Socialist Equality Party

Carolyn Kennett, 47, a former nurse, and now mathematics lecturer at Macquarie University, will contest Reid, which covers the mainly working class areas along the southern bank of the Parramatta River, including Auburn, one of the poorest areas of Sydney. As president of the university’s branch of the National Tertiary Education Union for the past four years, Kennett has opposed the union’s backing for the Rudd/Gillard governments’ pro-market restructuring of tertiary education. She joined the SEP in 2007 and is married with five children and three grandchildren.

Carolyn Kennett exposes Greens’ role at public education forum

Carolyn Kennett exposed the role of the Greens and condemned the efforts of the teachers’ unions to promote them as a progressive alternative when she addressed a public education forum on 19 August. Kennett and the Greens’ candidate for the neighbouring electorate of Bennelong were the only candidates to speak, after Labor’s Maxine McKew and her Liberal opponent, John Alexander, both contemptuously refused to participate.

Increasing social hardship in Sydney’s west

The Socialist Equality Party’s campaign in the seat of Reid, which covers Sydney’s mid-western suburbs along the southern shore of the Parramatta River, has found widespread concerns about high unemployment, housing stress and rising inequality. The social reality throughout the electorate is a far cry from the claims of the Labor government and the media that Australia has avoided recession and “defied the gravity” of the global economic breakdown.

SEP candidate speaks on Gillard’s education record

The following is the edited text of the speech delivered by Carolyn Kennett to a public meeting held on 1 August in her electorate of Reid in western Sydney. Kennett, who is a university lecturer, focussed on the record of Prime Minister Julia Gillard in undermining public education through Labor’s so-called “education revolution”.