In the November 10 federal election, the Socialist Alliance will be standing 30 candidates, in some House of Representatives seats in every state and territory as well as in the Senate in all states and the Northern Territory. ALISON DELLIT explains why Green Left Weekly readers should vote for them.
Vote against the war
Almost every day and every night bombs are raining down on Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world. These bombs have killed more than 1000 civilians and may kill thousands more before the US and Britain stop their campaign. They will not, however, kill as many people as starvation will in the coming winter — a direct result of the war.
Some of the warplanes that drop the bombs will have been re-fuelled by the Australian air force. Some of the bases that serve the US military will be protected by Australian soldiers. Some of the highly armed special forces on the ground will be members of the Australian SAS.
The Australian government and its military are helping to create a humanitarian disaster. A vote for Socialist Alliance is a vote to stop it.
The Socialist Alliance believes that terrorism can only be stopped if its root causes are attacked. Launching a "10-point plan against terrorism", lead NSW Senate candidate Pip Hinman proposed an end to the arming of dictatorial regimes, the elimination of the Third World debt and demanded that United Nations' resolutions be consistently implemented, especially on Palestine.
Not only has the Socialist Alliance condemned the war, it has organised demonstrations against it in more than a dozen suburbs across Australia, from Auburn to Adelaide. A vote for Socialist Alliance is a vote for the peace movement.
Take a stand against racism
In the last six years, indigenous Australians and Asian and Middle-Eastern migrants and refugees have faced an extraordinary increase in racist abuse. Under the guise of "telling it like it is", Prime Minister John Howard and Philip "Minister for Racism" Ruddock have accused Aborigines of being lazy, dole bludgers; migrant communities of harbouring criminals and terrorists; and refugees of being wealthy "queue jumpers". The rhetoric has resulted in more racist attacks.
Howard and his cronies want to deepen the racist divide. They want to falsely blame our worsening living conditions, poor wages and cuts to social services on mythical "lazy, welfare dependent, queue jumping" refugees and blacks rather than point to the real culprits — the federal government and its big business backers.
Howard also used racism to justify cutting funds to indigenous communities, slashing the budget of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and all but abolishing additional funding for indigenous students through the Abstudy scheme.
The racist filth stepped up in August, when the government used the arrival of a boatload of refugees rescued from a shipwreck to fan the flames of xenophobic fear in order to increase its own support in the polls.
It reached frenzy levels in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States, as the government used racist stereotypes of Muslims to justify its support for the war on Afghanistan.
The Australian Labor Party will not stop the flood of racism swamping Australia. The ALP supports with gusto the bombing of the Afghan people. The ALP has no intention of stopping attacks on living standards and offers no solutions for working people.
If elected, Socialist Alliance MPs will campaign to end mandatory detention and grant full rights to asylum seekers. It will demand a migration program that does not discriminate against the poor, the uneducated or those who know little English. It will fight for a treaty with the indigenous population.
Fighting racism means more than just saying the right things. It means campaigning against the bombing of the Afghan people, fighting to defend indigenous communities and campaigning in favour of refugees' rights.
Socialist Alliance candidates, members and supporters are at the forefront of these struggles. That's why a vote for the Socialist Alliance is one way of making the strongest possible stand against racism.
A party for the millions, not the millionaires
The corporate establishment has plenty of parties to choose from at this election. However, working people, students and the unemployed do not.
In one corner, we have the party who introduced the GST, introduced individual workplace contracts and slashed child-care while offering tax rebates for stay-at-home mothers. In the other, we have the party that refuses to repeal the GST and, when it was last in government, introduced enterprise bargaining and presided over the first fall in the female-to-male pay ratio in 20 years.
Both parties lowered company tax rates, slashed education funding, allowed increased environmental degradation and privatised public services.
The "choice" for working people is between the ALP which promises to implement economic rationalism a bit slower and the Coalition which promises to do it faster.
In the last 10 years, company profits have increased at the cost of workers' wages and conditions, women's ability to work full-time and the existence of decently funded public services. We desperately need a party that actively takes the majority's side in the battle between the capitalists and the rest. The Socialist Alliance is that party.
The Australian Democrats have clarified their role as the third party of the establishment, despite a humanitarian approach on the refugee question. Having always claimed to represent small business, the Democrats' continued support for the GST (a 2001 Democrats policy statement says, "on the positive side, the new tax system has achieved the objective the Democrats wanted") indicates that party's anti-working class nature. This is confirmed by an industrial relations policy that supports legal restrictions on workers' right to organise.
The Socialist Alliance stands proudly on the side of the majority and against the corporate elite. Its members, including Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Victorian branch secretary Craig Johnson, are at the forefront of defending workers' right to organise, to fight for better pay and campaign for decent welfare, education and health systems.
The alliance is uncompromisingly on the side of the working class. It was initiated by the Democratic Socialist Party and the International Socialist Organisation, and involves seven other working-class parties.
The Socialist Alliance calls for the abolition of the GST, big increases in taxes on big business and the wealthy, restoration of child-care subsidies and a 35-hour week with no loss in pay for all workers.
Vote for activists, not politicians
Socialist Alliance candidates are a diverse lot. They range from indigenous activists Sam Watson (Senate, Qld), June Mills (Senate, NT) and Clarrie Isaacs (Senate, WA) to key organisers of the May 1 stock-exchange blockades such as Sarah Peart (Senate, Vic), Alex Bainbridge (Senate, Tas), Lisa Macdonald (Reid, NSW), Kathy Newnam (SA ,Senate) and David Glanz (Wills, Vic). Refugees' rights campaigners Ian Rintoul (Senate, NSW) and Tony Dewberry (Senate, Vic), and shop stewards Tim Gooden (Corio, Vic) and Philip Chilton (Perth) are also on board.
Also running are NT drug legalisation campaigner Gary Meyerhoff (Senate, NT), Indonesian solidarity activists Max Lane (Lowe, NSW) and Pip Hinman (Senate, NSW), feminist and solicitor Karen Fletcher (Senate, Qld), environment activist Edda Lampis (Page, NSW) and 13 others.
They all have one thing in common: they are activists, not politicians. Socialist Alliance candidates believe that change will come only through people working together — through street protests, strikes and organised action.
Of course, they want to get elected. But not to line their own pockets. Every Socialist Alliance candidate has agreed that if elected, she or he will only accept the wage of an average skilled worker. They will donate the rest to feminist, anti-racist, peace and pro-worker campaigns.
Our candidates do not see their role as being separate from that of grassroots campaigners. This is the biggest difference between the Socialist Alliance and the Australian Greens.
The alliance would use its Senate positions, and the accompanying media coverage, to publicise anti-war actions, to build big public meetings to support refugee rights and to draw more people into struggle.
Alliance members will continue to urge those who vote for it to join the alliance in building the rallies. It will help to turn passive support into active political opposition. A vote for the Socialist Alliance is a vote for people-power and stronger campaigns.
Be part of something bigger
The fight for equality and social justice does not stop at national borders. More than half the planet's population live in abject poverty, often forced to work for just a few dollars a day. The Earth's precious environment is fast being chewed up and spat out by corporate marauders. The only response to this insanity is global solidarity with the oppressed.
In demonstrations from Seattle to Seoul, people have responded to the globalisation of corporate greed with the globalisation of solidarity. First World students have stood shoulder to shoulder with Third World workers, demanding that crippling debt be cancelled and the structural adjustment programs that force poor countries to put debt repayment above education and health be abandoned.
What makes the Socialist Alliance part of something bigger is its consistent and active support for the struggles of the oppressed. Whether through organising pickets outside the Pakistan embassy when the military took over, or supporting Turkish human rights meetings, Socialist Alliance members are integrally involved in almost every aspect of international solidarity.
Perhaps most importantly, the Socialist Alliance has placed, and continues to place, a high priority of involvement and support with the international movement for peace and the movement against corporate tyranny. Socialist Alliance members were key organisers of the S11 protests in Melbourne 2000, and of the 2001 May Day stock-exchange blockades, held simultaneously with protests around the globe.
That's why support for the Socialist Alliance at this election means more than just a local vote, it is a show of strength with the oppressed everywhere.
From Green Left Weekly, November 7, 2001.
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