan Tamils from fleeing the island and seeking asylum in Australia. [More] The economic crisis and the resurgence of class conflict in the United StatesThe following is the text of a report given by David North, national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party, to the WSWS/SEP/ISSE regional conferences, “The world economic crisis, the failure of capitalism, and the case for socialism.” [More] Internationalism and the struggle for socialismThe following is the text of a report given by Nick Beams, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia), to the WSWS/SEP/ISSE regional conferences, “The world economic crisis, the failure of capitalism, and the case for socialism.” [More] Join the International Students for Social Equality!Human progress is being blocked by the social relations of capitalism, which subordinate everything to the drive for corporate profit and the accumulation of personal wealth by a tiny layer of the population. The ISSE is an organisation of students around the world dedicated to building a socialist movement that will finally realise the potential of the modern era, put an end to poverty and war, and lay the foundations for genuine freedom. Socialist Equality Party holds founding Congress in United StatesThe founding congress of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the United States, held on August 3-9 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, represents a milestone in the history of the Fourth International and the development of the revolutionary socialist movement. [More] Statement of Principles of the SEP: Part One The Northern Territory intervention: an on-the-spot reportPart one: Rudd Labor deepens Howard’s assault on Aboriginal communities
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| Life for Aborigines in Tenant Creek | Darwin resident explains impact of NT intervention | Comments from an Aboriginal town camp |
Labor’s budget reveals unprecedented revenue collapse
Confronted by a $200 billion collapse in tax revenues over the next four years—the largest fall since the Great Depression—in Tuesday night’s budget, the Rudd Labor government has responded by cutting social spending. [More]
Australian PM’s essay: an exercise in ideological damage control
Australian Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has written a much-publicised essay, entitled "The Global Financial Crisis". [1] The essay's significance, however, resides not in any economic insights, but in what it reveals about the scale of the political crisis confronting the ruling elites and their political parties. [More]
Australian government announces military buildup as strategic dilemma intensifies
In its new Defence White Paper, published on May 2, the Australian Labor government has committed to a major military build-up, under the aegis of the country’s postwar alliance with the United States, despite mounting concern over the decline of American hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region and the prospect of conflict with China. [More]
Official figures obscure rapidly rising joblessness in Australia
The Rudd Labor government is now countenancing the prospect of a double-digit jobless rate by next year, which would mean more than a million unemployed. [More]
Australia: Haneef “terrorism” inquiry produces a whitewash
The Rudd government's Clarke review of last year's aborted terrorist witch-hunt of Dr Mohamed Haneef has proven to be a whitewash of the former Howard government and a vehicle for the current Labor government to bolster the country's draconian counter-terrorism measures. [More]
Australian university review proposes student vouchers
When the final report of the Rudd government's Bradley Review of Higher Education in Australia was released last month, the media headlines led people to believe that the report was proposing a multi-billion dollar injection of funds into the ailing university system. Although the recommendations speak of increased funding, however, this is conditional on further subjugating education to the same market forces that have created the current global economic disaster. [More]
Climate change, the Garnaut report, and the profit system
The Labor government’s Garnaut Climate Change Review has effectively concluded that within the existing international political and social framework, dangerous and potentially irreversible global warming is inevitable. [More]
Climate change, Kyoto, and carbon trading
Part 1: The Howard government and the Kyoto Protocol
While many people have a general understanding of what climate change is, there has been a deliberate suppression, by the political and media establishment, of the agendas underlying the various solutions being advanced by the major parties. Very few people even know what the most commonly used terms—Kyoto, carbon trading, carbon offsetting etc.—actually mean, let alone how these mechanisms work in practice. [More]
Part 2: The orientation of Labor and the Greens
The Labor Party has cynically attempted to appeal to the concern felt by millions of ordinary people over climate change, and their hostility towards the Howard government’s stonewalling. But its real audience is big business. [More]
The Northern Territory Intervention & "Reconciliation"...
Conditions of Aboriginal people in Alice Springs and the town camps
For most Australian residents, the Northern Territory (NT) town of Alice Springs—population 26,000 and located in the centre of the continent—is little more than a series of striking picture postcards of spectacular rocky desert scenery, native animals and brilliantly coloured contemporary Aboriginal paintings.
Few have any conception of the harsh conditions endured daily by the central Australian city’s Aboriginal population, or the real social and political impact of the federal government’s 10-month old NT intervention, now being expanded under Rudd Labor. [More]
The SEP 2007 Election Campaign...
An assessment of the SEP’s vote and campaign in the 2007 Australian election
By the Socialist Equality Party
29 November 2007
With around 80 percent of votes counted so far in the November 24, 2007 Australian federal election, the Socialist Equality Party has received a total of 3,451 votes in the House of Representatives and 3,231 votes in the Senate.
For the House of Representatives, the following votes have been recorded: in Sydney, Alex Safari, Kingsford-Smith, 914; Patrick O’Connor, Grayndler, 269; Chris Gordon, Parramatta, 195; James Cogan, Chifley, 850; in the NSW Hunter Valley, Noel Holt, Newcastle, 269; Terry Cook, Charlton, 347; in Melbourne, Will Marshall, Melbourne 289; Frank Gaglioti, Calwell, 211; in Perth, Joe Lopez, 141. Safari and Cogan were positioned at the top of the ballot paper, and thus benefited from the “donkey vote” (where voters place “1” beside the first candidate, and then number their preferences in order down the ticket, regardless of party affiliation). [More]
The SEP and preferences in the 2007 election
The Socialist Equality Party is opposed to the compulsory preferential voting system set down in Australian electoral laws. In our election statement, we explain that the position of those who advocate a preference for Labor is “aimed at obscuring the central issue of this election. The two-party system cannot be pressured to meet the needs of the working class, nor will Labor be a ‘lesser evil’. That is why the Socialist Equality Party will not be advocating any preferences, or making ‘preference deals’ with other parties.”
The method of voting being advanced by the SEP in the course of the 2007 federal election, in both the House of the Representatives and the Senate, is based on this principle. [More]
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