While Victorian Socialists showed great potential when it was formed in early 2018 and ran two big and exciting socialist election campaigns, it has not lived up to its promise to build a more united left.
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The slogan “There’s no going back to normal” has gained considerable popularity for good reason. As governments all around the world have struggled to deal with the health and economic challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have been forced to take emergency steps they would not have countenanced just months ago, challenging the idea that greater public spending to address social needs is simply unaffordable.
Morrison has long made clear that he has no intention of trying to eliminate COVID-19 entirely. He justifies this by saying the economic cost — that is, the cost to corporate profits — is too high.
The fall in the number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases over the last few days has been received by most people with cautious relief. The official advice of federal and state governments remains to maintain the social distancing and to stay at home.
But the capitalist class is looking at things very differently. It is growing impatient for capitalist exploitation to return to “normal” and they are preparing us to accept the cost in lives.
The battle remains for working and unemployed people to push for a response that puts public health first, without making them pay for the crisis.
The COVID-19 crisis has revealed (once again) how the profits-first capitalist system fails to look after the needs of ordinary people. Here are five lessons of the crisis.
It is clear that the Australian government has badly mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic with doctors now warning that Australia is on track to be in a "worse position than Italy is currently in".
If there is one thing the recent unprecedented bushfire emergency has proved to us in Australia — and to millions in countries who watched on in horror — is that the climate emergency is not just something to worry about in the future: this is the climate emergency and it is already catastrophic.
Arndt and Hanson are femicide deniers. Like climate change deniers who refuse to acknowledge the science, these two deny that the intentional killing of women is a growing problem that governments need to address.
Disgruntled homophobes in the Coalition were determined to bring in protections for religious institutions that want the right to discriminate: Morrison is the guy to deliver.
Big corporations fund Australia’s two “parties of government”. They received more than $430 million from corporate Australia in the year leading up to the May 2019 federal election. This is a record amount: $150 million more than the previous highest total.
The context in which Plibersek is attempting her insulting dressing-up of Australian patriotism is the ugly, nakedly racist push by right-wing politicians to whip up nationalism and jingoism at a time when Australia (and the rest of the world) is divided by greater inequality, spawned by a sharper exploitation by the corporate rich.