The Victorian Socialists hosted a forum, Stop the Drive to War, at Melbourne’s Trades Hall on 3 June to try to build a coalition against the militarisation of Australia, the expansion of the nuclear industry, and the AUKUS deal and drive to war with China.
More than 200 people attended the event, which featured as speakers Victorian Socialists Secretary Corey Oakley, anti-nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney, NSW South Coast Labour Council Secretary Arthur Rorris and lifelong socialist Diane Fieldes. The event also raised $2,300 to send anti-war student activists to the National Union of Students conference in Brisbane to try to start a student anti-AUKUS campaign.
Sweeney, a co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, described nuclear technology as an existential threat to humanity. He pointed to the terrifying fact that the weapons-grade nuclear waste from the AUKUS submarines will need to be managed for 100,000 years, an impossible task that will fall to the Department of Defence, with its chain-of-command culture of secrecy and lack of expertise.
Rorris noted the devastating impact a nuclear submarine base in Port Kembla would have on the community and the environment, undoing the hard campaign work being put into setting up renewable energy sources in the region.
To build a strong anti-war movement, Fieldes urged activists to learn lessons from previous anti-war campaigns, such as those against World War One and the Vietnam War. She noted the mass demonstrations and endless strikes that led to success in these campaigns, not a reliance on electoral politics.
“We need to end the US alliance, kick the bases out of Australia and end the AUKUS deal”, said Oakley.
The fight against Australian participation in an impending US-led war against China will be built in workplaces, on the campuses and on the streets. So, as Fieldes concluded, “Let’s be ready!”
Daniel Andrews, in one of his last acts as Victorian premier, announced that Melbourne’s 44 public housing towers will be demolished. In an audacious giveaway to developers, the sites will be opened up to private development.
“Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Zero!”
Two record-breaking union meetings at Melbourne University have voted overwhelmingly for another week-long strike, starting on 2 October.
Refugee women desperate for visas are walking 650km from the office of Immigration Minister Andrew Giles in Melbourne to Parliament House in Canberra.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price could well become as synonymous with the far right as Pauline Hanson. Four weeks out from the referendum on the Voice, she cemented her position as one of Australia’s leading white supremacists with her comments at the National Press Club about how colonisation has been a wonderful thing for Aboriginal people. She railed against “separatism” (any acknowledgement that Aboriginal people are oppressed) and implored people to recognise that Aboriginal disadvantage is not due to racism but is the result of something “much closer to home”.
Dan Andrews, who has just resigned after nine years as Victorian premier, was probably the most controversial Labor leader since Gough Whitlam or indeed Jack Lang. Andrews was detested by the right as “Dictator Dan”, a man out to destroy all the “freedoms” so beloved by arch reactionaries and libertarians, such as the right of business owners to put profits above basic health measures.