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 […]

Just as changing Liberal leaders won’t change the fundamentals, neither will dumping Shorten for a fake leftie like Albanese or Plibersek, or promoting a smooth right-winger like Tony Burke.

There is a message for activists and socialists in the fall of Abbott. It wasn’t Labor who defeated him. It certainly wasn’t Shorten. It was those Aboriginal, education, refugee, Medicare, feminist and other activists, the gay community and their supporters, the teachers, nurses, public servants, wharfies, building workers etc etc etc actually fighting against Abbott and his rotten policies and sending a message to the wider community about Abbott’s rotten policies and the fact you could reject them and resist them.

It is the same message we need to develop in fighting Turnbull’s neoliberalism and that of whoever is leading Labor at the next election. On to the streets to fight for equal love, against the closure of remote communities, against climate change, to free the refugees, for women’s liberation and so on. Close down our workplaces to defend jobs and wages.

We the people got rid of Abbott. We can get rid of the Liberals’ good cop, Turnbull, too. But we don’t want to see him replaced in 2016 with Bill Shorten as the neoliberal in sheep’s clothing. If we don’t fight we lose. Unite and fight whoever is in charge of the bosses’ neoliberal project.

The head of the Left Front in France, Jean-Luc has Mélenchon has called, together with the French Greens (Europe Écologie – Les Verts or EELV), for a mobilisation in the streets of France in support of Greece. He says that there is no time to waste to offer the French people a way to express solidarity with the Greek people and to defend their own independence before France too is challenged [by the troika] just like the Greeks. In light of the European Central Bank attack, and following the lead of the Left Front in France, maybe the Left should organise demonstrations across the globe where feasible in support of the Greek people and Government?

There is no alternative to defeating the neoliberalism of Abbott and the neoliberalism of the Labor Party than class struggle; massive, unified strikes.

A Wave of Strikes Shake Brazil

It is time for strikes. After the huge mobilizations last June, primarily the youth, now it is the working class and they are shaking Brazilian cities.

It is time for students, staff and the public to reclaim our Universities from the snake oil sales men and women of neoliberalism. Occupy our Universities. Close them down to win a new era in higher education.

Workers are angry and looking for a lead. Socialist Alternative at the moment is much too small to give the call for action, but our unions are not. The all union members meeting on Tuesday of the Victorian Trades Hall Council has the potential to refocus the anger in the hands of rank and file union members and to mobilise workers as workers against the attacks on them and the poor. That is where the power to beat the Budget lies.

Stop work to stop the bosses’ Budget.

The fact that over 100000 people turned out across Australia to demonstrate against this Government should give us hope that we can continue the fight and build a mass movement against Abbott and neoliberalism. Let’s try anyway and see what happens.

Close down these detention centre concentration camps. Bring the asylum seekers from Indonesia and Malaysia to Australia for processing while they live in the community. Hope, not fear. Love, not hate. Refugees, not racists.

To see that happen will require a Herculean effort on our part since the Abbott government has gone murderously on the attack against refugees. We must therefore fight back strongly in their defence. The first steps to do that are demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne. Others will be announced soon and posted when I have details. Join us in the fight to defend refugees and by extension all those who will come under attack from this rotten viciously ruling class government.