En Passant

There is something truly inspiring about seeing thousands of mostly black South Africans blockading roads and hurling rocks at police in Soweto, Johannesburg, again, writes Ben Hillier in Socialist Alternative. In the same district that saw the historic June 1976 uprising, which was the beginning of the end for apartheid, dissent and rebellion is once […]

A long term solution must involve recognition of prior ownership and sovereignty, paying the rent and negotiating a treaty with aboriginal people.

Newspaper and other reports are describing the Australian Tax Office’s action in issuing a Departure Prohibition Order against Paul Hogan, an order preventing him leaving Australia, as draconian, heavy handed, and even that it makes Australia a police state. It seems I am the voice of reason in all of this, having been quoted in […]

‘Independent MPs will do nothing to solve the problems facing workers and students in Australia today. Instead, we need a clearly left-wing alternative that is prepared to stand up for workers’ rights, against racism and war, and which will resist the pro-capitalist policies of Labor and the Liberals.’  So wrote Corey Oakley in Nothing positive about […]

The Greens, and the vast majority who voted for them, see the Party as being to the Left of the ALP. With the balance of power in the Senate now is the time to prove it.

We are the terrorists. Bring the troops home.

Their stability is the stability of the gun and the dollar. Their certainty is the certainty of more profit for themselves. Let’s give them our stability and our certainty and rock their rotten sytem to its core.

Jack Waterford (‘Don’t blame the messengers, Julia’) points out in the Canberra Times of 23 August that Labor lost ‘even more [votes] to its left’.  The swing to the Greens of 3.8 percent was more than double that to the Conservatives. But I disagree with Jack that this means what Labor needs is a makeover of Julia Gillard as […]

Labor has done so badly in these elections because Labor’s appalling right-wing policies offered nothing to its working-class supporters.

The swing of 3.7 % to the Greens gives them almost 12% nationally. It offers the left an opportunity to argue our case with those who will become disillusioned with the Greens and their incapacity to fundamentally change anything. They support the profit system which is the root cause of our problems – climate change, […]