On January 26 we celebrate resistance, mourn losses and speak truth.

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 25 January 2026

 

On 26 January 2026, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) greets First Peoples on the front line against invasion for 238 years.

Together we celebrate resistance, mourn losses and speak truth.

Truth first

US imperialism long ago displaced British colonialism and imperialism as ruler here. Like Britain, the US benefits from colonial relics to enforce its domination – a constitution and parliaments which embed foreign allegiance not independence, states and territories based on original colonies to divide and conquer us, and a violent capitalist state apparatus that criminalises and kills First Peoples for their lands and waters. 

US corporations demand unfettered right to profit from every key sector of our economy – from resources industries to real estate – on First Peoples’ country. 
US imperialism’s drive to war against its Chinese rival dominates the world, and this country. Its attempts to export US economic crisis is marked by systematic division and lies. 

US bases on First Peoples’ lands bring thousands of US troops to Garramilla Darwin. Its military housing projects steal and destroy Larrakia land, while Long Grass Peoples are harassed by private security contractors.

Pine Gap on stolen Arrernte land chooses human targets to guide bombs and drones to kill Palestinians, Lebanese, Yemenis, Iranians.

The new NT Administrator says the truth out loud. He described First Peoples as criminals. Darwin’s mayor says, ‘We are the city that serves the oil and gas industry.” Not the people?  

Federal parliament convenes early for laws that aim to outlaw hatred of imperialism and Zionism. First Peoples face hate and state violence on a daily basis. Nowhere worse than in custody. Yet still they fight to get even the easiest Royal Commission recommendation implemented, the removal of hanging points from cells. 

The national deaths in custody report by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) released in December 2025 showed 33 Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people died in custody in 2024-2025 – the highest yearly death toll since the AIC began keeping records. There have been 617 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991.

It’s the same murderous song across the country.

More truth

There’s always money for imperialist war. 

Exhausted grandmothers, grandfathers, parents, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles struggle to hold families, communities, languages together unpaid or begging for grants that disappear just as they begin to work, to save their people especially their children. 

First Peoples know what they need. They know what their young people need, because young people have told them. 

We say, redirect the billion dollars spent each year to imprison children ($1.12 million per child!) to support their families, communities, their, culture, health and education. 

We say, stop spending $30 million a day on AUKUS subs, which is just the tip of Australia’s subservience to US imperialism. 

We mourn

There is no need to lacerate First Peoples with tales of their suffering. 

First Peoples know their land is destroyed for corporate profits, often government-subsidised. 

They know the toll of Sorry Business, sometimes eight funerals in a month or two. Suicide is a part of every family. Some are children.

They know child removals are at the highest rate ever, with children left alone in motel rooms instead of with their families, of ten-year-olds jailed in every state and territory except the ACT where the age is 14, but which has the second highest rate of child removals and lowest rate of returns to family in the country. 
First peoples live with genocide. We mourn with them.

We mourn division and lateral violence. We mourn those hoodwinked with lies to join the US ruling class ‘sovereign citizens.’ 

We mourn those First Peoples who have been convinced by immense ruling class power to wield the invaders’ weapons. 

But First Peoples themselves will deal with their people who profit from collaboration.

Resistance

Armed resistance spread like wildfire from Sydney, the first point of invasion, across the continent. Brilliance in guerrilla warfare, mastery of strategy and tactics. 

Holding colonisation back between 10 to 30 years in each new area till 1931, when Arnhem Land was pronounced Aboriginal land because the invaders saw its terrain and climate, the determination of opposition, but didn’t yet know of its massive mineral wealth. 

Decades of intolerable hardship. Yet First Peoples survived. They whispered language, organised quietly and sometimes loudly, till, as workers knowing their own collective worth and dignity through numerous struggles (some as communists, many led by them) they birthed the land rights movement. They created unity across this continent and its islands. They told their truth. They gathered immense support.

In 1988, united, they thundered, ‘We have survived!’ In 2000 a million Australians marched in support.

The ruling class fights back

Capitalism regrouped. Reorganised new ways to break resistance, to thieve more.

The Business Council of Australia’s 38-year quest to divide and conquer First Peoples has prised open lands for exploitation. Its member corporations are overwhelmingly foreign owned. Their most frequent ‘significant shareholders’ are three US finance houses – State Street, Vanguard Group and BlackRock. 

Like its US member corporations, now the BCA demands hard tactics.

It works with Zionism, to win over some First Peoples. 

Parliaments bow before US domination.  Minns won favour with NSW police-state-powers.

On November 1 in Sydney a State Street sign towered above a Deaths in Custody protest. 55 police, six on horses, outnumbered protesters. Yet less than a handful of police were at Bondi, despite their own warnings and rants about the rise of antisemitism. They show exactly who their enemy is. They show who they serve. 

Police tried and failed to stop Black Lives Matter and Invasion Day protests in early Covid times. They failed. Despite new laws and the NSW Police Commissioner’s bluster, he knew they would fail again. So, they equate Invasion Day in Sydney with March for Dividing Australia. 

If violence occurs on Invasion Day, its 500 NSW police will cause it. 

Justice for all

Protests and Survival Day celebrations will take place around the country.

First Peoples are on the sharpest end of imperialist attacks here, because alongside the labour of workers, their lands and waters are the source of capitalist

wealth. 
We must rebuild the unity of 1988 and 2000. 

We have the same enemies. 

Justice will only come – for all of us – when we kick out the real criminals, US imperialism and its Australian collaborators.

We say to First Peoples, the peoples of this continent and its islands learn from your resistance as they learn from their own experiences in struggle.

Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Indigenous people's leading role in Northern Australia

Written by: Ned K. on 25 January 2026

 

Australian historian Henry Reynolds latest book, "Looking from the North - Australian History from the Top Down" is a well-researched and eye-opening account of the struggles and working lives of Indigenous Australians in Northern Australia from the 1700s to the present day.

"Northern Australia" is described as the land mass above the Tropic of Capricorn.

Reynolds reveals that since the British invasion of Australia, there has been uneven development.  What became known as the "Southern States" of NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia were developed along capitalist lines by the British Crown and their colonial states' governments which formed between May 1856 and April 1857.

By contrast, the first colonial outpost in Northern Australia was at Bowen on 10 April 1861.

Reynolds points out that even in 1901 when the first Australian Government was formed, the Attorney General Deakin admitted that the new government had no effective control of the north of Australia.

The uneven development of Australia did not mean that Indigenous people of Northern Australia avoided the attempts by colonial settlers to take over their land. The Indigenous people of Northern Australia also conducted guerrilla warfare against the colonial settlers. Reynold's book details the strategies and tactics used by Indigenous people in defence of their lands in Northern Australia right up until the 1930s.

When the colonial settlers and their government armed forces eventually overpowered the Indigenous people's resistance in Northern Australia, these same settlers became reliant on Indigenous labour to ensure the settlers' economic interests were fulfilled. Indigenous people worked on cattle stations, sheep runs, sugar cane and banana plantations.

"On The Sheep's Back"? or By Killings and Labour of Indigenous People?

Northern Australia, like most of Australia, was not initially "developed on the sheep's back" but by a combination of killings of Indigenous people and use of the labour of Indigenous people. Reynolds refers to historians Ray Evans and Robert Orsted-Jenson whose research concluded that between 1859 and 1897, there were nearly as many Indigenous people killed by colonial forces in Northern Australia and other colonies as the total number of Australians killed in ALL overseas wars that Australia has been involved in.

In February 2022 the federal government's Office of Northern Australia met for the first time with its Indigenous Reference Group. At that time the Indigenous population of in Northern Australia was 230,000, 17.4% of the Northern Australia population,

Indigenous property rights and interests under current law in 2022 covered 78% of the Northern Australia land mass. 

Alan Dale professor of tropical regional development described Northern Australia as an "indigenous domain" and that Australian governments "need to ensure that development proceeds with the free, prior and informed consent of traditional owners,"

Reynolds adds that the mainly non-Indigenous 1.4 million population of Northern Australia is highly mobile, while there is a large FIFO population of over 100,000 workers.

On the other hand, the Indigenous population of Northern Australia stay in the north while moving around within their own lands.

From Pastoralist Settler Expansion to US Military Front Line - Indigenous People "In the Gun".

Northern Australia has become an expanding military base for US imperialism.

A dramatic change from the settler pastoralist days of Northern Australia of the 1800s, but no less dangerous for Indigenous people according to Reynolds and to astute observers of Australia from our northern neighbours.

As an example of the latter, Reynolds refers to Kishore Mahbuhani, Singaporean academic who in 2022 declared that Australia's dilemma in the 21st Century was simple: it could choose "To be a bridge between East and the West in the Asiatic Century - or the tip of the spear projecting Western power in Asia".

In May 2024 Defence Industry Minister Conroy at a defence industry conference in Darwin said northern Australia "was critical to the defence of the nation, not just in defending Australia, but projecting power out into our region against any potential adversary"!

He announced that the government planned to spend $18 billion over 10 years on northern defence bases in the NT, WA and Qld.

In August 2024, US Republican Michael McCaul, the chair of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee spent 10 days in Australia in northern Australia lauding the area as key for the US "as it sought to deter Chinese aggression"!

Defence Minister Richard Marles, according to Reynolds, added that "America's military was now operating in Australia's land, sea, air, cyber and space."

Reynolds argues that this expansion of US military activity and dependence in the north of Australia has proceeded at ever increasing speed without the slightest consultation or prior consent from Indigenous people.

Reynolds points out that Australia becoming "the thrusting spear of Western hostility" is completely contrary to the hundreds of years of peaceful relations and trading of Indigenous Australians and peoples from various parts of Asia, starting long before the aggression of British and then US imperialist agendas in Northern Australia. 

While Marles and his cronies cover this thrusting spear mentality with talk about a US made up "international rules-based order", they say nothing about the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People declared by 150 countries in 2007 and ratified by the Rudd Government of 2007.

On Invasion Day 26 January 2026, white Australians like me are reminded from Reynold's book about the pending latest danger to Indigenous people of Northern Australia. This time it's from US military takeover of their land and the repercussions of that.

 

Rojava must be saved! Defend Rojava!

Written by: ICOR on 21 January 2026

 

The following statement in defence of the Rojava region of north-east Syria is currently being signed by affiliates of the International Coordination of Revolutionary parties and Organisations (ICOR). Our Party has signed the statement. We urge any people able to attend today's rally outside Parliament House, Canberra, to do so - eds.

 

Immediate stop to the attacks by the jihadist-fascist HTS!

Imperialists, fascists, and Zionists, get out of Syria!

Democracy and freedom for the peoples of Syria!

 

In the wake of imperialist aggression in Venezuela, the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and recent developments in Iran, a genocide by the imperialist henchmen HTS against the Kurdish population in the districts of Şêxmeqsûd and Eşrefiyê began in the Syrian city of Aleppo. 120,000 people were displaced and hundreds were killed while putting up a self-sacrificing resistance. Let us remember that Hayat Tharir al-Sham (HTS) is a reactionary Islamist organization that was close to al-Qaeda for a time and has been in power in Syria since Bashar al-Assad fled, and has been removed from the list of terrorist organizations by Western imperialists. Meanwhile, the Zionist occupying power is putting its expansionist megalomania for a Greater Israel in Syria into practice, having already taken the Golan Heights.

 

Military aggression is spreading. The Golani regime and Ankara advanced in a coordinated manner in the affected areas with over 40,000 jihadists, hundreds of tanks, and modern military equipment. The jihadist gangs of the so-called Syrian army are bombing Dair Hafir and the strategic Tişrîn dam, among other places, with simultaneous Turkish drone attacks in the region. The attacks were extended to the rest of Rojava, including the provinces of Deir-e-Zor and Raqqa.

 

These attacks are taking place against the backdrop of the fascist Turkish state's colonial occupation efforts in northern and eastern Syria, its hostility toward the Kurdish people, the imperialist-Zionist intervention in Syria, and the security negotiations between HTS and Israel in Paris.

 

They are a continuation of HTS's aggression against the peoples of Syria, beginning with massacres against the Alawites, Druze, Palestinian refugees and resistance forces, and especially women. They are directed above all against the revolutionary and democratic achievements in North and East Syria, such as the groundbreaking position of women in society, the council organizations with national and religious equality, and the legitimate self-defense of the peoples. According to their commander Mazlum Abdi, the Syrian Democratic Forces have withdrawn to avoid civil war and further bloodshed. The agreed peace process was torpedoed by the Islamist-fascist Syrian government.

 

HTS is a force that has been deliberately promoted and controlled by the British and US secret services and forms a coalition of deeply reactionary, misanthropic gangs, most of whom are not Syrian and are successors to ISIS. They are the enemies of Syria, who will bring neither democracy nor stability to Syria, but immeasurable suffering and oppression. The fact that they attack infrastructure, kill civilians, and throw people out of their homes illustrates their character. They have close ties to Saudi Arabia and Turkey, serve imperialist and Zionist interests, and allow important parts of Syria to be occupied in order to redraw the region.

 

As the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organizations (ICOR), we stand in full solidarity with the revolutionary forces in northern and eastern Syria and the broad masses of Syria who yearn for democracy and freedom.

 

We stand alongside the struggles of the peoples of Syria for their own liberation from imperialist, colonial intervention and occupation by Turkey, Israel, and US imperialism.

 

We stand with the Kurdish people and behind their legitimate demands for self-determination and a free life in dignity.

 

Only the peoples themselves will be able to liberate themselves. But they need the international solidarity of the workers and peoples of the world. That is why we call for Solidarity with the peoples of northern and eastern Syria against the current and future attacks that are being prepared. You are not alone!

 

Fight the fascist HTS, henchmen of imperialism!

Stop the Turkish occupation of Syria!

Stop imperialist and Zionist intervention in Syria!

For a united democratic republic of Syria and the right of self-determination for the Kurds and all other ethnic groups!

 

Status of the signatories 20.01.2026. Further signatures possible. Current list of signatories at www.icor.info

1. ORC   Organisation Révolutionnaire du Congo (Revolutionary Organization of Congo), Democratic Republic of the Congo

2. PPDS   Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia

3. NCP (Mashal)   Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)

4. RUFN   Revolutionary United Front of Nepal

5. CPA/ML   Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

6. Krasnyj Klin   Аб'яднання беларускіх камуністаў «Чырвоны Клін» (Association of Belarusian Communists «Red Wedge»), Belarus

7. БКП   Българска Комунистическа Партия (Bulgarian Communist Party)

8. PR-ByH   Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)

9. MLPD   Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)

10. UPML   Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France

11. KOL   Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)

12. RM   Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands

13. UMLP   União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)

14. RMP   Российская маоистская партия (Rossijskaya maoistskaya partiya) (Russian Maoist Party)

15. TKP-ML   Türkiye Komünist Partisi – Marksist-Leninist (Communist Party of Turkey – Marxist-Leninist)

16. MLKP   Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)

17. PCP (independiente)   Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan  Communist Party (independent))

18. PC (ML)   Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic

19. PCR-U   Partido Comunista Revolucionario del Uruguay (Revolutionary Communist Party of Uruguay)

20. Chinese Communists (MLM)   Chinese Communists (Marxist Leninist Maoist)

No Pride in an Ongoing Genocide

Written by: Dawn on 22 January 2026

 

(Source: www.inkl.com)

This January 26th, the WA branch of the CPA(M-L) would like to turn to the ongoing and pervasive suffering of koolinga (children) on Noongar Boodja (Country). The ongoing incarceration and death in custody rates of Aboriginal people remains a national shame, 25 years after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. 

In Western Australia, Aboriginal children are subjected to inhumane, developmentally inappropriate and traumatic punishment at Banksia Hill Detention Centre, and the notorious Unit 18. Banksia Hill Detention holds young ‘offenders’ between the ages of 10-17. Unit 18 is a separate facility within the adult Casuarina Prison where children are moved if their needs or behaviour does not suit BHDC.  

The “Hear Me Out” report released by the Department of Justice in 2024 details the experiences of inmates and staff at BHDC and Unit 18. It describes how many young children at Banksia Hill do not have access to cold water in summer, and that their cells are devoid of air conditioning or even fans. In November last year, 6 young inmates between the ages of 12 and 17 staged a protest atop the roof of Banskia Hill Detention. They were promptly removed, scolded by Corrective Minister Paul Papalia and sent to Unit 18.  

Commenting on the incident, suicide prevention researcher Gerry Georgatos said that the protest was a response to conditions in detention. “Each one carries complex trauma histories, neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities and unmet clinical and psychosocial needs. They are children reacting to environments that erode hope, escalate despair, and entrench impulsivity. Not environments that stabilise, nurture or rehabilitate.”  

Conditions and punishments in Unit 18 are more dire. Cleveland Dodd was a 16 year old inmate who died in Unit 18. Evidence presented to the inquest into his death revealed that he had been kept in solitary confinement for more than 22 hours a day, for more than 80% of the 93 days before his death. This was a clear breach of the UN Convention against Torture and the Convention of Rights of the Child. Amnesty International Australia has been calling for BHDC and Unit 18 to be closed entirely, since 2024.  

In The Force of Nonviolence Judith Butler discusses how deaths in custody and inhumane conditions of imprisonment are acts of great violence, how they may be viewed as an unchecked mode of the death penalty, issued silently by the state and its institutions. “…if prison deals death not only through the death penalty, but also through more or less systematic forms of neglecting some lives rather than others, it seems clear that a few obligatory legal protections have not been honored…. prison deals death (slowly and quickly), but also manages life…” 

The government of Western Australia continues to neglect its duty to its Aboriginal youth through the systemic horrors enacted at Banksia Hill Detention Centre, and the ways that the WA Police Force disproportionately and aggressively target Aboriginal people. Sovereignty was never ceded. These violent institutions must be undone. It is the duty of all those living on stolen land to center and amplify Aboriginal voices in their fight.

Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.  

 

Greenland: Misusing “intelligence” to justify aggression

Written by: (Contributed) on 18 January 2026

 

(Source:  www.usatoday.com)

Statements from leading European sources have revealed the Trump administration has been relying upon flawed intelligence assessments to justify its claims on Greenland.

The situation has arisen in the context of a changing geo-strategic balance of forces in the wider Arctic region; US preoccupation with Greenland has revealed the limited range and capacity of sensitive regional surveillance systems used by the Pentagon to provide intelligence data for analysis.

The US has seriously misrepresented the situation. In fact, they have weakened their own diplomatic position with their chosen method of operation of diplomatic bravado.

A recent high-level diplomatic statement from the White House that Greenland had serious security problems due to it being 'covered with Russian and Chinese ships', raised an immediate response from several Western European and Scandinavian countries. (1) The US has relied upon sensitive military facilities based near Thule on the southern coastline of Baffin Bay, facing the Davis Strait, for regional intelligence assessments; the Pituffik Space Base has been described as a 'regional hub' for US operations, including the P-Mountain radar and signals base. (2)

While considered extremely sensitive, the US military facilities are a mere shadow of their range and capacity during the previous Cold War. At their height of operations, they had 6000 military personnel stationed in the facilities. Due to technological advances and defence department cut-backs they now only house about 150 personnel. (3)

While technological advances have increased range and capacity of sensitive military equipment, accurate intelligence assessments rely upon personal judgements from reliable data; they also require trusted 'ground human' feet on the ground to back up the spies in the sky. (4)  The US facilities in Greenland have been shown to possess serious deficiencies in their most vulnerable areas; that of providing accurate intelligence assessments. The US also experience similar problems, elsewhere. (5)

In fact, European diplomatic sources have revealed that 'the alliance had no intelligence that there was significant activity by Russian or Chinese vessels or submarines around Greenland … it is not correct that there is a lot of activity from Russia or China around Greenland'. (6) European diplomatic sources have clearly been able to access more accurate intelligence reports from localised and reliable sources either from Greenland residents or counterparts elsewhere.

The official US diplomatic position, nevertheless, remains adamant that 'the acquisition of Greenland is a national security priority, citing Russian and Chinese threats'. (7)

It is important to note, however, that the whole Arctic region, in recent years, has undergone a changing balance of forces; joint military co-operation between Russia and China has presented a serious challenge to traditional US hegemony. Due to global warming, furthermore, the vast Arctic region is slowly thawing, exposing 'key natural resources, and the navigation of northern sea-routes. (8)  

The US appears not to distinguish between perceived security threats to Greenland and problems emerging in the wider region. It has revealed a serious intelligence problem.

It is generally accepted that both Russia and China retain an active presence in the Arctic region; but that, 'neither claims Greenland'. (9) 

European countries have accepted the need for greater diplomatic attention to be placed on the Arctic region; statements from well-placed sources have agreed that 'the Arctic will only become more strategically important ... and that the region is … the front line for strategic competition'. (10) NATO countries have also agreed that 'Arctic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities' need to be expanded. (11)

In conclusion, it is, therefore, important to note: the Prime Minister of Greenland, Jens-Frederik Nielson, recently stated, following a round of high-level diplomatic talks with the US, that ‘one thing must be clear to everyone. Greenland does not want to be owned by the US. Greenland does not want to be governed by the US. Greenland does not want to be part of the US'. (12)

The people of Greenland have already chosen to remain under the security umbrella provided by Denmark and NATO countries and sovereignty of their natural resources, despite threats from the Trump administration.
          
It is also important to note that the US remains highly unpopular in Greenland. In March, last year, for example, vice-president JD Vance, visited the country. He was met with organised protests from a large section of the country's tiny population and only visited the US military facilities. It was subsequently noted that his visit was, 'uninvited … and he … did not mingle with local residents'. (13) No official response was given by the White House.

The people of Greenland should be applauded for their courageous anti-imperialist position toward the Trump administration and the US!

1.     NATO trio back guard mission for Greenland,  Australian, 13 January 2026.
2.     Wikipedia: Pituffik Space Base.
3.     Ibid.
4.     See: The Clandestine Mentality. The CIA and the cult of intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, Part 3, Chapter 8, pp. 273-320.      
5.     See: 'We have very strong military options', Australian, 13 January 2026; and,  'Blackouts undermined by 'tech partisans', Australian, 16 January 2026, which has information about the Pentagon using Space X Starlink internet terminals in an attempt to retain effective contact inside global troublespots.
6.     Australian, op.cit., 13 January 2026.
7.     Under Trump's icy glare, Australian, 16 January 2026.
8.     The expanding footprint of China in the Arctic region, The Explainer, 22 June 2025; and, NATO's Europe: Commander sees growing Russia, Chinese threat in Arctic, Europe: Defence News, 13 January 2026.
9.     Greenland to pick Denmark over US takeover, Australian, 15 January 2026.
10.   Europe: Defence News, op.cit., 13 January 2026.
11.   Ibid.
12.   Australian, op.cit., 15 January 2026.
13.   Ibid.

Statement on Iran

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 17 January 2026

 

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) supports the right of the Iranian people to rebel against the country’s theocratic dictatorship.

Their just struggle is occurring in a complicated environment with both US imperialism and Israeli Zionism fishing in troubled waters and trying to turn events to their own advantage. 

The anti-theocratic democratic front in Iran extends from genuine anti-imperialist and proletarian elements who want an independent and socialist Iran, to petty-bourgeois and bourgeois elements who want bourgeois freedoms. Some support US intervention.

Struggle within the anti-theocratic front will exist side-by-side with the movement against the theocracy. 

 

We support the demands of the progressive elements: 

 

• Oppose any foreign interference in Iran, especially from US and Israel  

• Oppose the Islamic Republic of Iran 

• Defend imprisoned politicians and stop the killings 

 

We support Australian Iranians calling for solidarity rallies with the uprising. We urge people to join the Iranian Socialists in Australia (ISA) protest on Sunday at Sydney Town Hall at 1pm. 

 

Our best contribution to the struggle is to strengthen mass connections, build solidarity and strengthen our joint struggle against US imperialism and its local collaborators here. 

 

Workers united struggle under re-elected ALP government is needed

Written by: Ned K. on 14 December 2026

 

The landslide election victory by the ALP in the 2025 election has not seen any further changes to the Fair Work Act. 

The changes made during the ALP’s first term of office such as Same Job, Same Pay and Multi Employer Bargaining, Casual Conversion and minimal Delegates Rights clauses in Awards and Agreements have enabled some sections of the working class to become stronger in the workers’ ever-present struggle against capital.

In the State and Territories workers in the public services sectors including ambulance officers, nurses, hospital workers and school teacher aids and cleaners, have won through action higher wages than in recent years.

The largest wage increases have been realised in the federally funded aged care and child care sectors.  These wage increases were a result of workers in those sectors through their Unions being able to exert political pressure on an ALP government.  The Unions supported the ALP election campaign in exchange for ALP commitment to fund higher wages.

Apart from some Labor hire workers’ wages significantly increasing under Same Job Same Pay legislation, wage increases across the whole private sector have not been nearly as high.

The leaders of Unions whose members rely on federal funding from either federal or state governments have been reluctant to push the boundaries and pursue the federal government on issues affecting all workers such as the Right to Strike if workers are employed under an Award or during the life of an Enterprise or Multi Employer Agreement if workers are so employed.

The dependence of some Union leaderships on their relationship with the ALP has also seen them compliant with the ALP in government destroying a Union ( CFMEU Construction Division ) by putting it in control of a government appointed administrator.

Divisions within Union Ranks

This situation of higher wages in sectors reliant on government funding and associated strategies by Union leaderships to achieve these wage outcomes with  limited industrial action and by being “responsible” leaders by not upsetting the private sector employers has caused divisions within the ranks of union members.

Within some of the larger Unions formed through amalgamations with very broad industry coverages,  the strategy of high dependence on ALP governments in office definitely has a downside.

It has given rise to Union members employed in non-government dependent sectors feeling left behind and searching for alternative leaderships of their own Union or jumping ship to another Union.

This has been a problem for workers going back at least to the Accord days of the 1980s and still present today.

In some cases there are challenges to the existing leaderships of Unions every three or four years when internal union elections are held.

Usually the challengers at union election time run on tickets that promise a “members  first”  or “member led” Union.

Existing Union leadership try and maintain their elected positions by highlighting the wins members have had due to the Union being able to exert pressure on the state or federal government.

Unlike parliamentary elections, voting in Union elections is not compulsory.

So the ticket that is able to reach enough members and urge them to vote is the likely winner.

Unity is strength

On occasions in the history of working class mass organisations (unions) in Australia, there have been unions led by people whose political aim has been to build a working class movement that has a vision for workers that goes beyond capitalism and all its laws and institutions that are designed to maintain the power of the capitalist class.

Those leaders have led some big successful struggles of the working class such as the anti-conscription struggle during World War 1 and the refusal of workers to send iron ore to Japan in lead up to World War 2.

More recently the Your Rights At Work Worth Fighting For campaign that defeated the Howard Government showed the best way forward.

That campaign united workers from public and private sectors, whether union members or not, independent contractors (on AWAs and other sham contracts), small businesses squeezed by corporate giants and people on fixed incomes and the unemployed.

United workers struggle is the way forward in 2026. 

Boss Class Agenda or an Independent Working Class Agenda?

Written by: Bill F. on 15 January 2026

 

A Boss Class Agenda restricts the scope of claims put forward by unions in their struggle to win better outcomes for the workers. Above all, it imposes a legalistic struggle around EBA negotiations (bosses always want “trade-offs”) and court appearances, with strict rules governing any form of industrial action, strikes and sit-ins especially, and harsh penalties imposed by the capitalist state against unions, officials and even individual union members.

Workers’ action is confined to the particular workplace/s directly involved, with any industry-wide support ruled illegal. The ability of union officials, organisers and delegates to even meet with members in the workplace is tightly managed by the anti-union laws and regulations developed and imposed by both Liberal and Labor governments. Despite the risks, many honest and courageous union officials and organisers find ways to highlight the workers’ issues and support their actions. 

Nevertheless, within this arena of small victories and frequent setbacks in the day to day struggles that workers face in monopoly capitalist society, workers can learn the lesson that collective action and determined organisation can win breathing space for a while, even though capitalism will eventually reassert itself and crack down again. For workers, this treadmill sometimes speeds, sometimes slows, but never stops in the constant battle to “get ahead”.

Given the obstacles and difficulties facing unions, it is little wonder that membership has fallen, a result clearly intended by the ruling class interests of foreign and local monopolies and their compliant governments. For non-union workers, it’s “take it, or leave it”, unless they are skilled or specialised. Yet non-union workers also recognise their common exploitation, poor wages and conditions etc. and can quietly “organise” themselves, even with petitions seeking wider support.

Independent Working Class Agenda

An Independent Working Class Agenda expresses not just the immediate and real basic material needs of the working class, but also their aspirations for a better life, for a fairer world of peace, justice and equality. 

In the context of Australia, an independent working class agenda means one that reflects these fundamental interests of the class without influence or pressure from the Labor Party, the bourgeois media, and any other bourgeois or petty-bourgeois sources. It seeks to empower workers to take control of their struggles in the workplace and in the community, demanding that their union delegates or neighborhood councillors put workers’ interests in first place.

Consequently, it promotes working class leadership, collective action and solidarity. It challenges the anti-union legal system of monopoly capitalism, it takes a militant stand on all the current social and political issues that impact working people and supports their struggles around many issues – against imperialist domination and the threat of imperialist war, poverty and the cost of living, the climate crisis and environmental degradation, Indigenous rights, pollution, civil liberties, racism and discrimination, housing and rent, healthcare, aged care, education, childcare, refugee services, water and power, government social services, laws and regulations, etc. It identifies with the working classes and oppressed peoples across the globe, and expresses solidarity with their struggles against imperialism, exploitation and autocracy.

Thus, the working class can build the allies it needs to be recognised as the force that can lead other sections of society and bring about significant change. It reaches across the whole of the working class, building unity and support for their struggles. It educates workers and their allies in the basic operation of monopoly capitalism, and the dominating role of US imperialism in this country. At the same time, it exposes and shames the greed of the collaborating bosses, the lies of the poisonous mass media, and sell-outs who betray the workers.

While there are various groups and parties that claim to represent the workers’ best interests, they will be judged by the extent to which they seek to build unity and support around the struggles of the class. Not all differences are hostile and antagonistic, and experience over time reveals what positions and ideas are mainly correct, or need to be scrapped or modified.  

An Independent Working Class Agenda is revolutionary in that it moves beyond improving the lot of the working class under the capitalist system, and seeks to replace the current ruling class of foreign and local monopoly capitalism with working class state power where the collective working class runs society – socialism.

 

New Federal environmental laws insufficient for forests’ survival

Written by: Leo A. on 12 January 2026

 

(Above: Anti-logging protest in Hobart in 2024.  Source: ABC News)

 

After years of public pressure, on November 28 the federal government passed new laws affecting the forest and woodland habitats of many threatened species. While some good will indeed come from this, the laws have already been widely criticized by environmental groups. 

The main highlight of the legislation is that the Tasmanian logging industry will no longer be exempt from federal environmental regulations. Those who remember our article ‘Did capitalist corner-cutting kill the Thylacine’ will recall that habitat damage from clearing forests has been a serious crisis on the island for a long time, and as readers may have inferred from that article, Tasmania’s native forest logging is a very powerful and influential industry. With this in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the industry has been given a year and a half of breathing room before the exemption will officially come to an end on July 1, 2027. Those eighteen months of business-as-usual chainsaw privilege can still make a big difference. And there have already been warnings that even afterward, the industry may still find loopholes to exploit. It is worth briefly adding, for perspective, that 88% of Tasmanians oppose ongoing logging.  

In addition to what has happened, it is useful context for us to explain what did not pass in the new laws. As environmentalist and former senator Bob Brown said: “Our appeals to get Takayna the World Heritage protection it deserves were rebuffed with a pitchfork by Albanese and Watt. Playing off the Greens with the Coalition is like playing off the Angels with Bluebeard. Nevertheless, the Greens were able to block some holes in Watt’s legislative sieve.”  

Environmental organisations such as the Wilderness Society have correctly assessed that, while some good will come from this legislation, it is only a minor and limited victory. However, we must add that, while these organisations are good at identifying and targeting environmental matters, they usually lack class-consciousness. When asked about the deeper root causes of environmental issues, they still tend to dismiss such an approach with remarks like “it’s better to send a positive message than to sling mud” and “we can’t repair all of democracy”.  

This comes partly because their long and often successful campaigns over decades faltered dramatically in recent years. Their real enemy, the logging, mining and gas industry, is one of the most aggressive sections of the ruling class. It has immense power. One of its most successful tools has been to win over the workers who are the front line of their attack against environmentalists. It's workers who they confront in blockades and in towns reliant on extractive industries.  

At times like these it is important for us to occasionally take a step back to remind ourselves where and why these societies and organisations currently stand on big-picture thinking outside of specific environmental challenges.

Our task is to help them and their members develop the class consciousness necessary to take part in a broader mass movement on the path to Australian independence and socialism.