Labor has won a smashing victory in the lower house and, with the backing of the Greens, looks set to control the Senate as well. The Coalition has done disastrously, losing its leader and scoring the lowest vote in its history. 
Peter Dutton—one of the last relics of the Howard government and one of humanity’s most embarrassing specimens—has been roundly defeated. He lost a record number of seats, including his own (the first opposition leader in history to do so). The main reason for Dutton’s drubbing was the comprehensive rebuking of Trump style politics in Australia. For all Dutton and his team tried to distance themselves from Trump, the association is just too organic to hide. This is the thug who relished locking up and torturing refugees as immigration minister under Tony Abbott, and as Home Affairs minister under Scott Morrison. He made his mark as opposition leader by whipping up anti-Aboriginal racism. 
Of course, it is a qualified victory. The right-wing Labor government is not going to defend workers, refugees or Indigenous people and, rather than living his days out in a cell on Nauru, Dutton will likely be gifted a lucrative corporate board position and become a Sky News commentator. But it is for good reason that so many people want to take a moment to celebrate this monster’s political failure.
The Liberals and Nationals needed to gain nineteen seats to win office; they lost fourteen. In the Senate, they are reduced to just 27 seats out of 76. Trends that became apparent in 2022 have only continued. The Coalition is increasingly a party of rural and regional Australia. No state escaped the carnage. It failed to advance in targeted outer suburban seats in Victoria and went backwards in Queensland. At the time of writing, it now holds no seats in Adelaide. In Melbourne, it has just three. In Tasmania, it was wiped out. 
The Liberals failed to make any ground against the teals, who now dominate traditionally blue-ribbon Liberal electorates in Sydney and Melbourne. In many cases, teals topped the polls rather than coming second and relying on preferences, as they did in 2022. 
It was not a good night for the Greens in the House of Representatives. They entered the contest with four seats and hoped to pick up four more. Instead, they will likely hold only two. Leader Adam Bandt, who previously appeared to have a lock on his seat of Melbourne, is fighting to stay an MP. In Brisbane, the Greens lost two of their three seats and one of their most high-profile figures, Max Chandler-Mather. Whatever criticisms socialists might have of the Greens, their loss of seats is a setback for progressive politics in Australia 
The Greens’ failure in the lower house was cause for celebration by the political class, who treated the party as a threat to the Lib-Lab consensus and were dreading a minority government dependent on Greens votes in the lower house. They said it would cause “instability”. They meant that the Greens might have held back some of the ALP’s more right-wing legislation in its second term. 
You only had to have witnessed Queensland LNP Senator James McGrath’s extraordinary spray at the Greens on the ABC’s election night coverage—in which he called them “a nasty, horrible, racist, antisemitic party” and got no push back from ALP treasurer Jim Chalmers nor any of the show’s hosts or panellists—to get some idea of the hostility the Greens arouse in the establishment.
Less reported than the Greens’ losses in the lower house is the party’s record-high Senate vote. The Greens will maintain Senate spots in every state. So, while the establishment wants to paint the Greens as beyond the pale and its lower house failure as an indictment of left-wing politics, more people than ever voted for the party.
The desire for a progressive alternative was also evident in the vote for the Victorian Socialists, who recorded a big jump in their vote in the Melbourne electorates of Cooper, Scullin and Fraser, while the Socialist Alliance also increased their vote in highly contested Wills. These are the best results for a clear socialist alternative for decades and were notched up in inner-city and mid-suburban booths. In multicultural, working-class Scullin, the Victorian Socialists scored between 15 and 20 percent of the vote in Thomastown, Epping Views and Campbellfield booths. 
Independent Arab and Muslim candidates backing Palestine also scored decent votes in Western Sydney, helping to break the stifling pro-Israel consensus of the major parties.
The other bright spot is the failure of the hard right to break out. Polls were suggesting One Nation could potentially win up to six Senate seats. It fell short. The party’s lower house primary vote went up partly at the expense of Clive Palmer, whose Trumpet of Patriots was more shambolic than its United Australia Party predecessor. But One Nation’s lower house vote increased by just over one percentage point, to 6.2 percent. 
In the Senate, it picked up one to two percentage points in most states, taking its vote to around 5-6 percent. The party might gain one or two extra spots, but its vote went backwards in Queensland. Given the Senate’s likely composition, One Nation will have zero leverage to pursue its racist agenda.
Explaining the results
The defining feature of the Albanese government’s first term was the dramatic drop in living standards: household disposable incomes fell to their lowest in a decade. Other government positions angered those who had hoped Labor might enact progressive change—the approvals of more coal and gas projects, the promises of massive spending on nuclear submarines and its do-nothing approach to the housing crisis, for example.
Beginning in late 2022, the government’s fortunes fell in the polls for two years. In the first few weeks of this year, though, the situation began to turn around. Several things have gone its way.
First, there has been some relief from the squeeze in living standards because of falling inflation, increased wages, the first interest rate cut in nearly five years and the prospect that more will follow. Unemployment remained low even as interest rates shot up in 2022-23, mitigating the worst effects of the cost-of-living crisis. There is a sense that things might finally be getting better.
Second, Labor was helped by the ruling class’s willingness to give it another go. Under the ALP, the economy continued to grow on the back of high immigration, the stock market and property prices climbed­—so the investor class did magnificently—and the fossil fuel industry, the banks and the supermarkets reaped super profits. Meanwhile, the prime minister attacked the construction division of the CFMEU, one of the few unions with a reputation for delivering higher wages for its members.
Third, Labor’s job ruling for the rich was made easier by the trade union leaders who sat back and watched as the cost-of-living crisis ravaged workers’ pay packets. The union leaders’ apathy was not because workers did not want to fight for higher wages. Time and again, workers voted to strike for inflation-busting wage increases, only for union leaders—many of them ALP-aligned—to accept some rotten deal that left workers further behind. 
Fourth, the Albanese government was helped by the uncharismatic, untalented and charmless political hacks who made up the Opposition front bench. Many were holdovers from the Morrison government, which voters enthusiastically dispatched only three years ago.
The Coalition did capitalise on government weakness for a while. In 2023, it began to reduce Labor’s early polling lead when Peter Dutton took up the fight against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament and defeated the referendum. Given the string of defeats of incumbent governments worldwide last year and the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, Dutton may have thought things would just fall into his lap. Instead, once the federal election approached, support for the Liberal leader began to evaporate. 
Dutton’s former Queensland cop/property investor/right-wing head kicker image may have warmed the hearts of Liberal loyalists but won him few friends elsewhere. Dutton promised an even more right-wing version of the unlamented Morrison government. If the cost of living was the most pressing issue for people, Dutton never made a convincing case for how he would address it. Anti-immigrant rhetoric may have poisoned the political atmosphere, but it wasn’t going to make Dutton prime minister. As public opinion hardened against the opposition leader, the media, who had given him a free ride, began to sharpen their criticisms.
Finally, there was Donald Trump. Trump has never been popular in Australia, and it didn’t take long in his second term for anti-Trump sentiment to revive. But Dutton initially seemed to believe Trump’s election would work for him. Albanese would be seen as out of favour with the White House, and Dutton, a fellow conservative, would be the man to cut deals with the new president. And so, Dutton described the US president as “a big thinker and deal maker ... shrewd”.
Fairly quickly, however, the Coalition realised that blindly following Trump would come with an electoral cost. So recent months have seen a consistent pattern of Dutton grabbing some element of Trumpism and then dropping it or shunting it to the sidelines—whether that be nuclear power, Jacinta Price’s DOGE-like government efficiency unit and her MAGA hat, scrapping working from home in the public service, or sacking tens of thousands of public servants. 
With two-thirds of respondents to a mid-April Resolve poll stating that Trump’s victory at the US election had been a bad outcome for Australia, Dutton’s identification with Trump seriously hurt the Coalition. It didn’t help him with the Liberals’ capitalist backers either. Few were enthused by Trump’s apparent determination to blow up trade with China, which the Albanese government had successfully restored after the Morrison government had sabotaged it. The ruling class didn’t love the Albanese government, but they opted for “better the devil you know”.
These broad trends came together at the election to demolish the Coalition. 
What can we expect from Albanese’s second term?
The Labor camp was overjoyed on election night. With a sizable majority government and a two-party preferred vote of nearly 55 percent, Albanese has been elevated to the ranks of Labor heroes, for now at least. But the rest of the country is hardly cheering; mostly, there is just relief that Dutton wasn’t elected. 
Labor has promised next to nothing to reverse the decade-long stagnation in living standards. All the things that have pissed off Labor supporters will continue—environmental vandalism, support for Israel, refusal to tackle tax breaks for the rich, rising inequality, denial of Aboriginal rights, billions for nuclear submarines and US bases and so on. The government will not say or do anything that will seriously antagonise business nor do anything to give workers the power to go on strike or fight for their rights.
Labor may have won, but Essential polling one week before the election showed that half the population believes Australia is on the wrong track, compared to less than a third who think it’s heading in the right direction.
This is all the more reason for the working class and oppressed to fight. 
The resistance we need means demonstrations and strikes that mobilise the working class where they have power. More than anything, if we are to push back against the sustained, decades-long ruling class attack on living standards, the working class must rediscover the strike weapon. 
But demonstrations and strikes rarely happen of their own accord. They need leadership. The problem is that the traditional organisations that might lead, most importantly the trade unions, have gone into hibernation. The union leaders’ refusal to call strikes has allowed the capitalists to grab more and more of the wealth produced by the working class. The Greens are no alternative either. They prioritise parliamentary games over campaigning.
We need to rebuild grassroots leadership that is not beholden to the ALP. Leaders who aren’t simply waiting for an appointment to a plum political position, as so many in the trade unions are. Leaders who aren’t compromised by dependence on government funding and contracts, as so many in the NGOs are. Leaders who resist all the arguments to go easy on the government for fear of giving the Coalition any advantage. Leaders who are serious about fighting for workers. That means we need more socialists agitating for class struggle, defiance and mass action, not polite lobbying.
A good place to start is joining the 24 May National Day of Protest demanding the government cut ties with Trump’s America. The protests have been called by Students for Palestine. They are backed by local Palestinian solidarity groups, the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network, the Campaign against Racism and Fascism and Labor against War. In this election, millions voted against a party identified with the Trump agenda. We need to turn that rejection of Trump into a movement on the streets.

Tom Bramble

Albanese triumphs but promises nothing for the working class

There are a lot of big political issues you might have expected to generate serious debate in this federal election. Rising sea levels, skyrocketing housing costs, global remilitarisation and historic levels of wealth inequality spring to mind. 
Instead, the campaign has been dominated by big headlines about the utterly mundane.
For instance, there’s the Teal independents vs. Liberals corflute wars. Ro Knox, Liberal candidate for Wentworth in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, fired the opening shot when she accused sitting MP Allegra Spender’s campaign of sticking a poster over an image of an Israeli hostage family (Spender has since threatened to sue for defamation). 
The Sydney Morning Herald launched a detailed investigation, including analysing metadata from photos of said posters, to get to the bottom of the escalating dispute. This battle for the ages heated up when a grainy video emerged of three posh women using lipstick to deface a corflute of Teal MP Zali Stegall in Sydney’s Mosman. 
“It was Chanel! Why’d you let me do that?”, cried the first woman. 
“Oh, it doesn’t matter, do piggy things on her nose”, her friend replied. 
When Kooyong Teal MP Monique Ryan’s husband seized a campaign sign belonging to her Liberal rival, the incident received media coverage comparable to that of Trump’s tariffs. 
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s most media-saturated moments came when he fell off a stage and then spent a day bizarrely denying it (before presumably being told by his PR guy that this only made him look weirder), and when he tried to relate to the yoof in classic boomer dad style by saying the Coalition is “delulu with no solulu”. The cringe still reverberates weeks later. 
Liberal challenger Peter Dutton has also had a few moments in the spotlight. When he whacked a cameraman in the head with an errant kick of a football, the newspapers cleared their front pages. Melbourne’s Herald Sun
released a blow-by-blow account, imploring readers to “SEE THE PHOTOS, WATCH THE VIDEOS”. 
But of greatest interest to the media has been which taxpayer-funded mansion Dutton will live in should he win the top job: Sydney’s Kirribilli or Canberra’s Lodge? 
The first leaders’ debate was aptly described by satirical site The Chaser
as “a rare chance to see the two most boring men in the country squabble for an hour” and “a bid for both major parties to confirm their commitment to the leader of Australia, Rupert Murdoch”. 
It all seems kind of humorous, until you stop to think about it and realise it’s not funny at all. There are no substantial political differences, so the drama and the debate revolve around who’s better at holding steady on a stage, kicking a football or sabotaging an opponent’s plastic signage. 
And they’re pumped out by a corporate media all too happy to keep quiet on the fundamental issues facing most voters. To question the politicians seriously would mean questioning the current inequalities and injustices of Australian capitalism; good luck getting that headline past the Murdochs or Kerry Stokes.
When it comes to the cost of living, the only difference is a $5-per-week tax cut (Labor) or a 25-cent discount on a litre of petrol (Liberals). Both parties are in lockstep on protecting a housing market geared towards the bank balances of landlords, spending half a trillion dollars on nuclear-powered submarines, letting the fossil fuel companies ravage the environment and denying the humanity of refugees seeking safety. 
They’ve adopted the same campaign strategy: don’t rock the boat, i.e. don’t say anything that will piss off big business.
The boredom of this election campaign is contrasted with the dire need for a political alternative. Thankfully, socialists are trying to make that happen. The Victorian Socialists are running in four lower house seats and the Senate. 
With no attachment to or funding from corporate Australia, VS is implacably hostile to landlords, bosses and the political elite. The party’s program can be summed up as “people before profit”. The working class is getting screwed by rising living costs while the rich have never had it better, so we should redistribute wealth from the top to the bottom. With Trump in the White House and endless atrocities such as the genocide in Gaza, now is not the time to sit at home and despair but to go out and fight for a different kind of world.
In this election, vote socialist wherever you can, vote Greens before Labor (the Albanese government deserves a beating) and put the Liberals and right-wing micro parties last.
Socialists are not yet able to make a decisive stamp on the Australian political scene. But with declining support for the two major parties, there is an appetite for an alternative. The more people who get involved in fighting for that to be a socialist alternative, the better off we’ll all be.

Eleanor Morley

An election campaign about nothing that matters

Looking through the Greens’ social media in recent weeks, you find many posts referring positively to the minority government the party formed with Labor PM Julia Gillard between 2010 and 2013. “The best parliaments are hung!” says one post featuring Sydney candidate Luc Velez. Gillard’s government was “one of the most productive parliaments in Australian history”, glows another published on the Australian Greens page. 
In a January interview with the Guardian, party leader Adam Bandt went so far as to argue that a new Labor-Greens coalition government could usher in “a golden era of progressive reform”. What better way to substantiate his claim than to recount the last time it happened? But was the Gillard experience really that wonderful? What did this “most productive” parliament deliver?
Gillard took an even more rightward course than her predecessor, Kevin Rudd. One of her first moves was to placate the mining industry by scrapping Rudd’s super-profits tax in favour of a watered-down Minerals Resource Rent Tax. Figures from the Parliamentary Budget Office from 2021 show that Gillard’s capitulation cost the government—and saved the mining industry—a whopping $33 billion between 2012 and 2020. Gina Rinehart’s newest Pilbara project was approved to sweeten the deal.
Cuts to services were another hallmark of the Gillard era. Despite its purported feminist credentials, the government slashed $700 million in welfare for single parents in 2012, lowering payments by $56 per week when children turned eight. This mainly affected impoverished single mothers. Despite announcing an “education revolution” ahead of the 2010 election, university funding suffered two rounds of cuts under Gillard: $1 billion in 2012 and a further $2.3 billion the following year. 
Even the NDIS, the flagship social program established by the Gillard government, has been riddled with problems. For one, it is a for-profit system based on private providers underwritten by tens of billions in government funding. Predictably, it has been a free money button for business owners wanting to make a buck off some of society’s most vulnerable. 
Also, Gillard was thoroughly conservative on social questions. Despite having majority support, she continued Labor’s opposition to marriage equality, arguing in a 2011 television interview that “for our culture, for our heritage, the Marriage Act and marriage being between a man and a woman has a special status”. The following year, she voted down a private members’ bill on the issue, sparking significant protests at Labor’s 2013 national conference.
Refugees perhaps suffered the most under Gillard. Soon after assuming the prime ministership, she announced the so-called East Timor solution—a plan to reopen mandatory offshore detention for refugees who arrive by boat. Refugee rights activists widely viewed the move as a return to the Howard-era “Pacific Solution”. 
This is the real record of the last Labor-Greens minority government. It was hardly a progressive paradise. 
What did the Greens win in exchange for propping up Gillard? Mostly, a series of commissions, committees, inquiries and some changes to parliamentary procedure. A suite of bureaucratic and non-binding measures that enabled Labor to do what it does best: talk about problems in a back room, commission a detailed report about them, and never have to act. The only substantial gain was dental being included in Medicare for under-18s, who today enjoy only partial coverage.
It’s a real reform. So it’s worth asking whether it was worth the compromise. Our society faces overlapping crises—climate, housing and cost of living, to name a few. Can we afford to limit our ambition to horse-trading on one issue for inaction on the others? Can the left win the radical change we need through a strategy premised on weighing up which oppressed group we can accept being thrown to the dogs in exchange for minor reforms somewhere else? Are these the heights we should aspire to? 
While they were not the architects of Gillard’s crimes, the Greens provided political support for them in government. Even when the Greens eventually decided to pull their backing for the increasingly unpopular Labor government in 2013, they still agreed to back supply and confidence, rendering the move functionally meaningless. Now, they are arguing for a repeat of the formula based on phoney receipts. 
Rather than facing up to the facts, the Australian Greens Instagram page talks up Gillard’s “mining tax legislation” and apparently “world-leading climate laws”. These are the same policies that saved extractive industries $33 billion in taxes. This sort of honest accounting complicates things if you want to convince progressive people to repeat the drama all over again.
Today, the Greens are approaching minority government with a shopping list of demands to negotiate with Labor. One social media post by WA Senator Jordon Steele-John spells it out. “It’s time to make way for a minority government where Greens hold the balance of power”, he writes. Only that way will we get dental into Medicare, proper funding of the NDIS, affordable housing, climate action, rent caps and other things. 
The Greens also entered 2010 with lofty ambitions—climate action, marriage equality, better treatment of refugees—and ended up reduced to the wagging tail of the Gillard government. We need to learn the lesson, not commit to repeating the same mistakes. Unfortunately, there’s no indication that the same compromises won’t come along with another minority government this time around. The Greens have already waved the white flag on housing and climate policy under Albanese. 
Resurrecting the corpse of the Gillard government has gone hand in hand with a quiet backpedalling on Gaza. As David Speers pointed out in a recent cross-examination of Bandt on the ABC’s Insiders, the Greens leader now avoids calling Albanese complicit in Israel’s massacre in Gaza. He is complicit. But it would be an awkward look for Bandt to accuse the man he wants to form a government with of being an accessory to genocide. 
It would also be awkward for The Greens to claim they will have significant housing policy wins by shacking up with the party that Greens housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather described in 2023 as “the political arm of the property industry”. 
This is one of the disagreements socialists have with the way the Greens go about politics. For all the accurate criticisms they may make of Labor, the Greens accept that the parameters for change are set by what a coalition with that same rotten party could achieve. Sadly, it’s the sort of politics that leads not just to one compromise, but to habitual compromise and, now, attempts to dress up, justify and replicate those compromises. This is precisely what the Greens are doing by peddling revisionist narratives about the Gillard years. 
Socialists campaigning in the federal election want to do things differently. We want to untether the left’s strategy from what a thoroughly right-wing Labor government is willing to agree to. We want to plant the flag for radical solutions to society’s problems—not as a bargaining chip to be traded in, but as a goal to fight for. 
Unless we build an alternative that is willing to stick to its guns, the left will constantly be pulled back into the orbit of what is tolerable to Labor.

Jack Mansell

The Greens’ phoney history of the last minority government

The Victorian Socialists have a policy to put politicians on an average worker’s wage. Federal parliamentarians currently get a base salary of $230,000, which puts them in the top 5 percent of Australian income earners. Ministers get more than $350,000, putting them in the top 1 percent.
On top of that, they get heaps of benefits like a travel allowance—which lets them claim $310 per night spent in Canberra for parliament even if they stay in their own house while they’re there.
We think all this is too much and that they should get something resembling an average full-time worker’s wage. After all, if politicians had to live more like the rest of us, they might think differently about their decisions in parliament.
We think politicians’ base salary should be no more than that of a sixth-year nurse, which is currently just over $92,000. To show that we’re serious about this policy, other VS candidates and I have pledged that if elected, we’ll accept only $92,000 out of our salary and donate the rest—around $140,000—to local campaigns to make our communities a better place for working-class people.
In response to this policy, a few people have noted that the workers’ movement historically fought for parliamentary salaries: the Chartists in early nineteenth-century Britain, for example. 
The thing is, we’re not saying politicians shouldn’t be paid at all. Not paying politicians at all would mean, as it did then, that you could be a politician only if you came from money and could support yourself.
We’re just saying politicians should be paid an average worker’s wage. It’s strange in that context to say working-class people couldn’t get by as politicians earning only $92,000 when most workers are getting by on less than that now.
Another objection is that politicians deserve to be in the top 5 percent of income earners because their job is very hard and stressful. Here’s an example from one of our social media channels: “It’s a pretty shit job at times. Someone is always upset with you, even when you do your best. You have to give up a lot of privacy, and the job requires you to work at all kinds of hours”.
I’ll just quote one excellent reply someone gave: “Ex hospo worker here. Can confirm someone is always upset at you, even when you try your best. Work all kinds of hours, get doxxed by the creep you wouldn’t go out with. $18.70 an hour”.
Millions of workers in Australia are doing work just as hard and stressful as what politicians do—and doing it for less than half of what politicians are being paid. 
Just because being a politician can be hard and stressful at times doesn’t mean the financial reward should be greater than that of 95 percent of other workers.
Another objection is that politicians need to be paid a lot so that parliament can attract the most talented people. An example from a comment on X responding to our policy: “Nonce. The salary needs to be properly paid to try and attract good people from the private sector”.
The problem is that there’s zero evidence that higher salaries mean better, more talented people. The absolute worst people in Australia are billionaires like Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart. The heads of banks and other big businesses earning multimillion-dollar salaries are all anti-working-class scum. And the current crop of well-paid politicians is hardly an advertisement for “talent”.
The most genuinely talented, creative and energetic people aren’t usually those in it for the money. They’re the people who have a genuine passion for something and are prepared to work for it even if it doesn’t result in massive financial rewards.
Politics is perhaps the worst career to get into for the money. It means you’re likely to think more of yourself and your prospects than the people you’re supposed to be serving.
We want parliamentarians to stand up to the powerful vested interests that dominate politics today—not join them. We want people who want to work to build a better society. You’re unlikely to do that if you’re the kind of person who would rather be a real estate agent, a banker or a lawyer instead because you’d make better money.
This relates to people’s third main objection: paying politicians less will make them more susceptible to bribery and corruption. For example, one person argued: “It’s important that politicians are paid extremely well so that money has less of an effect on politics”.
What is it about the state of the world today, though, that makes you think that earning a lot of money is protection against corruption? If anything, the opposite is the case—the higher up you go on the income scale—all the way to billionaires like Rinehart and Donald Trump—the more likely you are to engage in various dodgy or corrupt practices to boost your wealth further.
And, again, it isn’t like the massive salaries we pay them now have been any protection against political corruption. If they earned even more and were even more integrated into the elite world of the Australian ruling class, they’d likely become more subservient to their interests.
So none of these objections stacks up.
I want to finish on a positive note. A lot of people love our policy. They’re the kind of people who work hard day in and day out in stressful, massively underpaid jobs and are sick of politicians lecturing workers about the need for “wage restraint” when they’re earning hundreds of thousands of dollars and passing tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations.
One says: “5th year midwife/nurse here! Every $ that goes into my bank account I know I’ve worked hard for serving my community and looking after those most vulnerable—what a joy it would be to have someone in parliament doing the same”.
These are the kinds of people this policy is for, and I’ll be fighting for them if I’m elected to parliament.
This is an edited version of a video made by Victorian Socialists Senate candidate Jordan van den Lamb.

Jordan van den Lamb

Why socialists think politicians should be on an average worker’s wage

As a socialist, I’ve always found elections to be somewhat depressing events. After all, whoever wins them, most of us lose. Billionaires and corporations can rest easy knowing that their power and profits are in safe hands, because the capitalist system will roll on unchallenged. For decades, their share of the world’s wealth has been steadily rising, while that of those who actually produce that wealth has been in steep decline. 
This palpably growing inequality is just one of the salient features of the world today. But we also face existential threats. The hideous ongoing wars in Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar (and in the case of Palestine, genocide), have killed, maimed and displaced millions of people, with no end in sight. And there’s an increasing threat of a global war driven by the rivalry between US and China. Military spending is on the rise around the world, inevitably draining funds for the things people actually need. Australia’s alliance with the US—a solidly bipartisan affair—would make this country a prime target, thanks to the Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap, which provides crucial surveillance intelligence, and the US military bases dotted around the country. 
Catastrophic climate change is making parts of the world completely uninhabitable. In Australia, as elsewhere, supposedly “once in a generation” disasters such as major fires and floods are now regular occurrences. Yet governments of all persuasions have not only failed to do anything meaningful; they have continued to expand the extraction of fossil fuels. The much-touted goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees is already a pipe dream.
Then there’s the running down of health, education and welfare services, assaults on the rights of migrants, women, LGBTI+ and other oppressed groups, the rise of racism and Islamophobia, and the increasing erosion of democratic rights such as freedom of speech and assembly; the list goes on. 
None of the major parties offers anything of substance to address these issues. At best, they will just tinker around the edges. You only need to look at what they’re offering in response to the cost-of-living crisis, the issue uppermost in most Australian voters’ minds. While more and more people are being forced into homelessness or having to choose between paying their rent or mortgage and putting food on the table, the Labor government promises a pathetic $5 per week tax cut and the Liberals a temporary cut to the petrol excise. At the same time, both parties shell out billions for a bunch of nuclear-powered submarines, continue to open and subsidise fossil fuel projects and hand buckets of money to private providers of aged and childcare services.
Their priorities and allegiances are crystal clear and demonstrate their contempt for working people and the poor. The old saying about the Roman emperor Nero, “fiddling while Rome burned”, springs to mind (although Nero wasn’t actually in Rome when the devastating fire broke out, and fiddles didn’t exist in AD 64). The phrase remains a metaphor for “someone insensitive or inattentive to a crisis”, which certainly applies to our parliamentary representatives. At best, they have stood by while a cost-of-living crisis driven by corporate profiteering has trashed the living standards of workers and the poor. For the most part, though, they’ve colluded in this process.
So yes, it’s hard to get excited about an election when you know nothing will really change for the better, and things will likely get worse for ordinary people. But if you live in Victoria, it’s different. Since 2018, it’s been possible to campaign and vote for Victorian Socialists candidates in state, federal and council elections. It’s been an exciting experience showing the potential to build a real alternative to the barely distinguishable major parties.
Attempting to lower our sights and aspirations, capitalist politicians and the media constantly try to convince us that radical change isn’t possible. Yet Australia is among the world’s richest countries, with more than enough wealth to fund affordable housing for all, boost welfare, and provide everyone with quality health care and education—the basics of a decent life. 
The problem is that the wealth is increasingly hoarded by a tiny minority at the top. In 1974, Australian workers received 56 percent of GDP in wages. Today it’s down to 48 percent, representing a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. This rampant inequality is supported and enabled by politicians. In return for their high wages and multiple perks and privileges, they keep the system ticking along for their class. 
The Victorian Socialists project is based on the belief that working-class people—the vast majority of the population—can collectively challenge the power of the rich and build a society that looks after all those left behind. 
A key issue in this election is housing, which is an important factor in the cost-of-living crisis. Housing insecurity and homelessness are the result of a market-driven society organised around private ownership of residential property. The major parties fully concur with this state of affairs and are firmly in the pockets of the developers and landlords. 
Governments are destroying public housing, and since most parliamentary representatives own multiple properties, they are utterly opposed to measures that would lower property prices (ending negative gearing, capital gains tax discounts and similar rorts), or regulations to cap soaring rents. Victorian Socialists stand unequivocally for all those struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Secure, quality housing should be a right, not a money-making opportunity for the rich. 
That’s why we’re standing Jordan van den Lamb as a candidate for the Senate. Jordan (aka “purplepingers”) has built a significant following as the hero of renters and scourge of scumbag landlords via his website shitrentals.com. By running for the Senate, he hopes to take his online campaigning a step further, winning a broader audience and building an activist base to fight for the Victorian Socialists’ housing policies. These include Commonwealth funding for public housing, with the goal of building 1 million new units over the next decade and imposing a five-year freeze on rent increases. 
In addition, Victorian Socialists would tackle inequality and the cost of living by such measures as heavily taxing the ill-gotten gains of the rich. For example, by increasing company tax to 50 percent and making sure they actually pay it, ending tax breaks for property investors, cracking down on price-gouging and profiteering by supermarkets, energy companies etc., and significantly increasing the minimum wage and welfare payments. 
Historically, unions have played a crucial role in defending workers’ rights and living standards. But Australian unions today are in a parlous state; rather than mobilising workers to fight the bosses’ attacks, they put their resources into getting Labor re-elected. And they actively discourage strikes, our most important weapon. Victorian Socialists stands for rebuilding the fighting strength of our unions and for getting rid of anti-strike laws and other restrictions on workers’ ability to organise and fight for better wages and conditions.
The military alliance with the US has embroiled Australia in horrific wars against Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The bipartisan commitment to the alliance is largely behind Australia’s unwavering support for Israel, even as it commits genocide. And it puts Australia right in the firing line if the imperialist rivalry between the US and China escalates into open war. The best way to defend Australia from the threat of such a war is to break the alliance. That means not only scrapping AUKUS, but also shutting down Pine Gap and other US military installations. Victorian Socialists also calls for cutting military funding and redirecting it to shamefully underfunded areas such as health care, housing and education.
The demands of capitalism—the endless pursuit of profit and power—mean that the major parties are incapable of solving the problems that blight the lives and living standards of workers and the poor, even if they wanted to. In many countries, this failure has contributed to the growth of the far right and, along with it, increased racism and bigotry of all kinds. 
Capitalism benefits directly from oppression in all sorts of ways: the scandalous gender pay gap for women is just one example. But the indirect benefits of pitting ordinary people against each other, whether on grounds of ethnicity, gender or sexuality, are equally important. Divisions such as these help to prevent the collective unity we need to fight back against the bosses’ attacks. Standing up to all forms of bigotry—racism, attacks on women’s and trans rights etc.—is not only morally imperative, it is key to building working-class unity. 
These are just some of the policies that Victorian Socialists stands for (visit our website for more detail). But good policies are one thing, achieving them is another. Clearly, there’s no prospect of Victorian Socialists forming government. But that’s not the point. As the Irish civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin said when elected to the British parliament in 1969: “My function in life is not to be a politician in parliament: it is to get something done”.
For us, the main reason to contest elections is to build a movement from below. Victorian Socialists is attempting to broaden the horizons of politics by putting forward a vision of society that’s sharply at odds with the mainstream. Having even one elected representative would provide a voice and platform, not just to advocate for better policies, but primarily to organise resistance on the ground. History demonstrates that if we stand together, organise and fight back, we can win. To quote Devlin again, “Never underestimate the power of ordinary people to bring about extraordinary change”.
So in this election (at least in Victoria), you can vote for candidates who stand for fundamental social change: for Jordan van den Lamb in the Senate, for Victorian Socialists in Cooper, Fraser and Scullin, and for Socialist Alliance in Wills.
But ultimately, we don’t only need votes. Victorian Socialists’ good showing in previous elections is down to the activism, commitment and enthusiasm of our members. We want to broaden the audience for radical politics, and to do that we need more people committed to building a bigger socialist movement (not just in Victoria)—a movement that can keep fighting for a better deal for workers, no matter who is sitting in parliament.

Tess Lee Ack

Why you should vote for the Victorian Socialists

Another day, another round of baby kissing, hi-vis vests and soirees with rich potential donors for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Meanwhile, the string of crises and injustices affecting the lives of millions—from the rising cost of living to global warming, genocide in Gaza, inequality, military build-up and the fascistic rampage of Trump—is studiously avoided in this election campaign. 
There has been a marked turnaround in the polls from late 2024 to the election campaign. From Labor being well behind Dutton and hoping at best to cobble together a coalition to form government, some polls now suggest it could win a majority. Either way, there has been a clear swing away from Dutton’s Liberals. While this could all change by 3 May, it does partly reflect something positive—the unpopularity of Donald Trump in Australia.
It is not just that Liberal policies failed to land (or in some cases even to exist), but also that the association of Dutton with Trump, who even before the tariffs chaos was unpopular in Australia, has hurt the Coalition. 
And Trump is indeed very unpopular here. Australia Institute polling released on 4 March showed that more Australians (31 percent) saw Donald Trump as a greater threat to world peace than Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping. Half of Australians think Trump’s election is a bad thing for the world, double the number who think it is a good thing.
It has taken the Coalition quite a while to recognise this. Initially, the Dutton camp made some minor gestures of differentiation from Trump; hence Dutton’s early disavowal of attacks on abortion rights and assurances that trans issues will not figure in this election. 
But like a dog returning to its vomit, Dutton couldn’t quite keep away from Trumpiness, whether promising our very own Musk-style DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) headed by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, or nominating health, education and the ABC as targets for its cuts. On the assumption that everyone was dying to drain the Canberra swamp, Dutton offered the mass sacking of 41,000 public servants, with those who survived being denied the right to work from home.
Since the election date was set, Dutton has been trying to pivot away from the Trump connection, largely by being an echo of Albanese. For example, ahead of the so-called “Liberation Day” tariff announcements, Albanese announced Australia’s pharmaceutical scheme, online news payment and biosecurity protocols were not up for negotiation. “Not on my watch”, he said, and was immediately echoed by Dutton.
Then, in the face of the unpopularity of mass sackings, Dutton backflipped on attacking public servants. One after another, Liberal candidates and campaign managers who turn out to be women-￹haters, Islamophobes and cookers of all kinds have had to be disendorsed or sacked. 
While it is positive that there is no appetite for Trump’s far-right, billionaire-first style of politics in Australia, the focus on Trump has given the major parties breathing room when it comes to their shared do-as-little-as-possible approach to the issue that matters the most to people in this election: the cost-of-living crisis. 
The 3 percent cheaper energy bills Dutton claims will be delivered by the Coalition’s energy policy equals a saving of roughly $50 to $70 a year for most east coast families according to the ABC, almost exactly the miserly household savings Labor has pledged through its tax cuts. Neither of these policies will make a significant difference to the difficulties facing working-class people.
Meanwhile, both parties are determined to hand $176 billion to corporate landlords and property investors over the next decade, and there is seemingly limitless bipartisan largesse available for military spending and subsidies to fossil fuel companies. 
Even though one or other will win the election and form government, the increasing decline in support for the major parties is likely to continue in this election. An aggregate of current polling produced by the Guardian
showed the primary votes share for Labor and the Coalition at 68.5 percent, an all-time low and the continuation of a long-term decline since the two parties claimed 98 percent of votes in 1951.
Nonetheless, both Labor and the Liberals have ruled out minority government or even negotiations with the Greens, something which only emphasises how right-wing Labor is, not that the Greens are some radical threat.
The Greens’ policies are better than Labor’s, especially on housing, renters’ rights and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But they’ve also gone to water again and again in parliament, eventually waving through the useless Housing Australia Future Fund housing program and Labor’s meaningless emissions reduction target.
Worse, there has been a shift in the Greens’ messaging as the election has got nearer. This was really summed up in their press release of 28 March 2025: “Greens hit go on biggest ever national campaign for minority government”. Their electoral positioning—“Greens will keep Dutton out and get Labor to act”—has seen a marked reduction in attacks on Labor in favour of praising them for adopting some aspect of the Greens’ policies.
One sign of this shift is the Greens’ new defence policy, which, although it involves an overall reduction in military spending and the scrapping of AUKUS, nevertheless represents a shift within the party towards greater commitment to military spending and legitimisation of the Australian military and the future conflicts in which it may be a part. Why are the Greens suddenly doing this, having never before released “a formally costed policy to fund new military programs”? With electoral possibilities in the air, parties like the Greens that see parliament as the place where change is made need to prove their reasonableness as a potential partner in government. Showing that they accept a range of capitalist non-negotiables, such as the military, is part of that. It also fits in with the growing tide of Australian nationalism in response to Trump.
In this new era, revived Australian nationalism will likely come in a variety of forms. One will involve the attempt to rehabilitate the myth of an “independent” Australian military that only ever acts in self-defence, ignoring the history of Australian imperialism and the capitalist logic that underpins its alliance with the US. 
Another will take the form of patriotic consumption of locally made goods. The budget committed $20 million towards the government’s “Buy Australian” plan. Western Australian Labor Premier Roger Cook last month launched a “Made in WA” campaign, which he said would “put manufacturing back at the heart of the economy [and help] make more things in WA”. 
Yet another will take the form of overt class collaboration as Labor and union leaders promote sacrifice of wages and conditions for the salvation of Australian industry in a more hostile world market.
An inevitable accompaniment to rising nationalism during a drive to rearmament is repression and the demonisation of dissent. This has already been evident in relation to anti-democratic attacks and vilification of Palestine campaigners, as well as in the politically motivated claims about the supposed rise in antisemitism. Even the revelation that almost all the Sydney graffiti, arson and the infamous caravan were not the action of antisemites but a cynical attempt by organised criminals to try to reduce their sentences, has done little to dent this narrative.
A raft of new anti-protest laws has been passed federally and by some state governments. This is occurring in the context of a McCarthyite-style witch-hunt of Palestine supporters across media and educational and cultural institutions. The message is clear: if you are on the wrong side of Australia’s imperialist interests and those of its allies, you will be treated like a criminal.
This both builds on and fuels the wider law and order beat-up that is a feature of politics in almost every state. This offensive is directed first and foremost at Indigenous children, such as Queensland’s “adult crime, adult time” laws, as well as immigrant youth. 
All this cries out for resistance. Given that unions, even at only 13 percent membership, still have great social power to take a stand on these issues and many more, it is criminal that the union bureaucracy reduces them to foot soldiers for Labor in its various marginal seat campaigns.
On the campaign trail the only positive has been the left-wing hecklers who both leaders have faced, from campaigners against fossil fuels to opponents of the genocide of the Palestinians to Indigenous people keen to proclaim that Jacinta Nampijinpa Price does not speak for them.
And whatever the result of the election, the issues that animate the hecklers, and the desire to fight those issues, will remain. The hostility to Trump is important not just for its effect on the elections, but for its potential mobilising power in Australia as Trump’s and Musk’s outrages in the US strike a chord here. 
The cost of living remains for very good reason the main election issue for most workers, with the election coming on the back of a steep decline in living standards over the life of the Albanese Labor government. While prices are not rising as fast as they once were, workers and the poor are still burdened with the increases of the past two years. And for most, the prices of housing, food and health care have risen much more than their wages. Wages rose just over 10 percent between March 2022 and December 2024, while inflation rose more than 12 percent and many goods, including essentials such as housing and food, increased even more.
When even Peter Dutton can do it, it’s not enough just to acknowledge that “working families are doing it tough”. Neither major party mentions inequality, let alone offers to do anything about it, because that would draw attention to the fact that those they actually serve—Australia’s capitalists—are raking it in.
The wealth of the richest 200 Australians has risen from 8.4 percent of GDP in 2004 to 23.7 percent in 2024. Australia Institute research shows the gas corporations have paid zero royalties on over half (56 percent) of all gas exports. In fact, the government collects more revenue from HECS than it does from the petroleum resource rent tax.
There’s nothing inevitable about any of this. What’s on offer at the election isn’t a reflection of popular sentiment. Genocide, destroying the environment, far-right crazies and being ripped off by the rich aren’t inherently popular. Better funded health care, decent public housing and climate action are. But sentiment alone isn’t enough. Even voting for Victorian Socialists once every three years isn’t enough. Those sentiments and those votes need to be translated into socialist organisation that persists day in and day out, animated not by “put Liberals last” but by a desire to wipe out the whole profit-driven, crisis-ridden system.

Diane Fieldes

We deserve better than what Labor and Liberal offer

What do you get when you throw billions of government subsidies at private, for-profit childcare providers with little regulatory oversight? Unacceptable levels of child abuse and negligence, wage theft and exploitation alongside a booming investment opportunity for property developers, bankers and private equity firms.
A recent Four Corners <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-17/betrayal-of-trust/105063150">investigation</a> into early childhood education and care (ECEC) has revealed a rise in incidents of sexual abuse, serious physical and mental injury, inappropriate use of restraints and missing children. This is the latest in a string of reports highlighting chronic staffing shortages, regulatory breaches and child welfare concerns in the sector. Meanwhile, the ballooning $20 billion-a-year industry is <a href="https://www.apimagazine.com.au/news/article/is-childcare-still-a-property-investors-playground">marketed</a> as an attractive investment opportunity, due to the heavy injection of government subsidies and high fees charged by providers.
Some of the more extreme cases of reported abuse include children being strapped in highchairs for hours at a time, being kicked and roughly handled, force fed and screamed at. Cost-cutting measures mean many children are fed meals with inadequate nutrition or not fed at all. In some cases, staff lack proper first aid training and knowledge of allergy management. This has resulted in children being hospitalised for serious injuries, often by parents after staff failed to call emergency services at the time of the incident.
This is the predictable outcome of a system that prioritises profit over quality education and care for young children.
Child care has fallen victim to the neoliberal privatisation of public services in Australia over several decades. As a United Services Union member previously <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/early-childhood-education-shouldnt-be-profit">wrote</a> in Red Flag, “Over the last three decades, Labor and Liberal governments have shaped the sector more and more in favour of private providers, moving away from funding service provision by government or community-run providers, and towards per-child subsidies available to private providers”.
Early childhood education is the only level of education in which private, for-profit providers benefit from government subsidies. The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) projects that government handouts to the sector will reach $15 billion by 2026-27.
The result has been a rapid rise in the number of for-profit providers opening childcare centres across the country. According to Professor Gabrielle Meagher, interviewed by Four Corners, of the 300 to 400 new centres opening each year, 95 percent are for profit.
In order to generate maximum returns on investment, for-profit childcare providers have an incentive to drive down operating costs. This means sacrificing child safety and welfare and cutting back on staffing costs to increase profit margins. The latest report into the sector by the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) shows that for-profit centres are consistently rated lower quality than not-for-profit providers. The report found that just 13 percent of for-profit childcare providers exceed national minimum standards for the provision of ECEC, compared to 28 percent for not-for-profit providers. The latter figure is still far too low and indicates that problems in the sector are widespread, likely due to chronic staffing issues. 
Early childhood educators, the vast majority of whom are women, are some of the worst-paid workers in Australia, even after the government’s pay rise of 15 percent over two years. A 2023 ACCC inquiry found that for-profit providers spend significantly less on staff, have a higher proportion of casual employees and employ less experienced educators than not-for-profit providers. Although the rates of pay for staff vary across providers, qualified educators covered under level 3 of the Children’s Services Award were paid on average $35.48 per hour at not-for-profit centres, while their for-profit counterparts were paid $33.69 per hour. As a result, there has been an exodus of workers from the sector. Desperate for staff, operators are cutting corners, hiring under-qualified educators and skipping background checks to fill vacancies.
Despite these issues, governments have not prioritised adequate funding for regulating the burgeoning sector. A report by the Productivity Commission last year found that industry regulators are under-resourced, meaning compliance inspections are infrequent or in some cases do not occur at all. According to the ACECQA, almost one in ten providers have never been given a quality rating yet are allowed to continue operating and enrolling children.
Whistleblower Ashley Sy, an early childhood educator, told Four Corners
that centres she has worked at regularly gamed the system to achieve ratings that don’t reflect the reality of the services they provide. “There are materials that children can’t use on a day-to-day basis that are kept in staff rooms that are only brought out for assessment and rating time.” She said staff feared reprisals for speaking up about conditions in the centres they work in because many are migrants and did not want to risk losing their jobs and visas.
Even when assessments do take place, the ratings are next to meaningless. Centres that do not meet the minimum standards are given the euphemistic rating of “working towards” and allowed to continue to operate and rake in huge profits.
In an environment where profits are put before child protection and staff working conditions, it’s no surprise that there are frequent reports of breaches in laws and regulations. Yet the consequences are minimal even for serious breaches.
In a particularly heinous case in which several children suffered brutal physical and psychological abuse, childcare provider Jumpstart and an educator were fined just $186,620 and $38,650, respectively. The mother of one of the children affected expressed the inadequacy of this, saying to Four Corners: “Children being abused and having trauma for the rest of their lives, that’s what it’s worth? As a parent, if I was to do that to my son and had it reported I would lose my son, I would be considered an unfit parent”.
Clearly, the sector is in need of reform. At a minimum, federal and state governments should shut down providers that do not meet quality standards and direct more resources to the regulators to conduct frequent spot checks. They could cap fees charged by for-profit providers and mandate wages for educators on par with primary and secondary schools to address the staffing shortages.
However, Labor seems reluctant to investigate seriously and address the issues. The NSW Labor government attempted to block Greens MLC Abigail Boyd from accessing reports from the regulator about serious cases of abuse and neglect. A selection of documents was made public only in early April, six months after she first requested them. In March, Boyd moved a motion to censure Labor MLC Penny Sharpe, the leader of the government in the NSW Legislative Council, for not producing the documents as directed.
“I have spent five months trying to get this information out, and none of the excuses stack up”, Boyd said when presenting the motion. “The fact that our regulatory authority cannot produce this information when it is responsible for keeping children as young as nought to three years safe is incredibly worrying.”
The response from Minister for Education and Early Learning Prue Car so far has been to order an independent assessment with narrow terms of reference and no concrete time line, further kicking the can down the road.
Labor is reluctant to address the crisis in child care because it is committed to raising women’s participation in the workforce to fill skills and labour shortages. According to a 2023 report by the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, boosting women’s participation in the paid workforce by removing barriers, such as limited access to affordable child care, could add $128 billion to the economy. So, the government doesn’t have an interest in bringing the inadequacies of the sector to light, or to fund a robust regulator for that purpose, as this could interfere with its broader economic objectives. 
Given the documented superiority of publicly operated providers, an immediate solution to this crisis is to nationalise the sector to ensure the welfare and safety of children are the priority while significantly improving staff pay and working conditions. This would ensure that child care exists for public good rather than private wealth accumulation. 
However, Labor—like its Coalition counterpart—is committed to the idea that the market, with its competition between private providers, produces the best outcome, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary. Until this changes, children will continue to be placed at risk, educators will be underpaid and overworked, and the industry will remain a playground for private profiteering rather than a service that truly supports working parents and their children.

Clara da Costa-Reidel

Profits before children: The crisis in Australian child care

More than 300 people gathered at Brunswick Town Hall in Melbourne on Friday evening to launch the Victorian Socialists’ campaign for the federal election.
The party will contest four lower house seats in Victoria in the election on 3 May and run Jordan van den Lamb, aka purplepingers, for the Senate.
Hundreds of people have already been involved in the campaign, either by attending forums in Melbourne and regional towns or by helping to distribute letters, yard signs and socialist arguments to working-class people across the state.
Friday’s launch brought some of these people together, and many new faces, to hear our socialist platform for the federal election.
Kath Larkin, candidate for Cooper in Melbourne’s inner north, spoke at the launch about rising inequality and poverty. It’s an indictment that, in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, demand for food banks and homelessness services is increasing.
The major parties don’t care about this pain; they’ve helped facilitate it. Under federal Labor, we’ve seen a massive transfer of wealth to the richest at the expense of workers’ living standards. 
Victorian Socialists are fighting to increase taxes on big businesses and the ultra-wealthy to take back what they’ve stolen and to pour that money into cost-of-living relief and public housing, healthcare and education. 
The housing crisis is the sharpest edge of Australia’s cost-of-living crisis. Evidence for this is the popularity, both online and at campaign forums, of van den Lamb, who has tapped into widespread discontent among renters with his “shit rentals” videos targeting dodgy landlords and developers. Speaking at the launch, he outlined a socialist solution to the housing crisis:
“We’re not here to beg for crumbs. We’re here to demand housing for all. We’re here to demand the empty homes be taken off speculators and distributed to the people who need them ... We’re here to fight for an end to this system that treats our homes like poker chips in a casino.” 
It’s this fighting anti-capitalist approach to politics that sets Victorian Socialists apart. We need to see more of it in parliament, not another do-nothing, pro-capitalist moderate.
Omar Hassan, candidate for Scullin in Melbourne’s outer north, spoke about the rise of the far right globally and the response we need in Australia. Labor is sucking up to Trump, while Dutton and the Liberals are seeking every opportunity to blame migrants for the problems we face. 
“It’s only socialists who know how to fight right-wingers, the far right and fascists”, he said. “All around the world we’re seeing that the mainstream cannot defeat the far right. Vote socialist to fight that scum—whether in the White House, or here in Australia.”
Despite the economic and political challenges, the mood was not despair but hope—and determination to fight for something better. 
“We know that society can be better”, said Jasmine Duff, candidate for Fraser in Melbourne’s west. “We can live in a world that puts people before profit. And that’s because working-class people have at their core the empathy and sense of solidarity that can make that world possible.”
Most hopeful of all is the feeling of standing alongside hundreds of people who aren’t going to accept the current state of politics. We’re going to fight in this election and beyond to force a much-needed socialist perspective into Australian politics that puts people before profits—on doorsteps, voting booths and wherever else we can get that message.

James Gallagher

‘We know that society can be better’: Victorian Socialists launch federal election campaign

No matter who wins the federal election on 3 May, most of us will lose. This election is about the rich vs. the poor, and both major parties are firmly in the camp of the former.
Since the Albanese government took office in May 2022, Australian workers have suffered their steepest decline in living standards in modern history. Household disposable income has dropped by 8 percent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Every cent of real wage growth made in the 2010s has been obliterated. Property website Domain’s rental reports show that the median rent for a house in a capital city has increased by 26 percent. Those who took out the average mortgage for a new home were spending $2,218 to $2,694 on monthly repayments back in 2022—now they’re spending $4,096, according to ABS data.
Food is more expensive. Bills are more expensive. Clothes, shoes, flights, coffee, petrol, brunch: everything is more expensive.
Some, however, have done very well for themselves over the last three years. The 200 parasites who grace the Australian Financial Review’s Rich List have increased their combined wealth from $520 billion to $625 billion. That $105 billion is enough to wipe all outstanding HECS debt and have enough left over to raise the rate of welfare payments to $88 a day, lifting 2.3 million people—including 840,000 children—out of poverty. 
Instead, Australia’s billionaires have hoarded their wealth, grown their share portfolios and expanded their property holdings. An article about the luxury property market on the National Australia Bank website sums it up well: “Despite broader economic uncertainties, the high-end property segment remained largely insulated due to resilient demand in high-net-worth individuals”.
The Labor government has done basically nothing to try to rectify this startling rise in inequality. It handed out tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich and has refused to touch the generous concessions provided to landlords. “We’re not trying to bring down house prices”, Labor Housing Minister Clare O’Neil declared on ABC radio in November. At least she’s honest. Albanese’s solution to the housing crisis? Purchase a $4.3 million clifftop mansion with timber-lined cathedral ceilings and sparkling ocean views. 
Labor has allowed supermarkets, airlines and energy companies to price-gouge while dismissing calls to hit them with a super profits tax. The minuscule increases it has made to poverty-inducing welfare payments have been eaten up by inflation.
And there is no illusion that the Liberals would do anything differently. Peter Dutton proved where his loyalties lie when he flew to Sydney to attend a lavish fundraiser hosted by billionaire pub-and-club boss Justin Hemmes as Cyclone Alfred approached his hometown of Brisbane. A new mural hanging in the reception of Australia’s top billionaire Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill mine depicts a banquet on her 70th birthday with Dutton seated next to the mining magnate herself. 
Now that the election campaign is well underway, what are the major parties offering to entice our vote? For Labor, it’s a $5-per-week tax cut. For the Liberals, it’s 25 cents off a litre of petrol. That’s the extent of the choice we have in this election.
While it’s pennies for us, billions are spent on the most odious industries. Both major parties have committed to doubling military spending, from about $50 billion in 2022 to $100 billion by 2034. Federal subsidies to fossil fuel companies totalled $14.5 billion in 2023-24, an increase of 31 percent on the $11.1 billion recorded in 2022-23, according to the Australia Institute think tank. 
We deserve much better than this. It’s no wonder that combined support for the major parties has been steadily falling over the last twenty years—in 2022, a third of all votes went to candidates not from Labor or the Coalition. But we also deserve better than what’s on offer from the existing minor parties and independents. 
A small chunk of the vote is going towards crackpot right-wingers who’d love to see a MAGA movement in Australia. The Teal independents are, broadly speaking, “lapsed Liberals” targeting the wealthiest electorates with a conservative economic framework and girl-boss energy. 
Then there’s the Greens, who had their best run yet in 2022. Across the board, their policies are better than Labor’s, and they’ve done some heavy lifting in calling out the government on the housing crisis, renters’ rights and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But despite having the numbers to block shitty Labor policy in the Senate for the last three years, they’ve waved through some of the worst—from do-nothing housing programs to climate policy that ensures the continued destruction of the environment. 
Recently, the Greens announced that ending native forest logging will be a key demand put to Labor in negotiations to form a minority government following the upcoming election (no other “key demands” have been raised). Worthy as this is, it hardly gets to the heart of the assault on living standards, the fossil fuel industry, Labor’s brutal refugee policy or rising militarism. 
We need a socialist political alternative that takes on the major parties and fights for a world that puts people before profit. In Victoria, this means a vote for Victorian Socialists in selected lower house electorates, the Socialist Alliance’s Sue Bolton in the seat of Wills and Jordan van den Lamb (aka “purplepingers”) in the Senate. Elsewhere, vote socialist where possible. 
But we also need to get organised beyond the federal election—socialist activism is not a once-in-three-years activity. If the last three years has taught us anything, it’s that no-one is coming to save us but us.

Labor and Liberals rule for the rich—we need a socialist alternative

1. Because the super-rich in Australia are taking the piss—and the piles of cash 
Back in 1983, the wealth of the hundred richest people in Australia totalled $3.2 billion. If that wealth had increased in line with inflation, today it would be nearly four times more—an obscene $12.5 billion. 
But this would be viewed as chickenfeed by today’s super-rich. The wealth of the one hundred richest people last year was 163 times greater than that of the richest 100 in 1983, according to the Australian Financial Review—an extraordinary $524 billion. 
If we include the AFR’s full annual “Rich List” of the 200 wealthiest people in the country, we get to $624 billion, 24.7 percent of Australia’s annual gross domestic product. 
To call this wealth “stratospheric” is a massive understatement. If piles of $100 notes were stacked up to the value of $624 billion, they would reach 878 kilometres into the sky: the stratosphere runs out after about 50 km. And as Red Flag
has <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/annual-rich-list-200-ugly-faces-australian-capitalism">pointed out</a> in the past, the wealth of the billionaires is only the very public tip of the iceberg of wealth that the capitalist class accumulates from the labour the rest of us perform.
If Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest took a month off, or a year, their money would continue to accumulate. This is because it’s the work of others—in the mines these billionaires own, but also the vast network of communications, transport, education, finance and health, throughout the country and around the world—that creates the vast fortunes of the rich. So no-one would notice if Rinehart et al. dropped off the planet—but if enough of those workers stopped working for just a few days, the flow of wealth would stop stone cold dead. 
What’s the correct word for those who accumulate this sort of wealth from the labour of others? “Capitalists” is accurate. So is “parasites”. And it’s about time they faced a serious challenge.
2. Because the rest of us are sick of being ripped off
As Albo and his treasurer sprinkled a few crumbs on budget night to a standing ovation from Labor MPs, and most of the rest of us scratched our heads wondering just how we’ll spend our $5 weekly tax cut from the middle of next year, Victorian Socialists crunched the numbers. As our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18g2mgZsmo/">budget reply</a> stated: 
“In 1974, Australian workers (aka the people who create all the wealth) received 55.9 percent of GDP in wages. Today it's 47.9 percent. If that share increased back to 1974 levels, it would mean workers would, collectively, be $220 billion better off (more than $15,000 per employee, per year). Keep that in mind when Labor politicians are spruiking $5 a week tax cuts, 5 cents off a pint of beer, or modest cuts to HECS debts.”
And imagine what we could do with that $220 billion—equivalent to around $10 per hour for every employee. Maybe we could take a well-deserved pay raise and a greater share of the wealth we create. Or maybe we could take some of that wealth back in the form of transformative public infrastructure. A massive new hospital costs <a href="https://www.vhba.vic.gov.au/health/hospitals/new-footscray-hospital">$1.5 billion</a> to build; <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/energy-transition-will-likely-need-400b-renewables-marshall-plan-20230719-p5dph9">official estimates</a> of what the country is spending on our criminally slow transition to a renewables-powered electricity grid are currently around $10 billion per year. You can work out the maths from there. 
3. Because housing for profit means people without homes
It’s obscene, but it’s true: as far as anyone can tell, there are more empty houses than homeless people in this country. On census night in 2021, there were a million empty houses in Australia—eight times the estimated number of people experiencing homelessness. 
Of course, even during the lockdowns of 2021 some homes would have been empty due to people travelling or visiting or being in hospital. But a much more conservative 2023 <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Prosper_SpecVac11_July2024-web.pdf">estimate</a> by the think tank Prosper Australia found 27,000 houses in Victoria didn’t use any water at all for the entire year—so were almost certainly empty for the whole year. 
This pretty much matches the estimate of 30,000 people experiencing homelessness in Victoria right now. Prosper points out that another 70,000 houses appear to be entirely or very largely vacant, judging from a level of water use consistent with a couple of dripping taps, or a bit of watering from an occasional visiting gardener. 
Similarly, the Tenants Union of Tasmania has used water use data to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-29/census-finds-1-million-empty-houses-amid-affordability-crisis/101190794">show</a> that 2,000 homes in that state have been unoccupied for three years or more—pretty much matching the official homelessness figure of 2,350. 
It’s no mystery why: there’s no profit to be made from matching empty houses with people who desperately need them. 
Many investors find it more convenient to leave a house empty while the value steadily rises, rather than renting it out as a home. The law of the land allows this outrageous situation, even encourages it through tax incentives. Property—and profits—are sacred, while people are left to sleep rough (or pay through the nose for a <a href="https://www.shitrentals.org/">shit rental</a>). 
The solution? Do what Victorian Socialists candidate Jordan van den Lamb (aka purplepingers) <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DHXkKUNTkya/?hl=en&amp;img_index=7">advocates</a>: take over houses left vacant for twelve months or more and use them as homes. And we should shift Australia’s construction sector to building public housing rather than ever glitzier shopping malls.
Once we remove the profit motive and organise ourselves to do what’s needed, everything becomes a whole lot simpler.
4. Because we need more strikes
There. We’ve said it. No-one else apart from the socialists are stating this blindingly obvious fact. 
If we don’t fight, we lose. The figures from recent decades show that, over the last few decades, the less we’ve fought, the more we’ve lost.
So while the mainstream parties either denounce industrial action, or perhaps drop in to a picket to murmur some polite nothings for a few minutes, or post an Instagram or two, socialists do our best to turn up, in numbers, when it matters most. 
One example was Victorian Socialists bringing a couple of hundred members and supporters to the pre-dawn picket line at Dandenong South in Melbourne during the Woolworths strike in December last year.
Other parties see parliament as the be-all and end-all of politics. In contrast, socialists want to use election campaigns and any representation we win to build active participation by ordinary people in activities that can actually change things: protests, activist campaigns and strikes.
5. Because bigotry and oppression: capitalism counts the cash 
Some of the benefits that capitalists get from sexism, racism and other forms of oppression are staring us in the face. 
A swathe of Australian employers get a massive cash discount on wages due to the gender pay gap. If we use Australian Bureau of Statistics <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/employee-earnings-and-hours-australia/latest-release#data-downloads">figures</a> for non-managerial employees, a gender pay gap of $4.10 per hour translates to a $700 million cash discount on wages for employers every week. This is more than $36.5 billion in discounted wages each year, straight to the bosses’ bottom line, due to sexism. 
Unpaid labour in the home to raise the next generation of workers, estimated at up to half of GDP, is disproportionately done by women—another handy cash benefit for the ruling elite, flowing from the sexist oppression that affects half the population. 
Other benefits for our rulers from bigotry and oppression are harder to measure exactly, but no less real for that. For instance, it’s hard to quantify the benefit the system gets from having young men buy into the foul, blatant sexism of Andrew Tate. Tate’s gross objectification and contempt for women is the central plank of his thoroughly dog-eat-dog world view. The point of life, according to Tate, is to be out for yourself: everyone else on the planet, and especially women, are just objects to be used. It’s impossible to put a dollar value on the benefit to the rich and powerful from this perfectly pro-capitalist world view being propagated—but it’s substantial.
Similarly with racism. It’d be a difficult task to calculate the “worth” to Australia’s bosses from having <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Migrants-in-the-Australian-workforce.pdf">at least 7 percent</a> of Australia’s working class on some sort of inferior or insecure visa status, generally bound to their employers and therefore reluctant to speak up about <a href="https://www.migrantworkers.org.au/lives_in_limbo">wage theft</a>, health and safety or a punishing pace of work.
It’d be possible to put a dollar value on all the straight-up theft of land from Indigenous people (e.g. the estimated $700 million owed to the Gumatj people in the Northern Territory for a bauxite mine imposed on them in the 1960s, according to a recent High Court <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/14/high-court-native-title-ruling-may-affect-compensation-claims-nationwide-experts-say">decision</a>). But it’d be much harder to calculate a figure for the value our rulers derive from the racist political campaign drummed up against Aboriginal people around the Voice referendum—which has helped Dutton drive politics in this country in a more right-wing, dog-eat-dog direction, undermining solidarity to the benefit of the capitalist class.
Which gets us to Trump.
6. Because fuck Donald Trump and the horse he rode in on 
The modern world has never seen a more blatant example of the rule of the rich. The thirteen billionaires appointed to cabinet posts by President Trump are <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-net-worth-cabinet-billionaires-b2654841.html">reported</a> to be worth US$340 billion—more than the annual gross domestic product of well over 100 countries. 
This government by the obscenely rich, for the obscenely rich, tells us a lot about what capitalism, at its core, is all about. 
It’s about whipping up bigotry and fear. Just one example is the extraordinary US$215 million that Trump and his allies spent during last year’s presidential election campaign whipping up hatred against trans people—<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/republicans-spent-nearly-215m-on-tv-ads-attacking-trans-rights-this-election/">calculated</a> at US$143 for every trans person in the US. 
It’s about vicious anti-migrant politics and the repression of democratic rights: snatch squads from Immigration and Customs Enforcement stalk the streets of US cities, grabbing pro-Palestine activists and whoever else they can for deportation. University administrations and media outlets have rushed to drop any pretence of seeking the truth without fear or favour, in compliance with Trump’s directives.
Of course, a government of billionaires is about trashing workers’ rights: Trump’s <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/15/business/nlrb-trump-musk-workers/index.html">gutting</a> of the National Labor Relations Board is the start of rolling back the legal protections won by workers in the 1930s. This is a gift of love to Amazon owner Jeff Bezos (the second-richest person in the world), and to every other employer who has been troubled by their workers forming new unions in recent years.
And perhaps the most terrifying of all—behind the chaos of Trump’s economic and tariff policy is the cold hard logic of rebuilding US industry to rapidly prepare for war with the US’s fast-rising imperialist rival, China.
And in Australia? Billionaires like Gina Rinehart and Anthony Pratt love Trump just as much as their US counterparts. The Liberals want to copy as much of his agenda as they can. Labor can’t bring itself to make even token criticisms, sending Foreign Minister Penny Wong to applaud Trump and his billionaire sieg-heiling mates at the presidential inauguration. 
Why is this an argument to vote socialist? Because it’s only the socialists who say that every single one of these policies—and the whole system and logic behind them—have to be rejected. And it’s only the socialists who are consistent about building a politics of hope and resistance based on the one power that, throughout history, has shown itself capable of challenging the rule of the rich: ordinary people, and in particular workers—organised, mobilised and armed with radical politics. 
The world needs a socialist movement as a living, breathing, organising, fighting opposition to Trump and to the system he rode in on. 
This means plenty of hard work over the next five weeks, and far beyond. But <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/victorian-socialists-putting-socialism-on-the-political-map">putting socialism back on the political map</a> during the current campaign is an important contribution to the movement that we need.

Albanese triumphs but promises nothing for the working class

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The Greens’ phoney history of the last minority government

Why socialists think politicians should be on an average worker’s wage

Why you should vote for the Victorian Socialists

We deserve better than what Labor and Liberal offer

Profits before children: The crisis in Australian child care

‘We know that society can be better’: Victorian Socialists launch federal election campaign

Labor and Liberals rule for the rich—we need a socialist alternative

Six reasons to vote Socialist

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