Socialist Equality Party

For the northern Melbourne working class seat of Calwell, the party’s candidate is Peter Byrne, 51, an architect and son of a car worker, who joined the SEP in 1983. For more than two decades, he has played a leading role in the work of the party’s Melbourne area, including in campaigns to defend the jobs and basic rights of car workers, building workers, pilots and teachers. Calwell is home to the Ford motor company and associated car parts suppliers where workers face the continual threat of closure and the slashing of conditions. With a growing population of Iraqi and other immigrant families, the electorate extends out to Craigieburn and Sunbury, encompassing newer housing developments in northern mortgage-belt suburbs like Roxburgh Park.

SEP candidate demands immediate end to Tullamarine health hazard

By Peter Byrne
19 August 2010

Residents in the Melbourne suburbs of Gladstone Park and Westmeadows in the Calwell electorate are facing serious health risks as a result of chemical leakage and fumes from the nearby Tullamarine Hazardous Waste Landfill. The dump was closed in 2008, but the dangers have persisted due to totally inadequate remediation and capping works that have still not been completed.

Responsibility for the ongoing health hazard rests with the landfill operators, who cut corners to maximise profits, and successive Labor and Liberal state governments that stonewalled over demands for the dump’s closure and systematically played down its dangers. From the outset, the overriding imperative has been to provide cheap toxic waste disposal for industry at the expense of workers and local residents.

SEP candidate for Calwell addresses the social crisis facing workers and youth

The following is the text of the speech delivered by Socialist Equality Party candidate Peter Byrne to a public meeting held on 8 August in his electorate of Calwell in Melbourne’s working class northern suburbs. Byrne focussed his remarks on the social crisis confronting working people after decades of de-industrialisation and economic restructuring.