elections

Green Left columnist Carlo Sands takes "Carlo's Corner" to Green Left TV, hailing Clive Palmer's decision to seek pre-selection for the Liberal National Party to challenged Treasurer Wayne Swan.

You can read Carlo's Corner columns and subscribe to Green Left TV.

Footage from the 'Malaysian Spring': the inspiring 250,000-strong Bersih ('clean') rallies for free and fair elections in Malaysia PLUS from Australian support rallies in Melbourne (1200 people), Sydney (500) and Perth (400).

Also includes footage of the brutal police repression which saw 500 people arrested along with widespread use of water cannon and tear gas.

Justice for the Malaysian people - take the power back!

Liam Flenady has been endorsed as the Socialist Alliance’s candidate in the April by-election for the South Brisbane seat of former ALP Queensland premier Anna Bligh. Flenady released the statement below on April 11.

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Within two weeks of taking office, Premier Campbell Newman and his Liberal National Party (LNP) government show signs of returning to the bad old days of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen regime.

The Queensland ALP “snatched disaster from the jaws of defeat,” socialist activist Gary MacLennan told a public forum at the Activist Centre here on April 3. The forum, sponsored by Green Left Weekly, discussed the Liberal National Party’s (LNP) rise to power in Queensland, the crisis in the ALP and what this meant for the labour movement.

MacLennan said: “When the Queensland people said no to the [Anna] Bligh Labor government, they were not saying yes to an LNP government.

The day after the Queensland election was a very dark day for the state. The unprecedented swing to the Liberal National Party (LNP) will mean huge cuts to the public sector and brutal attacks on unions.

It will mean increased environmental degradation and unnecessary, destructive development. It will mean dangerous coal seam gas will spread further across the state and coal production will rise even though Australia is already the biggest exporter in the world.

It will mean the ruin of Gladstone harbour due to dredging carried out to benefit the fossil fuel industry.

The Socialist Alliance (SA) pushed ahead with its campaign to put socialist politics before the Queensland electorate, as the ALP government faced annihilation in the state election held on March 24. Although everyone knew the government was unpopular, the sheer size of the Liberal National Party (LNP) win took all commentators by surprise.

The election result has left Labor with only seven or eight seats compared with the LNP’s probable 78. The Bligh ALP government suffered a record two-party swing away of 15%.

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) in Queensland is in its deepest crisis in its 120-year history following the disastrous defeat in the state elections on March 24. A swing of more than 15% to the Liberal-National Party (LNP) has resulted in the Queensland ALP's record lowest primary vote of 26.5%.

Labor is likely to win seven, or at most eight, seats in Queensland’s parliament of 89. The LNP will take 77 or 78. This is a worse position for the ALP than the Joh Bjelke-Petersen regime's high point in 1974, when Queensland Labor was reduced to 11 seats.

This article was originally posted at Left Flank on March 26.

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When watching the last few episodes of US cable TV series The Walking Dead, it struck me that the title has a double meaning, that Sheriff Rick and the other survivors of the zombie apocalypse are also among the dead who roam the planet’s surface.

After gaining a huge majority in the Queensland parliament, the new Liberal National Party (LNP) government is preparing its assault on unions, the public service and the environment.

Newly elected Premier Campbell Newman wasted no time in showing his intentions to escalate the neoliberal offensive, already started by the defeated Anna Bligh Labor government. He began by appointing leading Liberal Party honchos to key bureaucratic jobs in the administration.