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 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.

Edgar Daniel-Richards

Tonsley needs trees, not Teslas

Public school staff in the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union (AEU) have been gathering at regional log of claims meetings across the state to discuss the changes we want to see in the Victorian Government Schools Agreement (VGSA), which determines our pay and conditions over the next few years.
We desperately need a better VGSA. Our last agreement, which was <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/big-no-vote-step-forward-school-staff">narrowly voted up</a> despite considerable pushback from members, has left us worse off. Our real wages <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_O83eLz-imC8uYDBNB_hzvXyK9Z4BB2kRMV3bBE8GQ0/edit?usp=drivesdk">have fallen by 11 percent</a>, which means graduate teachers are paid $8,489 less per year ($162 per week) than if our pay had kept up with inflation. Starting teacher salaries in Victoria are now the lowest in Australia, and almost $10,000 behind those in New South Wales.
Our current agreement’s modest reduction in face-to-face teaching hours has failed to put a serious dent in our unmanageable workloads. According to a Monash University report, staff are still working a staggering 12.5 unpaid hours each week on average. 
Union members are sick and tired of our profession being undervalued. That’s why, in log of claims meetings, we’re voting for ambitious claims that put forward a positive vision for what our jobs and our schools could be. 
A top priority for members is a big pay rise to win back the value we’ve lost under the current agreement, and then future pay rises that bring our wages into line with similar professions. Some regions are pushing for an immediate 30 percent boost followed by 5 percent every six months, for a total of around 60 percent over the life of the agreement. We also want retention payments that help keep our most experienced teachers in the job. 
Many of the other claims are about addressing our crushing workloads. These include requiring at least one education support (ES) staff in every classroom, additional staff to assist with teachers’ administrative tasks, a limit on meetings to one hour per week, a hard limit on class sizes at 18 students, a reduction in face-to-face teaching hours to 17 in the first year and 16 in the second, and nine professional practice days each year (two for report writing, two at the start of the year for set-up, four for whole school professional learning and one to complete compulsory online units).
For ES staff, there is the claim (left out of the last agreement) for paid lunch breaks, one hour of self-directed preparation time each day for classroom support ES and four professional practice days each year. There are also claims to clarify the different ES roles and to make progression more streamlined, as it is for teachers. 
These claims, if won, would completely transform our jobs and our schools. Staff would get the support and time we need to do our jobs and meet the complex needs of our students. We’d be paid at a rate that means we are better able to cope with the rising cost of living. And this would help ensure vacancies are filled, particularly in working-class, outer-suburban schools, which currently struggle to attract staff. 
Claims approved by regional union meetings now go to the union’s state conference in early August for discussion and approval, ahead of the expiry of the current agreement at the end of this year. We know from experience that these changes will not come easily. Our last log of claims in 2021 included a series of <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/victorian-school-staff-need-fight-workloads-and-wages">commendable claims</a>, but there was no strike action to pressure the government into accepting them. The result was an agreement that has left us significantly worse off on pay and did very little on workload, and which because of this has failed to solve the crisis of teacher retention. 
We can expect the Victorian government to resist our demands again. Recent revelations in the Age show that the government is <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/teachers-on-collision-course-with-state-government-over-school-funding-20250512-p5lyhn.html">withholding almost $3 billion</a> in funding that it previously promised our schools. It will likely use supposed budgetary constraints to claim that “the money isn’t there” for our demands.
But the money is there. Around $1.6 billion of it is going to “back in Victoria’s new bail laws” with new and expanded prisons, presumably to deal with those falling through the cracks in our decaying education system. The new $1.19 billion prison in Lara, the Western Correctional Facility, will <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-13/prison-victoria-state-budget-bail-reform/105284224">offer sign-on bonuses of $8,000</a> to draw in new staff. 
The money is there, but what’s in poor supply is the political will to use it to fund schools. That means union members need to take matters into our own hands. We need meetings at all our schools to establish our minimum expectations or “red lines”, and if those claims are not included in any proposed offer, we will vote “no” and fight for something better. 
Victorian nurses received their 28.4 percent pay rise only by voting “no” to an initial offer of 12 percent. Though their industrial campaign was brief, the fact that nurses had already shut down hospital beds and surgeries, coupled with their high-profile rejection of the proposed settlement, created a plausible threat of a major, politically damaging industrial dispute for the state government. This was enough to eventually win an improved offer. Teachers in New South Wales went on a series of strikes in 2021-22, eventually winning an immediate pay rise of almost $10,000. 
Where workers have refused to be pressured into accepting sub-par offers and have struck for something better, they have been successful. To win anything close to our ambitious demands, it’s highly likely we will need to do the same. 
The AEU has called a protest outside Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll’s electorate office in Keilor at 4:15pm on Thursday 19 June. Join us in demanding the state government keep their promise to fund our schools.

AEU members

Victorian teachers demand dignity, but won’t get it without a fight

The internet adage “pics or it didn’t happen” refers to the fact that, since about 2010, almost nothing important has happened in a public space without someone pulling out their phone and taking a photo or video of it. 
And yet, if we are to believe a SafeWork NSW report, details of which were published by the Australian, pro-Palestine activists at Sydney University managed to burst into lecture halls chanting antisemitic slogans and carrying banners that read “Jews not allowed”, without a single photo or video of these alleged incidents in existence. 
Similarly, no-one thought to snap a pic and post about the time when, according to the report, Sydney University student activists “put up a billboard with all the names of Hamas terrorists on it” at a protest.
The report also claims that the eight-week Gaza solidarity encampment, which began last May, created “a workplace of fear, anxiousness and a fear of retribution towards Jewish workers and students because they were Jewish people”. Multiple reports and investigations into the encampment, including this one, have failed to provide any evidence of this. But if you repeat something often enough, it can start to seem true. 
The SafeWork NSW report is the result of an investigation instigated by a complaint from 23 staff and students claiming that Sydney University had breached its responsibility to provide a safe working environment for Jewish employees. SafeWork, the government agency tasked with regulating workplace health and safety, concluded based on interviews with the complainants and two site visits that the university “failed to take reasonable actions to manage, reduce, and eliminate active antisemitic conduct on campus”. 
But the report contains no credible evidence of antisemitic activism linked to the Palestine solidarity campaign. The main examples from the report, which the media have used to try to slander pro-Palestine activists at Sydney University, fail to provide this. Some are clearly fabricated, as in the above examples, which have not been corroborated with any evidence. Others are stock standard features of the campaign to support Palestine: posters and flyers advertising rallies and campus meetings, “Gaza will be free” tagged in the campus graffiti tunnel and the slogan “Palestine will be free” being chanted at a campus protest. There is not a shred of antisemitism in any of this.
That these gestures of staff and student support for the Palestinians form the basis for “psychosocial harm” to employees at Sydney University is a politically charged false assertion. 
In putting together this report, SafeWork makes a mockery of the idea of workplace health and safety. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that the agency is known for taking a soft touch approach to bosses who endanger their employees’ lives at work. In 2022, SafeWork NSW was <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/workplace-safety-scandal-auditor-general-launches-six-month-investigation-into-failings-20221013-p5bphh.html">investigated</a> over allegations that workers had experienced injury and even death on sites where inspectors failed to follow up complaints adequately due to political interference.
While serious infringements of workplace health and safety have gone unpunished, and the number of workers fatally injured at work continues to <a href="https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/media-centre/news/key-work-health-and-safety-statistics-2024">rise</a>, the government agency tasked with regulating this is instead being misused as a weapon to come after pro-Palestine activism on university campuses. 
On this front, SafeWork is only following the lead of many other institutions that have tried to stifle Palestine solidarity under the guise of combating antisemitism. 
State Labor Premier Chris Minns spent months linking a “<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/the-great-antisemitism-con-job">great tsunami of high-profile antisemitic attacks</a>“ to weekly pro-Palestine street marches in Sydney, passing repressive anti-protest laws on the back of these claims. The NSW Police later revealed that these incidents had been almost entirely the work of petty criminals, linked to the same common source as the Dural caravan hoax. 
Universities have also used “concern for antisemitism” as justification to introduce anti-protest policies and procedures. Indeed, despite what the SafeWork report alleges, Sydney University has been leading the charge on quashing pro-Palestine activism. Over the last year, Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott has pushed through multiple policies designed to crack down on student and staff rights to protest and express political dissent. The new <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/free-speech-under-attack-at-sydney-university">Campus Access Policy</a> bans forms of protest that have been part of university life since the campaign against the Vietnam War, while policies introduced just this month impose punitive rules regarding posters on campus and total bans on students making lecture announcements before their classes. 
As Israel intensifies the genocide in Gaza and the war crimes pile up, the pro-Israel camp continues to find new ways to slander and silence the activists standing up for justice. But we won’t stop campaigning for Palestine.
Shovan Bhattarai is the vice-president of the University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council and a coordinator of the campus Students for Palestine collective

Shovan Bhattarai

SafeWork NSW’s report on antisemitism at Sydney University is fake news

Thousands of local government workers in Melbourne have signed on to bargain collectively, across 10 councils, for better pay and conditions. This is an early test of recent changes to the Fair Work Act by the federal government that should enable unions to more easily bargain—and take legally protected industrial action—across multiple employers. 
According to Tash Wark, secretary of the Australian Services Union (ASU), “this is the largest worker-initiated multi-employer agreement proposed in Australia”. The ASU intends to use an industrial and political campaign across multiple councils to put pressure on the state Labor government to modify or scrap the neoliberal “rate capping” policy that limits council budgets. 
In response, local government employers have <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/ASU_multi-employer_bargaining_update.aspx#:~:text=This%20has%20the%20practical%20effect,by%20the%20Fair%20Work%20Commission.">gone on the offensive</a>. From Brimbank to Darebin to Yarra to Port Phillip, employers are launching sham (non-union) single enterprise “negotiations”. These are designed to pave the way for non-union ballots to keep bargaining at a council level, thus avoiding multi-employer bargaining. Employers are also mounting legal challenges against the ASU, despite similar challenges <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader%2Fballarat%2Ffederal-court-rejects-central-goldfields-shires-appeal-of-multicouncil-bargaining-with-ararat%2Fnews-story%2F66f6c2c1b3797b2c670c6ffa3cf6fdb7?amp&amp;nk=95c7c698a7cc5f92b3b45e378f1ce6d3-1749453407">losing at the Federal Court</a> earlier this year.
Local government workers provide a wide range of essential services that keep our communities running. From removing waste, cleaning streets and beaches, maintaining parks and roads, to running libraries, immunising and educating children, and providing in-home care for elderly and disabled community members. 
But over the past few years, these essential workers have been falling behind—their wages consistently failing to keep up with inflation. Since 2021, council workers across Melbourne have lost anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of the real value of their wages. The vast majority of us are now hundreds of dollars a fortnight (thousands of dollars a year) worse off than we were in 2020.
There’s one exception to this: senior council executives. Council CEOs across Melbourne <a href="https://www.councilwatch.com.au/general-5">typically earn more than $400,000 a year</a>. That’s on par with federal government ministers ($403,000) and the Prime Minister of the UK (£172,153 or $360,335). Last year, it was revealed that Alison Leighton, CEO of the City of Melbourne, pockets a whopping $534,000 annually—almost as much as the prime minister. These are the same people crying poor and threatening job cuts in response to workers’ demanding a liveable wage.
In the face of real wage declines, increasing numbers of local government workers have been <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader%2Fnorth%2Fdarebin-council-workers-begin-strike-taking-protest-to-the-streets%2Fnews-story%2F3c6d0399f41489f72f46ce32377890e5?amp&amp;nk=95c7c698a7cc5f92b3b45e378f1ce6d3-1749443789">going on strike</a>. Despite heroic efforts from workers, <a href="https://brunswickvoice.com.au/council-industrial-dispute-ends-as-staff-vote-yes-to-pay-offer/">gains have been minimal</a>. This is partly because a few hundred workers in a single local government area have limited industrial power. The Victorian government’s rate cap also provides an excuse for management to cry poor. And previous bargaining strategies of the ASU have failed to challenge these limitations. 
Multi-employer bargaining represents, at least potentially, a means to change all that. There’s certainly sentiment for a fight. At a packed meeting of council workers from across Melbourne recently, one worker put it this way: “We are the ones who run this city. If we stop work, the city stops: bins overflow, services disappear, streets and beaches get trashed, parks and sporting fields become overgrown. Imagine what we could achieve if council revenue begins to dry up, if small businesses start to suffer, and if state infrastructure projects grind to a halt.” 
Council workers are coming together to <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/MEB_update_Have_your_say_on_our_draft_Log_of_Claims.aspx">demand</a> a 22 percent pay rise over four years—consisting of a 10 percent “recovery payment” in the first year and 4 percent in the following years. This will go some way to redressing the decade-long decline in council workers’ real wages. Most of us haven’t seen a pay rise of more than 2 or 3 percent for 10 years—since the re-introduction of rate caps in 2016. That’s why, as part of this round of bargaining, we’re gearing up to rally against the Victorian state government’s neo-liberal rate capping policy.
The rate cap dates back to the Kennett government of the 1990s. Liberal premier Jeff Kennett directly copied this neoliberal measure from former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who used it to coerce local councils into implementing local austerity, regardless of the wishes of the people who elected them. Compulsory competitive tendering of all council services, with councils legally obliged to accept the lowest bid, was used by both Thatcher in the UK and Kennett in Victoria as a way of cutting workers’ wages and essential services to the bone. 
Though rate capping was abolished when Kennett was thrown out of office in 1999, it was reintroduced by Daniel Andrews’ Labor government in 2016. The current system limits councils’ ability to raise revenue, including through measures such as charging higher rates for major corporations and property developers that are making millions in our communities.
The consequences? As the <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Putting-a-Cap-on-Community-WEB.pdf">Australia Institute reported</a>, less than half of Victorian local government workers now have permanent, full-time jobs, as councils respond to the cap by outsourcing and casualising work. For too long, the rate cap has functioned as a wage cap for local council workers—and it’s about time it was seriously challenged. 
Multi-enterprise bargaining is the means workers are hoping to use to mount this challenge. Australia’s top CEOs are <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/top-ceos-lash-multi-employer-bargaining-20221218-p5c79c">hostile</a> to it for a reason. If paired with a militant union strategy, they know multi-enterprise bargaining has the potential to put money and power back into the hands of ordinary workers. They say they’re worried about <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/70s-werent-bad">“a return to the 1970s”</a>—a time when wages in Australia consistently outpaced inflation and workers enjoyed a much higher share of national income.
No wonder council employers are <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/Fair_Work_update_Metropolitan_Melbourne_multiemployer_bargaining.aspx">doing everything in their power to divide us</a>. They know multi-employer bargaining could help shift the goal posts by giving workers in our sector greater industrial power. Last Friday, Brimbank council won a fierce campaign to get a non-union single enterprise “agreement” voted up before their employees’ multi-enterprise bargaining application could be authorised by the Fair Work Commission. 
Workers at Brimbank reported intimidation and standover tactics from management, with managers going as far as <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/Brimbank_literally_called_the_cops_to_prevent_you_hearing_about_your_rights.aspx">calling the police</a> on union officials, censoring communications, and <a href="https://www.theservicesunion.com.au/VICTAS/News/Brimbank_Aquatic_Centre_employee_targeted_for_speaking_up_about_No_Vote.aspx">sacking employees</a> for communicating with their co-workers about management’s offer. Thanks to Brimbank council’s <a href="https://www.asuvictas.com.au/VICTAS/News/Vote_No_to_Brimbanks_single_EA_Fight_for_a_better_deal_through_MEB.aspx">dirty tactics</a>, 1400 workers there are likely to fall further behind the cost of living and their colleagues in local government for years to come. 
While it’s a disappointing outcome, Brimbank workers never would have received a 4 percent pay rise this year (their highest in 13 years!) if it weren’t for the threat of large-scale industrial action via multi-enterprise bargaining. “I have no doubt in my mind,” said a Brimbank worker, “that once a multi-employer agreement gets up in local government, everyone will want in. We know that taking large-scale industrial action is the only way for us to claw back wages. We just need an opportunity to demonstrate that we can win. It’s up to workers in the nine other councils now to lead the way.” 
Like Brimbank, employers at City of Darebin, Yarra, and Port Phillip are currently preparing to put non-union single enterprise offers out to vote in the coming weeks and lock their employees out of multi-enterprise bargaining. Workers at all of these councils need to mobilise members and non-members to vote no to any employer ballot aimed at dividing council workers.
In good news, at Maribyrnong council, a non-binding ballot organised by the employer saw a thumping majority of workers vote for multi-enterprise bargaining, rejecting the employer’s attempt to split the workforce away. And just a week later, on 12 June, news came in that 74 percent of eligible City of Melbourne employees had voted in a non-binding ballot organised by the employer. Management was hoping for a rejection of multi-employer bargaining. Instead, an amazing 80 percent of those who voted wanted to stick with the union campaign. This puts the lie to the managers’ claims that workers are being “tricked” into supporting multi-enterprise bargaining. A majority of workers at Maribyrnong and Melbourne have now voted for it twice!
If Brimbank teaches us anything, it’s that our side needs to be better organised. We need to mobilise our members, we need to be more proactive in countering management’s bribes, scare tactics and misinformation, and we need to patiently explain to our co-workers what’s at stake. 
This is not just about cutting better deals in our individual work areas for the next three years. Knocking back employer efforts to keep us divided in our individual councils is an act of solidarity. It’s saying that we’re prepared to use our industrial power to win a solid pay rise for childcare and day care workers, for clerical staff and librarians, for parking officers and garbos all over Melbourne. 
Over the coming weeks, the employers will aim to wear us down and convince us that what they’ve got to offer is the best we can hope for. But we know better. Ten thousand local government workers, acting together, have significant industrial and political power. 
A multi-enterprise bargaining campaign, paired with an industrial strategy that uses mass action to pressure the state government to loosen its hold on council purse strings, could potentially win a very different outcome. This will not be an easy fight. But we owe it to ourselves, our colleagues and our communities to pursue this course. 
After all, if we don’t fight, we lose.

ASU member

Council workers battle to bargain together

The University of Melbourne has expelled two student activists and indefinitely suspended two more for a 2024 occupation of the office of university academic and pro-Israel campaigner Steven Prawer. The expulsions follow a pattern of management attacks on Palestine solidarity activism. 
Since 3 March, the administration has banned indoor protests, those at building entrances and any that are “unreasonably disruptive”. The university previously tried to intimidate nineteen students by issuing misconduct notices after the Gaza Solidarity Encampment last year. When students camped out in the Arts West building to demand divestment from Israel and arms manufacturers, the university secretly spied on their movements via the Wi-Fi system. 
Management also threatened to defund the student union if it paid Palestinian speakers at a forum raising awareness about conditions in the West Bank. As well, in 2022, the university condemned the union for adopting a pro-Palestine and Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions position. 
To legitimise its crackdown on campus free speech and activism, the administration has cynically weaponised the issue of antisemitism. In 2023, the university adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism. The definition is hotly contested because it includes, as an example of antisemitism, “criticism of the state of Israel”. 
Like the government and media, the university deliberately conflates support for Palestine and an end to the war in Gaza with hatred of Jewish people. There are several anti-Zionist Jewish organisations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace in the United States, that vocally oppose Israel’s war in Gaza. Indeed, JVP’s slogan at demonstrations is “not in our name”; a pointed rejection of the idea that Israel acts in the interests of Jewish people when it starves and massacres Palestinians. 
Recently, the university published an “Anti-Racism Action Plan”, supposedly to combat antisemitism on campus. Twelve complaints of antisemitism were lodged with the university, it says, “concentrated in Semester 1 2024 ... during the period of the encampment and occupation [and] largely related to posters, slogans and stickers which could not be attributed to a specific person”. 
The only evidence provided of antisemitism is pro-Palestine slogans and protests calling for an end to the war in Gaza. Under the guise of fighting racism, the university has punitively targeted anti-war and anti-genocide student campaigners. 
Universities are attacking freedom of speech and anti-war protesters in part because they are a key pillar of defence research in Australia. The University of Melbourne alone collaborates with thirteen weapons companies, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and BAE Systems. 
It aims to cement its place in weapons research by establishing a <a href="https://www.thecitizen.org.au/articles/at-fishermans-bend-university-of-melbourne-angling-for-defence-contracts-relationships">weapons research hub at the new Fisherman’s Bend campu</a>s, currently under construction in Port Melbourne. The university will partner with Boeing, Siemens, and the Australian Department of Defence. The administration has already spent $2 billion on the project and is attempting to establish more contracts with other weapons companies. 
The decision to discipline students coincides with the devastating escalation in Israel’s war. Israel is systematically starving Gazans. In the past week, a US “aid” organisation, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has repeatedly gunned down Palestinians desperately seeking food at distribution sites. Israeli politicians boast openly of making the Gaza Strip so unliveable that Palestinians will “voluntarily” leave. It’s open ethnic cleansing. And at this moment, the university administration has come out stridently on Israel’s side. 
The expulsions set a dangerous precedent for free speech and the right to protest on campus. But they can be challenged. Last year, <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/how-deakin-university-tried-to-trample-on-students-rights-and-failed">a Deakin student was suspended</a> for her involvement in the Deakin Gaza Encampment, but was reinstated on appeal. Similarly, <a href="https://honisoit.com/2024/09/pro-palestinian-anu-student-wins-expulsion-appeal/">an ANU student won their expulsion appeal</a> after being disciplined. Those cases show that it’s possible to challenge university discipline and win civil liberties on campuses. The movement won’t be cowed or intimidated by those trying to silence us.

Emma Dynes

Melbourne University expels Palestine solidarity activists

The call went out at 10pm on Sunday, 1 June—workers in hazmat suits would enter a public housing tower in North Melbourne the following morning to begin work. It’s the first step in demolishing the homes of the 50 families still living inside.
Ten hours later, 50 people gathered outside the 33 Alfred Street tower, ready to block any work. We didn’t have to be there long. Within fifteen minutes, three workers in high vis walked out of the precinct, telling community members they had been told not to begin work and citing “hygiene issues”.
The next morning, Tuesday, we were back at 7am with a crowd twice as big. The workers respected the picket, and Homes Victoria, the government department in charge of public housing, soon updated residents that the planned works had been delayed for the week.
It’s a small victory. And it’s a sign that we can build a campaign to resist Labor’s destruction of public housing.
Along with two towers in Flemington, 33 Alfred Street is part of the first tranche of public housing up for demolition as part of the Victorian government’s “urban renewal project”. Ultimately, the project will destroy all 44 of Melbourne’s public housing towers. The plan was one of the final policy announcements of Labor Premier Daniel Andrews in 2023, and is now being carried out by Jacinta Allan’s government.
The government claims an increase in social and affordable housing will offset the units lost in the towers. But behind the spin, the plan is really about the privatisation of Victoria’s public housing stock. It was announced after extensive talks between the government and developers, who will take over the sites to build private apartments. 
Only a small portion of all the housing built on the sites across the city will be reserved for privately owned “community and social housing”—in which tenants have fewer rights and more expensive rents than in public housing. Some of it will be touted as “affordable” housing—to be rented privately slightly below the market rate.
The government has admitted that there will be no public housing rebuilt at the Flemington and North Melbourne sites, where the first demolitions are scheduled to occur. The sites will be handed over entirely to private developers. Resisting these demolitions then, as we did last week, is an important first battle.
In many ways, the towers are reminders of the past. Their construction was a product of decades of campaigning by communities and reformers from the 1930s. Today, their 1950s facades have become an iconic part of the inner city skyline, but inside, maintenance has been neglected thanks to restrictions on spending by successive governments. The idea they represent—that the government ought to provide housing at least to society’s most vulnerable—has long been abandoned by the major parties. 
Being up close to the towers puts Labor’s spin in perspective. As we stood in the rain and prevented work from beginning, kids from the building were heading out the front door, off to the school up the road. Real families live here, a real community full of migrants and workers and disabled people, who all deserve public housing and a whole lot more. For the government and developers, they are simply in the way: poor people taking up prime inner-city land that could be used to make some cash.
What’s to be done with these people? As soon as the plan was announced, Homes Victoria began knocking on residents’ doors, pushing them to sign contracts agreeing to move out of the buildings. Many residents are migrants who weren’t provided with translations of what they were signing. Those who have moved out already have found themselves in privately owned community housing, with reports of mould and faulty heating. 
Many who remain in the towers are holding out for a better deal—relocation to public housing, or the right to return once the redevelopment is complete. Others simply want to continue living in the towers and don’t want to be displaced from their communities and support services. “They want to put us in private housing. But we only know commission housing”, one resident told the rally on Tuesday.
Opposition to Labor’s demolitions has been building since the first announcement.
A central feature has been the class action lawsuit brought against the government by residents of the Flemington towers and progressive lawyers. 
Over months of hearings, Homes Victoria argued that it had no obligation to consult residents about the demolitions and admitted that, even if it did, it wouldn’t have listened to their concerns, because the residents had no legal rights that were affected by the decision to demolish their homes! The department also made clear that it was acting completely under the orders of the Labor government.
The court found that the demolitions would have a significant impact on residents’ human rights, but concluded that the government was under no obligation to do anything about this. After the case was dismissed, the government pushed ahead with the demolitions.
The loss in court was a setback, and the residents are considering an appeal. However, we were never going to defeat the government’s plans solely in the courts. The case has held up the government, delayed the demolition and, importantly, sent a signal that people are standing up and fighting back. Residents in the second tranche of towers marked for demolition—in Richmond and South Yarra—have begun organising to resist pressure from Homes Victoria to vacate.
Organising by residents will be key. Defending the towers will require a big campaign on the ground. Last weeks’ mobilisations, bringing together the Greens, Victorian Socialists, renting and housing activists and other community campaigners, were a good start. 
Building links with unions will be another important factor: the demolition contract has been handed to construction company John Holland, whose workforce is represented by the construction union. Ultimately, it will be workers who are sent in to destroy this housing. Building a big campaign can help make a case to them that they shouldn’t.
Labor’s drastic plan to knock down all 44 towers presents us with a big challenge. Every step of the way we will have to fight it—from preventing testing and surveying, to building confidence among residents to resist Homes Victoria, to mobilising to stop the actual demolition. But as last week shows, each of these steps presents an opportunity to mobilise, grow our support and put pressure on Labor.

James Gallagher

Resistance grows to Victorian Labor’s demolition of public housing

Reconciliation Day in Canberra last year was ice cold, the air thick with fog. For 232 days, Israel had been indiscriminately bombing the people of Gaza. For 28 days, hundreds of students and staff had maintained a protest encampment on Kambri lawns, the heart of the Australian National University campus, demanding that the administration cut ties with Israel and condemn the genocide. ANU managers had spent the month slandering the protest and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-16/act-palestine-anu-gaza-encampment-members-ordered-to-vacate/103858184">suspending student activists</a> involved in the encampment. 
It was Monday morning, 27 May; the university bosses finally decided that they could no longer tolerate the encampment in such a prominent position. Their official justification was that we were blocking a fire evacuation point, and the backup evacuation point just would not do. In truth, they wanted the protest out of sight. 
Dozens of security guards and a handful of police officers arrived to serve the students with an evacuation notice. Those awakened by this order initially complied. Ambushed and outnumbered at 7am, they began dismantling the tents. The media soon arrived to witness the supervised self-destruction. 
Yet, as the morning fog cleared and the sun came out, a handful of students sat down in defiance and began chanting: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!” More spontaneously joined, sitting around the camping gear, which had now been packed down, linking arms and chanting. The circle of hi-vis security guards retreated as supporters surged closer to the first movers and joined in the chanting. 
More police arrived. Blue and white chequered vans, cars and motorbikes pulled up across the creek to establish a “command centre” about a hundred metres away. Security was no longer fit for the task, so ANU had called in the cavalry. 
Meanwhile, the students had now convened a meeting. Did we want to stare down the police, risking arrest, to defend the camp? After a brief discussion, we took a vote. The decision was close to unanimous—we would not move. 
Some volunteers sifted through the crowd to write the phone number of a supportive lawyer on the arms of everyone willing to get arrested. Those who preferred not to face arrest stepped off the grass and formed a human chain around the camp. About a hundred sat ready to be dragged off in a divvy van, and a few hundred more stood with their arms linked in an unbroken chain around the perimeter. People with megaphones were stationed throughout the picket line, leading songs and chants to keep spirits high. 
We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s planted by the water
We shall not be moved.
But after several hours, the ultimatum finally came. Two of us were given the job of police liaisons. We walked to their “command centre” next to the creek and were told that the university was prepared to offer a second location for the camp, a few hundred metres up the path. If we refused to move there by 3pm, we would be arrested. We went back to the camp and relayed what the officer had said. We took another vote. “Knowing what we just told you, who is committed to staying?” Everyone cheered. I passed their message back to the officer. 
The deadline came and went. We kept checking our watches. Eventually, at 4pm or so, an officer marched to a spot across from the camp and placed a small speaker on the ground to announce an official directive: that everyone must vacate Kambri lawns by 11am Tuesday or face arrest. 
We had forced the police to back down—for now. Every cop van, car and bike left the campus, and we were left to debrief. We fought the law and, for a moment, we won. 
Later, we heard that the university had issued a directive to all students to avoid the Kambri precinct the following day, and that businesses in the precinct were instructed to shut down in preparation for a major police operation. But we also heard from some unionists that workers on ANU construction sites were organising to walk off the job in solidarity with us. 
We put a call out to every community group we could think of to mobilise the next day and support us against mass arrests. The university managers were preparing to escalate the situation—but we had won once, and the mood was that we could win again. 
Yet, after hours of debate, several votes and a thinning out of people in the camp, the scared and tired few who remained at around midnight finally voted to accept the university’s directive. The anticipated showdown never came. Construction workers still walked off the job. Students, community members and reporters still showed up the next day in expectation. But the police didn’t need to return—they scored their victory through intimidation. 
This wasn’t the end, however. The camp continued in its new location for 83 more days. By the end of the year, there had been several general meetings, countless rallies, a referendum and one of the longest campus protest encampments in the country—all demanding divestment from Israel and weapons companies supplying the Israeli military. 
Under pressure, the university reversed the suspensions and expulsions of student activists and <a href="https://www.woroni.com.au/news/anu-to-divest-from-controversial-weapons-manufacturers-but-questions-remain/">promised to divest</a> from “controversial weapons companies”. Exactly which companies were “controversial” was never clarified, and no updates have been provided since that promise was made. They have not yet condemned the genocide in Gaza or cut ties with Israel.
The fight for a free Palestine continues, but the strength of our side is nourished by small acts of defiance and partial victories like the one we scored last year on Kambri lawns.

Nick Reich

When Palestine solidarity protesters defied police at the ANU

To stifle growing pro-Palestinian activities on Australian campuses, university authorities are developing and applying disparate techniques of control. Consequently, the university as a place of free speech, political activism and the right to protest is under attack.
The universities of<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/21/university-of-sydney-criticised-for-plan-to-ban-protest-banners-being-displayed-without-prior-permission"> Sydney</a>,<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jun/03/university-of-melbourne-two-students-expelled-pro-palestine-protest-ntwnfb?utm_term=683e574093202591af7057f2c5ad560f&amp;utm_campaign=GuardianTodayAUS&amp;utm_source=esp&amp;utm_medium=Email&amp;CMP=GTAU_email"> Melbourne</a> and<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/university-of-wa-bans-statements-that-cause-harm-disciplines-student-for-defending-free-speech"> Western Australia</a> are particularly punitive. The intricate intrusiveness and hyper-vigilance of their techniques of control are well known and widely criticised. 
All these techniques have been identified by members of Educational Researchers for Palestine—a group I belong to. Such patterns are evident in the views and material we have gathered from universities and from our own experiences, observations and communications with other staff and students. While the following techniques are not equally evident in all universities, various combinations are evident in many.
1. Control through double-speak
Universities claim to uphold free speech and academic freedom. But on matters related to Israel/Palestine they shut both down. They also claim to balance free speech with their anti-racism agendas. But these agendas are selective. Antisemitism is their focus. Anti-Palestinian racism, including their own, is not. Anti-<a href="https://apan.org.au/media_release/apan-aman-report/">Palestinian</a> racism involves “actions that silence, exclude, erase, stereotype, defame, or dehumanise Palestinians and their narratives”. 
They say they balance free speech with ensuring a safe environment. But their main concern is the political backlash associated with purported complaints about the safety of Jewish students and staff. In contrast, the university itself creates an unsafe environment for Palestinian staff, students and their allies including their Jewish allies. 
2. Control through distraction
By focusing on antisemitism, universities distract attention from anti-Palestinian racism on campus and from Israel’s dreadful treatment of the Palestinian people. This distraction involves endless debates about what constitutes antisemitism. And universities’ ambiguous definitions of antisemitism allow them flexibility in classifying hateful and threatening speech. 
In February 2025, Universities Australia released its highly ambiguous “working definition of<a href="https://universitiesaustralia.edu.au/media-item/statement-on-racism/"> antisemitism</a>”. This was endorsed by all 39 members. How individual universities will embed their endorsement is not yet clear but further distraction is guaranteed. 
3. Spatial control
Restrictions are placed on the spaces where Palestinian supporters might gather to prepare banners and posters, distribute materials and hold events. Students are not allowed to announce events in classrooms or lecture theatres, to leave fliers on desks or posters on walls. These who don’t “belong” to the university are prohibited from involvement in protests on university grounds and threatened with trespass. 
4. Language and image control
The campus is to be cleansed of posters, fliers, flags, chalked messages. Almost any image, phrase or slogan may be deemed antisemitic. Hence, all images of Palestine or messages of Palestine advocacy or solidarity can be defined as contravening university rules. 
5. Political control
Student and staff activities relating to Palestine are strongly discouraged—clubs, film screenings, speakers’ forums, petitioning, distributing leaflets, chalking—even fundraising. University approval can be sought but such approval is largely a delaying and censorship ploy involving microscopic bureaucratic hurdles. 
Some academic staff are expected to become agents of the university’s political control in their classrooms. They must ensure that nothing is said or seen that is unrelated to their immediate teaching topic. 
When linked to Palestine/Israel, certain research, teaching and learning are considered dangerous—justice and ethics, human rights, international law, settler colonialism, apartheid, imperialism and the history and geopolitics of the Middle East. Those pursuing such “dangerous knowledge” may feel the need to water down their curriculum and research. 
6. Technological surveillance
In some cases, if they are to use a university account, staff and students must agree to being monitored. Whether they agree or not, technology is used to monitor pro-Palestinian activities, to identify “ring leaders” and participants. Pro-Palestinian activists may also have their technology use restricted, thus making it difficult to share information. Certainly, over time, universities have increased their surveillance of all staff and students—usually with little or no follow-up. However, their surveillance and follow-up have intensified in response to pro-Palestinian activism.
7. Discipline and punishment
Students and staff are subjected to various forms. Their self-defence is time-consuming, costly and emotionally draining. 
Peaceful events are often redefined as potentially threatening and violent. Hence security staff and police are used to “keep the peace” and to identify and report “leaders” and “troublemakers”. They have been used to shut down encampments and protests. At encampments, they have not protected students from violent attacks by extreme right-wing groups. Their presence is implicitly threatening, and their behaviour is sometimes physically violent. 
Undergraduate and graduate students have been “spoken to”, warned, suspended, fined and expelled. Staff have also been “spoken to” and warned, had their teaching and other activities monitored and reported by pro-Israeli/Zionist students and other staff. They have had their research questioned and some have had their grants suspended. 
8. Climate control
A climate of fear and distrust is created. It has a chilling effect on everyday university activities and relationships. Fear causes self-censorship. Events are relocated or re-badged. 
Staff feel their opportunities for jobs, tenure, promotion and academic leave are at risk. Students feel at risk of suspension and expulsion. They often don’t know if their peers, lecturers or supervisors will support or report them. Palestinian, Muslim and Arab staff feel extra visible and vulnerable. 
The result: universities of bad faith and ethical emptiness.
They have allowed themselves to be intimidated by politicians and special interest groups. They have tried to bury the discussion of an inexcusable tragedy involving genocide. They have sacrificed the notion that knowledge must be free and fearless—corrupting truth and undermining trust and collegiality. Timid and small-minded, they implicitly encourage staff and students to be the same. 
Were they not so ethically empty, universities could have practised an ethic of care, courage and compassion in response to the ongoing horrors visited by Israel on Gaza and the West Bank. They could have developed this into a sector-wide ethos. They could have responded to the desperate <a href="https://www.gazauniversities.org/">calls</a> for help from universities in Gaza. They could have explored, with staff and students, ways to help Gaza recover from the educational obliteration of <a href="https://euppublishingblog.com/2025/05/27/scholasticide-memory-power-of-pedagogy/">scholasticide</a>. They could have mobilised their knowledge and expertise to contribute to an understanding of the issues and to consider how university members might help alleviate the Palestinian people’s terrible suffering. 
Could have? Should have.
First published by the <a href="https://blog.aare.edu.au/these-are-deeply-disturbing-patterns-of-censorship-across-australian-universities/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup">Australian Association for Research in Education</a>. Jane Kenway is an elected fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia, emeritus professor at Monash University and professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Jane Kenway

The patterns of censorship across Australian universities

Victorian public sector workers are taking on the useless union leadership in elections to be held next month. The state branch of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) has repeatedly failed to stand up for its members. The challengers’ election team, called A Voice for Members, wants to rebuild a fighting, member-led union. 
This is the first time in more than 30 years that all executive positions (secretary, assistant secretary, president and two vice-presidents) will be contested. The current state secretary, Karen Batt, was first elected in 1993, when Jeff Kennett was premier. 
Last year, CPSU leaders excluded members from any meaningful involvement in enterprise bargaining negotiations. They eventually pushed through an agreement that includes a real wage cut. <a href="https://avfm.au/cpsu-rank-and-file-news/edition-7-wages-cap/">By the time the deal expires in 2028, real wages are expected to have returned to 2018 levels</a>. 
The union leaders insisted that there was no point in trying to push the government on its “wages cap”, as it would not budge from its three percent per year offer. But they were proven completely wrong when the paramedics’ union and the nurses’ and midwives’ union won pay increases of 17 and 28 percent, respectively, over four years. Firefighters are also pushing for a 25 percent pay increase.
The CPSU leaders have long hampered members’ ability to organise: they do not hold members’ or delegates’ meetings, and members frequently report difficulty finding other members, or even their workplace delegates. During last year’s negotiations, for example, most members did not even see, let alone vote on, the union’s proposed list of demands. 
The seed for the rank-and-file electoral challenge was planted during CPSU for Palestine meetings, which provided a rare space for members to get together and organise, given the union’s lack of democratic structures. 
At first, A Voice for Members was established as a progressive caucus inside the union, recognising that a union’s power comes from its members, not its paid officials. Consistent with this goal, the group will continue fighting for a democratic, member-led union, regardless of the election result. 
When Treasurer Jaclyn Symes in February announced <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-20/vic-govt-public-sector-job-cuts-spending-review-budget/104958948">Labor’s plan to slash 3,000 public sector jobs</a>, A Voice for Members immediately called a rally opposing the cuts. Longtime union members are hard-pressed to recall the last time the CPSU made such a call. But, four days later, undoubtedly feeling threatened by the campaign, union leaders called a separate rally, scheduling it for the day before the rank-and-file rally.
Under Batt, the CPSU’s membership has languished at around <a href="https://avfm.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/AVFM-policy-platform.pdf">15,000 for decades</a>. This is understandable: why would anyone be motivated to join a union that doesn’t stand up for its members? 
But A Voice for Members is taking action to rebuild a union that’s worth joining, that’s ready to take industrial action to defend living standards, that thinks it’s union business to take a stand against genocide, and that opposes laws restricting workers’ ability to organise and take collective action. We are holding regular organising meetings, public events, and rallies, and conducting daily workplace leafleting to recruit more workers and mobilise existing members. 
To learn more about AVFM, the candidates, and to join the fight, visit <a href="https://avfm.au/">the website</a>. You can also <a href="https://chuffed.org/project/a-voice-for-members-cpsu">donate to the campaign</a>.

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