En Passant

Hong Kong socialist Lam Chi Leung in Socialist Worker UK says the current protests sweeping the country show the politicisation of ordinary people The government in Hong Kong has suspended a planned bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. The climbdown follows huge demonstrations. On the morning of 12 June, forty thousand Hong Kong citizens […]

It looks as if the government is in a bit of hot water thanks to Barnaby Joyce. If you listen to Barnaby explain the water buy back issue, the problem was and is not him but ‘Labor, Labor, Labor, Labor, Labor. ‘ The government has a water buy-back scheme to help save the Murray-Darling Basin. […]

The Turnbull Government is in complete disarray and every day brings some revelation of further incompetence, I write in Independent Australia​.

  Barnaby Joyce’s High Court expulsion from Parliament is just a byproduct of the Constitution’s racist Section 44, says John Passant in Independent Australia

The future of journalism and democracy lies in news and analysis that reflects the interests of ordinary people, I write in Independent Australia.

The refugee protest at Parliament House was a great display of democracy, bringing the voice of voiceless refugees to the attention of the wider public. It interrupted for a few minutes the daily posturing of the wafflers and trough sniffers in Parliament and highlighted the lives permanently interrupted on Manus Island and Nauru. This is what democracy looks like.

This is a statement by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (DSİP) of Turkey on 16 July 2016 against the coup attempt. They finish off by saying: ‘The fight against the coup must be a fight for democracy, it must continue and be turned into a fight against the restrictions on democracy. Those who want to set up a military junta cannot win! The people will win! ‘

200 local community members attended the first meeting of the ‘Inner West Council’ imposed by Mike Baird. The community sent a clear message to the administrator Richard Pearson when he was forced to leave the meeting after he claimed it had become ‘untenable’… This is local democracy, and Baird cannot take it from us.

Duncan’s contribution on Q&A on Monday night was a lightning rod of class clarity. That is why the ruling class is trying to silence his message and punish him and anyone else who might expose the rotten reality of Australia today. Defend democracy. Defend Duncan.

Abolishing the Senate would be the first step in democratising the bourgeois institution of Parliament.