Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New – a shoddy Murdochian attempt to deny history

 Written by: Nick G. on 13 November 2025

 

It really could only have been done by a seasoned Murdoch reporter.

Troy Bramston has been a senior writer and columnist with the Australian since 2011.

He has written political biographies before: Bob Hawke: Demons and Destiny; Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics; and Paul Keating: The Big-Picture Leader.

His new book on Whitlam is a very lengthy 720 pages, of which a massive TWO (!) are devoted to the CIA’s role in the constitutional coup that saw a British representative sack an elected Australian Prime Minister.

Or not. Because the index entry for pages 553-4 reads “CIA – fake narrative of involvement in Gough’s dismissal”.

And what do we find on those two pages?

They read like something that Rowan Dean might say on Sky News After Dark. 

For example, Bramston takes issue with Richard Butler’s recollection of a discussion between Whitlam and US President Jimmy Carter’s Assistant Secretary of State for Asia and the South Pacific, Warren Christopher on Wednesday, 27th July, 1977.

Whitlam used Butler’s notes of the talks to write about the meeting, unannounced and held at Sydney Airport where Christopher had stopped enroute to New Zealand for an ANZUS meeting, in his 1984 memoirs.

Whitlam wrote that Christopher said he had “made a special detour in his itinerary for the purpose of speaking to me. The President had asked him to say: That he understood the Democratic Party and the ALP were fraternal parties. That he respected deeply the democratic rights of allies of the U.S."

Christopher continued quoting the President, saying that “The US Administration would never again interfere in the domestic political processes in Australia’; and ‘that he would work with whatever government the people of Australia elected."

Bramston queries Butler’s memory of the event, and goes on to say: “No corroborating evidence has ever been presented to justify Butler’s claim.  If you remove a single word  - ‘again’ - it is a straightforward policy statement of the Carter White House. In the post-Watergate era, and with evidence having emerged of the CIA interfering in the politics of other countries, it was a clear message from a new administration that the United States would restore integrity to its foreign relations. This was the message Christopher gave other nations.”

It may suit Bramston to remove the word “again”, but it begs the question of why Christopher would request a special and unscheduled discussion with Whitlam if his purpose was merely to pass on a general statement of US policy, not to the Australian Prime Minister, but to the Leader of the Opposition. Does Bramston have “corroborating evidence” that Christopher’s intention was anything other than to pass on a personal apology from Carter to Whitlam for the US role in his sacking, and to reassure Whitlam that it would never happen again?

Throwing around accusations of “fake news” is a shoddy Murdochian slur that hardly makes the reading of the other 718 pages of the book worth its cost.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

PS - Guy Rundle has an article in Jacobin magazine (12 November 2025) in which he reveals that Bramston has been at it before. Rundle writes of attempts to wipe the record clean of US involvement in the coup:

"This shift in the discourse was, in part, the result of an effort to consciously scrub the record. Over four decades, for example, Paul Kelly, a lifer editor-journalist in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, has published four editions of his record of the time, The Unmaking of Gough. The first edition is from a time when Kelly led a strike at News Corp masthead the Australian against the paper’s biliously biased coverage of the event. In it, the “national security crisis” gets its own chapter. By the third edition, the chapter had disappeared. In the renamed fourth edition, edited by Troy Bramston, he and Kelly explicitly ask the CIA whether it had had any role in the dismissal. As the authors primly report, the answer was “no.” Just fancy that."

 

Away with the Yankee presence in the waters of the Caribbean

 Written by: ICOR on 13 November 2025

 

(Source: https://www.semana.com/)

The CPA (M-L) has signed a statement by the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organisations (ICOR) on US threats to the sovereignty of Venezuela -eds.

Away with the Yankee presence in the waters of the Caribbean

 

Once again, US imperialism is threatening to invade Venezuela, this time under the pretext that Nicolás Maduro is involved in international drug trafficking through the so-called "Los Soles" cartel - a pure invention of Donald Trump and the CIA. 

 

Contrary to international maritime agreements, since the beginning of September, the US has carried out at least six attacks on boats in Venezuelan waters, killing over 30 people after accusing them of transporting drugs. In addition, Trump sent three destroyers into the waters off Venezuela, a nuclear-powered submarine and several reconnaissance aircraft. A criminal threatening gesture shortly before a military intervention. 

 

Unfortunately for him, the world knows him only too well and knows that he is capable of the most implausible lies in his efforts to demoralize heads of state and governments hostile to him. America and the world remember only too well the invasion of Panama and the arrest of Manuel Antonio Noriega in 1989. Today, Trump is imitating the methods of President George H. W. Bush, whose accusations about Noriega’s links to drug trafficking served as a pretext for the invasion of Panama. Furthermore, his arguments collapse when one considers the trail of blood left by the dictators the US has supported, from Batista in Cuba, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and Videla in Argentina  to Netanyahu in Israel. 

 

There is no doubt that the United States' interest in these maneuvers is not simply to overthrow Nicolás Maduro, their goal is to control the oil and other natural resources of this rich South American country. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world and significant deposits of gold, iron, diamonds, copper and many other minerals, making the country one of the richest in the world in terms of natural resources. The presence of US imperialism in the Caribbean is not only a threat to Venezuela, but to the whole of Latin America, especially countries with progressive governments such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia and Brazil. 

 

With this move, US imperialism is also trying to suppress any attempt at rebellion that might arise in any of the countries under its tutelage in the region. It also wants to warn China and Russia, who are competing with it for influence and markets in the region, that it is still alive. 

 

Stopping the interventionist aspirations of fascist Donald Trump and imperialism on Venezuelan territory is therefore a revolutionary obligation. Therefore, the International Coordination of Revolutionary Organizations and Parties (ICOR) urgently calls on the entire worldwide revolutionary movement to make the defense of Venezuela's sovereignty a current task in the face of the ongoing threats of invasion by US imperialism in the waters of the Caribbean. We also call for the strengthening of the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist united front as the only guarantee to stop the expansionist greed of the imperialist countries.

 

Yankees, get out of the Caribbean waters!

No Yankee presence among other peoples of the world!

Resist the fascism of Donald Trump and all fascists!

Imperialism is war! Down with all imperialists!

Long live the self-determination of the peoples!

 

Present signatories, further signatures possible. Current list of signatories at www.icor.info

1. PCPCI   Parti Communiste Proletarien de Côte d'Ivoire (Proletarian Communist Party of Ivory Coast)

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

3. UPC-Manidem   Union des Populations du Cameroun - Manifeste National pour l’Instauration de la Démocratie (Union of Populations of Cameroon - National Manifesto for the Establishment of Democracy)

4. CPSA (ML)   Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)

5. PCT   Parti Comuniste du Togo (Communist Party of Togo)

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

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

8. RUFN   Revolutionary United Front of Nepal

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

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

11. БКП   Българска Комунистическа Партия (Bulgarian Communist Party)

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

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

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

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

16. RM   Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands

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

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

19. MLGS   Marxistisch-Leninistische Gruppe Schweiz (Marxist-Leninist Group of Switzerland)

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

21. KSRD   Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine

22. UoC   Union of Cypriots, Cyprus

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

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

25. SUCI (C)   Socialist Unity Center of India (Communist)

Stop the militarisation of Space

 Written by: Nick G. on 12 November 2025

 

Not content with their domination of the surface of the Earth, imperialist powers are determined to seek domination of cislunar Space – the area of space between the Earth and the moon.

True to form, US Empire loyalists in Australian political and military circles are determined to spend billions of dollars to ingratiate themselves with their masters and develop military interoperability across their respective Space Commands.

All of this flies in the face of the UN Declaration on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space in 1963, subsequently ratified as the Outer Space Treaty in 1967.

The Treaty was a response by the nations of the world to US and Russian nuclear weapons tests in Space.

Amongst its provisions were:

• outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;
• outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;
• States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner

At the time, the emphasis was on blocking the use of Space for nuclear weapons. It implied that Space should be used for peaceful purposes but did not explicitly ban all weapons.

US-EU contradictions over Space domain

Inter-imperialist rivalry for domination of the Space domain is in full swing. The fear among US military circles is that the Chinese are currently winning the race for Space.

The US is also concerned that the European Union is not as compliant as Australia.

A draft EU Space Act, released in June, has three key pillars: safety, resilience and sustainability.

At the beginning of November, the US State department made a stinging attack on the draft EU Act, claiming it would establish restrictive market barriers, impose costly environmental protection requirements, and create regulatory hurdles for US commercial firms.

According to the State Department, “The United States does not believe the provisions are sufficient to protect national security equities, assets, and operations because the Act threatens U.S. and EU development of commercial space capabilities, introducing doubt about interoperability of systems and the ability to use collaboratively developed or owned space assets for national security purposes.”

“Such unfair and unwarranted regulations are unacceptable to the United States and must be removed,” the document states.

The online US Breaking Defense website notes that the contradictions between the US and the EU reflect “widespread European government concerns about the direction of US policy, ranging from the Trump administration’s about-face on Ukraine support in war with Russia to the president’s punitive tariffs on European imports. The push for EU security independence includes the planned move by the European Space Agency, for the first time in its 50-year existence, to take on projects in support of European defense ministries.” 

Australia to bolster Space ties with US

With US-EU relations not working out as the US would wish, more will be expected from its Australian lackeys. 

The Defence Department last November made a commitment to invest $9 to $12 billion over the next decade to military space programs.

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) last year put together Concept SELENE, a framework for space operations, the details of which have not been made public. However, passing reference to it in online military journals reveal that it seeks to “enable freedom of action by temporally assuring access and disrupting or denying an adversary’s use of the space domain, as required.”

On October 8, Army Brig. Gen. Christopher Gardiner, space and cyber attaché at the Australian Embassy in Washington, said “...we don’t have enough resources to build that resilient architecture in a sovereign sense, we need to partner and we need to cooperate to generate the resiliency effect.”

In other words, Australia will fall in behind US efforts to dominate Space. “Thus,” he said, “Australian Space Command is taking a page from the US Space Force’s approach to acquisition by first focusing on what commercial activities it can leverage, then looking to partners for capabilities it can share, and only lastly building its own space systems.”

In an article selected by the Australian Commander Space Command as the winner of a writing competition, Royal Australian Army Signals officer Chris Maclean wrote that “RA Sigs personnel should be embedded with allied space commands and commercial satellite operators acting as the conduit to facilitate coordination, threat response, and best-practice sharing.”

He defined Space as a “as a contested, congested, and competitive domain” and said that “to fully prepare for the unique challenges of space warfare, RA Sigs must incorporate emerging space-specific training content into its existing courses.”

These and similar ideas about how best to become part of US imperialism’s drive to dominate and control Space will inform the update of the Defence Department’s 2024 National Defence Strategy. 

According to Brig. Gen. Christopher Gardiner, “the country’s Space Command is considering its options for gaining ‘space control’ capabilities” as part of the update. “With space control, looking at … how do we as Australia best contribute not only to the defence of Australia and our immediate region, but then also a credible capability, cooperatively within a partnership?”

All of this violates both the letter and the spirit of the UN Outer Space Treaty to which Australia is a signatory.

We must demand that all weapons are banned from Space and that any developments there are done for purposes other than “colonisation” by any state or nation on earth.

 

The Whitlam Dismissal: America's coup for the control of Australia

Written by: Alice M. on 11 November 2025

 

11th November marks the 50th anniversary of the bloodless semi-coup of the popularly elected Whitlam government in 1975.  As the tide for an anti-imperialist independent Australia is building up, what lessons can we learn from the Whitlam dismissal 50 years on?

This was a bloodless coup unlike the fascist coups in Indonesia (1965) and Chile (1973) where thousands were killed by the military.  The three coups all had one thing in common – they were engineered by the US to crush people’s progressive and revolutionary mass movements that were threatening the US and British imperialists control of their countries. The US/UK engineered bloodless semi-coup that overthrew the progressive Whitlam government used British colonial vestiges to create a constitutional crisis, was executed by the Queens representative, John Kerr, Australia’s governor general and head of state at that time. 

The Whitlam government was the most socially and politically progressive Labor capitalist government Australia ever had before, or since.

With a huge majority it was swept into government in 1972 on a wave of six preceding years of massive grass roots people’s movements and struggles pushing for progressive change: against the Vietnam War, conscription and US imperialism, against the anti-worker and anti-union penal powers and the Clarrie O’Shea-led militant working class struggle, against South African Apartheid, against Pine Gap and US bases, against the dominance of US and UK culture,  for land rights, women’s liberation, free public health and education, for Australia’s independence and many socially progressive reforms demanded by the people.  (See our booklet  50years whitlam booklet nov 2025.indd )

The Whitlam government brought in many socially progressive reforms that benefitted the people, and it also started to take small tentative steps towards Australia’s political, economic and cultural independence from the US and UK. Whitlam objected to the US controlled Pine Gap intelligence spy base and ASIO’s involvement with the CIA in covert operations in other countries, including orchestrating the 1973 bloody military coup in Chile.  He told the US he may close down Pine Gap, and his Attorney-General raided ASIO’s offices.  

Rex Connor, Minister for Minerals and Resources in the Whitlam government, tried to take Australia’s natural resources and agricultural land out of the hands of foreign corporations (mainly US and British eg Vestey Holdings) by “buying back the farm”, and placing them in public ownership.

But the Whitlam government was not threatening capitalism. It was a progressive national bourgeois government and didn’t pretend to be anything else. 

Reforms that the government started to introduce were within the confines of capitalism, but they did open up visions, and potentially could have led, to far more reaching demands by the people. Demands for reforms that the US monopoly capitalist class and British colonialism, the core of monopoly capitalist ruling class in Australia, could not tolerate or accept. 

The powerful US and UK interests started to worry that public enthusiasm for greater national independence and more reforms would threaten their expropriation of surplus value from Australia’s working class. 

In November 1975, after 3 years in government, the popular Whitlam government was dramatically overthrown in a bloodless constitutional coup secretly engineered by the US/CIA and UK.

Mass anger against the Dismissal

As word spread of the Dismissal, outrage broke out across the country. Tens of thousands of angry working people immediately walked off their jobs, schools, universities and homes across the country.  The numbers swelled ten times the following days. They gathered in public places, outside state and federal parliamentary offices demanding reinstatement of the Whitlam government and called for the sacking of the Governor-General.  Workers and students were threatening wild cat strikes until their elected, popular government was reinstated.

In stepped Bob Hawke, the then ACTU President, directing workers and students to go back to work, universities, schools and homes, to cool off and wait for the next election.  Hawke saved the day for imperialism and reactionary forces from the people’s wrath.  The ruling class didn’t need guns to suppress the working class.  They used Hawke and social democracy to do it. Hawke seized the struggle out of workers’ hands, diverting it into parliament and delivered the working class to the ruling class.  Hosing down working class struggles and delivering working people to capital was Hawke’s trade mark throughout his entire period as ACTU President and Prime Minister. (See “Bob Hawke: Labour Lieutenant of Capital” pp 10-13 here)

For a brief moment in history, the Whitlam Dismissal exposed and shone a spotlight on US imperialism at the centre of political and economic power in this country, backed by British colonialism. It also showed the role of social democracy in reining in and strangling people’s mass movements and struggles.

Since the 1975 US/UK coup, the economic, political and military stranglehold of US imperialism over this country has tightened and expanded.  Capitalism in Australia is imperialism, now mainly US imperialism. The most powerful and decisive sections of Australia’s ruling class are US multinational corporations and local comprador bourgeoisie dependent on US imperialism for their survival and expansion.  The most powerful sections have always been those tied to imperialist finance capital.

From Hawke to Albanese - the US grip tightens

Since the constitutional coup of the Whitlam government, US imperialist control of this country has been strengthened by every Labor government from Hawke to Albanese.  We see it economically, politically and militarily.  We see it in giving away our natural resources, rare and critical minerals, destruction of local industries, environmental destruction, our culture and foreign policies. We see it in the US-led AUKUS military pact which is stealing more than $400 billion from the needs of Australia’s working people only to support the US and UK languishing ship building industries and imperialist war.

The global “neo-liberal” policies implemented by Hawke and Keating in Australia in mid 1980s – early 1990s were driven by capital’s compulsion to constantly expand.  Hawke and Keating governments opened the door to foreign capital, private banks and wholesale privatisation of state instrumentalities, hospitals, child care, aged care, social and community services, public transport, energy and power.

 Many hard-won workers’ rights have been dismantled and new draconian anti-union laws brought in by Labor governments.  (See “Labor Since Whitlam” pp 16-20 here).  Hawke’s famous 1983 Accord froze workers’ wages whilst the bosses pocketed bigger profits. The Hawke government weakened workers’ struggles that led the way for the Dollar Sweets and Mudginberri attacks on workers. The Hawke government deregistered the militant Builders’ Labourers’ Federation and used Air Force as scabs in the 1989 Ansett Pilot’s strike.  

In 2007 the Rudd Labor government rode on the backs of another nationwide working class struggle against the Liberals’ anti-union and anti-workers’ Work Choices. Immediately after riding into power on the workers’ backs, the ALP and ACTU dismantled the powerful Your Rights at Work are Worth Fighting For mass movement. Despite promising to dismantle the draconian Australian Building and Construction Commission if elected to government, the Rudd and Gillard governments both kept the ABCC, laws prohibiting secondary boycotts and restrictions on unions’ Rights of Entry.  

This is not because of individual leaders’ personal characters or politics, although it does matter. But it is mainly because Labor as a parliamentary Party of capitalism is compelled to protect and advance the needs of capitalism and its ruling class.  Parliament serves the needs of capitalism. The real and decisive power lies with the most powerful section of finance capital, not in parliament.  In times of capitalist economic downturns and social crises the main task of any parliamentary party in power is to rescue capitalism by attacking the people’s living and working conditions, removing democratic rights and crushing resistance to capitalist exploitation and imperialism.  

In 2010 the then Labor Prime Minister Rudd tried to introduce a 40% resources super profits tax on big miners and mineral corporations. The supe profits tax did not challenge capitalism.  But in a major campaign by the Mining Council, mining corporations, and the Murdoch media, Rudd was dumped as PM and replaced by Julia Gillard who immediately dropped the minerals super profits resources tax.  The resources super profits tax had enormous public support, including unions who started campaigning for it, but like Whitlam before him, Rudd did not mobilise the people and fight for it.

Under the Gillard and Albanese governments, the tighter US imperialist stranglehold is driven by the US, whose global dominance and spheres of influence are being challenged by capitalist China’s economic expansion. 

The 2011 US Pivot into Asia Pacific, announced in Australian parliament by Obama with fawning PM Gillard by his side, fully opened the doors to the US turning Australia into its major US military base in the region in its preparations for a war with China.  The 2014 Force Posture Agreement, gave the US unimpeded and secretive use of all of Australia’s military, defence and civil infrastructure and instillations.  The US controlled Pine Gap has doubled in its size since Whitlam, and is openly used by US to send intelligence to assist Israel’s genocide in Gaza and suppress Palestinian resistance to occupation, The US controlled AUKUS Pillars 1 & 2 and military interoperability lock Australia into a US-led war with China and allow nuclear weapons carrying B52 bombers and nuclear  armed submarines to be based in the Northern Territory and Australian Ports close to major cities.  

Lessons from the Whitlam Dismissal

Labor party is a parliamentary party of capitalism and when in government it is compelled to administer and implement interests and policies of the most powerful section of Australia’s capitalist ruling class, and imperialism.

The Whitlam Dismissal has shown that even small progressive steps towards independence and progressive social reforms that threaten capitalist class profit making, are quickly removed either by a “coup” or by immense bourgeois media propaganda, or both.

The Dismissal sent a warning to future governments “Don’t step out of line in your service to capitalism and imperialism”.  

The coup ensured that the interests of monopolies, the US alliance, bases, were protected and Australia continued as its servile vassal state economically, politically and militarily. It ensured that US imperialism continued as the dominant section of Australia’s capitalist ruling class.

This is in no way to diminish or reject rank and file members and supporters of the ALP, most of whom genuinely long for a Labor party and government that truly represent and fight for working people.  But the Whitlam Dismissal shows that the ruling class and its state machinery will only allow a parliamentary party to stay in power for as long as it doesn’t threaten imperialist domination and continued exploitation of workers and the environment. 

Organising for anti-imperialist independence

Whitlam’s progressive social reforms and a few steps towards Australia’s independence, and later Rudd’s mining super profits tax, won huge public support.  But neither Whitlam or Rudd, as Prime Ministers administering and protecting capitalism, could, or wanted to, mobilise that massive public support, fearing where it would lead.  

For the working class the only alternative is building independent and united people’s mass organisations armed with anti-imperialist class consciousness.
Lessons for working people is don’t let the ruling class divert, divide and manipulate working people’s struggles into parliamentary graveyards.  People’s struggles that are kept in the hands of the people have shown the real power of mobilised and organised working people - the Clarrie O’Shea penal powers, the Vietnam war and conscription, many workers’ struggles, anti-war struggles, uranium mining, land rights, Franklin River, the 1998 MUA waterfront struggle, Your Rights at Work, BLF, and many others.  

The people’s movements for an anti-imperialist, independent Australia are laying the ground for a truly socialist Australia, led by the mighty working class.
..............................
Further reading:

Bevan Ramsden: The role of the United States in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government

John Menadue: The Dismissal, the role of the CIA, MI6 and Austral Americans

Peter Rees: ‘She heard an extraordinary plot against the government’: The call that would haunt Winsome Nash

AIM Network: The Anglo-American ambush of the Whitlam Government – 11.11.1975 (Part 3)

John Menadue interview:   What would Whitlam think of the Albanese Government?

 

 

Party booklet on Whitlam dismissal released

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 9 November 2025

 

The CPA (M-L) has just released a 22-page booklet, “50 years on: the CIA coup that kept Australia under US control”.

The booklet contains some archival analyses of the involvement of US Ambassador Marshall Green in preparations for the coup, and a focus on the political dimensions of Whitlam’s sacking,

The booklet can be downloaded here, and will be available in hard copy as well.

With some exceptions, coverage of the coup in the capitalist media is superficial, and deliberately so. This includes the ABC, traditionally somewhat independent, but now very much under current right-wing control.

Its “I Was There” documentary on the Dismissal was a case in point. People recalled what they were doing on the day of the Dismissal but said little about the reason for it.

On Insiders this morning, ABC journalist Greg Jennett spoke of another documentary to be aired tonight (Sunday November 9) and he made it clear that they had deliberately chosen to avoid the topic of “foreign interference” in Whitlam’s sacking.

A notable exception to this blurring of US involvement in the coup is the revelation of Marshal Green’s three phone calls to Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen about replacing a dead Labor Senator with the right sort of person who could help bring about a constitutional crisis and bring down the Whitlam government. The article is in both The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, and we strongly recommend it.

Our booklet is important in setting the record straight.

Our Party had it right at the time and brings it up to date with an analysis of Labor since Whitlam.

Watch for a further statement from our Party on November 11.

 

CPA (M-L) paper on fascism in Australia

 Written by: CPA (M-L) on 6 November2025

 

Our Party was recently asked to prepare a paper on how fascism has developed and adapted in the 21st century for an international theoretical conference to be held under the auspices of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.

We have prepared a brief response with a focus on developments in Australia as an industrialised capitalist country.  

The conference aims to sharpen international collective understanding of fascism as a class phenomenon and strengthen the revolutionary united front to confront fascism in the 21st century.

Our paper can be downloaded from our  Booklets section here.

CPA (M-L) report to the Second Women's Conference of ICOR

 Written by: Louisa L. on 9 November 2025

 

SA nurses and midwives on strike October 2025

The Second Women’s Conference of the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organisations (ICOR) will be held this month in Kathmandu, Nepal.  The following is a report for the Conference from our Party – eds.

Contribution to ICOR’s women’s conference by CPA (M-L)

Louisa L.

Like all comrades worldwide, our women comrades are deeply involved in struggle. 

Ruling class attacks intensify daily. US imperialism, the greatest driver of war and aggression in the world, holds state power here. 50 years ago on November 11, using the British colonial relic of the Governor General, Australia’s elected government was overthrown in a bloodless CIA coup. It sent a silent message to all incoming governments, to adhere to US domination of Australia across the board. Of course, that has always been met with resistance by our peoples. 

US imperialism dominates the commanding heights of our economy and dominates its daily culture. Australian governments organise and often subsidise unfettered corporate plunder of the land and water and widening suppression of the people. Australia’s land is dotted with US military bases, and our armed forces are now a wing of the US war machine. 

The deepening economic crisis of US capitalism means subservient Australia governments ensure Australian taxpayers fund economic and military development of the US and its major allies like Japan through unjust and unequal treaties and arrangements, like AUKUS and the Quad. Our leaders portray our actual situation as US imperialism’s quarry for resources below cost price, as a victory for Australia. Labor politicians remember what happened 50 years ago and ensure it will not happen to them. 

The First Peoples of this continent and its islands pay the heaviest price for the wealth of their lands. Their children are the most incarcerated on earth. On every level, health, education, life expectancy, poverty, suicide, incarceration, child removals, First Peoples are made to suffer by deliberate policy which demonises children as out of control and disempowers Elders and all those who have not been bought off.  It undermines what evidence has again and again showed are the policies that improve their lives. Despite this, and despite a 25- year program by the Business Council of Australia (set up as a “union” for the biggest, overwhelmingly foreign controlled corporations operating here) to systematically divide and conquer First Peoples in order to get access to their lands and waters, First Peoples – especially women – have continued to organise and struggle.

The reality of women’s lives is affected by deepening economic crisis. Huge cost of living increases, especially necessities of housing, health, education, transport fall on all people, but disproportionately on women, who still provide most caring duties and who earn much lower lifetime wages. Older women are the fastest growing group of homeless. Single parents, mostly women, fear children will be removed if they become homeless. Instead of being assisted, their lives are destroyed.

Across Australia, house prices and especially rents have increased astronomically. Sydney has the second most costly housing in the world, while the real estate, development and construction industries make record profits. All rules and restrictions that hinder the industry (or mining and resource industries) in any way are targeted for removal.

While profits have been at record levels for decades, intensity and hours of work have increased dramatically, wages and conditions have deteriorated. Childcare fees are sky high in an increasingly unsafe privatised system. Australia has some of the most unequal education and health care systems in the developed world, as government funded private schools, universities, and for-profit medical centres and hospitals flourish, while state schools enrol all those who private schools reject on the class or income base of the parents, (without using such “nasty”, truthful words) as too poor, too disabled or not ‘talented’ enough.

Just as the private education cherry picks the best “crop” of students, the private hospital system is designed to cherry pick those with the most profitable operations and procedures. Australia has the highest proportion of hip and knee replacements in the world, quick, straightforward, churned out every day, day after day. Private hospitals don’t want sick people. 

Worst is mental health care. A mass resignation of public hospital psychiatric doctors this year in NSW – many of them women – occurred not primarily because of shocking wages and conditions. The main concern was that there are almost no public rehabilitation hospitals. Critically ill patients, threatening self-harm or harm to others have waited 70 hours in waiting rooms, and left without being seen. Many are homeless. Many are in jails, which are otherwise mostly full of First Peoples and those the education system has failed.

Yet education and health care workers – mainly women – are the biggest unions in the country. Unions are generally compliant. Independent organisation is key here, not usually as secret factions, but as open and active in struggle. This section of the working class flares up in struggle, with financial increases won quickly eaten away in price rises. Most new teachers leave the public system within five years, predominantly because of shocking workload, much of it compliance form-filling, totally at odds with educational needs. Corporate run mass testing of students has systematically brought narrowed curriculum, taking the joy from teaching and learning. 

In the face of deepening crisis and class divisions, ruling class attempts to divide people by race, immigration status, age, sex, sexual orientation, where they live (especially city versus country, inner suburbs against outer suburbs, city versus country, political and religious beliefs, etc, etc abound. Alongside this, democratic rights are legislated away, police powers reinforced, jails expanded.

Individual rather than collective causes and blames are emphasised, or governments rather than those they rule for are blamed. While mass struggle brought increased action against domestic violence, and coercive control which is the cause of most homicides of women by men is now acted against, analysis of the brutal reality that underpins capitalism is largely hidden. Bad men are blamed in shockingly regular news items of yet another murdered woman. Though contested, it too often remains an individual not collective response.

In the face of all this, we are a very small, but active and growing party. Women are in key leadership roles, and often have relatively high public profiles among the ‘left’. More men are drawn to join than women, but as struggle intensifies women are also joining. The more we build intermediate organisations, between ourselves and the masses, the more we are able to take initiative in building and leading united front organisations, the stronger we will become.
Because of the genocide in Palestine, US imperialism and Zionism are more widely exposed than ever. Women have been front and centre in this struggle. The Australian Education Union, especially in NSW, has been the most forthright in supporting Palestine, and supporting staff targeted for wearing Palestinian insignia.

Australia spends hundreds of billions on war and war preparations. This glaring contradiction with unmet needs is a latent strength for those struggling for change.

Our greatest strength as a party, and as women comrades, are our mass connections, built through decades of struggle. People learn from their own experience. Right now, many are learning pessimism and powerlessness, because despite massive worldwide struggle, Palestine is off the front pages, despite ongoing land theft and genocide. But alongside that, the strength of protests around the country like the March for Humanity across the Sydney Harbour Bridge is still fresh.

How can we convince women, and women workers particularly?  We start from where we are strong, our mass connections, and organise from there. We can convince them by the strength of our organisation and action to build struggle to understand their own collective strength, to analyse contradictions and target our main enemy, by our ability in struggle by promote clear strategy and tactics and to find the key link that cannot be ripped from our hands.

Organisation in struggle based on unity of all our Peoples is our key link.

Our key target is US imperialism. 

Our goal is Australian independence and socialism. US imperialism out now!

 

The construction of a new Syria

Written by: Marxist-Leninist Communist Party/ Turkey and Kurdistan (MLKP) on 4 November 2025

 

The Western world endorsed the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria, and has quickly rebranded the Islamo-fascist HTS as the legitimate government of Syria.  In return, the HTS accepts the expansion into parts of Syria by both the Israeli Zionists and the Turkish fascist regime.  In the latter case, Turkey is permitted to bomb and destroy the liberated autonomous zone of Rojava, where Communists have created a secular, democratic and anti-patriarchal example for the whole of the Middle East.  We support the defence and survival of the Rojava revolution and print the following statement from the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party/ Turkey and Kurdistan  (MLKP) in support – eds.

 

The construction of a new Syria 

Looking at Syria today, it quickly becomes clear that the political map is increasingly developing in line with imperialist plans toward centralization under a new political-Islamic regime. However, the biggest obstacle to this “new Golani Syria” remains the question of Rojava‘s integration. At the centre of this development are the negotiations and agreements between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the political-Islamist regime of Hay‘at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). 

This process, which initially stalled after talks broke down abruptly on March 10, 2025, was revived on July 9, 2025, at a meeting in Damascus.
In addition to representatives of the SDF, such as Commander Mazlum Abdî, representatives of the Assad regime and Western diplomats also took part, including the US Ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, and the French envoy Jean-Baptiste Faivre.

The central point of contention in these talks is the question of Rojava‘s integration into the Syrian state. The focus is on three main aspects: military, political, and economic integration. The autonomously administered northern and eastern Syria (Rojava) wants to ensure that it retains its political and social achievements and is not subjected to a centralized system. Without a doubt, any agreement with HTS will only be temporary, as stability for Syria under HTS is not in sight.

The US vision for Syria: one nation, one army, one government

Despite the ongoing negotiations, a decisive moment in the disclosure of the US‘s imperialist plans for Syria became clear. Tom Barrack, the US special envoy for Syria, outlined the US vision of a centralized Syria under the sole leadership of its new political-Islamic partner, HTS. This is underscored by the slogan “One Nation, One Army, One Government.” HTS has done its “homework” in this context: the domestic market has been opened up to Western investment, oil contracts have been signed with the US, and Israel has been granted the undisturbed right to annex Syrian territories. In return, HTS, along with all its political-Islamic fascist members, will be recognized by Western states, removed from terror lists, and integrated into the international system. The same imperialist West that condemned the repressions of the Assad regime now seems ready to accept the next dictatorship.

Such an Islamist-fascist regime stands in sharp contrast to the democratic popular revolution in northern and eastern Syria, where not only the equality of peoples but above all the equality of the sexes is practiced. This fundamental contradiction shapes the extent and intensity of the power struggles and negotiations in Syria and will determine the fate of Syria in the future.

The threat from the fascist Turkish colonial state

Amid these geopolitical upheavals, the fascist Turkish state remains at a key position. Through recent agreements with Hay‘at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), it has further expanded its influence in Syria. By regaining the right to conduct military operations up to a depth of 30 kilometres, Ankara has not only consolidated its military presence but also further secured its colonial ambitions in Syria. This agreement, which supplemented the “Ankara Agreement” with the Assad regime, clearly shows that the chief regime under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan does not intend to withdraw from the occupied territories in Syria. Rather, it seeks to occupy new territories and impose its political goals in the region.

The fascist regime is pursuing an evident strategy to destroy regional self-government in Rojava. Mazlum Abdî, commander of the SDF, stated that the Turkish colonial state is attempting to undermine the existing model of integration bet ween the SDF and HTS in order to weaken and ultimately dissolve the autonomous administration. Particularly striking is the pressure it is exerting on HTS to enforce its own political goals. For example, the Turkish colonial state is using various affiliated groups within HTS to influence negotiations and developments in Syria.

In addition, as in the past, it has mobilized Arab tribes in the region to force a shift in the regional balance of power and drive the SDF out of areas such as Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa, and Hasaka as part of its geopolitical strategy to strengthen control over southern areas and eliminate the Kurdish self-administration.

The threat to the peoples and the Rojava revolution

These geopolitical upheavals pose an immense danger, especially to the peoples of Syria, such as Kurds, Druze, and Alawites. These groups, which were already oppressed under the Assad regime or were among the poorest segments of the population, now face the threat of falling under the rule of a new dictatorship. A dictatorship that does not recognize any national, religious, or political rights. HTS has already demonstrated its hostile attitude toward various population groups in the past, for example through pogroms against Alawites and attacks on Druze.

The next decisive target region in this geopolitical chess game is un mistakably Rojava. Tom Barrack has made it clear that HTS aims to bring the Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Sy ria under its control. The US seeks to transfer sole control of Syria to HTS, subjecting the country‘s various peoples to US imperialist interests. These developments pose an existential threat to the Rojava Revolution.

The revolution is the hope of the peoples and the oppressed. 

Under these conditions, the statements of leaders of the revolution such as Sipan Hemo and Salih Muslim are crucial, emphasizing that the creation of an autonomous political system based on the self-de termination of the regions remains essential. Particularly important in this context is the insistence on the role of women and the achievements of the women‘s movement in Rojava. There have already been fierce clashes with HTS, in which the women clearly stated that “the YPJ is not up for debate.”

The revolutionary democratic principles that have been fought for in Rojava offer a glimmer of hope for the peoples of Syria that, even beyond dictatorships, there can be a democratic people‘s republic that guarantees a dignified and self-determined life. If this revolution is to continue and expand, it is necessary for all progressive forces, both in Syria and worldwide, to stand resolutely for the defence and construction of the Rojava Revolution. A destruction of this autonomy by HTS, supported by Western imperialist powers and the Turkish colonial state, would not only undermine the achievements of the revolution, but also jeopardize the rights and future of the Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, and Armenian peoples, alongside with all the op pressed, workers, and women in Syria.

The struggle for a democratic Syria and the self-determination of its peoples is entering a new phase in light of the new transitional situation.

Hay‘at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is led by al-Golani, a former IS and Al-Qaeda recruit

Marxist-Leninist Communist Party/ Turkey and Kurdistan  (MLKP)
October 2025