Fascists in Australia are trying to build a movement. We have to stop them. On 19 October, we will be counter-protesting the next round of “march for Australia” demonstrations—protests that are trying to capitalise on fascism’s international success. 
The far right is no longer just small bands of drunken neo-Nazis praising Hitler and organising small marches and pub gigs. Across the globe, fascists have entered the political mainstream, and far-right groups have become ruling parties. They are in government in the United States, India, Italy, Argentina and across Europe. If elections were held in the United Kingdom, Germany or France today, fascists would likely take key ministerial posts in far-right governments. 
In Australia, the far right has organised some of the largest street demonstrations in decades, and One Nation has gained in the polls. Inside the Liberal Party, there is a battle between the right and the hard right—Andrew Hastie quitting the shadow ministry to further campaign against migrants and climate targets and for increased militarism, and to build the far-right brand as the future of Australian conservatism.
The growth of the far right is, in many ways, inevitable under capitalism. The ideas of the far right are the ideas of capitalism taken to their logical extreme. And the program of the far right can suit the needs of the ruling class. That’s why, in the United States, the Trump regime is not meeting much opposition from the capitalists. 
What isn’t inevitable is the nature of the response to this growth of the far right. The Labour Party in the UK and the Democrats in the US offer one path: acquiesce, do nothing, and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-remarks-at-immigration-white-paper-press-conference-12-may-2025">repeat the core messages of the right</a> and by doing so legitimate them. Trump, in <a href="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-speech-department-of-defense-leaders-quantico-september-30-2025/">a speech</a> to the army top brass, as good as called out the Democrats for their lack of political response to his agenda: “I thought it would be met with fury on the left, but they’re sort of giving up, I must be honest with you. They’ve had it. They’ve had it with Trump”.
Where the centre parties do nothing, we have to stand against the growth of the far right. We need to build mass movements on the streets and take them on in other areas of our society. 
We need to make use of all political arenas that we can. That means organising forums and town hall meetings. It means postering campaigns, painting the town “anti-fascist”. We need left-wing political parties, like the Socialists, to grow everywhere and provide an anti-capitalist alternative to both the status quo and the far right. In 2023, we were able to deny Melbourne neo-Nazis their organising space, a gym in Sunshine, using protests and community pressure. Campaigns like that should be repeated when the far right attempt to set up spaces to build their movements. 
In Australia, we have the chance to push back against the far-right street movement because it still lacks coherent political leadership. 
We have to grow a confident and militant working-class movement. This is central because we cannot defeat the far right without taking on the capitalists. Only by getting rid of the system that breeds fascism can we ensure that this kind of politics cannot rear its head again. We may not be able to defeat the politics of the far right within the framework of capitalism, but we can challenge their current political organisations and build a left-wing alternative.
In Italy, a far-right government is currently in power. Despite this, a mass strike wave has developed against the genocide in Gaza, and crucially against the government’s support for it and its opposition to working-class action. As workers continue to develop their struggles, they can start to create a crisis for the far-right government and hopefully remove it from power. 
This shows us a pathway for defeating the far right. We have a responsibility to build these kinds of movements everywhere. The fight against the far right has to be a fight against this brutal system. 
In Australia, 19 October will be a crucial opportunity to build an anti-fascist movement and build the confidence of our side to take on the whole racist, rotten system.

Anneke Demanuele

The far right is organising—we have to resist

On a sunny Saturday in September, more than two dozen volunteers gathered at a park in Samson, in Perth’s south. As on many afternoons and weekends before, they were meeting there to doorknock for the WA Socialists’ candidate in the City of Fremantle council election. Between them on that day, they managed to knock on more than 1,000 doors, talking to voters about local issues and making the case to vote to elect a socialist to the council.
Victorian Socialists members voted in June to expand their electoral project across Australia, and the WA Socialists was launched in July. It immediately found an audience among those who were eager for a left-wing alternative to the parlous state of politics in Western Australia. Since then, more than 500 people have signed up, and many have gotten active in the council campaign—with good reason.
WA is possibly the worst state in Australia in which to be a renter. According to a recent report from the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, the median weekly rent in WA has increased by 76 percent since 2020 and now sits at $740. Anglicare WA’s 2025 Rental Affordability Snapshot found not one single room in the whole of the state, let alone a property, is affordable for people on Jobseeker, youth allowance or the disability support pension.
Investment in public housing has been criminally low. As of May 2025, there were 21,480 current applications for social housing. If you’re one of those applicants, you can expect to wait on average 148 weeks, or just under three years. And in its recent budget, the Cook Labor government wound up several key cost-of-living relief measures, such as electricity credits.
While workers and the poor are struggling, for those at the top it’s a boom time. According to the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation, WA’s iron ore sector generated $128 billion in sales in 2024, of which $36 billion was profit. And politicians themselves are among the winners. They were recently awarded a 4 percent pay rise, increasing a backbencher’s annual pay to $173,393. For comparison, the starting salary for a WA state school teacher is $78,397. 
It’s in the context of this one-sided class war being waged by the rich and their political servants that WA Socialists has embarked on its first serious campaign. Council elections are taking place across the state in October, in most places by postal ballot. With a total of ten candidates running across eight council areas in Perth, the party has presented voters with a genuine, fighting, anti-capitalist platform—proudly taking up issues like housing, the environment, workers’ rights and solidarity with global struggles like that for peace and justice for Palestine. 
Nick Everett, the WA Socialists’ candidate for East Ward in Fremantle, is a long-time socialist activist, former chair of Friends of Palestine WA and a union delegate. In Fremantle, wealth and poverty often rub shoulders. The median rent for a house has increased by nearly 60 percent in the last five years, and public housing levels have sharply declined, replaced with expensive new apartments. 
The state government plans to relocate Fremantle’s 100-year-old port, shedding hundreds of local jobs and destroying the heart of the community. Everett and the WA Socialists are firmly opposed to this, as well as to the plan to turn the nearby suburb of Cockburn into a base for US nuclear submarines as part of the AUKUS deal. Fremantle declared itself a nuclear-free zone in the 1980s. Everett wants to keep it that way.
“Fremantle’s identity is being sold off to developers while working-class people are squeezed out”, Everett says. “We need a council that treasures Freo’s unique working-class history and prioritises housing and services for all, not just the rich.”
In Canning in Perth’s east, the dilapidated Brownlie Towers site has sat empty for years despite its potential to provide much-needed public housing. Rachel Goldsbrough, a public hospital nurse and the WA Socialists’ candidate for Mason Ward in Canning, has made the redevelopment of the towers a key part of her platform. “We need 100 percent public housing at Brownlie Towers, and we need it yesterday”, she says. “The government has ignored this project for too long. It’s a disgrace.”
Rents in Canning have skyrocketed by 84 percent in just five years, and council rates were raised by 6 percent this year—among the highest increase in the state. Among other measures to address the housing crisis, Goldsbrough is calling on the council to impose penalties on owners of properties left empty long-term.
In Bayswater in Perth’s north, gentrification is setting in. The median house price in parts of the suburb has risen 70 percent, with many renters evicted to make way for short-term rentals and Airbnbs.
Lewis Todman, a longtime socialist organiser and pre-service teacher, is running as the WA Socialists’ candidate. “If elected, I’ll be the only renter on the Bayswater council”, Todman says. “We need a local government that stands up for the rights of renters, not the rights of Airbnb owners looking to make a buck from the housing crisis.”
Across all campaigns, the issue of Palestine resonates with voters, with many declaring that their vote will go to the WA Socialists on the basis of the party’s unwavering opposition to the war in Gaza.
While doorknocking in Fremantle, a volunteer met Sally, who said she had been a communist in her younger years. At the end of their conversation, Sally went inside her home and returned, handing the volunteer a pin that said “No Conscription”—a relic from her husband’s days as a draft dodger during the Vietnam War. She explained that she had been uplifted and inspired by some of the young people leading the WA Socialists’ campaign and their anti-war stance.
Whatever the results of this election, the WA Socialists project has significant momentum. It has already achieved the membership required to register as a party with the Western Australian Electoral Commission—a task to which it will turn in the coming months. By bringing issues like housing, public services, and global solidarity to letterboxes, doorsteps and community centres, WA Socialists offers a chance to seriously shake the rotten status quo of capitalism in WA and build a movement to win real change.

Miranda Wood

On the campaign trail with WA Socialists

Jerome Small

Fair Work Commission plans giant pay cut for community sector workers

On 1 September, the Maribyrnong City Council in Melbourne’s west initiated a six-month “security” program in central Footscray. The program involves two private security guards patrolling local streets for 24 hours a week at a total cost of $100,000.
The program was initiated at a council meeting on 22 July, at which councillors (including Labor Party and Greens members and one independent) voted to hire the guards. In the lead-up to the meeting, twenty businesses in Footscray lobbied the council to have an ongoing security presence after they trialled hiring guards for themselves. <a href="https://www.yourcityyourvoice.com.au/footscray-cbd?fbclid=IwY2xjawMrQDJleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFVSWExRlpKQ3FIWEUyWVhHAR6tsKtoj-fGc_iDIR2oDoimSVrtMvY6tbnHNGwp4uBpAB-73kZcgjXR0jT37Q_aem_Fih4j4xF4FbOTk2cdzD-vA">Maribyrnong Council argues</a> that having private guards in Footscray will “shape a CBD that is safe, welcoming and reflective of Footscray's growing community”. Recently, the council also declared that CCTV systems in the area have been upgraded so they link directly to Victoria Police for faster police responses. 
Maribyrnong isn’t the only council hiring its own security force. It took its lead from the City of Melbourne and its “Melbourne Model” of security. This was recently made permanent by Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece after an initial three-month trial. It involves eleven hired guards patrolling the streets of Melbourne’s CBD at a cost of $2 million a year. In June, Wyndham City Council in Melbourne’s outer west also hired guards for a 12-month trial at a cost of $372,000. As in Footscray, these measures have been justified on the basis of protecting community safety. 
Why do local councils see it as necessary to build up their own private armies of security guards in a context where police funding in Victoria has <a href="https://www.budget.vic.gov.au/keeping-communities-safe">increased by 88 percent in the past ten years</a> (from $2.4 billion in 2014-15 to $4.5 billion in 2025-26)? If that increase of more than $2 billion (along with more restrictive bail laws and other boosts to police powers) hasn’t been enough to combat so-called “anti-social behaviour” and petty crime in places like Footscray, why would anyone think an extra $100,000 on security guards will make the crucial difference?
It appears, in fact, that no-one much does. The police have used councils’ hiring of private security guards to push for yet more funding from the government. Police Association of Victoria chief executive Wayne Gatt recently told the Age, “[A]reas of high crime or where large groups of people commonly gather, were once areas of high police visibility via patrols, but due to capacity issues for Victoria Police, they’ve become areas where crime now flourishes”.
The reality is that neither more private security nor more police will address crime and its underlying causes, the main ones in a place like Footscray are poverty and homelessness. Not only does the beefing up of the state’s punitive functions on a local level do nothing to address these issues, but by targeting the most vulnerable people in the community, they are likely to make things worse. 
Take the homeless. According to <a href="https://chp.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/230614-Homelessness-in-your-area-2023-Footscray.pdf">Australian Bureau of Statistics data</a> from 2023, on any given night there are 694 people in Footscray without a home. These people will be among the first victims of the council’s security blitz. Council-hired guards will work with police to enforce local laws, including fining people for begging, “offensive behaviour”, having an open container of alcohol, drug use or sleeping rough in a way that interferes with local businesses or pedestrians.
In the absence of measures focused on broader issues of social welfare, fining and harassing the homeless and other vulnerable people will only contribute to entrenching them as a permanent underclass. Councils may prefer this to the status quo to the extent that it could temporarily push the homeless away from high-traffic areas, but it’s dubious to claim this will have any real impact on crime. The most common type of crimes occurring in Footscray, according to <a href="https://www.aucrimetracker.com/vic/footscray/#:~:text=As%20of%20Year%202025%20Mar,2241">recent data</a>, are theft and burglary. This isn’t something that a couple of security guards walking the streets handing out fines for begging or drinking alcohol are likely to do anything much about.
To see where the logic of constantly pouring more money into policing and security leads, we need only look at the US. US police are among the best funded and well armed in the world, and it’s the world leader in locking people away in prison. Spending on private security is also <a href="https://www.riotimesonline.com/the-rise-of-private-security-a-global-shift-in-law-enforcement/">high and rapidly increasing</a>. 
Despite that, signs of extreme poverty, homelessness, mental illness and addiction are visible almost everywhere in major US cities, along with the kinds of petty crime and “antisocial behaviour” that can go with that. And, of course, instead of thinking a change of course might be necessary, US politicians only ever use the scenes of destitution as an excuse to advocate more
violent police repression and more prisons.
The ever present threat of state-sponsored violence in the US only helps create a more violent society overall, and it’s Black Americans and other oppressed groups that are the main victims. To the extent we go down that path, it will be the same here. We’ll see more incidents like the murder of Somali Australian man Abdifatah Ahmed, who was shot by police in Footscray on 17 April. And—just as in the US—the knee-jerk response to such incidents by those in power will be racism and repression rather than policies that might help those in need. 
What places like Footscray need is investment in community spaces, more public housing, a rise in social welfare and wages, and caps on food prices. For a fraction of the extra $2 billion that’s been poured into the Victoria Police budget over the past ten years, the people experiencing homelessness in Footscray and across Melbourne’s west could have been given permanent shelter. That’s the kind of solution we need—not more police and prisons, or councils spending money hiring private guards.

Oskar Martin

Council-hired security guards waging local war on poor

Community members in Sydney’s Inner West are furious at the local council’s proposed “Fairer Future Plan”. The plan is anything but fair. It is a massive handout to developers, aimed at building expensive high-density housing, which will only worsen the Inner West’s housing crisis. Hundreds have mobilised against the plan over the past few months, culminating in a 200-person protest at a council meeting on 22 September. 
Opposition to the plan is being driven by the Better Future Coalition, a group of community activists and organisations including NSW Socialists and Action for Public Housing. The Labor-dominated council dodged community anger on Monday night by refusing to allow hundreds of people in and stacking the start of the hours-long meeting with Labor Party stooges (including paid ALP staffers) and pro-developer “YIMBYs” (“yes” in my backyard). A few developers showed up to ask for the right to build even higher apartment complexes, and their concerns were immediately noted by council members. 
Mayor Darcy Byrne is pitching his plan as a solution to the housing crisis. His supporters repeated the argument in the council meeting. The housing crisis, they say, is caused by a lack of supply, so the only solution is to build. But this is a myth. There are roughly 8,000 empty homes in the Inner West, according to the 2021 census. The Australia Institute reported in March that the construction of new dwellings has outpaced population growth for the past ten years. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are almost 1 million more residential properties in Australia than there are households. 
The housing crisis is a crisis of affordability, not a lack of houses. The Inner West Council’s plan will only exacerbate that crisis. Replacing lower-cost rentals with luxury apartments will affect all prices in the area, putting upward pressure on existing house and rental prices, and pricing many people out of the Inner West. This is a plan for gentrification, not a “fairer future”.
In a slap in the face to the community, and despite thousands of submissions demanding more affordable housing, the council revised its original promise of 5 percent affordable housing down to just 2 percent. “Affordable housing” in this context is something of a misnomer, as it would be priced at 80 percent of the current market rent, which was <a href="https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/dcj.statistics/viz/Rentandsales_16849924917120/Rent?publish=yes">$700 as of December 2024</a>.
Tellingly, the plan will not build any public housing. Meanwhile, in Waterloo, Glebe and Banksia, the Chris Minns state Labor government is busy tearing down what little public housing does exist. 
The Fairer Future Plan contains no provision for new green and community spaces, despite promising to increase the population by upwards of 70,000 people. There is no thought put into the increased need for public transport and schools. The plan will create a developer bonanza in the Inner West, not deliver services to the community. 
Mayor Byrne has tried to dodge blame by pointing to the state housing targets set by the Minns government. But his council, a bastion of the ALP, is reaching for double the targets for the Inner West, from 15,000 to 31,000 new dwellings. Byrne, Minns and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are all part of the same rotten party with the same neoliberal approach to housing.
In fact, the council’s plan is a continuation of the Minns state government’s attempt to boost the profits of developers across the state. In the 2025 NSW budget, Treasurer Daniel Mookhey announced that the government would guarantee developers’ profits by buying apartments if they can’t pre-sell enough of them. As Martin Barker <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/nsw-labor-builds-profits-not-housing">put it in Red Flag</a> in July, “They can build overpriced apartments in developments so risky even the banks wouldn’t fund them, secure in the knowledge that the government will bail them out if they can’t find buyers at the price and profit margin that they want”. 
The details of what will be built and how will largely be left up to developers. Some fear that developers will drip-feed the release of dwellings onto the market to avoid a glut that could lower prices. This habit of “land banking”, getting development approval to increase the value of land without delivering new dwellings, is already widespread. The Daily Telegraph
reported in February 2024 that “almost one billion dollars’ worth of housing in one of Sydney’s most affordable local government areas is yet to be built despite the DAs being approved up to five years ago”. There is nothing in Labor’s plan to prevent developers from playing these games to boost their profits. In fact, the plan encourages it. 
How convenient that Labor’s solution to the housing crisis doesn’t challenge developers, investors and banks but instead makes them richer. Real solutions would require a departure from decades of government policy and a fight against the wealthy elites who benefit from the commodification of housing. It would require that every level of government build public housing, end tax concessions to investors, requisition empty homes and cap rents. 
NSW Socialists and the Better Future Coalition will continue to fight this neoliberal development plan. The next big event will be a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/s/protest-inner-west-council-exp/1105656097935592/">protest</a>
against the council vote on the plan on 30 September. The Inner West doesn’t need a plan that is purpose-built for developers; we need one purpose-built for ordinary people.

Emma Norton

Community fights pro-developer housing plan for Sydney’s inner west

Student union elections are taking place on university campuses across the country. Given that only a minority of students vote in the elections nowadays, it’s fair to say that most students probably don’t know this is happening—or even know the first thing about their campus union.
This year, for example, in the RMIT University Student Union elections, about 6,000 students voted out of a student body of more than 60,000. While that level of suffrage might have been standard for nineteenth-century Prussia, it’s a sign of the general decline of student unionism in Australia.
Student unions used to be famous—even notorious—as political and activist bodies that organised and fought to improve students’ lives and the wider world around them. Today, most student unions don’t organise much more than some pretty sad free food events and occasional parties that are even sadder. 
It’s not as though there’s nothing to fight for. Financial precarity is increasingly common for university students. More and more students take on full-time work while they study to make ends meet. And the average student in their 20s leaves university with more than <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/the-crushing-cost-of-a-university-education-hungry-sleep-deprived-students-loaded-with-debt/">$30,000 of debt</a>, compared to $12,600 in 2006. 
Young people are also tuned in to the world around them: the genocide in Gaza has thousands of us outraged, horrified and wondering what on Earth we can do to stop it.
The need for fighting student unions could hardly be more urgent. So why do our unions spend so much time on glorified sausage sizzles?
Student unions and radical politics
Students have always been involved in politics and activism, but it was in the 1960s with the anti-Vietnam War movement that Australian university students burst onto the stage of history. The campuses became a major front in the battle against brutal imperialist war.
In 1971, a mass meeting of Melbourne University students declared their student union building a sanctuary for people evading conscription into the army—the so-called draft dodgers. The next year, Sydney University followed suit. Radicals at Monash University caused an uproar when they started to collect money for the “enemy” in Vietnam, the Communist-led National Liberation Front, in effect committing treason. In the political ferment, the notion that student unions should stay out of politics and focus instead on providing services seemed preposterous.
After the US and Australia withdrew in defeat from Vietnam and the anti-war movement ended, students remained a force to be reckoned with. In 1973, the peak student union body, the Australian Union of Students (AUS, precursor to today’s National Union of Students), declared itself in favour of “the building of a socialist Australia”. The AUS Women’s Department, established in 1975, became an important national forum for the women’s liberation movement. In his essential book It Can’t Happen Here, author Graham Hastings writes: 
“The culture of vigorous theoretical debate inside the Women’s Department played a vital role in the development of Australian feminism in the second half of the seventies and papers produced by the Department were cited at international women’s conferences.”
Back when university was still free, the Liberal Fraser government tried twice to introduce fees for higher education, first in 1976 and then again in 1981. Both times it was defeated by national student union campaigns that brought thousands of students into the streets. 
In the end, it was the Hawke Labor government that got the better of free education in 1986, introducing a $250 “administrative fee” that paved the way for the system we have today. But Hawke met serious resistance, including a coordinated boycott of the new student fees. Thousands of students across the country refused to pay and risked being unenrolled.
Their capacity to move students into militant action and beat back government attacks made the student unions major targets of conservative lawfare campaigns aimed at destroying them as a political force. Some of the Liberal Party’s most odious creatures—like Tony Abbott, who was president of the University of Sydney student union in 1979—cut their political teeth in these battles.
Young Liberals aren’t highly active in student unions these days, probably in part because, whenever more than two Young Liberals are put together in a room, <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/video/breaking/x98ehm0/liberal-students-rip-up-red-zone-rape-report-at-university-of-sydney/">misogyny happens</a>. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Liberal students led major campaigns against unions taking left-wing political stances. Sometimes the Liberals formed an alliance with right-wing Labor students. Catholic crusader Tony Abbott complained in a student publication:
“When AUS champions the women’s movement; homosexual liberation; the anti-Uranium campaign and anti-Kerr [the governor-general who sacked Whitlam] campaign, it is moving beyond the scope of unionism.”
But among those who did support the existence of student unions—from small-l liberals to Labor students to revolutionary socialists—there were very different ideas about how unions should operate. 
Socialists and radicals thought the unions’ strength lay in their ability to mobilise students to fight to improve their lot and combat oppression and injustice. It was under radical control that the AUS took up its call for a socialist Australia. 
Moderates in the union argued that the focus should be on welfare provision and student services. This was considered the best way to keep university management on side. Polite advocacy on behalf of students behind closed doors was preferable to disruptive protest. 
For many of these moderates, the union was their gateway to a political career, especially to high office inside the Labor Party. Labor is and has long been the dominant force in student union politics. Anthony Albanese got his start at the University of Sydney. His defence minister, Richard Marles, was the general secretary of the National Union of Students in 1989. The 1983 Australian Union of Students president was a Melbourne University student named Julia Gillard.
Student unions today
The decline of militant student unionism has tracked with the broader decline of radical politics and class struggle in Australia. The “service provision” model of student unionism has come to dominate—and with it, a generation of student union leaders for whom the unions are about beers, barbecues and building their careers. 
This dovetails with a vision of student unions as partners of the corporate executives who run our universities, even as they push through major cuts to jobs and courses. For example, the student-led <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/fighting-course-cuts-at-anu">No Cuts at ANU campaign</a> fighting against massive attacks at the Australian National University has received virtually no support from the ANU student union, ANUSA. The union accepted management’s dubious justifications for $250 million in cuts and, rather than fight, instead argued that the union should consult with management on how to minimise the impact of the cuts on students’ mental health. 
So it’s little wonder that most students today don’t vote in student union elections. Years of moderate and “apolitical” student unionism have lowered expectations so much that barely anyone expects much from their student representatives anyway. This situation ultimately benefits moderate student union groups, who are much more comfortable in elections fought out through social networks and backroom deals rather than open political debate. 
And while they often deliberately cultivate an “apolitical” image, student unions, like the ANUSA and many others, are still dominated by the Labor Party machine. Most unions are run by one faction or another of the ALP, particularly the right-wing Student Unity faction, which opposes free education and has an appalling record of reactionary political positions. The student unions are a perfect training ground for <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/7263">aspiring ALP operators</a> to learn the grimy arts of factional warfare and using people to gain power. It’s hardly the sort of environment that might attract young left-wing students who want to fight the system. 
Labor’s national dominance is also reflected in its control of the National Union of Students. This year, during the federal election, the NUS ran a barely concealed (and barely noticed) “vote Labor” campaign, telling students to “put the Liberals last”. 
The ALP machine’s control over the unions puts it well to the right of many students, a large proportion of whom vote for the Greens, a party that supports free education and other progressive policies, such as climate change and Palestine. 
The history of student unionism in Australia proves that this terrible state of affairs can be turned around. The state of the world today demands it. University students are a bigger chunk of the population than we ever have been—there are around 1.6 million of us in the country. We need student unions that can turn us into a force to be reckoned with and revive the best traditions of student activism: fighting against war, oppression and the corporatisation of our universities.

James McVicar

The sad story of student unions in Australia today

Take a stroll through the halls of a campus student union office and you’ll likely find it half empty. And you’re much more likely to see an elected student union representative handing out a free breakfast once a week than you are to see them organising a political campaign. It’s no surprise then that socialists are sometimes asked why we would bother with student unions at all.
Despite their current state, student unions have the potential to foster campus activism, give important leadership to students on political questions and even sometimes to make an impact on Australian politics overall.
The first reason for this is students themselves. They are a critical social group drawn together on campuses and encouraged to learn about the world, interrogate the ideas of the system, and develop their capacity for critical thought. While this doesn’t ordinarily result in students being politically active, in exceptional times a minority can explode into protest activity. 
Every significant social movement of the modern era has featured student activism—catalysing struggle in other social groups, leading youthful, militant and passionate demonstrations, and planting the flag for a different sort of society.
In Australia, student unions are at the heart of student politics and can be key to effective student campaigns. Campus-based unions, and the National Union of Students (NUS), have the authority to call demonstrations, the bank accounts to finance the necessities of activism and the affiliate structures and communication networks that can reach and influence tens of thousands of students. 
They also draw together the different currents of student political thought and are often the centre of debates. Those student factions, some of which are intimately linked to Australia’s main political parties, have been the training ground for generations of political activists, both in the trade union movement and in federal and state politics. 
So any serious socialist organisation needs a foothold on campuses and a presence in the political institutions of campus life if it has any chance of being part of the “real world” of Australian political life.
Over the last decade or so, the student unions, like the trade unions, have atrophied due to a declining activist culture, legal attacks and the approach taken by the mostly ALP-aligned representatives in the unions’ leadership positions. For the most part, the current student union leaders find various excuses to do little—citing the fact that many students are apathetic or that student unions rely on university administrations for continued access to funding. Campaigning against university management or encouraging student activism, it is said, would imperil the unions. So, under the leadership of these students, our unions mostly confine themselves to social events and food pantries dressed up as “mutual aid”. 
University administrators are currently on a national spree of course and staff cuts and a campaign to suppress campus Palestine solidarity activism. Limiting the actions of student unions to what these managers consider acceptable—as has happened at the University of Melbourne, where the student union has been reluctant to stand consistently for Palestine, or at Western Sydney University, where the student union is voluntarily cutting its activist positions in an effort to safeguard its funding—is a road to nowhere. 
The socialist approach is different. While we know we can’t simply wish a radical campus culture into being, we also know that if student unions took a lead on social justice issues, we could start to rebuild a more left-wing campus culture. Socialist students fight for their unions to take a stand on social issues, even if they are controversial, because doing so helps to win wider layers of students to a particular cause and gives them opportunities to become activists themselves. 
Student unionism is also important for building the ranks of the revolutionary left. Students have always played a substantial role in revolutionary socialist organisations. Student unions can organise campaigns that draw more people into political activity and provide opportunities for debate with other political forces. Student revolutionaries have to both debate and work alongside students from Labor’s left and right factions, the Greens and coalitions of independents. This means gaining experiences that are invaluable for members of a socialist organisation—like running election campaigns, learning when to compromise or hold firm and dealing with obstructionist bureaucracies. 
Student politics
Socialist Alternative is the largest and most active left political group in Australian student politics. Our organisation has maintained a consistent presence in the student unions for more than twenty years. Currently, we have more than 30 elected student union representatives across the country. There are Socialist Alternative clubs at twenty campuses, which has allowed us to become the second most powerful faction in the National Union of Students, after the Labor right. Over the last five years we have polled 21-29 percent of the NUS delegate positions elected on campuses around the country. This year, our members hold the NUS Education, LGBTQI+ and Vocational Education office bearer positions.
Socialist Alternative has a long history of pushing support for Palestine within the student unions. While student unionists from both Labor right and left have taken sponsored trips to Israel almost every year, our members have prevented the national union from adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and spent years arguing to the other student political factions that our default position should be a support for freedom of speech and democratic rights on campuses.
This year, through the NUS Education Office, we have organised an inquiry into censorship of Palestine supporters on the campuses, and a national student referendum in which more than 5,000 students voted in support of Palestine. The latter engaged many students in the Palestine solidarity campaign for the first time, with some becoming ongoing campaign activists.
For the last two years of the genocide, we have fought to drag our union into action. We have organised several student strikes for Palestine, in which thousands of university students have walked out of class for Gaza. In 2009, we established Students for Palestine, an activist campaign group. Last year, working with others in SFP, we organised student general meetings to vote on subjects like university ties to weapons companies and support for sanctions against Israel. These were the largest on-campus events for Palestine in Australia’s history, sometimes the largest meeting on any topic since the 1970s. In many places, the motions passed were required to become official student union policy. 
We faced significant opposition from others in the unions. At Melbourne University, student unionists from other factions attempted to prevent the meeting by calling in a law firm. The meeting went ahead only after socialists made it clear that it would happen with or without the union. At Adelaide University, the hard-right international student faction running the union attempted to prevent the meeting by refusing to convene the union council, where the forms to call an SGM must be approved. Socialist Alternative members scoured the constitution and found they could go over the heads of the union—as long as they found 300 students to support their efforts. They did, and held Adelaide University’s largest student meeting in years.
In May 2024, with SFP, we brought the Gaza solidarity encampment movement to Australian campuses. After initiating the campaign at Sydney University, we organised solidarity encampments at Monash, RMIT, Latrobe, Deakin, Adelaide, Curtin, Wollongong and the University of Queensland. We refused to allow the inaction of our student union leaders to hold us back.
We also know that one of the most basic functions of student unions ought to be a defence of their members. Ten years ago, when a Liberal government attempted to raise the cost of degrees, the student movement, led by a Socialist Alternative NUS education officer, used the infrastructure of the unions to roll out a national campaign of protest. While doing so was not appreciated by the government or university managements, the campaign contributed to the defeat of the planned fee hikes, drew many students into union politics and raised the profile of the student unions to a height not equalled since.
We have led too many other campaigns to note in one article. But we do so because we know that activist, left-wing student unions can stop right-wing attacks, draw students into campaigns, build a culture of protest and inspire other social groups. However, this won’t happen if the careerism and conservatism currently dominant in the leadership of student unions go unchallenged. Someone needs to go in to bat for activism, social justice and a combative approach to the government and university managements that are more interested in making money and serving power than delivering a quality education. 
This is why socialists contest student elections, attend student union meetings, fight to win positions in the national union and organise against conservative union bureaucrats.

Grace Hill

Socialist Alternative’s approach to student unions

The Interim vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, Rebekah Brown, has announced that there will be no more job cuts as part of sweeping restructures that began in 2024.
This comes as a relief to the remaining 105 staff whose positions were slated to be cut under the proposal to “Renew ANU”. The announcement, made in an all-staff town hall meeting on Thursday, is a testament to the sustained pressure by members of the National Tertiary Education Union and students involved in the “No Cuts at ANU” campaign. It follows the resignation of the former vice-chancellor, Genevieve Bell, last week.
The cuts have left no part of the university unscathed. Renew ANU aimed to slash $250 million in spending across the university, including $150 million on salaries. But five areas still face major overhauls, including the College of Arts and Social Sciences and the College of Science and Medicine. These include substantial cuts to the world-renowned School of Music, which would end the teaching of performance and composition.
According to the latest figures from the union, nearly 1,100 staff have been forced out since last year. Academics who relocated to Canberra for their dream jobs have found themselves competing with their colleagues for a smaller number of positions in Hunger Games-like spill and fill processes. In backing down from further job cuts, Rebekah Brown confirmed that they are no longer needed for the ANU to meet its “savings” target. 
This is partly due to the university’s voluntary redundancy scheme. Touted as a win by the union, the scheme allowed the university to cut jobs on the cheap. Those expressing interest in it have fewer entitlements than those who are made redundant and must have their application approved by senior management. If their position is deemed necessary, it will be rejected. The fact that 175 staff have taken a voluntary separation package rather than wait to be made redundant speaks to the depth of resentment towards the ANU and the desire by many to leave.
The cuts have generated significant opposition from staff, students and the wider Canberra community. More than 2,000 people have signed a petition calling on the ANU Council to stop the cuts and terminate the employment of the chancellor, Julie Bishop (and the now departed Genevieve Bell). This follows staff resoundingly rejecting a proposal to forgo their scheduled pay rise in December last year, and more than 800 supporting a motion of no confidence in the chancellor and vice-chancellor earlier this year.
Students involved in the No Cuts campaign have protested and organised forums against the cuts, including a Special General Meeting of the Australian National University Students’ Association earlier this week. The meeting voted to sack Julie Bishop, reverse Renew ANU, open the ANU’s financial books and fully fund free education.
Although many are understandably celebrating the end of Bell’s reign and the wave of job cuts, there is no indication that the restructures will be completely scrapped. In fact, Brown was clear in her town hall address that she intends to “complete the Renew ANU strategy”, including the decision not to embed performance into the curriculum of the new Bachelor of Music.
This comes as no surprise. As the former provost, Brown, like Bishop, is part of the same management team overseeing the cuts. For her part, Bishop remains chancellor despite allegations in a Senate enquiry that she bullied an academic on ANU Council to “near suicide”.
Forcing a widely hated vice-chancellor to resign in disgrace and ending forced redundancies should give hope and confidence to those facing similar attacks at universities around the country. While it remains to be seen exactly how much of the original plan to disestablish, amalgamate and centralise various parts of the ANU will be implemented, the fight for a university that puts staff and students before profit continues.

Elliot Downes

No more job cuts, but the fight continues at ANU

Genevieve Bell has resigned as vice-chancellor of the Australian National University. The ex-Intel executive, who we now know wasn’t as “ex” as advertised, quietly remaining on Intel’s payroll while raking in a hefty $1.1 million salary, has been hailed in the New York Times as an “oracle with magical predictive powers”.
But Bell didn’t predict the months-long revolt of students and staff that made her position untenable. She leaves behind a legacy of cuts and arrogance that ignited one of the biggest campus campaigns in ANU’s history.
Under Bell’s “Renew ANU” restructure, courses were gutted, staff were sacked, and students’ education was trashed. At the School of Music, one-on-one lessons and performance subjects, the very core of the program, were axed. Across the university, workloads were piled higher, departments stripped back and core subjects binned.
The justification? An alleged $250 million operating deficit. But ANU’s own 2025 financial report recorded a healthy surplus. In other words, it was a political choice: sacrifice staff jobs and student education for “financial sustainability”.
Students and staff refused to accept it. In July, 500 rallied outside the Chancellery demanding Bell and Chancellor Julie Bishop be sacked, and the cuts reversed. Music students staged an extraordinary 24-hour protest performance. Staff held a historic no-confidence vote, with overwhelming majorities declaring they had no faith in Bell or Bishop’s leadership.
At the centre of the fight has been No Cuts at ANU, a student campaign led by members of Socialist Alternative. From the start, No Cuts argued that management is not on our side, that compromise is a dead end and that only mass protest could win.
This combative approach starkly contrasted with the ANU Student Association (ANUSA). Rather than calling for Bell’s head, ANUSA insisted that we treat her as a “worker” and explore “constructive” ways to manage the cuts. In practice, this meant bowing to management and refusing to harness student anger. This is precisely the approach that has let decades of attacks on universities go unchallenged.
The Bell saga illuminates the transformation of universities. For decades, governments have slashed public funding, forcing universities to operate as corporate machines. Students are customers, workers are exploited, and executives are recruited straight from the boardrooms of business and politics, hence Bell and Bishop.
These executives don’t share a common interest with us. They exist to make the university profitable, no matter what the cost to education. That’s why Bell could spend more than $1 million cracking down on Palestine solidarity activism while crying poor and sacking staff.
The lesson is clear. We cannot appeal to the moral virtue of executives like Bell. Petitioning or pleading with them to “listen” is futile. Trying to meet them on “their level” with arguments about profitability and the university’s prestige only capitulates to their managerial logic.
Some in ANUSA even argued that calling for Bell’s sacking might provoke the university to defund the student union. But if management tried that, it would only have opened a bigger fight—one we could have won with protests and the continued involvement of staff. The worst mistake would have been to preemptively surrender.
Bell’s resignation is a victory for everyone who rallied, protested and refused to back down. But the cuts remain. The fight now is to stop Renew ANU in its tracks, reverse the existing course cuts, and drive Julie Bishop out alongside Bell. 
ANU students have shown the way: mass, uncompromising action works. If we keep building, if we refuse to compromise, we can win. And our struggle can inspire students elsewhere to take on the corporate executives who are gutting higher education.

Lucy Chapman-Kelly

How ANU students sacked Genevieve Bell

“Can I see with a show of hands—who here has walked out from work today?” A cheer ripples across the growing crowd outside the State Library of Victoria on 10 September as dozens of people, maybe a hundred, put up their hands. Somewhere around ten times that number have skipped work, used a day off, extended a lunch break or otherwise made time in our day to stand with these striking workers. 
Some strikers hold giant letters, spelling it out in red, green and black: ON STRIKE FOR GAZA. For the second time since Israel’s latest genocidal onslaught started on Gaza, community sector workers in Melbourne workplaces have done something that the whole union movement should be doing—used workers’ industrial muscle to disrupt business as usual, by going on strike and rallying in the streets. 
As one of the strike organisers, Louisa Bassini, told Red Flag: “We know we have the power as workers to do more to stop the genocide. This action has helped prove that we can use that power, and will hopefully encourage others do the same in other industries”.
The rally is a sight for sore eyes. 
Tasnim Sammak, a member of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), addresses the crowd on behalf of the Free Palestine Coalition: “We can’t look at the images of the rubble and destruction and think it’s over. No. What we should think is: we need to act now, with urgency. And urgency needs to fuel us”.
A series of striking workers take the microphone. A striking worker from Inner Melbourne Community Legal points out the hypocrisy of community sector employers and peak bodies:
“Despite standing for so called justice and human rights, our peak bodies have refused to speak out—and have said ‘it’s not our core business’. Shame! That’s why we’re here today. It’s time to do the most powerful thing we can do as workers, and that’s to withdraw our labour.” 
“We’re a union shop—we’re all here!”, announces a speaker from Flat Out, an advocacy organisation for women in prison: “What’s the point of having civil society, a community sector, if it won’t stand up to the government. I know the government funds us, but at some point you’ve just got to say: stop the genocide, free Palestine!”
“We’re sick of seeing parents holding dead children in their arms”, says another striker. “We’re sick of seeing plastic bags full of body parts. And we’re also sick of seeing children playing funerals because they see people on stretchers all the time. Israel bombs Qatar and our government and media are silent, because they’re part of a genocidal machine which is hungry for profit. But we’re not silent. We’re on strike today. We’re using our power as workers to shut things down, saying we’re not going to work as usual during a genocide, and calling on other workers to strike too.”
Another striking worker puts it in the most straightforward way: “We have to strike because nothing else is working”. 
The rally features banners and flags from the NTEU, and from the Australian Services Union which covers most of the striking workers. Some at the rally are members of the Australian Education Union, others the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation. Many have been active in the various Unionists for Palestine groups over the past two years.
 It is living proof that despite the crushing consensus among politicians and media commentators, large numbers of workers recognise and oppose a genocide when they see one. One attendee, social worker Louie, tells Red Flag: “Today is a real demonstration of the fact that workers support Palestine and oppose genocide and they want to build forces so that their voices are heard”. Another social worker, Rachel, explains: “I’m here because I’m sick of seeing children starving, and seeing people blown up”. 
“I want to put pressure on the government to put sanctions on Israel”, says another. 
Easily the largest and most visible political group on the day is Victorian Socialists, which includes several strike leaders and rally organisers among its members. Veteran journalist Marty Hirst gives an impassioned speech about the importance of fighting for free speech on Palestine, announcing the launch of a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/media-workers-to-launch-free-speech-campaign-for-palestine">major campaign</a> on the issue on 20 September. There are references to the current important fight to stop the Fair Work Commission from imposing massive pay cuts on community sector workers.
Some recall the proud history of workers in this country acting in solidarity with workers worldwide, connecting that to an argument that <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/why-palestine-union-business">Palestine is union business</a>. There are cheers for the dock workers of Genoa, Italy, who have <a href="https://x.com/usbsindacato/status/1962085329575313604">pledged</a> to blockade the port—and to call out other ports in solidarity—if Israel intercepts the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is currently sailing to Gaza. A pledge to rally (and if possible, strike) in support of the Genoa dock workers if and when they take action in defence of the solidarity flotilla is greeted by loud applause. 
But it’s rally co-chair Monica Campo who really brings the house down by talking about the importance of fighting for the right to strike—by striking. 
“The Fair Work Act deliberately limits our ability to organise, and to use the power that we have as workers, as a class”, Campo explains. “It limits our ability to continue that long tradition of standing in solidarity with international struggles. We should and must continue to fight these limitations in the Fair Work Act, and we’re pleased to hear that the ASU has committed to keep challenging these limitations on our right to strike. But one way to challenge the law is to break it!” The applause building through the crowd erupts into cheers. 
This is more than a propaganda point—it should be a call to action. 
Though it is right to emphasise the repressive and anti-democratic nature of Labor’s Fair Work Act, it is also the case that the sort of “demonstration strikes” that community sector workers have now taken twice against the genocide have rarely, if ever, resulted in sackings or even serious disciplinary action. Of course, the level of support in individual workplaces and within union structures, and a concrete assessment of how management are likely to respond are all important factors. But this form of industrial action can and should be much more widespread. 
Every unionist in the country owes a debt to the community sector Palestine strikers. They are showing us that we don’t have to resign ourselves to the unspeakable horror unfolding in Gaza today. And the strikers are continuing a living, breathing, organising, fighting current of solidarity—one that has played a crucial role in the history of the working-class movement. 
The official, Labor-aligned leadership of our movement have spent decades smothering the political radicalism and industrial militancy that kept this tradition of struggle and solidarity alive. But the strikers are reminding everyone of the obvious truths: that workers still have the power, that more of us need to use it, and that we still have a world to win.

The far right is organising—we have to resist

On the campaign trail with WA Socialists

Fair Work Commission plans giant pay cut for community sector workers

Council-hired security guards waging local war on poor

Community fights pro-developer housing plan for Sydney’s inner west

The sad story of student unions in Australia today

Socialist Alternative’s approach to student unions

No more job cuts, but the fight continues at ANU

How ANU students sacked Genevieve Bell

‘One way to challenge the law is to break it!’: Community sector workers strike for Palestine again

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