The Socialist Alliance (SA) held its Victorian state conference on February 27, with about 80 people taking part.
Victorian Indigenous activist Sharon Firebrace acknowledged the traditional owners of the land and kicked off the first session, which was focused on trade union solidarity with the Alyawarr people.
Tim Gooden, secretary of the Geelong and Region Trades and Labour Council, and Mick Bull, from the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, spoke about their experiences on the trade union brigade that helped build the "protest house" at the Alyawarr people's walk-off camp in central Australia.
Saradha Nathan from the Tamil community in Sydney and Pamela Curr, refugee advocate from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, addressed a workshop on Tamil refugees and spoke about their experiences in Merak, Indonesia and their visit to immigration detention cells in Jakarta.
Curr said mandatory detention was still a key issue under the Rudd government for refugee activists.
Melbourne university academic Hans Baer conducted a workshop on the need for an ecosocialist perspective in the climate movement.
Julia Burder from the Geelong branch of Resistance spoke alongside Phoebe Kelloway, National Union of Students queer officer and a campaigner with Equal Love about the struggle for same-sex marriage rights.
Cate Lewis from the Australia-Western Sahara group addressed conference goers on the liberation struggle of Western Saharans, before a march to the Victorian Trades Hall to support the raising of the Western Sahara flag there, as a mark of solidarity.
A panel devoted to climate change consisted of SA's Ben Courtice, who is running in the federal seat of Gellibrand; Climate Action Centre coordinator, Damien Lawson; and Victorian secretary of the United Firefighters Union, Peter Marshall, who said that "megafires" were happening more frequently, as attested by his members' experiences.
Marshall said successive governments have failed to act on recommendations from inquiries into large fires and Australia has persisted with its flawed policy of ordinary people "defending" their homes, something that most are ill-equipped to do.
He argued that getting the message across about climate change from a "public safety" perspective was an important, new angle.
Lawson said that closing the coal-fired power station Hazelwood was a Victorian climate movement priority and the election of Green parliamentarians in inner city Melbourne seats was a real possibility this year.
Dave Kerin reported back on the SA national conference and emphasised the important step taken immediately beforehand by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, which decided to merge its resources into the Socialist Alliance and build one organisation.
The conference preselected Margarita Windisch to be a Senate candidate. SA plans to have its Senate ticket finalised by the end of March.