Susan Price, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Summer Hill in the NSW state election next year, released this statement on October 30.
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Socialist Alliance candidate calls on West Ward residents to reject the racist Australia First Party (AFP) on November 15 in the Marrickville Council by-election.
Susan Price, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Summer Hill in the NSW state election next March, was horrified to receive election material in her Dulwich Hill letterbox from the Australia First Party's Jim Saleam over the weekend.
Saleam is standing as the AFP candidate in Marrickville Council's West Ward byelection, to be held on November 15.
Price said today: "AFP candidate Jim Saleam announced in his leaflet that refugees are not welcome in Marrickville and that he is ready to fight a 'culture war' in Marrickville against diversity, multiculturalism and environmentalism. This reactionary politics of fear and ignorance has no place in Marrickville — a rich and diverse inner-west community — or anywhere else.
"The AFP leaflet attempts to argue that the homeless are more worthy of support than asylum seekers.
"To compare the needs of innocent refugees with those of others who are homeless in Marrickville is simply resorting to racist scapegoating and it trades on ignorance.
"The crisis in housing and homelessness is the result of decades of bipartisan government neglect and profiteering by private developers.
"The billions of public dollars that flow to private corporations to lock up refugees on island prisons should be redirected to solving homelessness. Simply adopting a humane approach to asylum seekers would free up the much-needed funds for public housing — which is crisis-prone in Marrickville.
"Saleam and the AFP call for people to support a 'process of cleansing Marrickville City'. This is truly disturbing rhetoric.
"Marrickville West Ward residents should send a strong message on November 15 that rejects the AFP's politics of racism, fear and ignorance."
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