Ray Hayes, Socialist Alliance candidate for the Senate (NT)

Ray Hayes has worked in the Northern Territory for over 20 years, including as a union organiser. He is presently working in the marine aquaculture industry. He has been a long-time supporter of the struggle for East Timorese independence and was a founding member of Australians for a Free East Timor. He is also a member of the Asia-Pacific Support Collective.

Hayes is disgusted by the federal Coalition government's flagrant disregard for international law in relation to the sea-bed boundary between East Timor and Australia: "This is part of a continuing genocide against the East Timorese people who are still living in absolute poverty and suffering from diseases that don't even exist in the West any more."

Hayes believes that the theft of East Timor's oil is being used by the Coalition government to pay for an illegal war of occupation in Iraq. Hayes has been an anti-war activist since his high school days, when he was active in the anti-Vietnam war movement.

He believes strongly that another US "training facility" in the Northern Territory or anywhere in Australia is a proposition that ought to be strongly opposed by all clear-thinking Australians.

Hayes has had a long-term commitment to Aboriginal land rights and self-determination, workers' rights and defence of the environment. He is currently on the National Executive of the Socialist Alliance. He is also a keen gardener and owns a dingo-kelpie cross named, Namaliya.

From Green Left Weekly, July 14, 2004.

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From GLW issue 589