I apologise for not being here tonight but I have just spent three weeks in hospital with an injury to my left foot and this has prevented me from being able to attend. I see this as a great honour to be involved in such an important event.

Any progressive thinking person would see this as an exciting development. The reality is that the Labor Party and the Liberal Party — Tweedledee and Tweedledum — offer no real hope for the working class and for disadvantaged people throughout this country.

They are both pursuing an economic rationalist agenda, a free market agenda, that does not put people or the environment before profits. Their brand of globalisation is about letting the rich get richer and the rest of us starve.

The facts are that in this country in the 1890s trade union activists through militant trade union activity and many victories and defeats, realised that they had to have a political voice — and so they formed the Australian Labor Party.

Unfortunately the Australia Labor Party has now moved so far away from its roots that I would think that the founders would turn in their graves if they saw the rats that frequent and lead the Australian Labor Party in this day and age.

I believe it is about time that all progressive groups, progressive trade unions like my own, and others turn their backs on the ALP and get involved in a truly progressive alliance, like this Socialist Alliance, to try to push forward and deliver the aims and aspirations of the working class.

Groups such as community activists, women activists, cultural groups, gay and lesbian activists, environmental activists, progressive solidarity activists that work with workers and other organisations in other countries, and all left-wing political parties should rally around and join the Socialist Alliance.

Together in an alliance we can work to formulate policies that will put people and the planet before profit. The aim must be to change this system, a profit-driven capitalist system, to a socialist system which will be fairer and a more just alternative for the vast majority of people.

I congratulate the organising committee that have put this project together and I will be urging all trade unionists, both officials and rank and filers, to join this party. I certainly will be.

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