Since the election of Labor to government in 2014, Victoria’s police force has become more well armed, well resourced and well staffed than at any other time in the state’s history. The provision of $15 million by the Allan government for police to better brutalise Land Forces protesters—while hospitals and schools are being told to cut costs—is just the latest example.
When Labor was elected a decade ago, annual spending on the police was $2.27 billion. By 2021, it exceeded $4 billion, an increase of more than 75 percent. But that is just the baseline: the police receive significant funding on top of that. 
Minister for Police Anthony Carbines boasted last year in his budget estimates hearing submission about the government’s “record investment” of more than $4.5 billion since 2016 in addition to the police’s regular annual funding. This included an extra $685 million in 2016 for “technology, equipment and capability uplifts across the force”. Later in 2016, then Premier Daniel Andrews announced a further $2 billion “community safety” package, the biggest investment in the history of the police force. Rolled out over four years, the package included funding for 3,200 new police officers—the largest increase in police numbers in Victoria’s history—as well as for “critical equipment and hardware”. 
One piece of this “critical equipment” was semi-automatic rifles. In 2018, the government announced it was equipping at least 800 more police with these deadly weapons, at a cost of $25 million. Prior to 2018, only members of the Special Operations Group and Critical Incident Response Team were trained in the use of long-arm weapons, both already having access to semi-automatic weapons and machine guns. The 2018 announcement expanded the use of such weapons to the Operation Response Unit and officers in four regional areas. 
Victorian special operations police now have an arsenal that includes projectile launchers, chemical weapons detonators, pepper-ball guns, rubber-pellet grenades and stinger grenades that release smoke, light and eight-millimetre pellets. The extra weaponry was justified by the police minister, Lisa Neville, in 2018 as necessary to deal with “high risk events, like a terrorism event”. But the weapons have so far been deployed only against protesters.
The police’s air arsenal has also expanded. In 2020, the government spent $63 million acquiring three Leonardo AW139 helicopters—the “envy of many police forces around the world”, according to Air wing Inspector Craig Shepherd—and a Beechcraft Super King Air 350ER, reported by the Age
to be the first plane provided to the police in more than two decades. These aircraft have high-tech capacity to track people on the ground and can fly faster and further and can carry more people than older models.
It’s also not just specialist police that have become more heavily armed under Labor. In December 2021, the government announced that every front-line officer would have access to tasers, a weapon previously available only to special operations police. Last year, two women in New South Wales, one aged 95 and the other 47, were killed by police tasers, despite these weapons being touted as a less lethal alternative to conventional weapons. 
Measured in officer numbers, Victoria Police is now the largest law enforcement agency in the country. According to its 2022-23 corporate plan, the organisation has around 22,200 police personnel, a number which exceeds that of New South Wales, a state that has 1.4 million more people and three times the area. Victoria has more police per head of population than any other eastern state or the ACT. 
This has corresponded with a rise in the rate of incarceration in Victoria. According to the state’s Sentencing Advisory Council, Victoria’s imprisonment rate reached a record 122.9 people per 100,000 people in 2019, the highest level since the 1890s. 
Funding for police is prioritised by Labor over essential services like health and education. A Productivity Commission report on government services found that between 2013 and 2019, spending on police grew by 60 percent and prisons by 96 percent, while health and education spending grew by just 45 percent and 30 percent respectively. So while health workers struggle to treat patients and surgery wait times blow out with devastating human consequences, no expense is spared ensuring police are better placed to kill and maim people. 
The readiness demonstrated by police to use this greater arsenal of weaponry at the Land Forces protest, as well as at reactionary anti-lockdown protests before that, is to be expected. To justify the cost associated with the maintenance and replenishment of high-tech weaponry, the hardware must be shown to be necessary. This means finding opportunities to use it. In the absence of other threats, this has meant, and will increasingly mean, these military-grade weapons being used against protesters doing nothing other than exercising their democratic rights.

Louise O'Shea

The militarisation of Victoria Police under Labor

Israel’s war on Gaza has, up until recently, had a negligible impact on Australian campuses. Students have attended the regular protest marches that have been taking place in most capital cities, but the campuses themselves have remained relatively quiet. At Melbourne University, an institution with a long history of student activism, the student union shamefully even rescinded a motion it had adopted in support of Palestine under pressure from Zionists. 
On 23 April, all this changed. Inspired by the stand of US students at Columbia University who were brutally attacked by the NYPD on the orders of the university administration, students at Sydney University established their own Gaza solidarity encampment. Like the US students, their demands included that the university divest from weapons research, that the university and government break links with Israel and for an immediate end to Israel’s assault on Gaza. 
The students set up their camp at the heart of the campus, and it quickly became a hub of activity, with hundreds of students getting involved with painting banners, writing press releases, holding discussion groups and making announcements in lectures. The idea, as Students for Palestine convenor Jasmine Alrawi told Red Flag, is to “raise awareness and draw attention to the ways in which Israel’s genocide is being aided and supported by our own university, as well as to involve more students in activism and standing up for the cause of the Palestinians. Our government, the opposition, our university, our media and a lot of civil society in Australia support and defend Israel. Others are intimidated out of showing their support for Palestine lest they be slandered as anti-semitic. We’re here to show that intimidation no longer works. We are seeing the heartbreaking images of genocide, starvation and displacement with our own eyes, every day. And we refuse to be silent about it.”
The Australian National University in Canberra and Melbourne University were the next campuses to join the movement, with activists establishing similar camps a few days later. According to Students for Palestine member and ANU camp participant Carter Chryse, the camp has played host to “daily speak-outs and has attracted massive community support. We have had donations of all sorts of things and lots of words of encouragement. Dozens of students are staying out overnight and the numbers are growing.”
Encampments have since been established at the University of Queensland, Adelaide University, Curtin University, Monash University and more are planned. This represents the most serious explosion of national student protest since the movement against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s. 
Like in the US, university staff have thrown their weight behind the students. Branches of the National Tertiary Education Union have passed motions in support of the camps, have sent speakers to rallies and speak-outs at the camps, and some staff at the University of Melbourne have even brought their classes to the camps to both show solidarity and teach students about social justice activism. NTEU activist at Sydney University, Alma Torlakovic, who supports the campus protest camp, told Red Flag “Staff here support the right of students to protest, of course. But it’s more than that. Union members have watched what has happened to universities in Gaza—every single university in Gaza had been destroyed by January this year. That’s according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. Nearly 100 professors have been killed along with thousands of students. But when we speak out against this, we are treated like criminals or bigots. The level of repression and attacks on academic freedom in the US and Europe is shocking—professors have been sacked, investigated and disciplined for quite reasonably expressing concern about Israel’s war and sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians. We have a duty to stand up to this—to defend the right to criticise the powerful and to act on that criticism through protest.”
Unlike in the US, the campus administrators have so far opted to tolerate the encampments rather than repress them. Police have not been called, and students have been able to organise fairly freely. This has angered supporters of Israel, who see opposition to the current genocide as offensive and a form of bigotry. Australasian Union of Jewish Students president Noah Loven told the Australian
that Jewish student are “not safe” on campus because of the protests. But protesters object to the assumption that all Jews support Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, and that Jewish students are therefore offended by protests against it. “We’ve had Jewish students involved in the camp, they have spoken at rallies and have an organised presence here”, University of Queensland camp organiser Liam Parry-Mills told Red Flag, “And I know from communication with other protest organisers that that is the case at other camps around the country”. The Jewish Council of Australia has also expressed support for the protests, writing in a public statement that it “strongly rejects the claims that these protests are a threat to Jewish students and staff”.
Other supporters of Israel, like Chris Kenny writing in the Australian, attempt to discredit the protesters by implying or openly accusing them of supporting Hamas. Kenny spent his time at the Sydney University camp badgering students to condemn the 7 October attack. But as one of his targets, Palestine Action Group member Josh Lees, pointed out to Red Flag “The supporters of Israel aren’t continually called on to distance themselves from the deranged lunatics masterminding Israel’s genocide. But look at who makes up the war room: they’re religious fundamentalists using extreme violence to realise their vision of an expanded religious state.”
The eruption of student activism in support of Palestine is historic. It builds on a movement against the Gaza war that is without precedent in Australian politics. The media may have tried to bury it, but it is proving very difficult to repress. The students’ actions, along with the thousands who are regularly marching, moving motions on councils, picketing weapons companies and organising walkouts from work, are a source of hope in a world of brutality and war.

Palestine solidarity encampments spread across Australia

Sexism is so fundamental to our existence that we are not even aware of it much of the time. 
It starts from before we are even born. An experiment described by Annie Murphy Paul in her book Origins highlights the different ways pregnant women interpret the movement of their babies in utero. Those who knew they were expecting a boy were more likely to use words like “energetic”, “vigorous” and “jabbing” to describe the movement, while for girls it was “gentle”, “rolling” and “quiet”. 
This sort of unconscious bias shapes and curtails women’s potential throughout their lives. In her book Delusions of Gender, neuroscientist Cordelia Fine describes an experiment which showed that simply reminding university students about whether they’re a man or a woman at the beginning of a test, by asking them to tick a box, reduces women’s performance on the test compared to that of men; in the absence of such a reminder, men and women perform equally well. Even the “feminine” or “masculine” nature of the décor in the room where the test is held has a measurable impact on performance. If such subtleties can have a statistically significant effect, just imagine the cumulative effect of this conditioning over a lifetime. 
The sexist bias that plagues data collection and design has been documented by Caroline Creado Perez in Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men. Every area of design and technology is affected, from medical testing and drug development to building design, workplace temperature and tool size, all of which have wide-ranging and material effects on women’s health and lives. The male bias built into car safety testing, for example, means women are 49 percent more likely to be seriously injured in car accidents and 17 percent more likely to die than men. 
Then there are all the manifestations of sexism that we are conscious of, like unequal pay, lack of adequate maternity leave, limited access to child care, greater poverty on average for women throughout their lifetimes, greater risk of violence and death from intimate partners, sexualisation and objectification in daily life as well as in popular culture and advertising, to name just a few. 
There is not an aspect of life that isn’t affected by the gendered, and therefore sexist, nature of society in some way, from the most personal to the most public. 
So what can be done about this so all-pervasive form of inequality?
First, we—women and men—need to become as conscious as we can of sexism in our daily lives and strive to minimise it as best we can. We want women to be able to reach their potential and participate in whatever area of society, work and culture they want as equals. That means being sensitive to how the minutiae of behaviour—things like who dominates conversations and who gets listened to and taken notice of—affect women, who are used to being ignored, dismissed and generally treated as less important than men. It means treating women as equals, not sex objects, there merely to be admired or preyed on by men. And it means taking pro-active measures to push against the various subtle ways sexism shapes all sorts of human interactions. 
But even if we do everything we can to be alert to everyday sexism, it doesn’t alter the social reality around us that is reinforcing sexist ideas and norms as fast as we can reject them. 
So we also need a strategy for changing society and the inequalities that are structured into it and which every day normalise the subordinate position of women. 
In the immediate term, this means policies and services that enable women to participate as equals in paid work and the public sphere as much as possible—free, accessible child care and aged care, unlimited maternity leave, greater scrutiny of hiring and promotion to reduce discrimination against women, as well as higher wages in industries dominated by women, to name just a few. 
But on their own, these measures merely support women to undertake paid work more easily while they continue to take primary responsibility for caring as well. Hence the notorious “double burden” that plagues working women’s lives. In themselves, such reforms don’t challenge the idea that women are naturally nurturing and better suited to caring for others than men, who, by their nature, belong in positions of power. 
So, important as measures that enable women to participate fully in paid work and the public sphere are, they are not sufficient to bring about genuine equality or liberation. To achieve this, we need more radical change. In particular, we need to transform the way work is done, including breaking down the division between work in the formal economy and caring work, and the subordination of all work to profit making and capital accumulation. 
As long as most of us are expected to spend 40 hours or more a week performing waged labour—during which our “real” lives are on hold and we are under the control of a boss and doing work to generate profit for those who hire us rather than doing what is needed to keep ourselves and those around us alive, healthy and happy—the division of labour that so effectively supports this economic model will endure. Indeed, this is why it persists more then 50 years after most formal rights for women were won, including the right to equal pay, the right to work while married, the right to financial autonomy, the right to divorce and reproductive freedom. 
The bosses rely on the existence of a sub-class—women— to take responsibility for ensuring workers are looked after and fit for work, and that new generations of workers are produced who are willing and able to work. Women perform the majority of this work for free out of a sense of duty and because they genuinely care about the wellbeing of those around them. But the value to the bosses, who rely on that work to provide a productive workforce, is nevertheless enormous. 
A 2017 PWC report, “Understanding the unpaid economy”, found that unpaid work is worth $2.2 trillion to the Australian economy, equivalent to a third of GDP. Unpaid child care is the largest contributor, worth 25 percent of GDP, and would be by far the biggest industry in Australia if it was part of the formal economy. Domestic household tasks, including cooking and cleaning, are the next biggest category of unpaid labour. 
Having more women in the halls of power won’t be enough to change this. The halls of power are dedicated to strengthening the economy—i.e. generating more GDP through better exploiting workers and maximising the profits of business—and are dominated by the economic interests of the powerful few who control major corporations and industries. Waged labour and the status quo that ensures exploitation continues smoothly serve their interests, and those who challenge that soon find themselves on the outer. So while women have as much right as men to occupy parliaments and boardrooms, this is not a strategy for liberating women. 
To bring about the radical change that is necessary, we need to orient to an alternative source of power: the power the working class has collectively to challenge and transform society by mobilising at the point of production. Workers make everything, and they do it together. Rather than bosses directing this process, workers have the potential to decide democratically how and what to produce and for what purpose. 
Work and production could and should be reorganised to meet need—including the social need to care for everyone as well as the need to protect the planet from destruction. And because it could only be done collectively, cooperation, solidarity and fostering mutual respect are necessary to help strengthen working-class power. This is why we can be confident that the prejudice and inequality that are so rampant in capitalist society would be organically challenged and eventually overcome in the course of workers fighting for a socialist society, as has happened historically at high points of workers’ struggle. 
Working-class women aren’t necessarily conscious of the need for this sort of radical change to solve the problems they experience as a result of capitalism’s need both to exploit them and maintain their caring role. And nor are most male workers, who likewise have an interest in challenging waged labour and exploitation. But the reality is this is the only way to bring about a society of gender, as well as broader, equality, and to have a society that can meet people’s needs as a matter of priority, not as an afterthought or a ritualised hand-wringing every year on International Women’s Day. 
To get there, we need to start with rebuilding working-class consciousness and power from the bottom up. This is the radical origin of what was originally known as International Working Women’s Day when it was founded by socialist women in 1910 and celebrated under the slogan “The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism”. 
There is no easy way to do that, and we are currently a long way from the sort of consciousness and organisation needed to overthrow this system of inequality and prejudice. But if we want to avoid the cynicism or despair that comes from watching politicians carp on about women’s empowerment while they maintain policies that keep women down, or CEOs raising champagne glasses at International Women’s Day breakfasts while women languish on low wages in low-status jobs, we need some idea of what could actually transform the position of women. And we need to fight for those ideas wherever we are—at work, on university campuses and in every other area of life—and get together with other people doing the same, so that we can maximise our impact and form a larger pole of attraction for people who are continually pushed to radical conclusions by the injustices and atrocities of the capitalist system. That is the small but important step we can take towards women’s liberation, and the liberation of all humanity, in the here and now.

To end sexism, we need to destroy capitalism

The level of suffering in Gaza is more than the human mind can comprehend. As the war enters its twentieth week, it feels increasingly obscene to be going about daily life while an entire people are being systematically destroyed, their lives, histories and culture blown to pieces or buried under rubble. 
Normality in the face of such genocide is a quiet propaganda victory for the murderers: a violation of our collective humanity that we cannot stop, so have no choice but to tolerate. For the millions who have raged, spoken out or protested from afar, the feeling of impotence is unbearable. 
Two-thirds of Gaza’s population—1.4 million people—are desperately trying to survive in the 64-square-kilometre area around the border city of Rafah with almost no food, clean water, power or medical care. 
They were told to take shelter there by Israel, and that they would be safe. They have already faced bombing, and now, with Israel pulling out of ceasefire negotiations, a further catastrophic ground assault seems imminent. Much of the rest of Gaza is uninhabitable, and reports indicate the Egyptian government is establishing a camp on the border from which Palestinians will be transferred to a third country. 
Israel seems on the brink of wiping out Gaza as a viable Palestinian territory. 
It has not got to this point without help. Just in the time as Rafah has come under threat, the US has approved another weapons delivery that, according to the Wall Street Journal, “includes about a thousand each of MK-82 500-pound (227kg) bombs and KMU-572 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) that turn unguided munitions into precision-guided bombs”. US military aid to Israel so far sits at more than $14 billion, equivalent to roughly half the estimated cost of the war. 
The Australian government demonstrates a similarly obsequious devotion to Israel. For Foreign Minister Penny Wong, new atrocities are simply opportunities to reiterate Australia’s ongoing support and Australia was one of the first to cut its (measly $6 million) funding to the UN Relief Works Agency following an unsubstantiated allegation from Israel about its staff being involved in the 7 October attacks. 
And it’s not just at the level of foreign policy. At home, Labor is ensuring genocide is not merely tolerated, but actively cheered on. It is not enough that Israel gets unquestioned political, military and moral support to carry out genocide. Opposing it is now being cast as a new form of bigotry. The courage Labor couldn’t seem to muster to make the self-evident point that the No campaign against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament was racist, it has found when it comes to denouncing opponents of Israel’s genocide as anti-Semites. 
So while we watch on in horror as children are starved and killed, as men and women beg for relief and as an entire people and culture teeter on the brink of annihilation, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has rushed through legislation to ensure the privacy of Israel supporters in their online efforts to drive Palestinians and their sympathisers out of their jobs. 
Those of us who thought human feeling simply couldn’t be stirred in the hearts of the Australian political class have been proved wrong: the plight of people apologising for a genocidal regime has finally moved them. They will soon enjoy every protection the Australian state can offer as they slander, threaten and sack pro-Palestinians.
And why not— the Australian state acts the same way. As journalist Michael West has documented, pro-Palestinians who have faced death threats, arson attacks and improvised explosives placed outside their houses have had to fight to have the incidents investigated.
For these acts, no laws were rushed through parliament, no official messages of support from concerned politicians were forthcoming, no front-page newspaper spreads were designed to elicit sympathy. You only have to imagine the reaction should the situation have been the reverse to appreciate the extent of the double standard. 
The atmosphere that has been created—that conformity to Israel and whatever brutality it decides to inflict on the Palestinians is non-negotiable—is nothing short of chilling. The worse the crimes of our rulers, the less they are willing to tolerate dissent. 
We can only hope that at some point there will be some justice, that the criminals will in some way be held to account. In the meantime, we have a duty to raise our voices, to protest and to disrupt this sick system in any way we can.

Catastrophe looms in Rafah, but genocide must not be questioned

High school students in Melbourne taught the government and right-wing media a lesson when they walked out of class in their thousands on 23 November in support of Palestine. From Werribee to Greenvale, students came from all over the city to show their horror at Israel’s war on the people of Gaza, half of whom are children, and their disgust at the Australian government’s backing of the genocide.
“I’m here to support the cause of a free Palestine and to oppose war and occupation. There has been an occupation and genocide for 75 years, 75 years of this”, a Caroline Springs student told Red Flag. “I care about the lives of innocent people and the freedom of these people”, a Fitzroy/Collingwood student said.
The students’ contempt for those who presumed to lecture them about knowing their place and staying in school was palpable. “Kids in Gaza can’t go to school and haven’t been able to for weeks”, a student from Pascoe Vale Girls’ School said. “That’s what we’re protesting for: the right of everyone to go to school. Missing one afternoon seems very unimportant when you think about that.” 
A year 11 student from Caroline Springs, observed, “I’ve learned a lot coming here, meeting people and standing up with others for justice”, while another said they’d learned more being at the strike for two hours than “in an entire semester of history”. Another said that they were taught in school that genocide is bad and that so is remaining passive in the face of it, so it seemed natural to do what they could to prevent it happening again. “Isn’t that the point of education?”, the student asked. 
One of the organisers, socialist activist Ivy Bertrand, argued that the government should practise what it preaches: “If school is so important, fund our schools properly and stop spending so much on the military, including military support for Israel and the US! Our taxpayer dollars are being used to bomb schools and hospitals in Gaza and kill children instead of funding education and health care. How dare they lecture us about the importance of young people learning!” 
The solidarity the students repeatedly expressed for their fellow students in Gaza was profoundly moving, and stood in stark contrast to the daily efforts of the Albanese government to desensitise the public to the suffering it is greenlighting in Gaza. Whether it’s equivocating about the merits of starving an imprisoned population, as Foreign Minister Penny Wong infamously did, or repeating the absurd mantra about Israel “defending itself” while it slaughters defenceless civilians in cold blood, there is no atrocity too barbaric for the Australian Labor Party to defend. 
And the mainstream media reinforce this, demonising Arabs and Muslims and tirelessly presenting Jewish people as the most important victims of the war. A letter from the Jewish community allegedly signed by more than 6,000 people expressing disapproval of the high school walkout and demanding the government take a tougher stance against it enjoyed substantial airtime in the lead-up to Thursday’s action.
Many of the strike attendees expressed bemusement as to why anyone, Jewish or otherwise, would feel unsafe because of young people protesting the state-sanctioned murder of other young people. “This is a movement against violence and racism”, a Northcote High student said. “This protest is inclusive, Jewish students are welcome here, and it doesn’t matter about ethnicity or religion or culture; this is about being human”. A Coburg High student said she thought some of those attitudes stemmed from a “fear of Muslims”. 
The small number of Jewish participants in the march expressed similar views, with one woman, who was holding a placard which read “Jews say no to genocide of Palestinians. Not in my name”, telling Red Flag, “It’s not anti-Semitic to support the rights of oppressed people, and those people [the signatories to the letter] don’t represent the entire Jewish community”. 
The large attendance and defiant attitudes of the strike participants was not only a repudiation of tut-tutting politicians and organised Zionists, but also reflected a cynicism towards and disengagement from the mainstream media and their efforts to shape attitudes, at least among a substantial minority of young people.
“The media is very biased”, the Caroline Springs student said. “Only one side of the story is pushed.” It’s not hard to see why, with journalists from the commercial news channels sent to cover the strike repeatedly challenging the students about whether they were informed enough to be protesting, and interviewing motorists they hoped would smear the protesters for disrupting traffic. 
In contrast to the concern and solidarity on the part of school students for their counterparts in Gaza, not a single one of the six mainstream media journalists Red Flag asked confirmed that they were aware of Israel targeting journalists in its ongoing war against the Palestinians, including a report from just the day before of three journalists killed by Israel while reporting from the Lebanese border. This raises the question of who exactly belongs in school, as well as who has something to learn about compassion and solidarity. 
Underpinning the government opprobrium, Jewish community calls to shut down the strike and biased media coverage is a simple truth that was not lost on attendees: the establishment in Australia backs Israel down the line. That means smearing, discrediting and all too often criminalising those who dare to speak out for the Palestinians currently enduring unspeakable suffering at the hands of Israel. The students’ humanity and defiance in the face of this onslaught is a lesson to us all.
PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Hrkac

School students give lesson in solidarity

As millions of people around the world flood the streets in support of Palestine and to condemn their governments’ complicity in Israel’s genocide, many are demanding a ceasefire. In New York City, hundreds of brave Jewish protesters occupied the Statue of Liberty holding banners reading “ceasefire now”. In several major cities, including London, Washington, DC, and Melbourne, record numbers chanted the same thing. The hash tag #CeasefireNOW has been trending on social media for weeks, and is being taken up by millions. 
The ubiquity of the demand reflects people’s desperation to see an end to the relentless bombing that is killing devastating numbers of Palestinians and causing unimaginable suffering. And it is a testament to the scale of popular anger at the blood-soaked Western leaders who reject such an idea out of hand, lest they appear in any way disapproving of Israel’s atrocities. 
There is without question an urgent need to stop the daily murder of Palestinians by Israel. But to be meaningful, any ceasefire must bring a permanent end to Israel’s offensive, and it must be accompanied by immediate measures to prevent further suffering in Gaza and to rebuild what has been destroyed. 
A temporary halt to bombing—whether via a ceasefire or the contemptible “humanitarian pause” advocated by Western leaders—is no solution. It is a victory for spin more than humanitarianism, intended to defuse criticism of Israel so that its military objectives may be better achieved. And for Israel, temporary breaks in bombing can be strategic: urging Palestinians to move south, closer to the crossing to Egypt, during any pause in fighting advances the campaign of ethnic cleansing more than it makes Palestinians “safer”. And it means Israel can treat anyone who remains as enemy combatants and therefore legitimate targets for further massacres. 
So any ceasefire must be permanent if it is to advance the cause of the Palestinians. But even that, on its own, is not sufficient to meet the scale of the humanitarian disaster that is unfolding in Gaza. Urgent and immediate relief is also needed: food, medical supplies, water, fuel, electricity, search and rescue equipment, construction materials and more need to be moved into Gaza both to ensure the remaining population can survive and to ensure that Gaza becomes habitable again. Simply stopping the bombing and leaving Gaza as uninhabitable rubble only further aids the ethnic cleansing Israel is hoping to achieve. If Palestinians are not to be permanently displaced, homes must be rebuilt urgently, along with basic infrastructure like hospitals, markets, roads and schools. 
The terms of any ceasefire are also important: Israel is likely to agree to a ceasefire only if it involves the permanent expulsion of Hamas and any other resistance groups from Gaza. Israel and the US are already in talks about reinstalling the corrupt Palestinian Authority there, possibly aided by a long-term occupation by UN, Arab or even Israeli forces. This would be a significant victory for Israel and defeat for the Palestinians. A ceasefire that strengthens Israel’s stranglehold on the lives of Palestinians in Gaza will be no victory. 
Even if a permanent ceasefire on favourable terms could be achieved, a return to the status quo as it was prior to 7 October should not be confused with peace or justice. Even the best ceasefire will not end the siege Israel imposes on Gaza, a siege that has been collectively punishing Gaza’s 2 million inhabitants every day for nearly two decades. It will not end the expansion of settlements into Palestinian land on the West Bank and the apartheid conditions Palestinians are forced to live with day in, day out. It will not disarm one of the world’s most well-armed states, which oppresses and terrorises the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel every day of their lives.
Justice for the Palestinians is simply not possible so long as they are living in the shadow of Israel, backed by the most powerful state on Earth and its despicable allies like Australia, whose slavish devotion to every Israeli atrocity is a chilling warning of what we can expect in the wars that are yet to come. These barbaric regimes have to be brought down and replaced with something altogether different if we want to see a world without oppression and war.

Hajar Riad

Israel’s bombing must stop, but Palestinians need more than a ceasefire

Hope is a scarce commodity in 2023. The threat of military confrontation between the US and China looms large and is fuelling military expansion on a terrifying scale. An aggressive far right is making gains in an alarming number of countries, enjoying both electoral success and gathering support online and on the streets. And the instability in the world economy is condemning ever greater numbers to poverty and economic insecurity, while a minority continue to accrue obscene wealth. 
The Marxism 2023 conference, held in Melbourne over the Easter weekend, proved an important antidote to this grim picture. As veteran Indigenous right activist and radical Gary Foley declared in his speech at the around 500-strong opening night of the conference, "a room full of earnest young radicals is a sign of hope". This set the tone for the weekend. An enduring theme over the more than 100 sessions was that resistance springs eternal no matter what our side is up against. The upsurge of struggle in France against President Macron raising the age of retirement was a particular focus, as the actions of workers there starts to seriously unsettle the ruling class in one of the key centres of European capitalism. Struggles elsewhere, including in Iran against the repressive regime, in the UK over working conditions and against the far right in a variety of places, also featured. 
The history and continuing tradition of radical Indigenous struggle was a key theme, taking on a renewed importance in a year when the the referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament will be both a face-off between racists and anti-racists, as well as ploy by the Labor government to secure some left credibility that it does not deserve. Taking up other issues of immediate concern, such as the investment of billions in nuclear-powered submarines to support a future US-led war, as well as keeping alive the history of resistance and working class struggle in Australia, were all important themes aimed to better equip the activists of today for the struggles that lie ahead. 
After more than three years of online organising and zoom meetings, the conference marked the first national gathering of socialists since the pandemic began. With more than 1,300 tickets sold, attendees came from nearly every capital city in the country, as well as from around the world. The fight against capitalism is a global struggle, reflected in the large number of sessions featuring international speakers, including from the US, Argentina, Spain, France, Iran, Palestine, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand and Greece.
The success or otherwise of future struggles to stop imperial war and defend workers' living standards in the context of economic chaos will be in part determined by how well we are able to build up the forces to fight those battles now. The Marxism conference continues to be a vital contribution to achieving that goal.

Marxism 2023 conference held in Melbourne

Hundreds of Victorian Socialists volunteers have been staffing early voting polling booths since 14 November, building on the more than 150,000 doors knocked across the north and west of Melbourne during the state election campaign. They are bringing a new style of campaigning to the state election, and have found a constituency of voters fed up with the prevailing pro-corporate, mainstream politics. 
“Victorian Socialists get very little media coverage, and we have no powerful backers in the big end of town to help us get our message out”, the party’s campaign coordinator for the Northern Metropolitan region, Jess Lenehan, told Red Flag. “So our campaigners try to engage people, through conversations on door steps and chats at polling booths. It can take a while to break through the sense a lot of people have that politicians don’t care about them or about what they think; that they only care about advancing their careers and looking after the wealthy. 
“Once we explain that Victorian Socialists is not a traditional political party—its candidates are not professional politicians but community activists and unionists, who, if elected, will only take an average worker’s wage—we often find people are very open to hearing more of what we have to say.” 
Social media is awash with stories from the campaign trail that illustrate this point. At the Preston early voting booth, Erin, a volunteer, detailed how she met a young woman who worked at a nearby gym: “As soon as I said Victorian Socialists are outraged at the rich doubling their wealth in the last two years, Tiffany yelled ‘YES!’ She’s sick of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. She hadn't wanted to vote for anyone until she met us”.
At the Greenvale booth, another volunteer reported meeting Ahmet, a long-time Turkish socialist who had been imprisoned for two years by the Turkish government before fleeing the country. He said he always voted socialist and gave the volunteer a big hug. 
Esmaeil spoke to Belle Gibson, Victorian Socialists candidate for Kororoit in Melbourne’s west, at early voting. “He’s a welder at a factory in Sunshine”, Belle wrote on social media. “He manufactures the mesh that goes inside concrete structures. A couple of years ago he injured his back at work and is fighting for WorkSafe to cover his second round of surgery ... 
“We spoke about the need for fighting unions to win proper compensation for people are injured at work. When I told him about the campaign to get Liz Walsh elected in Western Metro and Liz’s track record of activism, his face lit up. He said, ‘Women know how to fight, they are leading the way in Iran, where I’m from. They are fighting for Women Life and Freedom’. He spoke about the need to fight for a world for our children. A world free of inequality, violence and greed, and a world full of beauty and parks and dignity ... I’m so proud to have his vote.”
Volunteers in the north and west have met a number of workers who have had personal contact with Jerome Small, Victorian Socialists’ candidate for the Northern Metro region and long-time social justice activist and unionist. Some have been fellow construction workers familiar with Jerome’s union activism. Others are people like Ravi, met by a volunteer in the electorate of Kalkallo, who, in the word of the volunteer, “has known Jerome for years, works at Woolworths logistics and remembers Jerome's support for their strikes and pickets. During the period of lockdown at the height of the pandemic, Jerome gave assistance to Ravi in dealing with health and safety issues at work. Rasika [Ravi’s partner] has always voted Labor since she migrated but thinks they take the outer-suburbs for granted, and is supporting Jerome this time too”.
Volunteers have also taken time to visit workers at the Pampas factory in West Footscray, where nearly the entire workforce of more than 100 is on strike and picketing, demanding higher pay and better conditions for casuals. At the Sunshine booth the previous Friday, a volunteer met Asha, who works for Pampas. The volunteer detailed how Asha has worked at the factory for more than twenty years, “and her workplace is about to go strike for 48 hours for a 6 percent pay rise starting Monday. She was pretty pumped. A socialist in parliament will back striking workers and build solidarity with their struggle”.
There are innumerable stories like this, of people struggling to survive on inadequate pensions, migrants who have been part of similar struggles all over the world, young people who feel hopeless about a future of climate crisis, unattainable housing and inequality. 
Victorian Socialists are trying to do more than just thrust a how-to-vote card in these people’s hands. The campaign wants to get a socialist elected to parliament, and lay the basis for greater resistance to the many inequalities and injustices that the capitalist system and those who run it expect people to accept. This is what motivates its hundreds of volunteers. 
Whatever the outcome on 26 November, this in itself will be a significant achievement and step forward for the socialist left. 
Help is still needed to staff the more than 290 polling booths across Melbourne’s north and west on election day. To volunteer, sign up at <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/polling">victoriansocialists.org.au/polling</a>.

On the campaign trail with Victorian Socialists

Red Flag’s Louise O’Shea spoke to Victorian Socialists Secretary (and former Red Flag editor) Corey Oakley about the socialist campaign in the Victorian state election.
What’s this campaign aiming to do?
We want to get one or more socialists elected to the state parliament of Victoria. We are too small to have a realistic chance in any lower house seats yet, but the Legislative Council—the upper house—elects five members on a proportional basis in each of eight electorates across Victoria. This gives us a real shot in places where we have some support and a base of campaigners. This election we are targeting the electorates of Western Metropolitan and Northern Metropolitan, which encompass the whole of the western and northern suburbs of Melbourne respectively. We are standing candidates in every upper house electorate across the state, but these are the two where we think we have a chance of getting someone up. We are also running candidates in all 22 of the lower house electorates in these areas, to help support the upper house campaigns.
How is it going?
This is the biggest socialist election campaign in generations. In 2018, when we started Victorian Socialists, we focused almost entirely on Northern Metropolitan. This time the campaign is on basically double that scale. We are planning to put leaflets into the letterboxes of every one of the 650,000-odd homes across the north and the west. More than 400 volunteers have already knocked more than 100,000 doors, which is a fair bit more than we managed across the whole campaign in 2018. We will be knocking on tens of thousands more over the next four weeks.
It’s a huge logistical operation, but even though we have been around for only four years, this is our fifth major campaign if you include council elections, so we are getting the hang of how to do it. 
Politically, large-scale socialist election campaigning is still very new in Australia. We don’t have anything like the recognition that a political current like the Greens, or even now the so called teals have. But what we do have is a pretty clear argument to make: politics in this country is rigged for the rich, the current politicians are in the pocket of big business, and we need radical change if we are going to address the multitude of crises facing society. That’s the message our army of campaigners are taking to the doorsteps of tens of thousands of people right now.
What can Red Flag readers do to help?
Get involved! No matter what your situation, there’s something you can do. We are aiming to have 2,000 volunteers help hand out how to vote cards on polling day—that’s how many we need to staff the more than 360 polling booths in the north and the west of Melbourne. For the two weeks before that there is early voting at more than 40 booths—we need help there too. And if you can take a sign to put up on your front fence, please do that! We already have signs on more than 1,500 homes across Melbourne, and we want to get many hundreds more up in the next two weeks before early voting starts.
What about money?
We need it! Obviously, we don’t take corporate donations, and we rely on regular people who support what we are doing to chip in. But what also makes things difficult is the new political funding laws. They are meant to stop big corporate donations, and to a certain extent they do that, but they also really entrench the status quo by channelling millions of dollars in public money into the established parties, based on their votes in past elections. This makes it very difficult for new parties to get established. 
Our strategy is based on grassroots campaigning, not media advertising, but that still costs a lot of money. Printing hundreds of thousands of leaflets and how to vote cards for our campaigners to hand out, thousands of campaign signs for front yards and election day, costs a lot. We are right at the crunch point now, so any contribution supporters can make will be hugely valuable.
What if you win?
In a little piece in the Herald Sun on minor parties during the federal election, we were quoted as saying, “Give us 100 days in office, and we will give you 100 ways we will fight to take power from the elite and return it to those who created the wealth in the first place”. They pulled that from our website I think, and for once the Herald Sun actually did a good job of representing what we are about. 
Having one or more representatives in parliament will be a new and exciting challenge for the socialist movement in this country. I don’t know exactly how it will play out, but what’s for sure is that having people in parliament determined to raise a socialist banner and stand up to the powerful has the potential to shake the hell out of our rotten to the core political system.
You can sign up to help Victorian Socialists on polling day, get a sign installed on your house, find out about upcoming events or donate to the campaign at <a href="http://www.victoriansocialists.org.au">victoriansocialists.org.au</a>. Alternatively, you can get involved by simply turning up at the socialist campaign offices in Brunswick or Footscray [Shop 6/16 Tripovich St, Brunswick and 553b Barkly St, West Footscray.]

‘The biggest socialist election campaign in generations’

The major parties have finally paid a price for offering nothing in the face of the multiple crises facing humanity. Be it the climate catastrophe, the deadly pandemic which, despite being officially “over”, has killed more than 5,500 people in Australia this year, or an economic crisis that is rapidly eroding the living standards of workers and the poor while the rich set new records for wealth accumulation, neither the Labor nor Liberal parties seem moved by the scale of these threats, nor willing to take the sort of action that is needed. So it is a significant development that in the 21 May federal election, slightly more than one in three voters threw their support behind a non-major party candidate in the lower house, leaving the two traditional parties of Australian capitalism with the smallest combined share of the vote since 1906. 
Not surprisingly, the Liberals bore the brunt of the revolt. The Coalition attracted its lowest primary vote since 1943 and second lowest in its history. In 1943, the groups making up the Coalition were in terminal disarray, the United Australia Party having forced the resignation of its leader and then prime minister in 1941. The disastrous 1943 result prompted a thoroughgoing reckoning on the conservative side of politics. This reckoning culminated in the formation of the Liberal Party in 1944, an effort to unite the disparate anti-Labor political forces under a single national umbrella, central to which was, ironically, orienting to well-off urban professionals as a strategy for electoral redemption. The 1943 election was also the catalyst for Keith Murdoch, George Cole and other luminaries of the Australian bourgeoisie to create the Institute of Public Affairs, with the aim of imposing a more coherent right-wing agenda on mainstream conservative politics. 
In this election, the conditions were much more favourable for the Coalition than they were 80 years ago. But far from this electoral annihilation prompting a rethink of the party’s agenda, the election of arch-reactionary Peter Dutton as Liberal leader suggests the party is likely to head further to the right, particularly on economic issues, despite the valiant public relations effort currently under way to uncover his purported “softer” side.
Labor also hasn’t had a result this bad outside of a major crisis in its ranks. Its primary vote, which is below 33 percent, is the worst since 1934, a time when the party was split following the creation of Lang Labor in 1931. Lang Labor picked up nine of the ten Labor seats in New South Wales and more than 14 percent of the overall primary vote, so the low vote was far from a reflection of disengagement with Labor-style politics.
Today, Labor is enthusiastically united behind its agenda of precious little, and had little more than the contemptible Scott Morrison as an obstacle to victory. Still, ALP leader Anthony Albanese will form government with only a slim majority in the lower house and no majority in the Senate. And he’s in a position to do this only thanks to a large swing in Western Australia, which had virtually nothing to do with enthusiasm for the agenda of federal Labor. In 1943 by contrast, when the Coalition vote collapsed, the ALP won every Senate position and almost two-thirds of lower house seats. 
Of course, disaffection towards the major parties can lead in all sorts of political directions. It is positive that a significant proportion of it has swung behind broadly progressive candidates united by their desire for action on the climate crisis. The strong showing for the Greens, especially in Queensland, where the party has picked up three lower house seats, is the most encouraging example of this. But there has also been a relatively strong vote for various far-right candidates and parties nationally. An important factor bolstering this vote is the bitter right-wing hostility to COVID-19 health measures, which has proved to be an enduring sentiment. This polarisation is largely obscured by the media’s focus on the teal independents. 
The Albanese government comes to power with the most underwhelming mandate in living memory and in a context of increasing political instability. Labor ran a campaign that unapologetically revolved around replicating the Liberal Party’s agenda and hoping that the toxic brand of Scott Morrison would be enough to drop victory in its lap. It attracted a record low vote, and there were no union or social justice campaigns connected with its bid for government. On the most important issues of the campaign—climate change and the cost of living—Labor resolutely refused to commit to the sort of measures that are needed. 
Such an enthusiasm deficit is hardly new for Labor. The last time it was in power—the Rudd and Gillard years between 2007 and 2013—is hardly remembered as an electrifying period of inspiring government. But Rudd did win the election in 2007 with a primary vote of more than 43 percent and on the wave of anti-WorkChoices sentiment and mass protest that resulted in the sitting prime minister losing his own seat. Rudd was seen to be pursuing a clear agenda of change in the interests of workers, however inadequate Labor’s commitments were.
Hawke in 1983 ran a campaign that was arguably even more right-wing than the one we’ve just seen from Albanese, but there was nevertheless enthusiasm for his election. And Labor attracted more than 49 percent of the primary vote, one of its highest proportions ever. 
The incoming Labor government commands no such support or loyalty, even if there is widespread relief that we won’t be subjected to Scott Morrison any more. There is no sense that it is pursuing an agenda for workers or for social justice. Despite a lot of talk about the cost of living during the campaign, since taking office Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been at pains to emphasise the need for austerity and has cast doubt on Labor’s campaign commitment to make a submission to the Fair Work Commission in support of increasing the minimum wage. The party has since vacillated on exactly what sort of submission it’s willing to make. So much for the supposed concern about workers doing it tough—they couldn’t even make it through a week without making it crystal clear which end of town they intend to govern for. 
Likewise, much has been made of the long-overdue return of the Murugappan family to the Queensland town of Biloela, but they remain on bridging visas without long-term security, and the government at the same time boasted about turning back an asylum seeker boat carrying Tamil refugees. 
This government is not only likely to be unpopular; it will also be under more pressure from independents in the parliament—who have a genuine mandate and determination to push for change—than any Australian government has been before. How much of a problem this proves to be for Labor, and how positive a difference it makes to the prevailing political culture, remain to be seen. But there is certainly potential for the wave of disgust at the major parties’ arrogant disregard for people’s welfare and the survival of the planet to upset the predictable monotony that characterises so much of official politics. 
Through voting, millions of people have shown their disgust at the status quo that is leading us down such a disastrous path. The challenge for the left will be to translate that into action.

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