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| Darwin resident explains impact of NT intervention | NT intervention: Comments from an Aboriginal town camp | Aboriginal people denounce Northern Territory intervention |
Australia's "two-track" economy: super-profits and falling living standards
Amid an ongoing share market decline produced by the US and global financial turmoil, economic indicators in Australia have revealed an acute divergence in what media commentators are increasingly describing as a “two-track” or “two-speed” economy. [More]
Rudd rewrites history as he announces “withdrawal” from Iraq
Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced on Monday that 550 Australian Army combat troops operating in southern Iraq would be withdrawn by the end of the month. The withdrawal, however, ends neither Australia’s participation in the criminal US occupation or its support for the Bush administration’s broader militarist foreign policy. [More]
A socialist answer to the global rise in gas prices
The sharp rise in gasoline prices in recent months has imposed enormous burdens on working people in the United States and internationally. With prices at the pumps averaging over $4 a gallon in the US and well on their way to $5 or even higher this summer, working families—already burdened by rising food, housing, medical and other costs—are experiencing a drastic cut in their living standards. [More]
Labor government introduces draconian police powers for Pope’s visit
By executive order, the NSW Labor government of Premier Morris Iemma has introduced sweeping police powers to suppress democratic rights and civil liberties during this month’s Catholic World Youth Day event in Sydney. [More]
Why Victorian teachers ratified the AEU’s sell-out industrial agreement
According to results published last week on the Victorian Education Department’s website, 84.7 percent of public school teachers voted to accept the sell-out industrial agreement drawn up by the Australian Education Union (AEU) and the state Labor government of Premier John Brumby. The ballot outcome marks the culmination of a ferocious campaign mounted by the union bureaucracy to ram through the agreement in the face of widespread opposition among ordinary teachers. It is a significant defeat, and one whose impact will be felt—sooner rather than later—by teachers and their students in classrooms across the state. [More]
Workers' Rights & Conditions...
Once again unions call off Qantas stoppages
For the third time in six weeks, union leaders have called off industrial action by 1,500 Qantas engineers in a bid to prevent a potentially explosive confrontation with the airline and the Rudd Labor government over the company’s demand for cuts to wages and conditions. [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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