Socialist Equality Party

Tania Baptist, 38, a law clerk who joined the party in 2006, is the candidate for Gellibrand, an inner-western electorate that covers the working class suburbs of Footscray, Altona, Braybrook, Brooklyn, Maidstone, Yarraville and Williamstown. It was once the industrial heart of Melbourne, the site of major meatworks, tanneries, ship building, ammunitions, petrochemical, railway workshops and automobile construction. Much of this industry was shut down in the 1980s and 1990s under the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. It remains the site of major workplaces, including a Toyota car plant, petrochemicals and Tenix shipbuilding, as well as Victoria University. Baptist, who stood on the SEP’s Senate ticket in Victoria in 2007, will challenge Health Minister Nicola Roxon, who is in charge of Labor’s blueprint to cut long-term health spending.

Bushfire royal commission report—a political whitewash

By Tania Baptist
11 August 2010

The final report of the royal commission into the “Black Saturday” bushfires that devastated large parts of the Australian state of Victoria on February 7, 2009, killing 173 people, including 23 children, and destroying more than 2,100 homes, was released on July 31.

The four-volume report provides a chilling summary of the fires—the worst in Australian history—and the catastrophic impact of the state’s seriously inadequate emergency response. It points to the “stay or go” policy, major failures by senior emergency services officials, lack of fire warnings to bushland communities, the absence of fire refuges or a collective evacuation program, and the poorly maintained, high-voltage powerlines that sparked almost half the fires, including the Kilmore East blaze that killed 119 people.

The Labor government’s childcare backdown and the profit system

By Tania Baptist
23 July 2010

Just weeks before being ousted as prime minister in an unprecedented backroom coup, Kevin Rudd announced that he was junking a 2007 election promise to build 260 childcare centres across the country. New Prime Minister Julia Gillard has made clear that Labor’s construction halt, which was imposed at the behest of the private for-profit childcare operators, will be maintained.