Our Common Cause

Our Common Cause is the column of Socialist Alliance in Green Left which is widely recognised as one of the most authoritative left-wing English-language sources of news and political analysis in print and online. Green Left covers many of the issues and campaigns that Socialist Alliance members are involved in.

Members and supporters are encouraged to promote Green Left while campaigning in their communities and workplaces and to become financial supporters of Green Left to ensure its ongoing production and distribution.

Malcolm Turnbull's very slim majority is no mandate to re-introduce the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) and other anti-worker legislation that he could not get through the previous Senate.

We need a political project that embodies the possibility an adequate response to runaway global warming, a serious redistribution of wealth and a dignified life for all. It will need to draw on the best of the socialist tradition, left wing Greens, militant unionism, community campaigns - and most of all our collective experience of struggle.

Regardless of which major party, or coalition of parties, forms government after the July 2 election one thing we can be certain of is that the struggle for a people's movement will still be as necessary as ever, writes Ken Canning.

We need a radically different future: one that provides for human development, meets community need, protects our environment and guarantees a safe climate. 

Instead of slugging ordinary working families for hundreds of millions of dollars we should tax the super-rich, says Kamala Emanuel (WA Senate Candidate).

"A strike for the freedom of any oppressed peoples is a strike for freedom for all people. The road to equity and justice for my people requires smashing the stranglehold the Liberal National coalition and Labor have on political decision making in Australia."

Sue Bolton, a Socialist Alliance councillor in Moreland, has come under heavy pressure for refusing to be cowed by the Victorian Police, sections of her own council and the racist right-wing. 

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.

Duncan Storrar — who courageously stood up to the powers-that-be, including the Murdoch media monster — and all those on low and medium wages and incomes, deserves a fair go from the tax system, as well as from the wage, welfare, health and housing system.

Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull have delivered a budget for the billionaires. They claim that opposition to their tax cuts for the rich is “class warfare”. But the truth is that they are the ones waging naked war against the ordinary people of Australia.

Remember last year when federal Treasurer Scott Morrison, picking up where Joe Hockey left off, declared that we had a spending problem not a revenue problem? That seems like a long time ago now.

We call for the scrapping of all anti union laws and for a workplace Bill of Rights that guarantees workers and unions the right to organise and protest and gives full recognition of unions and union representatives.