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!”

Sophie McLoughlin

Victorian Socialists hold anti-war forum

A <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/inequality-on-steroids-the-distribution-of-economic-growth-in-australia/">new report</a> from the Australia Institute paints a disturbing picture of the increasingly unequal division of wealth in our society. The report, Inequality on Steroids: The Distribution of Economic Growth in Australia, looks at how the benefits produced by economic growth have been distributed between the top 10 percent and the bottom 90 percent of income earners.
By combining data on changes in average national income per adult and changes in the share of national income going to the top 10 percent of earners, the report calculates how growth in national income has been distributed. 
The report looks at five periods of economic expansion between 1950 and 2019, which generally begin and end with a recession or crisis of some kind: 1950-1960, 1961-1981, 1982-1990, 1991-2008 and 2009-2019. 
In the 1950s, 96 percent of benefits from economic growth flowed to the bottom 90 percent of earners, but in subsequent decades this percentage steadily declined. In the 1960s and ’70s it fell to 84 percent, and in the ’80s it was down to 52 percent. In the 1990s and 2000s, there was a small increase to 64 percent, but overall, the trend of these periods was increasing inequality.
In the most recent period considered by the report, 2009-2019, this trend has been supercharged. When looking at the distribution of benefits from economic growth in this period, which began with the Global Financial Crisis and ended with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the numbers are shocking: only 7 percent of benefits went to the lowest 90 percent of earners, while the top 10 percent of earners received a staggering 93 percent. 
The report also compares the distribution of benefits from economic growth in Australia to other developed countries. In this period, the 93 percent share received by Australia’s highest earners was far higher than in countries such as Canada, where top earners received 58 percent, the UK (72 percent), China (47 percent), and the US (63 percent).
The report blames this “inequality on steroids” on a “fairly weak expansion together with a significant redistribution of income towards the top tenth”, as well as deeper forces such as the weakening of unions and the oligopolistic nature of Australia’s business landscape. 
What this data also shows is that it has made little to no difference to rising inequality whether Labor or the Coalition has been in power. Over the past 40 years, both have pursued the same neoliberal economic agenda to the benefit of the wealthiest few.
Though shocking, these statistics are not surprising. As the recent <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/survival-richest">Survival of the Richest Oxfam International report</a> showed, billionaires everywhere are only getting richer. Since 2020, the world’s richest 1 percent have grabbed nearly 63 percent of all new wealth created (around US$26 trillion). In Australia, combined billionaire wealth is up 61 percent since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Victorian Socialists hold anti-war forum

Report reveals ‘inequality on steroids’

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