BY CHRIS SLEE
MELBOURNE — In its first election campaign, in the by-election for the federal seat of Aston, the newly-formed Socialist Alliance plans to put the street back into street campaigning, calling an anti-GST protest for Wantirna on June 30.
The rally will begin at noon outside the Liberal party campaign office (432 Burwood Highway, Wantirna South). June 30 is the eve of the first anniversary of the GST's introduction.
Opposition to the GST features prominently in the Socialist Alliance's campaign for the July 14 by-election. Candidate Josephine Cox, a student at La Trobe University, campaigned against the GST before it was even adopted and is even more determined in her opposition now, having seen its impact.
Cox has visited workers on a picket line at Johnson Tiles in Bayswater to express her support for their struggle against retrenchment and replacement by labour hire workers.
She has also addressed Australian Manufacturing Workers Union members at the Creeks Metal Industries factory in Bayswater, who welcomed Socialist Alliance policy to scrap the GST and anti-union laws. Craig Johnston, the Victorian state secretary of the AMWU, is supporting the Socialist Alliance campaign.
Campaign supporters have also been leafleting shopping centers on Saturday mornings, at times defying security guards who have tried to order them off the "private property" of the shopping centre owners.
The Socialist Alliance will hold a public meeting on July 27 at the Rowville Community Centre to put its case in the by-election.
In addition to Cox, speakers will include George Zangalis, a former official of the Australian Railways Union, who will argue the need for improved public transport in the electorate, Cassandra Bawden, the Wantirna TAFE chairperson of Swinburne Student Union, who will talk of the problems for students caused by economic rationalism and a member of the AMWU, speaking about the struggle to defend jobs.
In other campaign news, the Liberal Party is pinning its hopes for re-election in the seat, made empty by the death of sitting Liberal member Peter Nugent, on negotiating an unlikely preference deal with the Greens. The bait is a promise to remove the burning of wood waste from its Renewable Energy Act, passed by parliament last year.
Fifteen candidates are standing in the by-election and the Liberal Party is desperate to hang onto it, seeing it as a test for the federal election due before the end of the year.