This is a speech given by Socialist Alliance member Dave Holmes on September 12, at Melbourne rally protesting regime's attacks on Kurdish communities across Turkey. The event was organised by the Kurdish Association of Victoria.
International solidarity
The announcement on September 9 that Australia will accept only 12,000 refugees from Syria and that the government will seek to discriminate on the basis of ethnicity and religion is further proof that the government is lying about leading the world in welcoming refugees.
Within hours of the Australian Border Force — Prime Minister Tony Abbott's paramilitary amalgamation of the Customs Service and immigration department — announcing on August 28 that they would be joining the Victorian police and privatised public transport operators in Operation Fortitude.
Socialist Councillor: "Reject Abbott's lies: Australia can do more to respond to the refugee crisis"
"Rather than wasting billions locking up defenceless, innocent people in offshore prisons, we should close the camps on Nauru, Manus and all other refugee detention centres, lift the cap on our refugee intake immediately and organise mass airlifts of Syrian, Kurdish and other refugees to bring them to safety in Australia."
The results of the recent Australian Labor Party (ALP) conference vote on boat turnbacks shows why building a progressive alternative to the left of the ALP in Australia today is urgently needed.
Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance expresses its solidarity with the Socialist Federation of Youth Associations (SGDF) and the socialist movement in Turkey in the face of the massacre of dozens of young socialist activists in Suruç by ISIS with the collusion of the Turkish government.
The Socialist Alliance condemns the effective imposition of colonial status on Greece by the ruling institutions of the European Union (EU), which represent the interests of the big banks whose speculative excesses contributed in great part to the accumulation of the “Greek debt” they are now seeking to recover.
When the Greek people voted “no” to creditor demands by 61.5%, the ECB tightened the screws even more. It is clear the Troika wants total surrender — to hammer home the message that “there is no alternative”. In reality, the only fair way out of the crisis is to write off the debt that is not just unpayable — as even the IMF admits behind closed doors — but illegitimate.
We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with the people of Greece and the Syriza-led government as they prepare for a referendum on July 5, 2015 on whether to accept the continuation of the program of neoliberal austerity or chart a new course free from the debilitating stranglehold of the “troika” - the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission.
The Socialist Alliance is proud to support the rally in solidarity with the people of Greece on Sunday June 28, 12 noon, Martin Place, Sydney, organised by Australia-Greece Solidarity Campaign.
“Greece is turning the page,” SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras told an ecstatic crowd on January 25. The radical left party had just come first in historic elections in Greece with 36.3% of the vote.
Joseph Elu, chair of the Torres Strait Regional Authority, told Radio National’s PM on January 5 that the islands that have been home to Indigenous people for thousands of years are “being inundated”, right now because of climate change.