More than 150 local and public housing residents attended a forum organised by the Public Housing Defence Network at the Brunswick Town Hall on October 4.
The forum focused on the problems with the Victorian state government’s Public Housing Renewal Program and, in particular, the plight of residents from the Gronn Place estate in West Brunswick who have been forced to leave as a result of the estate’s sell-off to private developers.
Australian parliamentarians are over-paid and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. By contrast the New Zealand Labour government has just frozen politicians’ pay for 12 months.
Nearly 100 workers at Note Printing Australia (NPA) in Craigieburn, which is owned by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), were locked out by their employer on August 10.
The workers have been campaigning for a wage rise of 3.5%. Their demand is in line with the appeal made by RBA Governor Philip Lowe to federal parliament in February, when he said that a generalised wage rise of 3.5% would help stimulate economic activity.
Sky News has been widely condemned for hosting a neo-Nazi on its TV station.
The November Victorian state election is fast approaching and candidates are being preselected by all of the main parties.
However, it is the formation of the Victorian Socialists, which consists of City of Yarra councillor Stephen Jolly, City of Moreland councillor Sue Bolton and lawyer Colleen Bolger — an unlikely alliance of the Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative — to contest the Northern Metropolitan Region in the Victorian Legislative Council that has aroused some serious attention from the left.
Residents of Fitzroy’s massive Atherton Gardens public housing estate rallied and then occupied the local office of the Housing Department on March 16.
The rally was organised by the Atherton Gardens Residents Association (AGRA) and was also attended by supporters of public housing including the Victorian Socialists.
The Victorian Socialists released this statement on the Batman byelection on March 18.
* * *
The Labor Party has managed to retain the seat of Batman, by offering a progressive and competent candidate in Ged Kearney, after years of imposing the right-wing powerbroker David Feeney on the electorate, as part of factional deals.
A coalition of socialists announced on February 5 that they are forming the Victorian Socialists to field a ticket to contest the Northern Metropolitan Legislative Council seat in the November state election.
Our political system is broken. The Liberals rule for their corporate mates. Labor is little better, tailing the political right and selling out its working class supporters to big money and developers.
It’s time for a genuine left alternative.
In the November 2018 state election, left wingers are uniting as the Victorian Socialists to get Yarra councillor Stephen Jolly elected to the upper house for the Northern Metropolitan Region.
We are for the poor against the rich, for workers against their bosses, for the powerless against the powerful.
