Socialist Equality Party

In the industrial city of Newcastle, 170 kilometres north of Sydney, the SEP’s candidate is Noel Holt, 62, a retired Telstra worker with 41 years’ service. Holt also contested the seat in 2007, warning of the pro-business character of a Rudd Labor government. Newcastle used to be one of the country’s biggest industrial centres, with mining, steelworks, docks and railways. Over the past 30 years, thousands of permanent jobs have been eliminated through closures, leaving school leavers to compete for casual and part-time jobs in call centres and the retail and service sectors.

Noel Holt addresses community forum

Noel Holt addressed a candidates’ forum organised on 15 August by the Throsby Village Alliance. He was the only candidate on the platform to raise the issue of the political coup in June that ousted Kevin Rudd and installed Julian Gillard as prime minister, and to warn of its implications for the working class.

Holt said that the coup demonstrated “that real political power lies not with elected representatives in parliament but with giant corporate and financial interests.” “Behind parliamentary procedure and national elections stands the naked dictatorship of capital,” he said.

SEP candidate campaigns at Newcastle university

Socialist Equality Party candidate Noel Holt campaigned at the University of Newcastle this week. He had been invited to address a meeting organised by the International Students for Social Equality (ISSE) to discuss the SEP policies in the 2010 federal election in opposition to war, growing social hardship and the threat of environmental disasters.

Labor’s punitive industrial legislation in action

By Noel Holt
31 July 2010 

Months after a settlement was reached in a dispute at Woodside Petroleum’s $12 billion Pluto gas project in Western Australia, hundreds of workers are facing huge fines for taking industrial action to defend their basic conditions.

The 1,500 workers went on strike for eight days in January to oppose Woodside’s plan to end housing in individual units or “dongas” and to impose a system of “motelling” at the company’s Gap Ridge village in Karratha. The issue of stable accommodation is an important one for workers in the remote Pilbara region, who fly in, work long shifts and then fly out.

The fraud of Labor’s “Work Choices” scare campaign

By Noel Holt
27 July 2010

One of the biggest frauds in the campaign for the August 21 election is the constantly repeated claim of the Labor Party and the unions that a Liberal government led by Tony Abbott would be a more serious threat to workers’ rights and conditions than the Labor government.

Desperate to deflect workers’ discontent with Labor’s industrial relations regime, Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the trade union leaders have spent the past week stirring fears that an Abbott government would bring back the hated “Work Choices” industrial relations laws of the former Howard government.

Implications of Rudd coup discussed at SEP meeting in Newcastle

A lively and well-attended meeting of workers, students and professionals in Newcastle on 25 July discussed the implications of the coup that removed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the socialist program required to politically re-arm the working class.

The meeting was addressed by Socialist Equality Party national secretary Nick Beams and Noel Holt, the SEP candidate for the federal seat of Newcastle. It was part of a series of conferences and public meetings held by the SEP over the past few weeks on the topic: “The World Economic Crisis, the failure of Capitalist and the Case for Socialism”.

SEP candidate calls for political struggle against Labor’s anti-strike laws

Noel Holt released the following copy of the remarks that he planned to make at a 20 July construction workers rally in Sydney (see: “Unions deflect anger over Labor’s prosecution of South Australian construction worker”). Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) state secretary Andrew Ferguson and Unions NSW officials refused to allow Holt to address the rally.