Environment

We have a chance to get a socialist elected to parliament. If we’re successful, it will be the first time since 1944.

Another round of United Nations climate talks were being negotiated in Warsaw, Poland, this week when the strongest typhoon recorded to hit land swept across the Philippines before moving on to Vietnam.

For the fifth time since their election in September last year, thousands of Australians will take to the streets in protest against Tony Abbott Coalition's government.

There is ample evidence that people across Australia want a transition to renewable energy. But if we are serious about taking action on climate change and swiftly moving to 100% renewables, we need to take the banks and energy sector into public ownership.

Socialist Alliance is running in the Queensland elections to help build an anti-capitalist current in Queensland and national politics.

While Phelps is no candidate of the left, her victory is a huge morale boost for those movements that have been fighting against the Coalition government.

Sam Wainwright is a Socialist Alliance councillor in Fremantle. Below is a talk he gave on the topic of how to achieve social change in Australia.

The demand of tens of thousands of people who marched through the streets in cities around Australia on May 18 was clear. They want the federal government’s killer budget blocked.

Rational argument by the world's most informed scientists have not been enough to convince the decision-makers of the coal, oil and gas giants to voluntarily stop holding a blow-torch to the planet; nor to persuade the political leaders of the Coalition, Labor or Greens to go beyond what is palatable.

If #Libspill can be summed up as the “madness of Abbott”, we have to recognise that this and other symptoms of political “madness” (such as Trump) are expressions of the dangerous times we live in.

Socialist Alliance supports and campaigns for:

• The closure of all unconventional gas mines, along with a retraining plan for workers in the industry.
• A royal commission into the full impacts of unconventional gas.
• A ban on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and similar stimulation techniques for unconventional gas mining.
• No new gas. Investment in energy must be limited to technologies that can move us to a zero emissions economy.

Indian socialist and feminist, Kavita Krishnan will be one of the international guests from the Asia-Pacific region at the 10th national conference of the Socialist Alliance, to be held in Sydney over the long weekend of June 7-9.