At our last national conference, we resolved to establish a policy committee to review our existing policy, to draft new policy and to proposed amendments to existing policy where required. We also resolved to create a 'pocket edition' of our policy and a new policy template.
The NSW Senate election campaign with Uncle Ken Canning was one like no other that I've been involved in: we didn't do half the things we ordinarily do in elections and we did a lot of other things we had never done before.
The 2014 Socialist Alliance national conference made some changes to our policy on sex work and the women’s rights charter. The changes strengthened our support for the full decriminalization of sex work and affirmed our opposition to the “Swedish model”.
[Explanatory note: This contribution was prepared by a working group tasked by the National Executive with reviewing our Constitution and Code of Conduct to clarify and strengthen the organisation’s ability to prevent and deal with abusive and violent behaviour in the organisation.
It's an ABC of socialism that in order to make correct decisions, socialists must undertake an analysis of the objective situation, of the level and character of the struggle, while at the same time conducting an analysis of the subjective situation or subjective capacity within the objective situation — i.e. what the level and character of the party is and what its capacity is in the struggle.
In this context in Australia then, where the level of the crisis is so acute, yet where the forces of working class resistance are so defuse and ideologically confused - why would the (relatively) few organised socialists, want to place an ideological and organisational barrier between themselves and those who are coming into political motion?
The time of a new election is coming quickly. And what choice do we have? Do we really have a choice? I do not see it.
The two major parties have just minor differences at the edges: that is all. They are not interested in a real change that is needed — the real change that will make our lives just, sustainable and fulfilling.
This proposal is to change the Socialist Alliance policy statement on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender to include Intersex people.
We live in a society in which attempts to dictate sexual preference and gender identity through promoting the gender stereotypes and homophobic attitudes which underpin the heterosexual nuclear family and by promoting marriage and the nuclear family as the only legitimate model for relationships.
The following is based on a speech given to the protest organised by Sydney Stop the War Coalition on December 10, UN Human Rights Day and the day war president Barack Obama received the UN Peace Prize.
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The so-called anti-war President-elect Barack Obama said the following on Human Rights Day in 2008:
The following draft of a public transport policy for Socialist Alliance expands and extends existing national policy, by incorporating work done for the NSW state elections in 2007, articles for Green Left Weekly and other research. It attempts to both illustrate the problems with the existing situation, where inadequate provision of public transport disadvantages poor communities and the environment and point the way to an socially and ecologically sustainable alternative.
Preamble
The following draft of a public transport policy for Socialist Alliance expands and extends existing national policy, by incorporating work done for the NSW state elections in 2007, articles for Green Left Weekly and other research. It attempts to both illustrate the problems with the existing situation, where inadequate provision of public transport disadvantages poor communities and the environment and point the way to an socially and ecologically sustainable alternative.
Draft Socialist Alliance Policy on public transport
I apologise for the length of this article, but I needed to give you some background knowledge. I wanted to raise an issue that I feel may need discussion within the Socialist Alliance. I recently sent in an article that was published in GLW, for SA’s column “Our Common Cause” on Cervical Cancer, perhaps some of you have seen this.