Homes blanketed with dust. People cannot open windows and enjoy fresh air or sit outside during summer. They wake up and taste dust in their mouth. Pavers, roofs, gutters, cars and gardens must be constantly cleaned.
This is life for many residents in Sellicks Beach, 45 minutes’ drive south of Adelaide. For much of the year, locals live under a cloud of dust from the Sellicks Hill Quarry.
The quarry is owned by Adbri, Australia’s second-largest cement producer. Dust emissions have been a source of complaints for more than a decade, but residents say that the problem has become worse following a recent expansion. 
“They’ve increased the volume of business exponentially, and the volume of dust is now totally unbearable”, Mike von Berg, a local resident, told A Current Affair.
The nuisance of daily cleaning is bad enough. But health concerns are also evident. Many residents report chronic coughing and respiratory issues. Hazel, an anti-dust campaigner, has developed blepharitis, an eye condition, which she attributes to quarry dust. 
“My family has moved away from Sellicks because they believed the dust was causing health problems”, she told Red Flag.
Residents also say that they have found silica particles in the dust. When inhaled, silica can cause lung disease and cancer. “We live in a beautiful location”, said Helen, another local. “And the thought that it could be toxic is horrifying.”
In March, 150 residents attended an angry meeting and called on health authorities to conduct comprehensive and targeted research to prove that the dust contains no respirable levels of silica.
Premier Peter Malinauskas has claimed that Adbri is subject to “severe” environmental regulations. Since 2016, the company has been required to develop a dust management plan and reduce emissions.
Despite government reassurances, not enough is being done. For years, locals have documented the quarry violating regulations. In 2018, Adbri was fined for failing to comply with dust mitigation measures. In February, shortly after it approved a revised dust management plan, the Environmental Protection Authority issued a notice for excessive dust production. For Helen, more than “a little slap on the wrist” is needed to counter company negligence.
Following community pressure, Adbri has committed to a potentially stricter dust management plan. It remains unclear whether this will lead to ongoing improvements. Among political leaders, concerns have fallen on deaf ears. The state Labor government hopes to construct 1,700 homes on land just 500 metres from the quarry.
“We are not wanting the quarry to close down; we just want them to control the dust that they blow down over us”, Helen told Red Flag. “It is a basic human right to live in a clean environment and breathe clean air.”

Nix Herriot

Residents battle dust pollution in Adelaide’s south

Hundreds of teacher unionists rallied outside the Queensland parliament on 24 June to demand a decent pay rise from the state government. 
Teachers’ real wages have gone backwards by more than 6 percent in the last three years, but the government is offering an insulting 8 percent pay increase over the next three years, while annual inflation sits at 2.4 percent.
The teachers also want workloads to be reduced. High school teachers’ planning time has not increased since the 1970s, but there has been a dramatic increase in the required work—assessing, marking and writing new unit plans. All of this work is unpaid and unacknowledged by the government. 
“I don’t feel like there’s much time to get everything done”, Danielle, a secondary school teacher, told Red Flag at the rally. 
Mina, a primary public school teacher, said she thinks teachers deserve a 30 percent pay rise—the rate that rank-and-file network Queensland Teachers Fightback <a href="https://qldteachersfightback.org/our-wages-vs-inflation-vs-state-gov-wages-policy.html">is arguing for</a>. 
Mina told Red Flag that she supports taking strike action next term, “to get the point across that change is needed, a pay rise is needed, and we need to be acknowledged for the role we play in young kids’ lives”. Queensland public school teachers haven’t taken statewide industrial action in sixteen years. 
If teachers struck, they’d receive support. Construction workers from different job sites rallied alongside the teachers outside parliament. They agreed that teachers deserve the solidarity of other trade unions as they fight for their pay and conditions. 
One construction union member said attending the rally was important “to show the QTU [Queensland Teachers’ Union] is not alone. It’s a symbiotic relationship we have with all trade unions”. 
The QTU voted last year to support construction workers, whose union has been put into administration by the federal Labor government. Rank-and-file activists in both unions believe that, when one section of the workforce stands up to the bosses, they show all workers the power they have. 
Public sector workers are being left behind. Queensland teachers, nurses and firefighters are due to negotiate new contracts this year. But the Crisafulli state government has made it clear that, while there’s money for Olympic stadiums and cops, there’s little to nothing for the working class. 
Teachers will have to fight, and take industrial action, to win what they and their students deserve.

Isabella Foley

Queensland teachers fight back against insulting pay offer

I have been suspended from my high school for challenging a federal minister about his continued support for Israel and the genocide in Palestine.
I am a year 11 student at Coburg High in Melbourne, and Assistant Minister for Defence Peter Khalil visited our school this week. When I saw him on my way to class, I asked him about the government’s continued support for the Israeli government as it carries out genocide. As I did so, staff members told me that “there is a time and a place” for such questions.
Khalil nevertheless stopped for a moment to defend himself. He went on about how much he cares for the Palestinians. His evidence for this was that his father was in the Egyptian army, he is an immigrant, has been to Palestine and has “spoken with Penny Wong on many occasions”.
How is any of that relevant?
As I continued asking questions, Khalil began to walk away. A year-12 student joined me, and we chanted as Kahlil entered the school building: “Free Palestine, Peter!” Another student then joined us in this short protest.
My classmates and I have a history of protesting for Palestine. A contingent of us left school to join the School Strikes for Palestine and the demonstration against the Land Forces arms expo in Melbourne. While we were discouraged from attending, we were not disciplined for doing so.
On this occasion, our vice principal stopped us and told us not to yell at Khalil, who was the school’s guest. But we wanted to make it abundantly clear that we didn’t view him as a “guest”. Kahlil walked past us again, so we continued to chant “Free Palestine!” I also shouted: “Fucking scum!”
After this, I was barred from returning to class. I spent an hour with the vice principal, who told me what I had done was wrong and that I should have had “a civilised conversation” rather than shouting abuse.
But if what my classmates and I did was “uncivilised”, what do you call the genocide in Gaza that Khalil and Labor have supported?
Two days later, I was told I could do “community service” to avoid multiple days of suspension. But I believe that protesting for Gaza and holding politicians to account are the best services I can perform for my community.
Maybe Peter Khalil should be doing some global community service by ending Australia’s ties with apartheid Israel.
Khalil later posted on his social media: “On Monday I answered questions from some really politically passionate year 10 students ... We discussed youth health issues ...” Actually, he completely avoided talking about the health of Gaza’s children, who have been systematically bombed and starved.
I have been told that my suspension is due to my yelling at a school guest. But that guest is a federal government minister who has sat by and done nothing as Israel has destroyed every school and university in Gaza. I felt obliged to stand up and shout when he decided to parade himself through our school grounds.
Many students and staff have since expressed support for my actions. Although I have been suspended for doing what was right and being on the right side of history, this will not stop our fight for a free Palestine—because none of us is free until Palestine is free.
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Editor’s note: This article was resubmitted with amendments on 12 July. The original version did not include a reference to the author publicly calling Peter Khalil “fucking scum”. The editors regret that this information was not contained in the original piece and acknowledge that it is relevant context to the disciplinary case against Callum. 
However, we also congratulate Callum for forcefully confronting Peter Khalil and think his actions are politically defensible—indeed, justifiable. The political atmosphere in 2025 has been defined by a total failure on the part of the “adults in the room”—particularly politicians and journalists with national platforms—to adequately respond to what is arguably the moral question of our time: the wholesale destruction of Gaza and the mass murder and starvation of its population by a key international ally of the Australian government. 
Instead, we have witnessed sickening displays of obsequiousness and deference by Australian politicians to US President Donald Trump and Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. The world would be a better place if there were fewer Peter Khalils and more Callum Bells—people prepared to throw caution to the wind and just fight for what’s right.

Callum Bell

Suspended for confronting Peter Khalil

“We are here today because we are fighting for what is right!”
Striking Grill’d workers and their supporters protested in front of the burger chain’s Rundle Street store in Adelaide on 28 June, handing out flyers explaining why they were taking action against the company. They argued to people who tried to enter the store that they should boycott Grill’d while workers struck. Would-be customers were cheered when they walked away from the restaurant’s entrance.
After a few hours of protesting, the picketers took to the streets of Adelaide. “Support Grill’d workers—don’t eat the burgers!” they chanted as they spread the word throughout the city. Many of the workers have never taken industrial action before, and were buoyed by the experience. “Look, it’s our street—Union Street”!, one quipped while marching back to the store. 
The founder and CEO of Grill’d, Simon Crowe, wants <a href="https://thewest.com.au/business/retail/grilld-chief-executive-simon-crowe-says-the-burger-group-can-more-than-double-its-size-in-the-next-five-years-c-13698323">to double the company’s size by 2029</a>. Crowe, with a reported net worth of more than <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/business/companies/they-slowly-strangled-me-grill-d-store-owner-lost-shop-days-before-christmas-20191206-p53hir.html">$450 million</a>, has grown rich off the backs of his workers.
Meanwhile, Grill’d workers struggle to make ends meet. The current agreement increases wages by just 1 percent per year. Once inflation is factored in, staff have gone backwards at a rate of knots.
An analysis from the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA, the union covering the workers) has found that those on the current enterprise agreement are up to <a href="https://grilldworkersunited.org/terminate2020">37 percent worse off than if they had been on the award wage</a> instead.
So, across South Australia, Victoria and Queensland, Grill’d workers were out for better pay and conditions. Some of their demands include wage increases that account for inflation, appropriate pay for staff with more responsibilities, and guaranteed hours for permanent contracts.
Many of the workers reported to Red Flag that they are overworked and understaffed, and often unable to call in sick or take breaks.
Outside the Rundle Steet Grill’d, a supporter remarked: “See how ridiculously priced [the] burgers are? Surely, they can spare a few extra dollars for the workers here ... We all deserve fair living wages, so why not?”
One young worker said she was earning $600 working 50 hours a week, having just turned 18. “I didn’t know any better. This was my first job, and I took it because I was desperate”, she said, adding that while working at Grill’d and studying at university, she collects bottles to help pay for groceries and does DoorDash on the side.
At a time when strike rates are at a historic low and wealth inequality is soaring, these workers are showing what needs to happen. As one said defiantly, “Our efforts today will help the higher-ups see we are not to be taken advantage of, and we deserve to have an agreement where we are actually better off!”

Jordan Armstrong

Grill’d workers turn heat on boss

The Queensland Liberal National state government is considering reintroducing public drunkenness laws that disproportionately target Indigenous people. 
The move comes only a year after public drunkenness laws were abolished, and after a 2022 parliamentary report found that 47 percent of people charged with public intoxication were Indigenous, despite the Indigenous population being just 4.6 of the state’s residents. 
The abolition of drunkenness laws was one of the recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody—the rationale being that intoxicated people should be presented to non-custodial facilities to divert Aboriginal people from police custody. 
Townsville Liberal MP Peter Baillie criticised the decriminalisation, carried out by the previous Labor government, saying that the decision made it hard for the police to do their jobs and was “significantly impacting liveability in our beautiful part of the world”. 
Speaking at a protest against the laws, Mununjali man and Indigenous activist William Sim said: “These laws make our people less safe but make it easier for the police to racially profile us, lock us up and brutalise us”. 
The laws certainly aren’t applied with the same enthusiasm on the Gold Coast or in Brisbane’s nightclubbing precinct, Fortitude Valley. 
The LNP’s campaigning would have you think that crime rates are skyrocketing. In fact, they’re trending downwards. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/criminologists-debunk-youth-crime-crisis-claims/104445432">Speaking to ABC News</a> last year, University of Queensland criminologist Renee Zahnow said there is an “absolutely unanimous” academic consensus that Queensland is not in the grips of a crime crisis, and that the myths are being driven by political opportunism and sensationalist media reporting. The Australian Bureau of Statistics found that youth crime hit its lowest point ever in 2022 and has remained steady ever since. 
Despite this, the government passed “Adult Time, Adult Crime” laws (formally the Making Queensland Safer (Adult Crime, Adult Time) Amendment Bill 2025), which will introduce mandatory jail sentences for children as young as ten years old. 
The government conceded that the laws would disproportionately affect Indigenous children. Yet, shamefully, all 35 Labor MPs in the Queensland parliament supported the legislation. 
Inconvenient truths have never stopped the Liberals from running a campaign to scapegoat Indigenous people. Whipping up racism and law-and-order panics are part of the party’s DNA. 
The government just handed down a budget allocating $2.7 billion to new prisons and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-24/queensland-state-budget-2025-winners-and-losers/105427568">$4.7 billion to the Olympics</a>. But for workers, there is little. The Liberal plan to allocate funding for 2,000 new community homes falls short of providing for the record 53,000 people on the social housing waitlist. 
No wonder that the government wants to scapegoat Indigenous people—it takes the attention off its failure to deal with the cost-of-living crisis. 
The attacks on Indigenous rights haven’t just come from conservative governments, though. The previous Palaszczuk Labor government overrode the Human Rights Act twice in eighteen months to lock up kids who violated bail conditions, and to keep children detained in adult watchhouses. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/17/first-nations-campaigner-accuses-queensland-government-of-hypocrisy-for-voting-down-raise-the-age-bill">In 2022, Labor MPs voted</a> to keep the age of criminal responsibility at ten.
Labor’s attacks on Indigenous rights have opened the door to further racist cruelty from the Liberals. Neither party wants to invest the billions of dollars in housing, healthcare and education that it would require to begin to address the serious levels of poverty and disadvantage in the Indigenous community and among increasing numbers of non-Indigenous workers. 
Fighting against these latest attacks from the Liberals will be an important part of the continuing fight for Indigenous rights and for a more equal state.

Ella Gutteridge

Queensland government considers reintroducing public drunkenness laws

Robert Dale, writing at <a href="https://www.counterfire.org/article/at-last-50000-march-for-palestine-in-berlin/">Counterfire</a>, a socialist website in Britain, reports that a Palestinian solidarity protest in Berlin on 21 June was a breakthrough for Germany's Gaza solidarity movement.
--------------------
The centre of Berlin was a sea of Palestinian flags and keffiyehs on Saturday 21 June. Banned slogans were held aloft and chanted loud. At least 50,000 turned out to show solidarity with Gaza. The mobilisation was national, the crowd largely young. They chanted slogans that would have had them arrested only weeks ago. The police were powerless to stop them.
Unusually, the protest was not called by an organisation or coalition, nor were organisations visibly present. It was initiated by two German-Palestinian online influencers, whose appeal spread by word of mouth. They expected 5,000. At least 50,000 came from all across Germany.
Ferocious repression
The German authorities have stamped on Gaza protests harder than any other government in Europe. In October 2023, demonstrations for Gaza were initially banned altogether. So the right to protest at all literally had to be won on the streets. An early candlelit vigil by Jewish Voice for Peace created a protest form that the authorities hesitated to crush. By 21 October 2023, it was possible to hold a proper demonstration, with about 5,000 attending in Berlin.
Ever since, there have been regular marches across the country, but attendance has rarely exceeded a couple of thousand. Rallies often begin with the organiser reading a long list of statements that the police have banned. No “From the River to the Sea”, no expression of support for Hamas or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, no comparisons with the German Holocaust. Brutal physical force has been used to arrest protesters for repeating them. Participants at a protest camp at the Reichstag [parliament] were forbidden to speak Hebrew, Arabic or Irish Gaelic, for fear that they might speak or sing illegal words without the police knowing.
The authorities have tightly policed public discussion altogether. Until very recently, essentially any form of solidarity has been beyond the pale. Prominent Jewish artists have had exhibitions cancelled for speaking out. A conference in Berlin in April 2024 was closed down by the police just as it began. People have been sacked for statements of support, including at least one civil servant. There has been a lot of discussion about withdrawing residency status or requiring applicants for citizenship to declare their support for Israel.
One indication of the severity of the suppression is that the authorities even targeted Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. When she came to Berlin, the city government ensured that her meeting at a university was cancelled and alternative venues were denied. She eventually spoke in a small room provided by the left-wing Junge Welt newspaper, where she said she was utterly shocked by the level of repression here. All this naturally has had an absolutely chilling effect.
Why the clampdown?
Germany’s political leaders had the same reaction as their Western colleagues: support Israel come what may. And they were certainly not alone in wanting to suppress any dissent. The legacy of the Holocaust gave them an additional—and heavy—cudgel to swing. Anyone who criticises Israel is an antisemite. But what allowed them to get away with it was the weakness of the German hard left and the complicity of the parliamentary parties. The German Social Democrats and Greens back Israel to the hilt. The Greens have been particularly vicious; apparently, it’s fine to deport people for saying the wrong thing about Gaza.
The Left Party has seen debate over the issue, but its leaders at all levels have ensured that it does not get tarred with solidarity or anything like that. The few individuals and a couple of branches that put their heads above the parapet took a lot of flak, and at least one prominent activist was expelled from the party. In recent weeks, the party’s tone has softened a little, though, mirroring the slight shift in the rhetoric of major Western leaders. The Left Party officially supported Saturday’s demonstration. This was, I believe, the first time it has done so since October 2023. They were visibly present too, though only with a dozen flags.
The trade unions have been completely absent from the solidarity movement. Given the general atmosphere, that is not entirely surprising. The nearest comparison I can think of would be support for Irish Republicanism in England in the 1980s. However, the immigrants’ caucus at the public service union Verdi put its name to a demo call recently and turned up with union flags. Apparently, the national leadership was not amused.
If public discussion is verboten [forbidden] and no organisation or coalition has the strength to push back, it can quickly become a vicious circle. Speaking out is felt to be a real personal risk, making it hard to organise protests. And the lack of protests discourages speaking out.
That is what makes 21 June such a breakthrough. Not only was the demonstration too large for the police to crush or harass. It also broke through the speech bans. Participants chanted the banned slogans, sometimes directly towards the police, keenly aware that this was their victory.
First published at <a href="https://www.counterfire.org/article/at-last-50000-march-for-palestine-in-berlin/">Counterfire</a>.

Robert Dale

At last! 50,000 march for Palestine in Berlin

Roughly two dozen construction union (CFMEU) members, crane operators and riggers, are on indefinite strike at the Port of Brisbane. They’ve been out for nearly a month now and don’t show any sign of giving in. One delegate told Red Flag that they are “committed to being here as long as we need”. Workers have set up a television, cooking equipment and decorations, as well as a couch—important comforts for a long fight. 
Their employer is Qube, Australia’s largest logistics company. Qube owns part of Patrick Corporation, an infamously anti-worker outfit. In 1998, in an attempt to cripple the Maritime Union of Australia, Patrick fired its entire wharfie workforce. This kicked off the famous <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/waterfront-war-shook-australia">war on the waterfront</a> dispute. 
True to form, the Brisbane strike kicked off after Qube sacked workers, including a union delegate, who took part in an initial two-day strike in early May. They were laid off using a dodgy “restructuring”: boss language for union busting. One of the workers quit in protest but is still down at the picket line each day: “These boys are in for a fight; I’ve got to stand alongside them”, he told Red Flag. 
Along with the right to strike, the workers are fighting for better pay and conditions. They say their enterprise bargaining agreement was “substandard” even when it was signed in 2019. Their wage currently sits $4 an hour below the industry standard, which they are fighting to meet. They’re also demanding proper redundancy pay, income protection and travel pay. The small amount of travel pay they are owed is often unpaid; one worker is still waiting on a claim he made a year ago. Another demand is for a meal allowance, which is standard in the industry but not paid here. 
Not everyone experiences this poor treatment at Qube. “They look after their corporate people very well”, said one of the workers. Qube’s managing director, Paul Digney, made $4.14 million in the 2023-24 financial year. Digney recently complained in an interview with the Australian that when his workers “don’t turn up for work, the economy stops”. Too right. According to the workers, their frustrated managers often drive past the picket, occasionally giving them the middle finger. Taking these arrogant fat cats down a peg won’t go in a log of claims, but it is a worthy reason to keep fighting. 
The CFMEU members aren’t up against only their own bosses, but also a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/labor-set-to-impose-dictatorial-powers-over-construction-union">government-appointed administrator</a>. The administrator has <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/attack-on-democracy-in-the-act-cfmeu">sacked officials</a> and destroyed democracy in the union. In response to a High Court ruling that gave the go-ahead to this undemocratic disgrace, hundreds of CFMEU workers walked off the job last week. Queensland Socialists secretary and teacher unionist Bec Barrigos spoke at their rally, arguing for more strike action to take on the administration. She also pointed out the connection between the fights of workers in every industry. 
The workers at Qube are similarly keen to point out this connection. “If we just leave it and they get away with screwing us over, other workers will have to deal with it”, one of the delegates said. But “if we win here, it's a win for the next worker”. Touch one, touch all, as the old union saying goes. Another saying is well worn among these workers: “If you don’t fight, you lose”. Amid a generational cost-of-living crisis, attacks on unions, growing inequality and stagnant wages, theirs is a message worth remembering. 
Contribute to the Qube workers’ strike fund:
QUBE financial hardship fund
BSB: 064 000
ACC: 165 702 38

Connor Knight

Queensland CFMEU members fight back

The public mental health system in Victoria is a disaster. Mental health workers across the state are demanding that the state government fix it. In the past week, allied health and nurse members of the Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) struck and rallied outside state parliament during a statewide day of action, to insist that the ALP address the sector’s underfunding.
Successive ALP governments have created a severely understaffed, degrading and dangerous mental health system. Low wages, disgusting conditions and burnout are the daily reality for workers. People seeking care and treatment confront an exhausting and too often traumatic battle to receive grossly inadequate support that is overly medicalised and demeaning. The 2019 Royal Commission into Mental Health in Victoria confirmed as much and recommended broad reforms.
In response, the ALP in 2022 promised an additional 800 full-time positions in the public mental health sector. In reality, at least 2,000 additional workers are needed. The government has since backflipped. 
The latest offer proposes cuts to pay for allied health workers and no increase to overall staffing. It is attempting to divide the workforce by giving a long-overdue pay rise to mental health nurses, while cutting paid entitlements and offering a pathetic pay rise of 3 percent to long underpaid, overwhelmingly women workers. The offer proposes to cut a yearly retention payment and slash some penalty rates, which, taken together, would result in an overall pay cut for allied health workers.
General nurses in Victoria won a 28.4 percent pay rise last year, after union members rejected a government offer of a 3 percent annual pay rise. When mental health nurses, who have the same qualifications and training as general nurses, but are employed under different enterprise agreements, demanded the pay rise awarded to general nurses, the ALP initially suggested it would not extend pay parity. It has since backed down and agreed. The catch is that allied health workers are being thrown under the bus.
Either nurses or allied health workers can staff many roles in the public mental health system. The offer from the ALP would result in nurses, in some instances, being paid $40,000 more than allied health workers for doing exactly the same job. In a recent poll conducted by HACSU, 97 percent of respondents said they would leave the public mental health sector if the government did not pay them more, and fairly. 
There is enormous and cumulative anger and disillusionment among mental health workers across Victoria. Decades ago, workers, including senior clinicians, regularly talked about “a crisis in mental health”. The ALP has been in government for more than a decade and turned the crisis into a full-blown disaster. The Allan government would have us believe there is no money and that hospitals have to cut budgets.
The lie that Australian governments have no money to provide high-quality public health services is becoming an increasingly enraging and hollow cliché. Australia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. 
Healthcare workers are getting angrier and more determined to take on the Labor government’s destruction of our public services. The more it refuses to fix them, the harder we should fight. 
HACSU members want genuine pay increases for allied health members, pay parity with nursing colleagues and no cuts to current entitlements. The enterprise bargaining campaign continues and should accept no less. The ALP, meanwhile, should deliver much more.

Simone McDonnell

Mental health workers versus Victorian Labor

Victorian Socialists hosted a members’ conference over the weekend of 14-15 June. After garnering impressive votes and national attention in the May federal election, the executive moved to establish socialist parties Australia-wide. More than 2,200 financial members have since joined outside Victoria, including more than 900 in NSW, 480 in Queensland, 270 in South Australia and 330 in WA. 
The momentum and excitement of this project were reflected in conference attendance—360 people participated over the weekend, making it the biggest gathering of party members to date. This is an important step at a time of overlapping capitalist atrocities that highlight the need for a radical left challenge to the status quo. This was acknowledged in the first motion moved at the conference, a <a href="https://victoriansocialists.org.au/news/palestine-statement">statement of solidarity with Palestine</a>. 
“In the past week, a small boat carrying twelve international activists set out to the ocean to deliver a tiny quantum of food, baby formula and medicine to Palestinians being genocided in Gaza”, Palestine solidarity activist and Socialist Alternative member Simone White said, introducing the motion. “They are amplifying one clear message, one statement of fact ... And it’s a statement of fact written into this motion. They asserted that governments and politicians around the world, particularly in the Western world, were complicit in the genocide in Gaza, and where they were complicit, where they betrayed and failed the Palestinians, we needed to fight.”
VS Secretary Corey Oakley introduced the first session by talking about the overlapping crises of the capitalist system—from far-right authoritarianism to escalating imperialist violence. “What underpins all of this is a savage class war taking place all around the world”, he said. 
The conference overwhelmingly endorsed motions to enlarge the scope and scale of Victorian Socialists’ activity. The executive’s decision to expand the party federally was supported, as was a proposal for an ambitious strategy to contest all 88 lower house seats in the 2026 state election. Victorian Socialists members also voted to expand the democratic structures of the party, organising members into groups based on electoral districts and enshrining democratic processes at a local level. 
On Saturday afternoon, members broke into groups to discuss organising in their local areas. Reports from these groups give a sense of the work VS members are doing to promote socialist politics locally and in workplaces. 
In Melbourne’s West, party members are organising an anti-racist demonstration to respond to police discrimination and violence. In Brunswick, the group is supporting a union rally to defend Merri-Bek council’s library social worker program, which has recently been cut. In the south-east, where Victorian Socialists have a newly established presence, the focus is on setting up the first local meetings to organise volunteers. In the Whittlesea and Darebin council areas, members are preparing to run candidates in upcoming by-elections.
Many conference participants were new to Victorian Socialists, from unionists sick of Labor’s sellouts, to Palestine activists brought into the socialist movement through interaction with the party. 
There was a series of debates at the conference, reflecting the party’s democratic internal life. The Communist Caucus, a minority faction, intervened with proposals to significantly alter the party’s structures and strategic orientation. They proposed a program for Victorian Socialists modelled on the politics and structure of early-twentieth-century European social democracy. The faction also nominated an alternative leadership and was provided ample time to explain their positions. They garnered only a small minority of votes for any of their motions or candidates. 
Conference elected a new executive, and re-elected the incumbent secretary, treasurer, campaign director and communications officer based on their records of orienting the party through an impressive period of growth. 
The conference closed with remarks from Rebecca Barrigos, a teacher unionist and state secretary of the new Queensland Socialists. Bec described the success of the new party in attracting support from blue-collar trade unionists disgusted by the federal Labor Party’s support for union-busting, including the takeover of the Queensland branch of the construction union (the CFMEU). 
“It’s a question that’s been posed to them very concretely because they have had ... Labor governments that have actively attacked them”, Barrigos explained. “They can’t have a meeting in their union offices without a bloody government spy sitting in their office listening to what every union member says.” 
Bec read from a statement by unionist Dan Jones, explaining to other CFMEU members why he has joined Queensland Socialists: 
“The political class is out of touch with the working class, because it’s not made up of ordinary people. Part of it is made up of lawyers, lobbyists and career politicians—people who’ve never clocked on, have never packed a lunch, and have never fought for a pay rise ... Militant unionism, the kind that refuses to beg, that organises and takes collective action, needs political representation that represents its values. Queensland Socialists don’t just talk about supporting unions. They hit the streets, and they do it.”
The project of building a nationwide alternative to the political parties that prop up capitalism in Australia is still in its early stages. However, if this conference is any indication, there is a great deal of willingness to build a new socialist alternative.

Luca Tavan

Victorian Socialists conference resolves to expand party organisation

“People before profits”; “Trees not Teslas”; “Elon Musk can get [Redacted]”; these were some of the placards at a recent protest outside the City of Marion Council chambers in Adelaide, where a proposal to build a Tesla battery servicing centre and showroom in Tonsley have been met with widespread community opposition.
The council reported that 95 percent of the nearly 1,000 responses to its community consultation opposed the proposal. Submissions cited opposition to Elon Musk’s far-right politics, Tesla’s terrible environmental record, and support for alternative uses for the site, such as public green spaces and public housing.
Despite this widespread opposition, the council is ploughing ahead with the proposal. It engaged in community consultation only because it is legislatively required to do so if it is to sell a local park that is part of the proposed site. But adhering to or even acknowledging the community opposition was not mandatory. Balancing its farcical consultation with recommendations from private developers, the council’s business unit decided that the will of the latter should come before the overwhelming disapproval of residents. The council agreed and voted to go ahead with the proposal.
This is nothing new for people in Tonsley. The proposed site sits next to the old Chrysler-Mitsubishi Automotive plant, which closed in 2008. The land once contained a publicly accessible park and public housing lots. In 2016, it was discovered that the groundwater had been contaminated by industrial pollution from the plant—the land was no longer safe for residential or recreational use. 
One would think that the company responsible for the pollution should be made to pay the cost of cleaning it all up. Instead, the housing trust residents were forced to move, and the park was closed. The land has remained unused since then.
The council says the Tesla plant is an excellent opportunity to put the land to use for industrial purposes. They say that the developer will be responsible for the cleanup, but locals are understandably sceptical. Given Tesla’s record of environmental mismanagement at some of its other industrial sites, it is not hard to see why.
According to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/elon-musk-tesla-environment-1263cd60">a report last year in the Wall Street Journal</a>, former employees have spoken out about a culture of regulatory avoidance at the company. Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, has been accused of illegally dumping toxic run-off into the city sewerage system. After the door on the casting furnace broke, management reportedly continued production, releasing toxic fumes, so as not to fall behind on Model Y production quotas. In Freemont, California Tesla’s factory has repeatedly breached air pollution regulations. And at the company’s main factory in Europe, in the German state of Brandenburg, a years-long protest campaign over the company’s theft of water is ongoing. 
Speaking to Red Flag at the Marion protest, Rebecca, a local resident, said that she was “tired of business and elected councils, supposedly bodies that are meant to represent the people, just running roughshod over community and over humanity. I’m really tired of profits being put above the people at all costs”. 
The proposal still requires state government approval. The activists behind the Trees Not Teslas campaign have vowed to keep fighting.

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