BY LISA MACDONALD
SYDNEY — A December 14 conference of the nine NSW branches of Socialist Alliance will preselect at least eight more candidates to complete its Legislative Council (upper house) ticket for the March 22 state election. The conference delegates will also order the ticket and adopt key policy positions and movement building projects.
Since the alliance decided earlier this year to contest the 2003 election, the Labor government of Premier Bob Carr has given it even more reasons to present a socialist alternative at the polls. Alliance branches have been kept busy publicly campaigning against Labor's assaults on:
- workers and their unions, especially those who dare to fight for decent pay and working conditions;
- new migrants who settle in Sydney, by blaming them for the city's boom in apartment construction and worsening public services;
- social security recipients;
- refugees, who he has accused of being potential terrorists;
- young people, especially if they hang out together in public;
- protesters who assert their right to march on the streets; and
- anyone who catches a train in suburban Sydney and is therefore subject to sniffer dogs and random police searches at train stations.
Carr's most recent assault was on Muslims and people from Middle Eastern backgrounds, who are the main targets of the "anti-terror" bill adopted by state cabinet two weeks ago.This will be a major campaign issue for the Socialist Alliance.
The massive extension of police powers to search, interrogate and incarcerate people without charge that this bill would enable, combined with the government's introduction of an extraordinarily punitive new sentencing regime, would make NSW the closest thing to a police state that we are likely to see in an advanced "democratic" society. The Socialist Alliance is determined, working alongside all others concerned about safeguarding civil rights, to prevent Carr's bill from being passed.
The December 14 conference will discuss a plan of action to build a civil liberties defence campaign as an important part of the broader campaign against federal and state governments' racist scapegoating and attacks on democratic rights under the cover of the so-called war on terrorism.
How the alliance can strengthen the movement against an Australian-backed, US-led war on Iraq will also be discussed, in particular the role of local alliance branches, which have begun to organise community networks and actions against the war and for refugees' rights in many Sydney suburbs and regional centres.
The conference, which will begin at 1pm at the University of Technology (Markets Campus) on Quay Street in the city, is open to anyone interested in the discussions and campaign activities of the Socialist Alliance.
For further information, phone Lisa on 0413 031 108, Michael on 0418 450 812 or email <sydney@socialist-alliance.org>.
From Green Left Weekly, December 4, 2002.
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