Socialist Alliance (SA) is running Anne McMenamin as an independent for the seat of Port Adelaide in the South Australian elections on March 21.
Labor’s support for the illegal attacks on Iran by Israel and the United States, and its complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, make clear that the AUKUS military alliance is shaping Australia’s foreign policy, and that Australia must end AUKUS and all military and intelligence ties with the US and Israel.
Organising against AUKUS starts at the local level, which is why Socialist Alliance is focusing its election campaign around “No to AUKUS: Yes to housing, health and education”.
It provides an opportunity to build popular support for socialist solutions to war and the cost-of-living crisis. AUKUS funding should be spent on better services and a massive expansion of public housing and public transport.
SA is calling for the new AUKUS facility at Osborne base, in the Port Adelaide electorate, for nuclear-powered submarines to be stopped. We also want a ban on the transportation and storage of nuclear waste as well as weapons’ research and production. Those facilities must be converted to civilian research and manufacturing.
The nuclear submarine facility threatens environmental damage to Kaurna land and waters. It also risks to Kaurna Country and dismisses First Nations peoples’ opposition to AUKUS nuclear waste storage on Country.
AUKUS is turning the state’s education system, at all levels, into a funnel for AUKUS jobs and military manufacturing. For example, many STEM and naval engineering programs provide “pathways” to naval and military jobs. SA wants an end to weapons and military-based education programs at local primary and high schools.
Socialist Alliance is also campaigning for treaties that respect First Nations sovereignty and land rights. It is critical of Labor and the Coalition MPs working with billionaires, military companies, and mining magnates, such as Santos, to maintain corporate profits through policies which put profits before Aboriginal lives, culture and Country.
The unresolved toxic algal bloom and the housing crisis are two other major problems. The algal bloom, caused by global warming, continues to kill marine life and habitat. Labor is exacerbating the underlying problem by refusing to phase out of the use and export of fossil fuels. SA says workers in the fossil fuel industry must be retrained for new and guaranteed jobs, with no loss in pay or conditions.
With unaffordable rents and more than 7400 people homeless, SA says only a massive expansion of state public housing construction, as well as rent freezes and rent controls, will ease the problem.
AUKUS and the nuclear submarine facility is a threat to public health because the funds being allocated to militarism should instead go to our inadequate public health systems, including expanding community-based health care networks. Access to abortion and making the procedure free are other critical health care measures.
The state could pay for these measures by taxing the fossil fuel industry and demanding the AUKUS budget go to people and environmental needs.
McMenamin will appear as an Independent on the ballot paper because Socialist Alliance is still in the process of seeking state registration.
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