There are some very straight-forward solutions to ease the sustained cost-of-living crisis, as Peter Boyle outlines. But they require a redirection of public funds away from the corporate profits-first agendas of the major parties.
Anti-Privatisation
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's argument that long-term government is counterposed to pro-working class policies contains major flaws, argues Alex Bainbridge.
The end of the JobKeeper program on March 28 means that up to 500,000 jobs are at risk, according to Small Business Australia (SBA). Government estimates are that 150,000 jobs could go.
Several days before Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg waxed lyrical about the good old days of early neoliberalism under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the Australian Council of Trade Unions launched its under-reported National Economic Reconstruction plan.
The ALP's recently released federal election post-mortem has a giant invisible elephant in the room: the party's own culpability for its defeat through its embrace of neo-liberalism and its abandonment of progressive “traditional Labor values” over decades.
Far from being too radical, Labor’s shift to the left was too little too late, incomplete and sometimes more rhetoric than substance.
The ALP lost the NSW election with its small-target strategy, its refusal to take on the privatisation agenda and its sly accommodation to racism.
“NSW not for sale!” was one of the chants at a Fix NSW rally on March 3, 20 days out from the state election.
The Socialist Alliance will be running three Hunter-based candidates in the March 23 NSW state elections.
While the NSW Coalition government can spend billions of dollars on rebuilding football stadiums, it says it cannot build 40,000 new public homes to house homeless people.
This is cruel and wrong. Having a certain proportion of the community go without a stable roof over their heads is a visual reminder to housed workers that their situation is precarious, and that they should be “grateful”.
After Commissioner Kenneth Hayne released the banking royal commission’s interim report in September, many of the headlines and takeaway quotes focused on its claim that banks “put profits before people”.
However, any socialist, and probably most people, responded to this by saying: “No shit, Sherlock!”