As the rich and powerful have always done, Clive Palmer is boasting he will spend $100 million on influencing the outcome of the federal election. Peter Boyle reports.
federal elections
The Socialist Alliance will field two long-term activists for the Victorian Senate on People and Planet before Profit platform, reports Chloe DS.
Veteran socialist councillor Sue Bolton has been pre-selected to run for the Socialist Alliance in the federal seat of Wills, reports Jacob Andrewartha.
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.
The farcical political posturing over electric cars by Coalition Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his minister for small and family business Senator Michaelia Cash says a lot about the state of Australian politics.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg only mentioned the word “climate” twice in his election budget speech, and almost as an afterthought.
The mining and energy division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining, Maritime and Energy Union (CFMMEU) does not seem to have a strategy for life after coal, if the leaked minutes from its Queensland division’s December meeting can be believed.
It intends to cling tightly to the coalmining multinationals and hope for the best as global climate and renewable energy policies kick in.
It is increasingly clear that we need more public transport to reduce air-polluting travel and provide much-needed sustainable jobs.
But state governments are captive to the road industry. The result is poor planning, expanding and expensive road tolls and more carbon pollution.
The following is the Socialist Alliance’s Sustainable Transport policy — an example of what an alternative transport plan could look like.
***
Following its successful November state election campaign, the Victorian Socialists held its inaugural conference on February 16, attended by more than 230 members.
The Socialist Alliance has a vision for a better world — and we are running in the federal election to share that vision and help make it become a reality.
The 2016 federal election has confirmed the continuing decline of Australia's two-party system. The relative stability that characterised the decades after World War II was shaped by a phase of unprecedented economic growth, record low unemployment and mass home ownership. But that is long gone, in fact it was an aberration. Our system of single member electorates helped paper over the current period of rising economic insecurity, but inevitably politics is catching up.
The federal election is now over and the final outcome is still being worked out, but the winners and losers are becoming clearer by the day.
The two biggest losers were the major parties. While the Coalition retained enough seats to still be able to govern, it lost its sizable majority in the lower house and is facing an even more hostile Senate.
The Labor Party recovered several seats overall, but it still managed to record its second lowest number of votes in a Federal election since World War II.
Anger with the two major parties was the clear winner this federal election as a quarter of the electorate gave their first preference to independents, Greens or minor parties.
The Socialist Alliance (SA) ran in the Senate in three states, and in four lower house seats. Despite its blanket exclusion from the corporate media, its reliance on small donations and its radical message, its votes increased in two lower house seats, dipped in two others and increased our Senate vote in NSW and WA compared to the previous election.
Two weeks into a protracted election campaign, it is looking ever-more likely that climate change is to be placed way down the order of business – at least for the major parties.
The contest over climate change that characterised the previous three federal elections seems to have disappeared off the political radar despite the issue being more urgent than ever.
The Socialist Alliance has selected a Victorian Senate team of Lalitha Chelliah and Tim Gooden, and candidates Zane Alcorn for the seat of Wills and Sue Bull for the seat of Corio.
I live and work as a nurse in Fremantle and I'm the Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Fremantle in this year's federal election.
The Socialist Alliance recognises that not only has corrupt, business-as-usual politics caused a deepening social and climate crisis, but that those entrenched and greedy interests are unwilling and incapable of providing real solutions. Major system change is needed.
There is a growing despondency amongst large sections of the community; real anger and frustration in the way things are going. And rightly so.
Pages
