It’s hard to think of a starker contrast. 
In Italy last month, Israel’s attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla sparked a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/italys-general-strike-shows-the-way-forward">general strike</a> backed by Italy’s largest union federation and a number of smaller union groups. Strikes and mass blockades shut down the nation’s ports and large sections of rail, logistics, education and other industries. Somewhere close to a million people marched in solidarity with Palestine in Rome the next day, the biggest protest in a generation.
Meanwhile in Australia, record numbers have rallied—most notably 300,000 at the March for Humanity on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in August. 
But the response of the Australian union movement’s official leadership to Israel’s assault on the Sumud Flotilla was largely confined to a couple of <a href="https://x.com/unionsaustralia/status/1974025863126503925/photo/1">tweets</a>. It was moving to see footage of seafarer Hamish Paterson, a member of the Maritime Union of Australia, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/reel/1524377095418162">welcomed home</a> by a crowd of hundreds of supporters at Sydney airport. But the fact remains that not a single branch of a single union in this country has authorised industrial action in opposition to the Australian government’s role in arming Israel’s genocidal military. 
It wasn’t always like this. 
Fifty years ago, Australia’s union movement was <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/when-australian-workers-struck-against-apartheid">famous</a>
for putting bans on companies that did business with the blood-soaked apartheid regime in South Africa. <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C98588">“Stop work to stop the war”</a> was likewise the slogan of the left wing of the movement against the US and Australian war in Vietnam—with many unions turning it into reality. In the 1970s, metalworkers regularly banned jobs connected to <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/6837">uranium mining</a>, and sections of the union movement backed strikes, protests and <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/7540">blockades</a> for Aboriginal land rights. 
<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/recollections-militant">Peter Close</a>, who as a tugboat crew member implemented the bans on South African shipping in Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay, spoke to Red Flag in 2013 about what it was like to be a militant at that time: “Proletarian internationalism, class politics, and class struggle itself was on the menu every day”. 
This doesn’t mean that everything was perfect. I remember Harry Bocquet, a Maoist who had worked on the Melbourne waterfront from the early 1960s, being very critical of the neglect of political discussion and education in that period. On one occasion, wharfies were pulled off a ship by the union leadership—but it was only when the workers got to the pub that they found out the stoppage was a protest against the war in Vietnam. 
The workers were supportive on this occasion, according to Harry. But this downplaying of political discussion and democracy meant any culture of militancy was hard to sustain, especially from the early 1980s, when the Labor government moved systematically to stifle union militancy through the Prices and Incomes Accord. 
The aim of the Accord was to impose sweeping neoliberal “reform”, including privatisations and deregulation of the labour market. This was carried out by the Labor government in partnership with business and almost all of the union movement’s official leadership. 
If you’re a union leader allied to a Labor government imposing neoliberalism on the working class, one thing you definitely don’t want is a politicised, militant current in the union movement. So the sometimes heroic traditions of the 1970s had to be smothered. 
A huge amount of effort was spent—especially by “left” leaderships like the key Metalworkers union—in “educating” union delegates out of militancy and browbeating them into compliance with the class collaborationist approach of the Accord. 
Rates of industrial action fell. Delegate organisation withered. Unions that refused to meekly go along with this shift were smashed, with a key role played by Labor governments. 
The union leadership that sold us this disaster hasn’t improved with time. This is evident from the lack of fight over wages during the recent inflationary surge.
It’s no surprise, then, that Australian unions have overwhelmingly been reluctant even to entertain discussions about Palestine, let alone take industrial action. 
Not wanting to embarrass the Labor government is obviously a factor. Any party that governs Australian capitalism has to respect that holiest of holies—support for the US alliance, and thus for Israel. So long as acknowledging Palestine means criticising Labor, the union leaders will resist.
Added to this, the political forces that led much of the working-class action against war and racism 50 years ago have all but disappeared. The Communist Party helped design and implement the Accord and then voted itself out of existence in 1991. The Stalinist breakaways from the Communist Party also withered under the impact of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the embrace of capitalism by China’s totalitarian rulers. 
Forces to the left of the CPA and its splits were reborn during the late 1960s and early 1970s, but were too small to change the course of the union movement. In more recent years, Socialist Alternative members have compiled an <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/socialist-alternatives-record-of-workplace-organising">impressive record</a> of industrial disputes—including helping to lead the only <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/community-sector-workers-to-walk-out-for-palestine-again">strikes for Palestine</a> in Australia over the past two years. But the sort of active solidarity seen in decades past has so far not been re-created.
This had also been the case in Italy, until the last few months. The wonderful response to the call for a strike in solidarity with Palestine has taken almost everyone involved by surprise.
It’s not hard to understand why. Critical commentary on the state of Italy’s unions isn’t difficult to find. In February this year, the mainstream news agency Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/big-toothless-italys-unions-blamed-wage-stagnation-2025-02-07/">carried a report</a> with the title: “Big but toothless—Italy’s unions blamed for wage stagnation”, noting that Italy is the only country in the European Union where real wages went backwards relative to inflation over the three decades to 2020. 
More than 90 percent of major strikes in Italy last a day or less, while in the US, 80 percent last two days or longer. “Trade unions in Italy have mutated to become mainly service providers”, according to Filippo Barbera, an academic interviewed by Reuters: “They help you do your tax returns and calculate what your pension will be, but they won't take on employers to secure salary rises”.
This is no surprise, given the politics of the three main union federations in Italy (the UIL, the CISL and the CGIL) and the parties they are associated with (respectively the Socialist Party, the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party—whose main political successor is the Democratic Party). Each has been every bit as committed as the Australian Labor Party and the leadership of Australia’s union movement in wanting to work in “partnership” with capital. 
One sign of this is the series of “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2022.2107044#d1e325">social pacts</a>” involving the Italian unions signing on to neoliberal “reform” from the late 1970s onwards. The intention of these pacts mirrored Australian Labor’s approach with the Accord: to assist the restructuring of capitalism along neoliberal lines. Such accords played a role in the ending of automatic wage indexation, the introduction of “flexible” contracts, privatisation of key state assets and cuts to Italy’s previously relatively generous pension scheme. 
This has not always been a smooth process, but overall, the main union federations in Italy have been ineffective in resisting neoliberal “reform”, and at times have been just as actively complicit as Australian unions. 
There is no system of government registration of unions in Italy. And the Italian far left of the 1970s—though plagued with all sorts of <a href="https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/workerism-and-autonomism-in-italys-hot-autumn/">serious political problems</a>—was much larger than the equivalent forces in Australia. These two factors came together in Italy in the formation of “base unions” from the 1980s. Some of these are splits from existing unions, others are the creation of politicised militants who set to work organising the unorganised. 
The main premise of the base unions is to reject union bureaucracy as inherently conservative, and to attempt to build a more combative rank-and-file-driven movement. Even advocates of this approach admit its limitations, however. 
Donato Romito, writing from a sympathetic perspective in 2003 on the anarchist-aligned Libcom website, <a href="https://libcom.org/article/exploring-alternative-forms-workers-organization-anarchist-communists-and-italian-base">noted</a>
that the CGIL “was systematically demonized, but there was never any strategy of dialogue with its members or with its internal opposition”. 
Further, Romito noted that the pressures of having to survive as a union can push towards conservatism, regardless of the formal politics of the leadership. There is also a serious tendency towards fragmentation among the base unions, where “everyone felt they were an alternative to everyone else ... Italian grassroots syndicalism remains trapped between the radicalism of its platforms and the need for bargaining, between its criticism of bureaucratism and the inevitable formation of a leadership class”.
An informative <a href="https://libcom.org/article/port-genoa-first-focaccia-then-class-struggle-article-autonomous-dock-workers-collective">commentary</a>
by Anna Jikhareva from 2022 paints a picture of the Autonomous Port Workers Collective (Collettivo Autonomo Lavoratori Portuali, or CALP) in Genoa. The CALP were key initiators of the recent strikes in solidarity with Palestine as part of the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) federation of base unions. 
Remarkably, in a major port with an on-site workforce of 4,000, including 1,200 dock workers, the CALP has only around 20 or so active members, according to Jikhareva. All of them are the sons of dock workers and continuators of a militant industrial and political tradition in the port of Genoa. 
Despite these small numbers, in the right circumstances the CALP can pull other workers behind them. Jikhareva describes relatively modest numbers of workers and supporters—dozens growing into a crowd of over a hundred—blockading the port in October 2021, as part of a one-day strike of the base unions on economic issues. 
In the extraordinary circumstances of late 2025, however, with a wave of revulsion sweeping the globe against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the modest forces of the CALP helped set something much more substantial in motion. Heading up a rally of 40,000 in Genoa at the end of August, CALP member Riccardo Rudino threatened to shut down the port—and every other port in Europe—if the Global Sumud Flotilla was attacked. Everyone understood that there was at least the potential of real power behind this threat. 
A series of factors were important in turning this threat into a reality. The fact that the Democratic Party (associated with the CGIL) is in opposition, and that unions are sidelined under the far-right Meloni government, probably removed one obstacle to the CGIL falling in behind the USB federation. The fact that there were two Democratic Party members of parliament on the Sumud Flotilla no doubt helped as well. And when Rudino threatened to “block everything” that night in Genoa, he was building on the substantial “block everything” union protests in neighbouring France.
The mass strikes would never have happened without the movement on the streets and on the campuses in solidarity with Palestine. Also crucial was the presence of politicised militants in a string of workplaces, who were capable of leading something. There are valid and important criticisms of the base unions, but they got enough right to make some history. 
Of course, we don’t know what comes next. We make our own history, as Karl Marx once observed, but not in circumstances of our own choosing. The USB has now called for a general strike against the Italian war budget on 28 November. 
In Australia, those frustrating “circumstances” include the disastrous continuing consequences of Labor’s all-too-effective imposition of the politics of class collaboration on the country’s union movement. Rebuilding a different and more combative workers’ movement requires rebuilding the politics of class struggle. After all, which political forces are organised, and to what end, is one of the few “circumstances” we have some control over. 
But if recent events have reminded us of this, they should also remind us of something else—that not every damn thing is predetermined. 
Marco Bertorello, a socialist and writer who works at the port of Genoa, wrote a moving <a href="https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article9157">account</a> of the 40,000-strong protest in Genoa at the end of August, describing how the long-dormant traditions of struggle in Genoa were taking on a mass character before his eyes. His account is a reminder that, though we can be all too aware of the circumstances we’re in, sometimes we can still roll the dice and make history:
“I think it was an important moment for my city. I don’t know what it might mean for the future and for other cities, but it seems to me to be a possible barometer of the social climate. I hope it is not just a passing anomaly. In difficult times, there is always room for the unexpected, the surprising—in short, for humanity.”

Jerome Small

A tale of two union movements: Palestine and the unions in Italy and Australia

For the Australian Labor Party, university campuses are a vital source of recruits and a training ground for future politicians and leaders. Through their control of the vast majority of the country’s student unions, student Labor members learn to manage budgets and bureaucracies, network and harvest votes, and to face down pressure from rival groups, mostly on their left—all vital skills for the Albaneses and Wongs of tomorrow. But they also have to prove themselves effective advocates, which means at times supporting or engaging in activism against governments, in support of education demands as well as broader social justice. 
So two years of campus activism against their party’s support for the genocide in Gaza have put them in an awkward spot. Labor students have had to balance the competing pressures of pro-Palestine sentiments on campus, their own personal views and loyalty to the staunchly pro-Israel line of their party and of university administrations. 
Predictably, and in line with the adult party’s stance, Labor-dominated student unions on many campuses have expressed outward hostility toward Palestine campaigning and used their resources to obstruct it. Labor students who run the University of Melbourne Student Union, fearful of spoiling relationships with the university hierarchy and drawing the ire of right-wingers, have rescinded union support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. 
Last year, the union responded to a request signed by 1,200 students for a special general meeting (SGM) to reinstate a pro-BDS position by hiring lawyers from Labor-aligned law firm Slater and Gordon to find a legal basis to prevent the meeting happening. They then used similar tactics to defeat a campaign by office-bearers to donate $19,000—the remainder of their 2024 budget—to a Palestinian activist group in the West Bank.
The Labor right-dominated Deakin University Student Association has used the precedent created by the disgraceful backdown at Melbourne University to refuse to hear pro-Palestine motions, arguing explicitly that the union should not take “political” stances. 
At Swinburne University, Labor students sabotaged last year’s SGM for Palestine, requested by 400 students, by scheduling it at the remote Wantirna campus. At Monash, Labor-left students reluctantly oversaw a requested SGM, but locked the doors before the meeting had reached quorum, rendering the meeting unable to change union policy. So far, so predictable. 
At some other places, however, the possibility of cynically harvesting pro-Palestine votes has softened their hearts to the plight of Gazans. At La Trobe University, Labor students registered the ticket “Social Justice—Free Palestine” in the student union elections to confuse students and compete with the left-wing ticket organised by Socialist Alternative and Students for Palestine members. And at Swinburne, the same Labor students who sabotaged the SGM called through attendees claiming to be from Students for Palestine to get votes for their group in elections. While not ideal, this sort of deviation from official pro-Israel talking points can be tolerated by Sussex Street so long as there are some votes in it and no-one important notices. 
But then there are the cases where Labor students have outright supported Palestine activism, a position at odds, to say the least, with their party’s policy. At RMIT, the Labor right-controlled union endorsed the campus’s Gaza encampment, even bringing fresh fruit to famished activists. At University of Wollongong, Labor members promoted and attended the SGM organised by Students for Palestine. Through the National Union of Students, leaders of the Labor right have used union resources to promote the People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine—a counter to Labor’s witch-hunt antisemitism inquiry—and endorsed a national day of protest against the government’s support for Israel. 
Even at Melbourne University, where the Labor students have more recently been hostile, their past conduct suggests this may be as much about toeing the line as conviction. In 2022, they supported the very BDS motion that they later rescinded under pressure. During the 2024 encampment, they gave limited behind-the-scenes support, including by booking lawn space for a camp, but avoided any public association with the event. This contradiction raises a question—if support for Israel is the great moral cause that Labor leaders claim it is, why do they tolerate such blatant disloyalty to party policy in their own ranks? 
For two years, Labor leaders have maintained the spurious line that Palestine campus activism is part of a detestable upsurge in antisemitic hate. Labor’s federal Education Minister Jason Clare labelled the University of Melbourne’s Gaza solidarity encampment “repugnant”, while Defence Minister Richard Marles asserted last May: “The levels of antisemitism that we have seen in the past few months are more than any that I’ve seen during my lifetime”. Labor supported a motion moved in the Senate by the Liberal opposition that condemned the traditional slogan of Palestinian resistance “from the river to the sea”, describing it as “used by those who seek to intimidate Jewish Australians via acts of antisemitism”. Labor have staked credibility on a bogus campus Senate inquiry led by Jillian Segal, a bigoted pro-genocide activist, that cynically and dishonestly conflated support for Palestine with threats against Jewish students. And anyone who dares speak up for the Palestinians, from former Labor Senator Fatima Payman to Greens Senator Mehreen Farouqi, has had the book thrown at them.
And yet Labor turn a blind eye to their own future leaders when they associate themselves with this same campaign and sentiments on campuses. If Labor leaders really believe all this, you would expect them to extend their condemnations to party members who have associated themselves with these campaigns. The fact that they haven’t makes it hard not to draw the conclusion that there is a lot of cynicism at work here, and a willingness to say whatever is required in service of Australia’s imperial interests and alliances.
It also reflects a lack of confidence in imposing their political line on their own student groups. Labor’s leaders have to give their student clubs a longer leash with the campaigning they tolerate because the clubs have to recruit from campuses that are populated by young people, the vast majority of whom are well to the party’s left, and where contempt for the party and its conduct in government is at record highs. So there’s an appreciation that pragmatic adaption to the prevailing pro-Palestine sentiment has to happen to keep the machine being supplied with raw material. 
Notably, it has been students from Labor’s right faction (Unity) in particular that have provided the most support to these campaigns. While the Labor left faction has been in long decline, Unity is overwhelmingly dominant and has the largest base amongst students. It recruits strongly among international students, many of who are from backgrounds where support for Palestine is widespread. Adapting to this sentiment is expedient, and whatever is expedient is acceptable, whatever the bombast about the moral righteousness of Israel.
And there is an understanding that all this has very clear limits. Student politicians who want to climb the ranks accept that “serious politics” is ultimately about trading principles away for influence and power. Penny Wong explained how this “serious politics” works when Payman crossed the floor to vote for a pro-Palestine Greens bill in 2024: “Even when we disagree, we have those arguments internally, as you saw over many years in the marriage equality debate”, Wong told ABC Radio’s AM program. “That’s what I did, and I think that’s the right way to go about it.”
Wong, who married her same-sex partner in 2024, adhered to Labor policy by voting against the Greens’ attempt to legalise same-sex marriage in 2008, and spent years publicly undermining the campaign for marriage equality. Her reward was the foreign ministry.
Payman’s case shows what happens when you don't exhibit this highly nuanced and sophisticated conception of politics that involves shutting up about things that are important with the hope of gaining power and influence at some point in the future, and instead say what you think. Payman was immediately shunned and suspended from the Labor caucus, while anonymous Labor sources backgrounded the press that Payman might be ineligible to sit in parliament due to her Afghan background. Payman was the first to cross the floor and vote against party since 2005. 
This is how Labor holds the line. For budding Labor careerists, the stick of discipline and ostracisation goes along with the carrot of career advancement. Some Labor students, as at University of Melbourne and Deakin, prove their mettle by openly defending Labor’s line against the movement, and copping the ensuing student outrage. Some others pretend to care about an issue they have no real interest in to harvest votes in elections. Others who, because of prior political conviction or family background, personally support greater rights for Palestinians, learn eventually to bite their tongues to get ahead. 
For the party to function, it counts on the people that matter becoming too cynical to ever want to really change anything.

Luca Tavan

Labor’s student clubs and Palestine activism

The rich in Australia are experiencing massive wealth gains, but a new report reveals just how challenging life is for those at the bottom. The <a href="https://reports.foodbank.org.au/wp-content/uploads/documents/Foodbank_Hunger_Report_2025_Web_Edition.pdf">Foodbank Hunger Report 2025</a> estimates that one in three Australian households (approximately 3.5 million) experienced food insecurity in the past year. Of those, two-thirds (or 20 percent of all households) were severely food insecure, meaning they had skipped meals or even gone whole days without eating. 
The most vulnerable in society are the worst affected—67 percent of households with a person with a disability or health issue experienced food insecurity in the past twelve months, as did 68 percent of single-parent households and 48 percent of low-income households, defined as those earning less than $33,800 per year. 
The report makes it clear that this is driven by the cost-of-living crisis. Only 21 percent of Australian households live comfortably on their current income, while 87 percent cite the cost of living as one of their top concerns. 
“Australia’s housing affordability crisis appears to be supercharging food insecurity in a way we haven’t seen before, with nearly 1 in 2 rental households reporting as food insecure”, Kylea Tink, CEO of Foodbank, said. Highlighting the direct relationship between the housing crisis and food insecurity, 35 percent of renters cited “changes in their household or living arrangements” as a cause of food insecurity. 
In response to the rise in the cost of living, households experiencing food insecurity have also reduced eating/drinking in restaurants, cafes and bars, dipped into household savings, cut back on fresh produce, protein, dairy or other food and grocery items, and relied more on credit cards or buy now, pay later apps. 
What has the federal Labor government done about this? Has it raised JobSeeker, the single-parent payment, the Disability Support Pension and other welfare payments above the poverty line? Has it placed price caps on groceries and other essentials? Has it capped rents and begun building a deluge of public housing? No. It has not. 
All of this comes as the rich are getting even richer. The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors’ most recent report on executive salaries found that the CEOs of Australia’s top 100 companies made, on average, 55 times the wage of an average worker. 
Some of Australia’s largest corporations are making major profits from the crisis. Coles and Woolworths made a combined $2.5 billion in after-tax profit last financial year, while Meriton Properties—a developer owned by Australia’s second richest person, Harry Triguboff—<a href="https://www.afr.com/property/residential/harry-triguboff-collects-222m-profit-as-rental-income-jumps-20251102-p5n74a">recently announced</a> that it made $222 million, an increase from $165 million the year before. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/banking-giants-to-pocket-30b-in-profit-as-lending-ramps-up-20251029-p5n69z.html">analysts expect</a> big Australian banks to have made $30 billion in profit this financial year, driven by growth in loans—particularly home loans. 
But not everything is as rosy as it seems for Australia’s wealthiest. While working-class families struggle to afford food, the Australian Financial Review <a href="https://www.afr.com/property/commercial/too-many-boats-not-enough-berths-why-marinas-are-hot-property-20250718-p5mfwl">recently reported</a> that the rich are suffering from severe super-yacht parking-space insecurity, driven by the increasing number and size of yachts in Australia.
According to the Foodbank report, 35 percent of food-insecure households don’t seek help because they believe that others are in greater need. While those most in need are concerned about taking too much from society, the rich possess no such compunctions. Just take Elon Musk’s (successful) bid for a US$1 trillion (A$1.5 trillion) pay packet, or the estimated $165 billion in negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions housing investors are expected to receive from the federal government over the next decade. 
“The capitalist class is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because ... it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him”, Karl Marx wrote in the
Communist Manifesto. “Society can no longer live under this class, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.” 
We need a society that uses its resources to meet everyone’s needs, ensuring no-one goes hungry or without a roof over their head ever again. Even more than that, everyone ought to live dignified and fulfilling lives. The wealth is there, but currently it funds the otherworldly extravagances of the rich. We have to take it from them.

Ben Lourie

Workers go hungry while corporations rake it in

The sound of an exploding flashbang grenade is hard to describe; the noise thunders through your skull and leaves you disoriented. They are violent, dangerous and potentially lethal devices, designed for use as part of military and armed police operations. Yet they are now being deployed regularly on the streets of Melbourne as a tool of protest management. So too is OC spray, a chemical weapon that’s banned from warfare due to its indiscriminate and potentially deadly impact. Then there are the batons, horses, water cannons, bird-shot rounds and rubber-coated steel bullets.
The growing militarisation of police forces around the world is well documented. It is one reflection of the growing disconnect between capitalist governments and the mass of people they supposedly represent and who are increasingly expressing their opposition to genocide, economic inequality, climate inaction, racism and other injustices in significant numbers. Lacking positive reform proposals to address these concerns or improve people’s lives, the state is increasingly responding with brute force, as well as legal restrictions on the right to organise and demonstrate both at work and on the streets. 
This tendency towards repression and violence is a serious threat to left-wing organising. It is an attempt to make disrupting the status quo harder, and it often succeeds. Anti-union laws, for instance, have played a role in taming the workers’ movement and reducing strike activity. The NSW police successfully used the courts to stop a recent pro-Palestine demonstration from occupying the Opera House shore, and regularly deny all sorts of campaign groups the right to march. And most states have introduced laws that specifically target climate activists who dare to disrupt business as usual.
It is possible to push back against these encroachments on our rights, and effective tactics that can be employed to do it. The most obvious is to mobilise significant numbers of people so that crude repression becomes significantly harder. Unfortunately, however, this is not always possible. 
When our numbers are smaller, it still matters what tactics we adopt. Tactics have to have the aim of making the action meaningful to those involved, helping encourage passive sympathisers to get more involved and being defensible to those not already invested in the issue. To do this, our message needs to be clear and our tactics must seem reasonable and effective. When mobilisations have a comprehensible message and approach, it makes it easier to win wider support to the cause. This doesn’t necessarily prevent repression, but it makes the political cost to the authorities much higher. 
Not every person and group involved in protesting the far right subscribes to this approach. The “black bloc”, in particular, does not, and its tactics are worth addressing. 
The black bloc is known for turning up to demonstrations as a distinct contingent wearing uniforms (black outfits, black hoods/helmets etc) designed to hide their identities and shield them from police attack, and with the aim of carrying out anonymous acts of violence. Sometimes this violence is targeted against police, as at the anti-fascist demonstration on 19 October in Melbourne and the attempted blockade of the Land Forces arms fair in Melbourne last year. At other times it has involved fairly random attacks on businesses and property along the path of broader demonstrations.
These activities are justified by black bloc supporters as attacks against authority, fascism, capitalism or whatever the issue of the day may be. And unlike the regular “sheeple” who attend conventional demonstrations, creating “<a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/in-defence-of-black-bloc/">banal spectacles</a>” within the rules, the black bloc sees itself as striking more serious blows against the system. But the truth is they do nothing to challenge the establishment, and often help strengthen it. 
Only a mass movement of the working class can seriously challenge capitalism. The same is true of the far right, which is now an entrenched part of politics in almost every country on Earth and in charge of the US military empire. While we’re not quite there yet in Australia, with Pauline Hanson polling at 15 percent nationally, and repeated street demonstrations numbering in the thousands, it feels like we’re catching up. In this context, thinking seriously about how we can build an anti-capitalist movement based in the working class is vital, even if it is a medium- to long-term prospect. Bashing a few fascists or throwing stones at police is the very definition of performative. It is pure street theatre, a chance for small groups to feel tough and radical by acting out their pseudo-revolutionary fantasies. 
Worse, these black bloc tactics expose the broader movement to violence at the hands of police and slander from the media and the political class, and give the state an excuse to further erode the right to protest. Sometimes such attacks can’t be avoided regardless of our tactics, but to provoke them for no strategic purpose is hugely damaging and irresponsible. 
Such tactics undermine our capacity to mobilise our existing supporters. Only the most committed activists will continually show up to events that end in widespread police brutality. This is especially so when the state then seizes the moment to introduce new repressive measures, as are now being floated in Victoria, confirming yet again to potential supporters that anti-fascism is an extreme sport better left to the experts.
The scandals that follow black bloc actions also end up distracting from the actual issue being addressed by the protest, giving the media a free pass to jump instead to the predictably reactionary terrain of protester conduct and law and order. This then tends to isolate the movement from the wider public who might otherwise have been sympathetic or open to joining.
In the current moment, this is particularly disastrous given that the key task the left faces is to convince larger numbers of people to take the far-right threat seriously, and to turn up when the call goes out. Currently, there are thousands of fascist and far-right scum mobilising on our streets every few weeks. They’re gaining strength inside the Liberals and Nationals, and One Nation has doubled its membership since the election. If the anti-fascist left is to get to the point where we can challenge and reverse these dynamics, we need massively more numbers. 
Sometimes the black bloc is defended on the grounds that a “diversity of tactics” is needed to maintain left unity. And in most movements, there is room for different approaches: fundraising, public forums, public postering, street art and so on are all useful activities with different audiences and rationales. But the black bloc is not some complementary part of a wide-ranging effort: its tactics are inherently counter-posed to it. 
Perhaps the worst aspect of the black bloc approach is how it relies on the very mass movement its adherents dismiss as not radical enough for cover and protection. If a group of masked militants were to attack a fascist event alone, they would easily be crushed by the state. But by deploying their violence within or around broader crowds, the black bloc make themselves safer by using the rest of us as shields when the police reaction inevitably comes—the very definition of parasitic. 
This behaviour is also profoundly undemocratic, in that it imposes the consequences of the block’s tactic—the state’s violent response—on others who did not necessarily support, agree to or carry out the tactic and could not reasonably be prepared for it. 
None of this is to excuse the state’s brutality. But knowing that the capitalists and their political lackeys are violent, anti-democratic scum doesn’t absolve us of agency and responsibility for our actions. Quite the opposite. Any serious approach to building a movement must take into account the way the capitalist system defends the status quo and organise in ways that can overcome it. As long as it has existed, the black bloc has been a barrier to doing that. It’s time for the left to draw a line in the sand and make it clear the black bloc is not welcome at our actions.

Omar Hassan

Police are getting more violent, but black bloc tactics make things worse

In a timely response to Donald Trump’s phoney “peace plan” and Israel’s continual violations of the ceasefire agreement, the concluding session of a <a href="https://gazatribunal.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“people’s tribunal” on Gaza</a> was held in Istanbul, 23-26 October. Over the four days, an audience of hundreds, plus many more online, heard compelling testimony from dozens of experts and individual victims of Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign, including the mass murder, deliberate starvation and destruction of medical care, housing, the environment and other civilian infrastructure. The statement below was issued at the conclusion of the Gaza Tribunal hearing. All talks from the Istanbul session are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@GazaTribunal/videos">available on YouTube</a>.
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The Steering Committee members of the Gaza Tribunal issue this conclusion at a historic moment of darkness, but in a continuing quest for the light of justice. 
The Gaza Tribunal recognizes that the current genocide in Palestine, rooted in a century of colonization and oppression, represents a watershed moment in the history of our world. If the Israeli perpetrators and their western enablers are allowed to escape justice, and the Palestinian survivors are left without meaningful redress and, ultimately, their full liberation from the dehumanizing shackles of Zionism and colonialism, the world will have ratified one of the worst atrocities in history. The Tribunal notes that if colonialism, apartheid, and genocide are not moral redlines, then there are no redlines. And the world that presages will be a world of unprecedented horror. Every member of the human family has a stake in Palestinian justice. 
Cognizant of this, the Gaza Tribunal was established in London in November 2024, as a people’s tribunal in the tradition of the Russell Tribunal that was established at the height of US aggression in Vietnam. It convened public hearings in Sarajevo in May 2025, adopting the historic Sarajevo Declaration as a statement of the principles of the Tribunal and of the global quest for justice in Palestine. Its work over the past year has consisted of the collection of information and analysis, the hearing of witnesses and survivors, the archiving of evidence, and the issuing of appeals to humanity for action to end the genocide and to secure justice for the Palestinian people. Its convening here in Istanbul has brought together members of the Tribunal, witnesses, survivors, experts, and an international Jury of Conscience to issue a moral judgement on the crimes of the Israeli regime and those complicit in their perpetration, and to set the course for the next phase of the quest for justice in Palestine. The members of the Gaza Tribunal welcome the findings of the Jury of Conscience, applaud their moral clarity, and commit to the struggle to see their implementation in full. 
The accelerated genocide of the past two years had shocked the conscience of humanity. The images of its audacious cruelty are forever seared in the minds of decent people everywhere, and the echoes of the cries of its victims will forever ring in our ears. We will forget none of it. The brutal attacks on an imprisoned civilian population, the intentional infliction of hunger, thirst, and disease as weapons of genocide, the targeting of bullets and bombs and drones at innocents, the mass arrests and imprisonment in notorious dungeons, the systematic beatings, and torture, and sexual violence of the genocidal perpetrators, the sniping of toddlers for sport, the systematic destruction of hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, homes, refugee shelters, aid facilities, agricultural fields, food stores, even cemeteries, and the deliberate targeting of civilian truth tellers, journalists, medical personnel, aid workers, and other protected persons. So too will we remember the arrogant genocidal threats and declarations of the perpetrators, and their cruel laughter and public celebration of their crimes, all recorded forever in a catalogue of shame. 
We warn the world today that the genocide in Palestine has not ended. The Israeli regime continues to murder Palestinians in Gaza with its Western-supplied bullets and bombs. It continues to obstruct the delivery of food and medicine to the survivors. It continues to impose its unlawful siege on the survivors. Its two-year systematic imposition of hunger, disease, injury, the plaguing of all of Gaza with toxic chemicals and explosive ordinance, its destruction of most shelter as well as the infliction of mass mental disorder and impaired developmental capacities for surviving civilians, will all continue to claim victims of the genocide for years to come. Even as Gaza continues to bleed, the Israeli regime has extended the annihilation phase of the genocide to the West Bank, where land, and livelihoods, and lives are claimed every day in the ethnic cleansing and racist assaults of the Israeli army and its violent settlers. 
Nor do the colonial maneuvers reflected in the so-called Trump Plan, or in the New York plan, offer any hope for end to the genocide, or for freedom or justice for Palestine. Even as we welcome any ceasefire, we note that the Israeli regime has continued to violate with impunity the current declared cessation with daily killings of Palestinians and the continued obstruction of humanitarian aid. We reject the provisions of both plans that would violate fundamental Palestinian rights of self-determination, the essential elements of which are agency, sovereignty, authentic representation and unified leadership. The proposed Plans presuppose impunity for Israeli genocide and apartheid, normalize the Israeli regime, ignore the rights of the Palestinian people under international law, and impose proxy occupation and colonial control over the victims of genocide, while doing nothing to reign in the perpetrators of genocide. Palestinians must lead the restoration of Gaza, and Israel and its enablers must be held responsible for all reparations. 
We demand accountability for the perpetrators and their complicit enablers, redress for the victims and survivors, action to address the root causes of Zionist colonization, occupation, and apartheid, rejection of all efforts to normalize the perpetrator regime and its criminal acts, and freedom for Palestine. In sum, we demand justice. 
To these ends, we call on people of conscience everywhere to intensify their efforts to secure justice for the Palestinian people, through increased and coordinated efforts to isolate the Israeli regime, reject its normalization, and to hold it to account through boycotts, divestment, sanctions, military embargoes, criminal prosecutions of perpetrators and complicit actors, civil actions against those benefitting from harms, education of our neighbors, public protest and civil disobedience, and the amplification of calls for a free Palestine.

Gaza Tribunal: The genocide continues

On 4 November, Judge Navi Pillay, former member of the UN special commission of inquiry that found Israel guilty of committing genocide in Gaza, addressed the National Press Club. “Under the Genocide Convention, every state has the legal obligation to prevent the commission of genocide, to deal with the commission of genocide, and to protect against genocide ... Be careful what you’re doing”, Pillay said. “You may one day face charges of complicity in genocide.”
As Pillay was delivering her speech in Canberra, two major Israeli weapons companies were spruiking their wares in Sydney at the Indo Pacific weapons expo, officially sponsored by the NSW government and the Australian Navy. Elbit Systems and Rafael have enabled and profited from the genocide in Gaza, and even <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-weapons-firm-rafael-uses-gaza-killing-marketing-campaign">use their war crimes as selling points</a> for their weapons systems. They were joined by a host of other arms dealers that have amassed fortunes by turning Gaza into a mass grave, including Lockheed Martin, Leonardo and Thales. 
While the Israel connection was the most morally repugnant feature of the expo, it went well beyond this. The main game for Australian imperialism is bolstering its military power and further integrating with the US military, to better contain and combat China. These priorities were reflected in the convention, which <a href="https://indopacificexpo.com.au/news-media/latest-news/74-american-companies-come-together-at-indo-pacific-2025-to-celebrate-innovation-collaboration-and-250-years-of-the-us-navy/">celebrated</a>
the US bringing the “largest national presence to date to Indo Pacific 2025 with 74 leading American companies representing nineteen states present at the show”. These companies are competing to get their snouts in the trough of the global arms race, now worth about US$2.5 trillion annually, and with Australia set to nearly double its military spending to $100 billion per year by 2033-34.
The weapons expo encapsulated the barbarity and the banality of the evil of present-day capitalism. Thousands of senior military and government personnel rubbed shoulders with war profiteering corporations, many of which are run by ex-military or government personnel themselves. Far from being a barrier to entry, complicity in the genocide in Gaza was almost a requirement of entry, and the rosy dawn being hailed was one of mushroom clouds and future holocausts. Free gifts for participants included hand-grenade plush toys.
Despite officially sponsoring the event, the NSW government tried to downplay its involvement in the expo, a spokesperson for NSW Industry Minister Anoulack Chanthivong <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/oct/30/israeli-weapons-companies-elbit-rafael-should-be-removed-sydney-defence-expo-over-gaza">telling the</a> Guardian that the state government was not paying international companies to attend and was not involved in planning the expo. Information leaked to the Palestine Action Group, however, claims that the NSW government has spent at least $1.6 million to secure the hosting of the expo in Sydney, and that staff from the Premier’s Department were involved in setting up and running the exhibition.
Federal Labor ministers were much less coy. The keynote speaker, Defence Minister Richard Marles, gushed that the machines of death before him spanned “the breadth of the beautiful, the menacing and the extremely cool ... the very best of human ingenuity”.
While these “beautiful” weapons were being bought and sold inside, other weapons were being deployed outside—against anti-war protesters.
Pepper spray is banned for use in warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention. But NSW Police did not hesitate to repeatedly spray hundreds of demonstrators with this chemical weapon, which causes severe pain and blindness for up to half an hour. The attacks on our demonstration began as soon as people arrived in Darling Harbour, police violently charging protesters from 6:23am, riding horses into the crowd, punching demonstrators in the head, emptying whole canisters of pepper spray into people’s faces and making violent arrests. One protester, Amy, a journalism student, was thrown to the ground, fracturing her tibia (shin bone). 
The police attacks continued intermittently for several hours, even after we were driven away from the International Convention Centre and into Tumbalong Park, a “designated protest area”. At one point, the police escorted an expo attendee into the park and through the middle of our protest, just to have an excuse to pepper spray the crowd again. I was sprayed directly in the face while trying to help up another protester who had been knocked down and blinded. 
Senior police later lied about events, telling a media conference that they had been “set upon by a pack of very angry people”. Several <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DQoitfwE3kb/">videos</a> show that the exact opposite occurred. When I tried to ask a question at this press conference—about whether NSW Police had begun any investigations into war crimes by companies at the expo—I was <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/propalestine-protesters-to-blockade-nsw-governmentsponsored-arms-expo/news-story/837abdd47900072694e75780444c2b46">surrounded by police</a> and threatened with arrest. 
Despite all of this, the spirits of protesters remained high, as we knew we had stood together, defied police violence and at least shone a spotlight on this abominable weapons expo and the sick priorities of our rulers and their repressive police. Next time, we need thousands more of us to shut it down and demand our money be spent on public housing, the health system and wage rises, not weapons, and for a world without war and genocide.
Josh Lees is a member of the Palestine Action Group Sydney.

Josh Lees

Why we protested the weapons expo of war criminals

The NSW government has announced it is making a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-21/chris-minns-government-takeover-northern-beaches-hospital/105914848?utm_source=abc_news_app&amp;utm_medium=content_shared&amp;utm_campaign=abc_news_app&amp;utm_content=messenger&amp;fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR6wnKAVF0SW-MCmpLaRalQev4KUHf0W7A4G_bkD4iKJUcoRSDSOoEu6y1cD-w_aem_DNHjkIwP0nKTzqm9-4DFeQ">$190 million offer</a> to return Northern Beaches Hospital to the public healthcare system. This follows the tragic and preventable death of a toddler—Joe Massa—in late 2024 <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/the-deadly-cost-of-privatising-health-care">due to inadequate care in the hospital’s emergency department</a>. The public outcry about this case, and broader discontent about the performance of the hospital, have prompted strong criticism of the hospital’s management and the public-private partnership model it was controversially founded on. 
The government’s offer is $190 million too much. It has already contributed <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-27/northern-beaches-hospital-mps-warn-over-private-operators/12006392">$600 million</a> to build the hospital, part of the $2.14 billion it committed to give the private provider in a contract signed in 2014. The provider, Healthscope, has demonstrated it is not capable of operating a hospital properly and that this incompetence represents a danger to the public; it should be being sanctioned, not compensated. Workers are not compensated when they underperform at their jobs, and corporate executives shouldn’t be either. Meanwhile, Healthscope currently operates 37 hospitals across the country.
The NSW government argues that buying Northern Beaches Hospital is about getting rid of public-private partnerships, but the details look a little murkier. It wants to make the hospital a “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-21/chris-minns-government-takeover-northern-beaches-hospital/105914848?utm_source=abc_news_app&amp;utm_medium=content_shared&amp;utm_campaign=abc_news_app&amp;utm_content=messenger&amp;fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR6wnKAVF0SW-MCmpLaRalQev4KUHf0W7A4G_bkD4iKJUcoRSDSOoEu6y1cD-w_aem_DNHjkIwP0nKTzqm9-4DFeQ">fully public operation with private services</a>”, but hasn’t provided any further detail about the operating model and partnerships with private providers. 
A parliamentary inquiry into the hospital has just begun. During its first day, the chair of the committee, Dr David Jollow (who is also the director of Women’s Health at Northern Beaches Hospital), has <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/fate-of-private-services-hangs-in-the-balance-at-northern-beaches-hospital-20251020-p5n3r1.html">cautioned against losing the 20,000 private surgeries that occur there each year</a>, echoing concerns voiced by private doctors. Professor Keith Burgess, president of the medical staff council at the hospital, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/oct/21/northern-beaches-private-hospital-sydney-nsw-government-buy-back">put it like this</a>: “In the private sector, you can do what you like, and so a number of higher level procedures have been carried out, like cardiothoracic surgery ... that will be proscribed if it’s a completely public hospital”.
Regardless of what implication the line “in the private sector you can do what you like” carries for the safety of patients in such facilities, concern is couched in terms of lost services for patients, and the long wait list for elective surgery in the public system. But it’s hard not to think it has more to do with defending the lucrative business model that doctors operating in the private system sense is threatened by a public takeover. And people shouldn’t have to rely on private hospitals for timely elective surgery. A properly funded public system could and should provide it. 
To most people, a public hospital with private services sounds like a contradiction in terms, but, strange as it sounds, privatising services within a nominally public hospital is not that uncommon in NSW. For example, cancer patients at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown have, since 2013, been treated at the private Chris O’Brien Lifehouse (COBL) centre at a cost to the government of $16.7 million per year. The private provider operates rent-free on the hospital’s grounds and has also been given $180 million of federal government funding. In 2016, the Sydney Morning Herald revealed that public patients being treated by the private provider had been told they would have to pay for these services, although COBL later claimed this was a “mistake”.
Randwick’s Prince of Wales Hospital likewise has a privatised vascular surgery department. It also houses the <a href="https://www.ehc.com.au/">Eastern Heart Clinic</a>, which provides interventional cardiology services. If you go to the hospital with a heart attack, you might end up on one of their tables having a a stent put in your coronary arteries. Bizarrely, one (geographical) half of the intensive care unit is also privately run.
There has been a long-term commitment by both major parties to propping up private health care in Australia. In fact, the entire industry is unviable without public subsidies: every medical service delivered in private hospitals has an associated Medicare code and subsidy. In 2022-23, the Australian government <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/health-welfare-expenditure/health-expenditure-australia-2022-23/contents/trends-by-area-of-spending/hospitals?utm_source=chatgpt.com#PrivateHospitals">spent $7.6 billion</a> on private hospitals, which represents 36 percent of their total funding. 
Neoliberal market worship is not just about making donations of public money to private providers; it also underpins the funding model used for public hospitals. This model is called Activity Based Funding (ABF), and it remunerates hospitals not for what it actually costs to treat a certain “type” of patient, but what it would cost an efficient hospital, as decided by the boffins over at the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority. 
ABF is meant to drive efficiency via arbitrarily decided price signals, but what it does in practice is intensify the exploitation of healthcare workers, provide perverse incentives for local managers to game the system and further commodify public health care. It also doesn’t take into account the individual circumstances that can make individual patient care more complex, violating the much touted aspiration of modern healthcare systems to deliver “person-centred care”. 
Health care should be a right, not a commodity. Privatised health care is dangerous and unfair. All privatised healthcare services should be brought into the public system without compensation, starting with all of the hospitals operated by Healthscope. But at the moment, the plan from Healthscope’s administrators is to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-20/healthscope-proposal-for-workers-tax-benefits-under-fire/105894910?utm_source=abc_news_app&amp;utm_medium=content_shared&amp;utm_campaign=abc_news_app&amp;utm_content=messenger&amp;fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR4xOJ1RbGXjfWzQiLj7YgVjCVfs7qtiVdtr-UONNTGW3rJSTMc_6IKRrMSs_Q_aem__asao8DOhIIKdHhNWtxS_g">re-brand as a charity</a> (PurposeCo) and steal their remaining employees’ tax benefits. They are hoping this will be enticing to potential buyers. What a circus. 
Instead of wasting money propping up the private system or, worse, building nuclear submarines, the health system should get the funding boost it needs so that quality care can be provided to all. Without a fight, this won’t happen not at Northern Beaches Hospital, or anywhere else.

A healthcare worker

Public money given to private providers, and patients pay

Community members and workers across the health and community sectors have been reeling over the last fortnight following the sudden news that some of the longest running community health centres in the country are closing their doors. 
The decision by Cohealth to close its general practice services in the Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood, Fitzroy and Kensington by the end of 2025, and to shut the Collingwood site entirely by mid-2026, will leave around 12,500 people without a GP. The closure will also cut off pharmacy services, including opioid replacement programs, as well as nursing, counselling and allied health care. 
Thousands of people depend on these clinics for their everyday health and survival, including some of the most vulnerable in the community: refugees, newly arrived migrants, people experiencing homelessness, those living with disabilities, and patients managing complex chronic illnesses.
Staff at Cohealth received notification of the closures via email on the same day the public announcement was made. There was no warning, no consultation and no plan to ensure continuity of care. For the communities affected, this is not just a policy change: it is a devastating loss of a vital lifeline.
Having spent eight years working as a doctor in public hospitals before moving to general practice and community health, I thought I understood what strain looked like in our system. I have sat through ward meetings where doctors debated who was “least sick” and could be discharged to make room for new patients who had been waiting in the emergency department for days. I have seen people essentially bedbound for months waiting for “non-urgent” elective surgeries. 
But the crisis in general practice is different—quieter, more personal, and in many ways more insidious. I’ve had patients tell me not to bother taking their blood pressure because they know it will be high, but that the ensuing discussion will mean their appointment will run over the standard consultation time and they can’t afford the extra fee. I’ve had women ask whether a follow-up appointment after a medical termination of pregnancy is really necessary, because the cost of the medication already means they’ll be short on food for the week.
These are the realities of general practice. Medicare’s promise of universal care has become increasingly hollow. A recent report from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners found that only 12 percent of GPs now bulk bill all their patients, while 40 percent bulk bill few or none. Even in Victoria, one of the better performing states, the bulk-billing rate for non-concession card holders is an abysmal 19 percent. 
It is no surprise, then, that 9 percent of Australians delayed or skipped seeing a GP because of cost in 2023–24, up from 7 percent the year before. But those figures don’t fully capture the damage. Preventive care—the invisible work of managing risk factors and detecting illness early—is what keeps people well, and reduces overall disease burden. The positive effects of this sort of care are hard to measure—the absence of disease where it might have otherwise occurred—and long term, which is also hard to quantify and politically less rewarding for governments. When people delay seeing a GP because of cost, prevention disappears from the picture. 
The Australian government’s own Department of Health and Aged Care admits that every dollar invested in preventive health saves an estimated $14.30 in future healthcare and social costs. Yet Medicare rebates have stagnated for years, pushing more and more clinics to pass costs onto patients, while those who can’t pay fall through the cracks. 
For a time, community health centres held the line. We were able to offer bulk-billed services, integrated care and enough time to address the complex needs of patients in crisis. But now even that last line of defence is being dismantled. 
In addition to the Cohealth closures, the Age reports that two more community health centres are on the brink of closure. Many more of the surrounding clinics have closed their books to new patients because they are already at capacity, with wait times of two to three weeks for an appointment. 
Part of the problem lies in the fragmented way our healthcare system is funded. The federal government funds general practice through Medicare, while public hospitals are jointly funded by federal and state governments. This creates absurd incentives. When the federal government keeps Medicare rebates low to save money, the result is more people ending up in hospital—which costs the states (and taxpayers) far more. A non-urgent emergency department visit costs over $500, compared to $42 for a GP consultation. Yet Canberra continues to starve general practice funding, leaving states to mop up the fallout.
The rollout of Urgent Care Centres is the latest example of patchwork policy masquerading as reform. These centres provide episodic, walk-in treatment for minor emergencies. They relieve some of the pressure on hospitals—but at five times the cost of a GP visit. They don’t support preventative health, continuity of care, or long-term management of chronic disease. And they further fragment and complicate the health system. 
Meanwhile, the federal government has trumpeted its new Bulk-Billing Practice Incentive Program, which began on 1 November. It offers a 12.5 percent incentive payment to clinics that bulk bill all eligible patients for certain services. On paper, it looks like progress. In practice, it’s a drop in the ocean. 
The flat 12.5 percent incentive does not scale with consultation complexity or length, incentivising short, frequent consults and penalising clinics that care for complex patients. Many community health services also rely on a mix of bulk-billing and small private fees from those who can afford to pay. These organisations may opt out of the program to preserve this income, as the incentive payment may not offset the loss from private billings.
The government claims these changes will increase the number of fully bulk-billing practices to around 4,800 by 2029, with 90 percent of visits bulk billed by 2030. However, an analysis conducted by the healthcare accessibility organisation Cleanbill suggests that the real number of new fully bulk-billing clinics is likely to be closer to 740. So far, according to the government’s own figures, only 622 of the 4720 metropolitan practices have expressed interest in changing from mixed billing to the new bulk-billing system, despite months of government campaigning. 
The deep sense of anger and betrayal from the communities of Fitzroy, Collingwood and Kensington has been palpable. Hundreds have flooded mass meetings to voice their outrage, directed at the Labor government and the Cohealth board in equal measure. The people here have a strong memory of what community-controlled healthcare once meant.
North Yarra Community Health, one of the precursors to Cohealth, was run by a board elected by the community: bi-monthly community meetings were attended by hundreds and interpreted into ten languages. Annual general meetings were held in tents, not boardrooms.
When North Yarra merged with Western Region Health and Doutta Galla to become Cohealth, that democratic model was dismantled. The board became incorporated, community membership was abolished, and decision-making drifted away from those it affected most. The current crisis is a direct outcome of that shift. Today, unelected board members can decide to close clinics, terminate staff and sell off community assets without answering to the people affected.
This fight is about more than one organisation. Australia’s public health system is at breaking point. Hospitals are overflowing, ambulance ramping has become routine, and exhausted healthcare workers are being pushed to their limit. Every year brings new promises of reform, yet the underlying issues—underfunding, privatisation, and the widening gap between rich and poor—remain untouched.
If governments are serious about fixing the system, they must start with the basics: guaranteeing access to healthcare for all, fully funding preventive and community health services and returning control of those services to the people they serve. We must end the profiteering that treats health care as a commodity and rebuild a universal public health system—one in which healthcare is free, accessible and guaranteed as a human right for every person. 
On Saturday 8 November, community members and healthcare workers will rally outside the office of federal Labor MP Sarah Witty to demand just that—immediate intervention by the Victorian and federal governments to stop the Cohealth closures with no interruption to services, as well as a commitment to a public, fully-funded community health system—free, universal and democratically controlled by the communities it serves.

Shaday Wheatley

Community health centre closures must be stopped

When Victoria Police Commander Wayne Cheeseman huffed into his media conference on 19 October, armed with a box of rocks allegedly thrown by anti-fascist protesters, he engaged in a piece of theatre intended to malign anti-racists and praise far-right protesters. Cheeseman was also doing his bit for the wider campaign, supported by the Melbourne City Council, the Liberal Party and the mainstream media, to crack down on protests in Melbourne. 
That day, there had been two opposing rallies in the city centre. One was a far-right protest, attended by angry, racist nationalists waving flags and demanding an end to immigration. This protest was led and addressed by Matt Trihey, a member of the National Workers Alliance, a fascistic organisation with links to the Nazi National Socialist Network. A similar protest a few weeks before had ended in violent attacks on Camp Sovereignty, an Indigenous protest camp in a city park.
The other demonstration was an anti-racist counter-march. It involved at least 1,500 people marching against nationalism and white supremacy, the vast, vast majority of whom did so entirely peacefully. The police chose to target their fire on just one of these protests. 
Cheeseman ranted and raved at his press conference, about “issue-motivated groups” (left-wing people who are opposed to racism), and praised the far right who “protested by example”. This celebration of the well-behaved racists gave a predictable boost to the far right, some of whom called on social media for Cheeseman to become mayor. 
The mainstream media amplified the police commander’s calls, building on many months of campaigning about the need to restore “order” in the city. Chip Le Grand, political writer for the Age, quoted beleaguered business owners as part of his argument for scrapping democratic rights: “Prominent restaurant owner Chris Lucas wants the CBD to be declared protest-free for the rest of the year. While this would temporarily impinge on the right to assembly guaranteed by Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, it would protect the countervailing rights of business owners, residents and ordinary visitors to the city”. 
The reality is that this anti-protest campaign was under way well before the anti-racist protest over the weekend. Cheeseman was saying what most of the establishment were already thinking, and some doing. Rock throwing and other counterproductive tactics simply gave the police and their allies more authority to pursue it. 
Their real gripe is the Palestine movement, remarkable in its scope, depth and longevity, and which has organised weekly rallies in Melbourne throughout Israel’s stepped-up genocide. This show of internationalism and solidarity against Western-backed violence is part of what had motivated the far right to organise. And it has been the catalyst for the authorities, in particular the Melbourne City Council, to call for restrictions on the right to protest, such as exist in New South Wales. The permit system there gives police the ability to veto the right to demonstrate, and while activists can sometimes overturn this in court, it requires access to lawyers and costs time and money, which left-wing activists often don’t have. 
Already, the Melbourne City Council has approved a plan to request state and federal governments to restrict protest rights in the city. This would <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-20/city-of-melbourne-councillors-vote-amendment-protest-disruption/105674980">include</a>
altering the routes of protests, moving them to parks or “stronger police intervention to minimise disruption”. 
Brad Battin, the Liberal leader, has likewise called for limits on the right to protest. Battin has pledged to introduce a permit system if the Liberals are elected at the coming state election. A Liberal press statement has Battin saying, “Under a government I lead, law abiding citizens will be prioritised ahead of those who seek to disrupt the activities of Victorians or endanger public safety”. The Liberals sleight of hand includes discussing protests and demonstrations in the same breath as machete crime and gang violence. 
Premier Jacinta Allen has so far resisted calls for a permit system, but her government has introduced other laws restricting protests. These include harsher penalties for people who lock on or glue themselves to surfaces—things that mainly environmental and anti-war activists engage in. 
Whatever happens, we have to defend the right to protest. We can’t let the very forces we are often protesting against take away our ability to challenge them. And we can’t let profit making for city businesses trump democratic rights. The best way to uphold and defend the right to protest is to keep getting out and protesting, and to make it impossible for the authorities to stop us.

Anneke Demanuele

Cops huff and media puff—we need to defend the right to protest in Melbourne

The WA Socialists achieved a solid result in their first electoral foray—into local council elections, which were completed on 18 October. Despite launching only in June this year, the party ran ten candidates across eight local councils, with grassroots campaigns concentrated in Bayswater, Canning and Fremantle. 
In Bayswater’s South ward, teacher Lewis Todman finished second with 15.8 percent of first preference votes. Also finishing second was nurse Rachel Goldsbrough in Canning’s Mason ward, with 24 percent. Finally, Nick Everett—longtime socialist and secretary of Friends of Palestine WA—finished third in Fremantle’s East ward with 19.7 percent of the vote. 
Among them, these campaigns mobilised more than 100 volunteers, many of whom were on the hustings for the first time. Together they knocked on 18,000 doors and spent countless hours getting the word out to voters. The message was straightforward: residents deserve a council that will put the interests of people ahead of the profits of developers and big business. 
This means, among other things, that councils should use their power to tackle the cost of living and housing crises head on. WA Socialists candidates argued for expanding or in some cases setting up council-run services, ranging from child care to aged care. Candidates also called for increasing council rates on vacant homes and for increased investment in community spaces. 
Over the course of the campaign, candidates also took up the big political issues. In Cockburn and Fremantle, we argued against the transformation of Perth’s southwestern suburbs into a hub for the AUKUS alliance. And in every ward, WA Socialists candidates argued for local governments to take up the issue of the genocide in Gaza. 
This message found an audience beyond those reached by our volunteers. With little more than a candidate statement sent out to voters along with their ballots, WA Socialists candidate Zoe Stevens won 17.7 percent of first preference votes in Armadale’s River ward. In Cockburn, where the field was heavily contested, Grace Redfern finished fourth out of eight with 10.1 percent of first preferences. With most other WA Socialists candidates winning between 7 and 10 percent of the vote in similar circumstances, it’s clear there’s an audience for socialist politics in WA. 
We can’t be content, though, with a couple of thousand people reading our policy and voting for us. We need more active socialists to keep up the fight for all the things we argued for in this election and to continue to establish WA Socialists as a radical left alternative to the political mainstream.

A tale of two union movements: Palestine and the unions in Italy and Australia

Labor’s student clubs and Palestine activism

Workers go hungry while corporations rake it in

Police are getting more violent, but black bloc tactics make things worse

Gaza Tribunal: The genocide continues

Why we protested the weapons expo of war criminals

Public money given to private providers, and patients pay

Community health centre closures must be stopped

Cops huff and media puff—we need to defend the right to protest in Melbourne

Impressive result for socialists in WA council elections

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