Pingers4Parliament: the campaign to get a socialist into the Senate

When Jordan van den Lamb, using his online pseudonym “purple pingers”, launched a website for renters to review their rental properties and real estate agents anonymously, he had no idea it would turn him into the “bane of all landlords”. Hating landlords is a big part of his life, however, so it’s a title he wears as an honour. Now, van den Lamb is taking his pro-renter, pro-worker platform to new heights by running for the Australian Senate with the Victorian Socialists in the upcoming federal election.

Shitrentals.org has become a database for renters to get information about potential rental properties that landlords don’t want prospective tenants to know about. Maybe it’s an ad that boasts a carpet floor but fails to mention that it squelches when you walk on it. Or it could be that you can’t bring your pet because a possum is living in the extraction fan. Perhaps you don’t need to bring your plants either, because there’s already one growing out of the kitchen floor. Some reviews have been so damning that landlords have offered him money to take them down—which he always refuses.

Van den Lamb started shitrentals.org for a few simple reasons. First, “the material conditions of the average renter are pretty shit, so you can just point at that and say, ‘That’s bad’”, he says. Second, “there’s really nothing in common between a renter and a member of the ruling class, so renters’ rights are something we can link to a broader struggle against the system”.

If elected, he plans to be quite the rabble-rouser. “I would shout at so many people; I’d be really excited about that”, he says. “I’d use question time to point the finger at people ... maybe a bit of swearing. I kind of want to see what the cafeteria is like, maybe throw some food at someone. And normal politics stuff, like trying to introduce bills or whatever.” Such a lack of respect for capitalist institutions is refreshing and appeals to many people.

Van den Lamb wants to use the Senate to challenge the anti-worker politics of the mainstream parties while building a movement of renters, students and workers outside of parliament. It’s an openly socialist approach to politics, which acknowledges that real change comes, not through respecting the institutions of capitalism, but by challenging them in all spheres. “If we got a socialist elected to parliament, we could shake some stuff up”, he says.

The campaign has already begun shaking up stuff. In early December, van den Lamb and the Victorian Socialists launched the “Empty Homes Crime Scene” campaign. The campaign involves placing bright yellow stickers on empty homes, exposing them as crime scenes for sitting empty during a housing crisis.

It got the attention of the landlords, too. The president of the Real Estate Buyers Agent Association of Australia “slammed” it as “quite extremist”. Van den Lamb is also part of the Renters and Housing Union (RAHU), where he has helped to organise empty home occupations.

They recently occupied three Brunswick homes that had been empty for almost 25 years cumulatively. Also in December, he was on the picket line with striking Woolworths warehouse workers. These are the sorts of actions that van den Lamb would use his Senate position to make even bigger.

“Victorian Socialists isn’t like the other parties, where they ask you to vote once every few years”, he explains. “Politics is something we want you to do every day—at home, on campus, in the workplace, wherever. Get involved.”

The Pingers4Parliament campaign is travelling all across Victoria. After a large forum in Bendigo in January with socialist councillor Owen Cosgriff, the campaign is going to Geelong, Ballarat, Castlemaine, Shepparton and beyond. Van den Lamb wants to bring his left-wing platform to the entire state.

That platform includes establishing a public builder to construct 1 million new homes, a five-year rent freeze and scrapping negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. Other policies include putting politicians on a worker’s wage, reversing privatisation, fighting for climate justice and standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Achieving such a vision will not come simply through getting a socialist into parliament—something van den Lamb regularly emphasises. But a socialist in parliament could be a voice for the struggles of ordinary people both inside and outside of parliament. Yelling at Liberals in the Senate in the morning, speaking at a rally in the afternoon, going to an organising meeting in the evening—all in a day’s work for a socialist parliamentarian.

These are the steps that van den Lamb and the Victorian Socialists are taking to rebuild the socialist movement in Australia.