Markets are neither free nor efficient, and they are bad for the environment. Market choice is not cheap. While that may sound like a timeless left-wing credo, it's also a simple assessment of Australia's 20 years of privatisation and market-oriented restructure of electricity supply.
Outside small left-wing dissident circles (from Keynesians to Marxists), operating the power industry according to market principles has become an unquestioned and unspoken assumption.
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The following resolution was adopted by the Socialist Alliance national council meeting on June 10.
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鈥 If socialism is not just to be a good idea, it has to become a movement of the working class and other oppressed groups. It flows from this that to build the socialist movement we have to have a permanent focus on linking up with the activists and leaders of the working class and oppressed groups who are fighting capitalist oppression.
Representatives from the Environment Centre NT (ECNT) and the Amateur Fishermen鈥檚 Association of the NT (AFANT) travelled to Mataranka on June 13 to host a public meeting about water allocations in the region.
The Country Liberal Party government has made changes to the allocation process, which threatens the Roper River region鈥檚 environment, as well as pastoral and Indigenous interests.
The Victorian government continued its attack on civil rights last week with the announcement that new prison cells would be built at train stations for use by protective services officers (PSOs).
Moreland City Council has voted to accept an offer from the Victorian government to fund the installation of CCTV cameras on Sydney Road in Brunswick.
The offer was made following the rape and murder of Brunswick resident Jill Meagher in a side street near Sydney Road last year.
Three councillors voted against the decision: Socialist Alliance councillor Sue Bolton, and Greens councillors Samantha Ratnam and Lenka Thomson.
Like most sectors of society, the education system in Australia is under attack. For decades, education has been underfunded, so when Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that she intended to fund the Gonski reforms, many people were temporarily relieved.
Then she said that, to pay for primary and high school education reforms, the government would cut funding to universities. Private schools won鈥檛 lose funding and, in some cases, will get more. Yet the ailing TAFE system would get nothing.
So much for an education revolution.
This is a slightly edited text of a presentation made by Dave Holmes at the 鈥淥rganising for 21st century socialism鈥 seminar, held in Sydney on June 9. Holmes is a leading member of the Socialist Alliance in Melbourne.
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Today I want to talk about how socialists need to work to win mass influence and how that relates to the unity process between Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative.
A new website has published the biggest set of immigration detention records in Australia to date. It will provide unprecedented verification of the endemic self-harm and psychiatric crises that refugee rights campaigners have independently reported for years.
Socialist Alliance candidate for Fremantle, Sam Wainwright introduces the Socialist Alliance campaign to a packed out candidates forum organised by GetUp.
The statement below was released by the Socialist Alliance on June 5.
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Liah Lazarou has been pre-selected by the Socialist Alliance to run for the seat of Adelaide in the federal election in September.
Lazarou is a communications student and a committed grassroots activist. She has been involved in organising workers, students and young people as a member of the Socialist Alliance since 2006.
During this year alone, an estimated 128 people have drowned or vanished trying to seek asylum in Australia. By June 14, up to seven asylum boats trying to reach Christmas Island had foundered, sunk or been stranded.
This includes the boat that sank in Indonesia鈥檚 Sunda Strait in April, when Australian authorities failed to give accurate coordinates of the foundering vessel to Indonesian search and rescue. Up to 58 people drowned, 53 of whom were never retrieved.
Information revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden about the PRISM spy program 鈥 which used data from giant internet companies, such as Google and Facebook, to carry out mass surveillance of people outside the US 鈥 has provided new evidence about the warrantless spying on civilians by the US government.
Although a government spying on civilians is hardly new and will not come as a surprise to many people, what is concerning about this case is the size and number of companies involved and the apparent ease with which this data was obtained.
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