More than just ‘rates, roads and rubbish’: Victorian Socialists vie for local councils

If you’d asked Victorians what they were most looking forward to in 2024, local council elections probably wouldn’t have made even the top 20. Many people probably only ever interact with their local council to dispute a parking fine or to order a new wheelie bin—hence the cliché that local government is about three Rs: rates, roads and rubbish. While road maintenance and garbage collection are vital, they’re not likely to be the subject of the next gripping political drama.

That being said, there’s no shortage of corruption and intrigue in local government, which is one reason the major parties often prefer to run in something approaching “incognito mode” in council elections. Scandals, dodgy dealings and “governance issues” (the official euphemism) are commonplace.

It’s no wonder, then, that most people expect little from their local council and get about as much. But that’s exactly what, in their own small way, Victorian Socialists (VS) have set out to change at council elections taking place in Victoria via postal ballot in October.

VS want to inject another ‘R’ into the local councils: radical politics. Across the state, some 80 Victorian Socialists candidates will be running on an unashamedly radical platform that highlights just what councils could and should be doing for working people.

That includes Jorge Jorquera, Victorian Socialists’ first and only elected representative, who will be running for re-election to the Maribyrnong Council in Melbourne’s inner west. “People think councils just deal with small problems”, Jorquera told Red Flag, “but the simple reality is that behind every one of those small problems is a bigger problem. Whether it’s fixing a pothole or putting in a new sports field, there’s always a bigger problem, and it’s usually spelled with a ‘c’—it’s capitalism”.

Take the cost-of-living crisis, for example. In the latest Ipsos Issues Monitor poll, which surveys Australians on what they see as the main “issues facing the nation”, rising costs ranked as the number one concern by far. Number two on the list was housing, and number three was the economy. In other words, it’s cost of living first, second and third.

“The cost of living and access to affordable housing are the issues that come up over and over”, Darebin Council candidate Cat Rose told Red Flag, “and all levels of government, including local councils, are responsible for walking away from this generational crisis”.

There are plenty of things councils could be doing. They could start with council rates. Victorian Socialists are calling for rate relief for low-income households—a simple measure that could make a real difference. By doing this, councils could also set an example and put pressure on state and federal governments to act in other ways.

Then there’s the rising unaffordability of housing, which is at its worst since records began in 1995. Tens of thousands of people have joined Victoria’s social housing waiting list over recent years. To add insult to injury, it was recently revealed in a report by Prosper Australia that across Melbourne around 100,000 homes sat empty or underused in 2023.

It’s little wonder when the major parties have for decades pushed neoliberal policies that have turned housing more and more into an investment asset for the rich rather than something that meets the fundamental human need for shelter. Property investors are forecast, according to an analysis undertaken by the Parliamentary Budget Office at the request of the Greens, to receive $165 billion in tax breaks over the next ten years. Meanwhile, public housing residents are being evicted from their homes as governments dismantle what’s left of Australia’s diminishing stock. In Victoria, social housing now represents only 2.9 percent of all housing stock, the lowest proportion of any state.

Councils should be fighting, with all the means at their disposal, to change this appalling situation.

One way they could do that is by making use of their powers to approve or reject proposals for new developments in their area. “We’ve got to use those powers now while we’ve got them”, Jorquera says. He’s referring to the fact that the state government recently moved to strip back council planning powers and give a freer hand to property developers, who never miss an opportunity to complain about council “red tape”.

Victorian Socialists say councils need to fight to keep those powers and use them to push for developments that put people before profit by, for example, imposing 30 percent public and community housing inclusions on large private developments. Measures like that could start to address the dire and growing need for affordable housing and put downward pressure on the cost of housing in general.

VS candidate for Merri-bek City Council Louisa Bassini, a community lawyer and renters’ rights advocate, says these kinds of policies are popular with voters she’s spoken to. “No-one seems to think that it’s fair”, she explains, “that such huge profits are being made out of housing when people are struggling to afford it, and public amenities are inadequate”.

Councils themselves have been run down by decades of neoliberalism. “Potholes are a good example”, says Jorquera. “One of the reasons they don’t get fixed in due time is that councils are paying millions of dollars on things like that because of outsourcing and privatisation. Here in Maribyrnong, it has cost millions of dollars to put in 200 metres of a bike lane, because it’s all outsourced.” One of Victorian Socialists’ core policies is to oppose any further privatisation of council services and assets.

Even where councils’ direct powers are limited, there’s nothing to stop them from putting their resources into helping put some power back into the hands of ordinary people.

For example, Jorquera wants councils to establish an information service for renters. “In the average local government area”, he says, “40 percent of people are renting. But with councils based on ratepayers [i.e. property owners] renters are basically not part of the equation. Every council should have a rental information service that protects the rights of renters. No council, as far as I know, has one of those”.

As for bigger political questions, Victorian Socialists candidates don’t have much time for the idea that councils should just stick to “roads, rates and rubbish”. And they have a solid record as long-term community activists. “People are paying attention to what’s happening in the world, and they expect local councils to as well”, says Bassini. In February this year, she organised an illegal walkout for Palestine at her workplace—one of the only examples of industrial action by workers for Palestine since the solidarity movement erupted last October.

Jorquera has been putting socialist principles into practice at a local council level since his election in 2020. Thanks to him, the Maribyrnong City Council became the first council in Victoria to join the national #racismNOTwelcome campaign, which put up anti-racist street signs across the council area. He has also initiated discussion in the council about recognising 26 January as a day of mourning, not one of celebration.

Jorquera’s efforts meant that his council became one of the first to fly the Palestinian flag in protest at Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. That set the ball rolling on campaigns in local councils across Melbourne for solidarity with Palestine, campaigns that members of Victorian Socialists played a significant role in.

And we should remember that it’s not just our side that’s getting organised. In America, the far right have been very active in local politics, agitating on school boards and city councils to push their reactionary agenda. In Australia, right-wing bigots have taken note. Last year, far-right groups protested against drag queen story-time events organised by local councils across Melbourne. Shamefully, several councils caved to the pressure and handed the bigots a win. This year, it was reported, far-right groups aligned with the reactionary My Place movement, are making a push in the local government elections. Even on local councils, we need people prepared to stand against all forms of bigotry and take the far-right threat seriously.

The council election campaign is part of Victorian Socialists’ larger project of trying to rebuild socialist politics into, in the words of VS member Jerome Small, “a living, breathing, organising, controversialising political force in this country’s political life”. That means a totally different approach to politics at every level—one that’s about putting power back into the hands of ordinary people and building their confidence to fight and demand more from a system that offers them less and less.

In the Hume council area in Melbourne’s outer north, where IT worker Mutullah “Mutu” Can Yolbulan is a VS candidate, the campaign is already yielding results. “We’ve already received a commitment from the council [to build] a one-hectare park on Broadmeadows Reserve, and we will make sure that park gets built”, Mutu says. “If we were able to achieve this now, imagine how we could improve the rest of our city in a four-year term and improve the day-to-day lives of working-class people.”

The 2024 council elections will be the first since legislation introduced by disgraced former Labor Party local government minister and veteran branch-stacker Adem Somyurek abolished multi-member wards in all but one Melbourne council and many regional ones. That means councils are now divided up into smaller wards with one elected member each. Labor is worried about losing ground on councils, and this was a transparent attempt to elbow out smaller parties, which benefit from more proportional representation systems.

That will make things harder for a small party like Victorian Socialists, but its candidates and campaigners remain hopeful that, when all the votes are counted, a new face or two will have been added to the current small crop of socialist local councillors in Melbourne. Even short of that though, the party’s council campaign has further established its credentials as a socialist electoral alternative in Victoria, at the same time as many of its members have continued to play a central role in the Palestine solidarity movement and other areas of grassroots organising and activism. This is a solid platform to build on in the months and years ahead.