Socialist Equality Party

Richard Phillips, 62, a long-standing member of the SEP’s national committee, is the party’s candidate in Blaxland. Phillips is a regular contributor to the WSWS, particularly on the arts. Centred on Bankstown, the electorate is one of the most culturally diverse in Australia, with over 40 percent of its population born overseas. Once a major industrial centre, the area now has an unemployment rate for youth aged between 15 and 19 of 45 percent—almost double the national rate of 25.8 per cent. The seat is held by Jason Clare, a Labor Party apparatchik who is being touted as a future minister.

Australian courts reject undemocratic electoral amendments

By Richard Philips
19 August 2010

Two recent decisions by the Australian judiciary have opened the way for an estimated 100,000 additional voters to participate in this weekend’s federal election and for voters to register online with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) in future elections. The rulings by the High Court and Federal Court respectively were in response to legal action by the online lobby group GetUp! against amendments to electoral laws made in 2006 by the former Howard Liberal-National government.

Prior to 2006, potential voters had seven days to register after the declaration of election writs. The Howard government changes, cynically called the Electoral Integrity amendments, slashed the time allowed for registration to one business day. Already registered voters were only given three days to notify the AEC of any change of address.

Blaxland voters speak out about their concerns

By our correspondents
16 August 2010

Socialist Equality Party members and supporters have won important support from workers and youth in the federal electorate of Blaxland for the party’s policies over the past three weeks.

The southwest Sydney seat, which includes Bankstown, Yagoona, Bass Hill, Chester Hill, Regents Park, Villawood and other suburbs, is one of the most culturally diverse and poorest in Sydney. Almost 50 percent of Blaxland residents are immigrants, with the largest numbers from Lebanon, Vietnam and China.

Young people disenfranchised in Australia’s snap election

By Richard Philips
30 July 2010 

In an attempt to provide a fig leaf of democratic legitimacy to the backroom coup that ousted her predecessor Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has claimed that the August 21 federal election allows Australians to exercise their “birth right” to deliver a verdict on her prime ministership and elect the government of their choice.

In fact, Gillard’s snap poll—called with the minimum legally permissible time for campaigning—marks a further sharp erosion of the democratic process. Most starkly, Gillard’s timing has effectively disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of eligible voters, most of them young people.