Socialist candidate supports refugees' rights

BY BRONWYN JENNINGS

GEELONG — “Successive Australian governments had shameful policies
towards refugees and now the Howard government is going to create more
by throwing its support behind George Bush's war on Iraq”, Brigitte Ellery,
Socialist Alliance candidate for the Victorian state seat of Lara, told
the Geelong SIEV-X refugees' rights rally, held in blustery conditions
at the Geelong waterfront on October 19.

Ellery is a member of Geelong Radical Women, a socialist feminist organisation,
a mother of three adult children and a grandmother. She is a disability
pensioner who is employed casually as a personal care worker.

Ellery told Green Left Weekly she chose to stand as a candidate
to help make the Socialist Alliance widely known as a political alternative,
as she believes most people are fed up with both Labor and Liberal.

“Achieving lasting solutions to everything from the provision of services
and protection of the environment to ending sexism, racism and homophobia
is achievable by eliminating the drive for profits and implementing policies
based on fairness and equality”, said Ellery.

From Green Left Weekly, October 23, 2002.

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From GLW issue 513