Analysis

This federal election is taking place at a time when the need for radical social and economic change is palpable: the escalating climate crisis and rampant and growing inequality are two major symptoms of the bankruptcy of capitalism.

The following manifesto was drawn up by rural and city-based activists.

A key federal election issue, which the carefully stage-managed leaders’ debates are ignoring, is one on which all our lives depend: access to clean drinking water.

These are the socialist candidates running in the federal election, putting forward a radical, anti-capitalist alternative to the status quo.

Fifty years ago, an industrial penal powers dispute provoked the biggest strike wave in Australia's post-war history. Jim McIlroy looks at the 1969 'Free Clarrie O'Shea' campaign and its lessons for unions today.

'I’m a 15-year-old activist and climate warrior. If you had asked 5-year-old me what I was scared of, I would’ve said the monster in my cupboard. Ten years later and I’m scared of the monster in Parliament House', says Parker Craig.

Another federal election looming and, of course, working people and trade unions want to see off the reactionary Coalition government in Canberra. Experience tells the union movement that we should always keep our powder dry, argues Brian Boyd.

Activists from the Australian Council of Trade Union’s campaign to “change the rules” for workers were told the day before pre-polling started that its official how-to-vote for the May 18 federal election would call on voters to put Labor first.

Disappointed, though not too surprised by the decision, some activists have decided not to hand out for the campaign.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten’s pledge to subsidise dental care for pensioners and Senior's Health Care Card holders if elected to government should be welcomed. But it is only a first step toward the kind of universal public dental care we need.

The bizarreness of Australian politics was summed up in multi-millionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer’s election advertisement accusing Labor of “supporting the big end of town”. He's right, though he is in no position to point the finger, writes Carlo Sands.

Aspiring PM Bill Shorten’s promise on April 23 to help boost gas companies’ bottom lines is as much about currying political favor with corporate mates as it is perpetuating the fiction that more gas will reduce energy prices, writes Pip Hinman.

A recent war exercise involving United States Marines seizing an island off the coast of Japan is being touted as part of the US military strategy to challenge China for control of the South China Sea. But little attention is being given to the potential role of the Marines being stationed in Darwin, writes Bevan Ramsden.