Ask the question!

Written by: Nick G. on 27 July 2026

 

(AI generated. Supplied)

One of the arts of leadership is to set an example of behaviours appropriate to one’s policies and objectives.

The recent ALP National Conference had the abysmal triumvirate doing just that.

Not wanting participants to see beyond a tightly AUKUS-trated agenda, to ask questions on matters already decided, or to be prepared to listen to dissenting opinion, Albanese, Wong and Marles have set their own example in relation to the AUKUS arrangements.

These “wise monkeys” have denied their own accountability for these arrangements and refuse to ask questions of their imperial masters on many issues, but two typify their “wisdom”. 

They relate to the expansion of the Tindal Air Base outside Katherine in the NT, and the construction of Submarine Base West at Stirling in WA.

Tindal

The Tindal Air Base is being expanded to host six nuclear-weapons capable US B-52 bombers.

Australia has committed over A$14 billion over the coming decade for northern base upgrades, of which Tindal is one element. The US will contribute to the expansion, but Australia will pay for expansion of aircraft parking aprons suitable for B-52 bombers, fuel systems, accommodation, security and communications.

There has been no public debate about why the US should base B-52 bombers in Australia.

The triumvirate say they will not ask the US whether those B-52 are carrying nuclear bombs. They say they respect the US right to neither confirm nor deny such information. 

Stirling

As part of the AUKUS arrangements, HMAS Stirling, the naval base located on Garden Island, 50 km south of Perth, has become part of Fleet Base (West). It is being upgraded as the site for the Submarine Rotational Forces-West (SRF-W) initiative whereby the US and UK would maintain a permanent rotational presence of nuclear-powered submarines at the base. From 2027, that will include one UK Astute Class submarine and up to four US Virginia-class submarines. All are nuclear-powered and capable of carrying nuclear weaponry.

The Australian Government is paying almost all of the infrastructure costs including construction of new wharves and maintenance facilities, utilities, security and housing. These costs are officially estimated to be $8bn. 

Included in the costs are 550 new homes for US and UK submarine crews to be built by private contractors and leased to Defence Housing Australia.

There has been no public debate about why nuclear submarines from foreign countries should be permanently based in Australia.

The triumvirate say they will not ask the US or UK whether those submarines are carrying nuclear missiles. They say they respect the US and UK right to neither confirm nor deny such information. 

In a remarkable admission to the Public Inquiry into AUKUS, Brigadier the Hon. Linda Reynolds CSC (Retd), Minister for Defence (2019-2012) stated:

If kinetic war was to break out to our north, here in Australia I believe we would be not only subjected to heighten hybrid attacks, but we would also be subjected to precision kinetic attacks. The joint facilities, bases and airfields across our approaches are already targets and a capable adversary would strike them early. A war that looked northern would not stay in the north.

NCND

These expansions of US military facilities on Australian soil that make us targets in a kinetic (real) war are consistent with the Force Posture Agreement (FPA) framework which guarantees the US the right to access Australian facilities when and where it likes.

Article 7 of the FPA states:

“United States Forces and its contractors shall have unimpeded access to Agreed Facilities and Areas for all matters relating to the pre-positioning and storage of defence equipment and supplies including delivery, management, inspection, use, maintenance and removal of such pre-positioned material. As mutually determined by the Parties, aircraft, vehicles and vessels operated by or for United States Forces shall have access to aerial ports and sea ports of Australia and other locations, for the delivery to, storage and maintenance in, and removal from, the territory of Australia of United States Forces’ pre-positioned material.”

Not only can it do what it likes, where it likes, it can deny whatever it likes and conceal whatever it likes.

And that is because the simpering triumvirate of US Empire loyalists have agreed between themselves that they just won’t ask their masters any questions that the masters don’t want to answer, such as “Do US B-52 bombers at Tindal carry nuclear weapons?” and “Do US-UK submarines at Stirling carry nuclear weapons?”

It is sad to think that 40 years ago, New Zealand had the guts to do what the Triumvirate won't. They called the US bluff on “Neither Confirm Nor Deny” (NCND) in relation to nuclear weapons brought into that country. In 1984, the USS Buchanan was meant to visit New Zealand. By the early 1980s, New Zealand had developed one of the world's strongest anti-nuclear movements. It led to a NZ government policy that required visiting militaries to declare whether their ships and planes were carrying nuclear weapons.When the US refused to answer the question, the NZ government banned the Buchanan from entering its waters. The US retaliated by suspending NZ’s involvement in ANZUS. Both the ban and the suspension remain in place and NZ still exists.

It is time for Australia to break free from the US.  
Demand that Albanese, Wong and Marles ask the question.
We have a right to know.

 

Deep right-wing influence within Labor

 Written by: Nick G. on 9 Jully 2026

 

Ciccone (3rd left) meeting on June 29 with members of Nuclear for Australia.  Source Senator Raff Ciccone Facebook page

 

Widespread opposition to the pro-US policy orientation of the Labor Party has focussed on the leading triumvirate of Albanese, Wong and Marles. 

To them can be added the three State Premiers of WA, SA and NSW who are complicit in the AUKUS arrangements and the restrictions of civil liberties associated with the anti-war and pro-Palestinian mass movements.

Being groomed for a more prominent future role is Victorian Senator Raff Ciccone.

After graduating from university, Ciccone initially worked in financial planning before moving into industrial relations and employment law, later becoming a senior official in the right-wing Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA). Like too many other union officials, he had not come through the rank-and-file and the workplace, but was recruited from outside the membership.

Having joined the Labor Party at 16, his stint at the SDA provided a path towards employment with Senator Jacinta Collins who had herself been employed by the SDA for 15 years. When she retired in 2019 to take up the position of national executive director of the National Catholic Education Commission on the same day, Ciccone was nominated to fill the casual vacancy.

Wolverines

In 2020, Ciccone posted a sticker of claw marks outside his parliamentary office.  It was a public declaration of his acceptance of membership in the “Wolverines”, a collective of far-right politicians committed to the most hawkish pro-US and anti-China politics. Other members include former PM and current President of the Liberal Party Tony Abbott, Andrew Hastie, James Patterson, Tim Wilson and the Nationals’ Matt Canavan.

Ciccone is an advocate of Taiwanese independence and attended the Presidential inauguration of Lai Ching-te in May 2024. On July 8, he personally met and farewelled Douglas Hsu, representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Australia, who was returning home. Ciccone is a member of the anti-China, pro-Taiwan Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international, cross-party alliance of parliamentarians from 43 countries. Andrew Hastie was a founding member, and James Patterson has been a co-Chair. Tiawan is a member, recognised as the Republic of Taiwan.

Zionist supporter

During the 2023 parliamentary winter break, Ciccone visited Israel hosted by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. On June 19, despite Zionism’s genocidal war against the Palestinians, he attended a function of the Council of Australian Jewry to celebrate the 78th anniversary of Israel’s independence. Seventy-eight years of colonisation, apartheid and genocide not a thing to celebrate, but he was happy to do it.

This was no surprise and followed his March 31 call, as chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, for US imperialism and Israeli Zionism to “finish the job” in their joint war of aggression against Iran. “It’s important that the US and Israel are able to, in some ways, finish the job and actually target the regime…” he said.

Fossil fool

Ciccone is no environmentalist. He is a strong supporter of the timber industry and criticised the Labor government in Victoria for its decision to phase out native forest harvesting by 2030. He is connected to a pro-fossil fuel grouping of some 20 Labor MPs, known as the Otis Group, and has argued against the ALP's opposition to nuclear power in Australia.

On 28 November 2025, he welcomed the give-away of Australian critical minerals and rare earths in the deal done by Labor and the US. He said “The landmark $13 billion critical minerals and rare earths framework signed last month by Australia and the United States represents a pivotal moment in our alliance…(and will) strengthen our economic and strategic partnership with the US.”

Supports the US stranglehold

Following the 2022 federal election, Ciccone became Government Deputy Whip in the Senate and was elected Chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee.  He has aggressively argued the case for the US Alliance and AUKUS in articles for ASPI (otherwise known as Australians Serving Predatory Imperialism).

In August 2025, fresh from having “the privilege of attending the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Adelaide”, he wrote in “Alliance that goes far beyond AUKUS”, that the Australia-US relationship “is one of our most valuable assets. Its strength lies not only in defence cooperation, but in the deep trust, shared values and people-to-people connections that underpin it.”

“…it’s our shared values that sustain our friendship. Our relationship is built on freedom, the rule of law, human rights and a commitment to a rules-based international order.”

He praised the commissioning of the USS Canberra in Sydney Harbour in 2023 because it “marked the first time a US Navy ship entered service in a foreign port”, and celebrated the test-firing of a Precision Strike Missile co-developed with the US during the 2025 Talisman Sabre Exercises.

He wrote that the US “treats Australia much like a domestic partner within the US defence trade system”, although it would be closer to the truth to say that the US treats Australia as a “domestic part” of its military-industrial complex.

Ciccone has been unleashed as the Labor triumvirate’s attack dog against the public inquiry into AUKUS. In a June 26, 2026 article published by ASPI titled “Nuclear submarines: bolt-cutters to ensure Australia is never wrapped in chains”, he wrote:

There are those whose foreign policy beliefs were shaped in a more benign era. Distinguished voices now animated by nostalgia are based in tragic and dramatic claims about the very purpose of AUKUS on the strategic needs of the past. With respect to these voices, the world has changed. Our region has changed and, as we speak, military modernisation across the Indo-Pacific continues at pace. Australia must respond to the world as it exists today and not as it existed in the past. Some of these voices have decided to form a so-called independent public inquiry into AUKUS. Although its contributors are certainly not lacking in experience, it is difficult to say what they expect to achieve.

Ciccone represents within the Labor Party that group of willing servants of US imperialism who continue to betray our national independence and sovereignty to a foreign state.

That state actually controls our state though a web of interlocking influence and pressure comprising its economic domination, its military presence, its control of media-shaping culture and influence over opinions and values, and its diplomatic and political ties to local politicians.

The Ciccones of this world accept that state of affairs and seek to perpetuate it. They often stand against the rank-and-file members of the ALP amongst whom there is a strong anti-war sentiment, a determination to support civil liberties and democratic rights, and a desire for a greater capacity for independence in matters of foreign policy. But control from the top ensures that right-wing influence goes deep within Labor.

For our part, we stand for genuine anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

Labor’s rank-and-file must play their part in fighting Labor’s Ciccones and working for the movement for independence and socialism in their work places and communities.

 

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?

 

 

People's struggle continues against SA government " love affair" with property developers and their $1 per year rent!

Written by: Ned K. on 31 October 2025

 

In the middle of winter this year several thousand people took to the streets and rallied on the steps of SA Parliament House on North Terrace in Adelaide. The people of diverse backgrounds included First Nations people, blue- and white-collar workers, young people, retired people and some former politicians. 

They were there to send a message to the SA Government that they opposed the proposed LIV Golf "development" on Park Lands which was also sacred land of the Kaurna people. (The name "LIV" refers to the Roman numerals for 54, the number of holes played at LIV events.) They also opposed the decision of the SA Government to allow the private for-profit property developer Walker Corporation to build a 38 Level office tower (Festival Tower 2) immediately behind Parliament House.

In October this year, the SA Government announced that it had "consulted " with Kaurna Elders, and the LIV Golf course development would go ahead with a minor concession to quarantine from the development a small area of land nearest to the Karra Wirri Parri (river of Red Gum Forest), named Torrens Lake by the British colonists after their invasion of Kaurna lands in 1836.

This small concession was rejected by Kaurna people who argue that the minor concession is tokenism as there will still be destruction of land where Kaurna people's descendants now rest. The Kaurna people are supported in their struggle to preserve lands sacred to them by the Adelaide Park Lands Association.
The proposed Walker Corporation 38 level office tower immediately behind Parliament House is also on Park Lands, as is Parliament House itself!

How did this come about? 

The British colonial city of Adelaide on Kaurna land was planned by British colonialist William Light in 1837. On 7th February of that year he wrote to the colonial Resident Commissioner that the city of Adelaide be bordered by 920 hectares of Park Lands of native vegetation with the streets bordering the city being North, East, South and West Terraces. 

"Light's Vision" as this came to be known did allow the Park Lands to be used for "recreation of citizens and various Government building or other purpose". 

Over time various not-for-profit sporting grounds and recreation facilities were built at various points on the Park Lands.

The understanding was that no private for-profit buildings could be built on any of the Park Lands surrounding the boundaries of this Central Business District of Adelaide.

In recent decades successive governments have "privatized" the use of the Park Lands.

For example, the Casino was built on land previously part of the government owned Adelaide Railway Station. The not-for-profit University of Adelaide was built on Park Lands as was the not-for-profit public hospital, RAH. The University is now a for-profit degree factory while the new RAH is operated by private for-profit interests on a 30-year lease.

Under the Marshall Liberal Government between 2018 and 2022, the Walker Corporation property developer was granted a long lease to build Festival Tower 1 and Sky City Casino was granted a lease to extend the Casino and build a five-star hotel, both on the Festival Theatre Plaza.

When the Malinauskas Labor Government came to office in 2022, it found that the Walker Corporation had a lease signed sealed and delivered for a second 3 Level Festival Tower 2 immediately behind Parliament House.

This land was originally part of the Park Lands and then became part of the SA Government owned Festival Theatre Plaza built during the Don Dunstan Government experiment of the 1970s.

In a decision which showed how much the Premier Malinauskas is a servant of the property developers in Adelaide, the SA Government, rather than opposing any Festival Tower 2 development by the Walker Corporation, agreed that Walker's second Festival Tower development immediately overlooking Parliament House could be not a 3 Level office building, but a 38 Level office tower!

The updated tower scheme comes after South Australian Minister for Planning Nick Champion initiated a planning Code Amendment in January 2025, enabling a maximum building height of 40 storeys. The Code Amendment, that changed the zoning law, was rushed through without following the government’s own community engagement charter, or due planning process.

If that wasn't enough to appease the Walker Corporation, the lease agreement included that the rent Walker Corporation would pay the SA Government was $1 per year for the next 100 years!

Last week, former SA Labor Government Premier Lynn Arnold was part of a delegation of concerned citizens who met with current Premier Malinauskas in an effort to get him to overturn the deal with Wlaker Corporation. 

These groups cannot even include the CFMEU Construction Division in any delegations to the government, let alone construction workers putting a ban on Festival Tower 2's construction. This is part of the fall out of this Union being put into Administration.

For those people in SA who see Parliament House as a symbol of the limited democratic rights that exist under capitalism in the (still) colonial state of South Australia, having a private-for-profit 38 Level office tower casting its daunting shadow over this House was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Premier Malinauskas told the concerned delegation that he would get back to them regarding their concerns. However soon after the meeting one of his faithful off-siders, Minister (for the Property Council vested interests!) Nick Champion praised the Wlaker Corporation development claiming a 38 Level office tower will create millions of dollars of "wealth" to South Australia!

With a state election due in March 2026, the dream run of Malinauskas Government "partnership" with big business is looking shaky!

Labor Sweeps to Power: Now It’s Time to Deliver for Workers

Written by: G. Sand on 16 May 2025

 

Boorloo — In a historic political shift, the Australian Labor Party has stormed back into government with an unprecedented majority of over 90 seats in the House of Representatives, cementing its mandate to enact bold reforms. This landslide victory is more than just a repudiation of the Coalition — it’s a call to action. It’s time for Labor to stop being afraid of the Liberals and deliver long-lasting, transformative change for Australian workers.

At the heart of this agenda must be workplace reform — and specifically, the restoration of union-led collective bargaining.

For decades, union density in Australia has been in freefall, a trend that began during the Howard era when changes to the Workplace Relations Act allowed workers to nominate anyone — not just unions — to represent them in Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) negotiations. This shift undermined the power and legitimacy of unions at the bargaining table, enabling employers to bypass collective negotiations in favour of individual or token representative deals.

When Labor returned to power previously, there were signals of a crackdown on these practices. But employer associations, led by right-wing extremists like the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Minerals Council of Australia, acted swiftly and ruthlessly. In a legal grey zone, they orchestrated a rush of so-called “baseline agreements” — minimalist EBAs that tied wages to the award, locking workers into stagnant pay and conditions.

These baseline agreements, often signed with minimal consultation, left union organisers arriving on-site to find the door already closed. Workers, trapped in subpar deals for years, saw their bargaining power gutted before negotiations even began.

This time, Labor must not flinch.

It is fundamentally a party of capitalism, but its electoral base largely resides in the working class. Its electoral campaigning depends very much on the support given to it by unions and their ability to organise mass doorknocking to persuade people to vote for it.

The huge majority it has won in parliament almost assures it of success in the next election as well. It can take either one of two paths: feel obliged to reward its electoral base with the repeal of anti-union frameworks embedded by the Coalition and re-empower unions as the exclusive representatives in enterprise bargaining. Unions were built to defend wages, protect safety, and push back against corporate exploitation. Preventing companies from gaming the system through dodgy EBAs isn’t just good policy — it’s a moral imperative.

Or it can feel so secure in office that it feels no need to take on the big end of town in order to extend the rights of workers at work and in the community.

Nothing should be taken for granted.

With a majority this strong, Labor has no excuse for timidity. The electorate has granted them the numbers, the authority, and the moment. Now they must use it — to put more money in the pockets of working Australians, to lift standards across industries, and to restore collective power to where it belongs: with the workers and their unions.

Dare to struggle, Dare to Win

 

ALBANESE DEFINES LABOR PARTY - "MAINSTREAM" and "REFORMIST NOT REVOLUTIONARY"

Written by: Ned K. on May 4, 2025

 

In the last days before the federal election, Anthony Albanese made it clear publicly that the ALP was "mainstream" and "reformist" not "revolutionary".

He did not elaborate on what he meant by "revolutionary". Perhaps he was implying that Trump type policies were "revolutionary" and Dutton liked Trump. Or perhaps he was saying to big business and middle-class swinging voters that the "market economy" (capitalism) had nothing to fear from a second term ALP government.

The outcome of the federal election showed that the majority of people, especially younger generations, rejected the most reactionary sections of the ruling class policies represented by Dutton's Liberal Party which represents the other side of the "mainstream" parliamentary political parties.

The ABC commentary after the election revealed that even die-hard Liberal voters in retirement villages in Dutton's own Seat of Dixon voted for the ALP candidate Ali France because of Dutton's nuclear power policy, his proposed cuts to public service jobs and his policy preference (later reversed) to prevent mainly women workers from working from home.

More experience of ALP in administering capitalism in Australia is a good thing. It will show people that "reforms" under the most reform-minded ALP government will not solve the problems of the people in Australia.

Through more experience of ALP in office, more working people will see that only a mighty mass movement outside of parliament for an independent, socialist Australia will provide the conditions for solving the many issues of the people in a sustainable way. Through their own struggles and experience of the limitations of "reforms", people will conclude that fundamental revolutionary change will be required.

 

Elections in WA

Written by: Allan M. on 1 April 2025

 

(Above: CFMEU members in WA  - Paid Up And Proud!)

2025 is a year of elections in WA, with Western Australians being asked to head to the polls to decide their State and Federal representatives. The State election here has just occurred, and WA Labor has had a decisive victory for a third term. Opposed by a Liberal/National Coalition (whose shambolic campaign, candidates, and policies are not worth further thought) the WA Labor Party entered their election campaign promising ‘a steady hand’ for WA. When looking back at their previous terms, we can see that this steady hand was used to quietly rob Western Australians of their future while enriching mining magnates and their political cronies.

The WA Labor Party experienced a record win in 2021, securing a 4-year term with no effective opposition in either house of Parliament. With this significant majority, WA Labor has had the opportunity the address major issues in our State. But in 2025, we face a huge housing crisis, with more and more families having to choose between rent payments and food, continued attacks on our natural environment, and attacks on worker power. 

With a record majority in Parliament, WA Labor promised to address the State’s seriously outdated rental laws. Soon after making this promise to the people of WA, the Labor government was falling over themselves to placate the landlords and property developer lobby, giving assurance after assurance that their proposed new law would not impact their ability to gouge tenants. What WA renters got from this law was a requirement that landlords are limited to a once-yearly rent increase, compared to the previous twice-yearly limit. What a comfort! To the landlord class, WA Labor delivered a massive green-light to continue their daylight robbery. With the retention of no-grounds evictions and the ability to increase rent to whatever they like on a yearly basis, landlords are still able to scare renters into shutting up and paying up for the privilege of living in low-quality housing. 

Now WA, like the rest of Australia, is in the midst of a massive housing crisis. In late 2024, Perth became the least affordable capital city to rent in, while 0% vacancy rates in many of our regional centres have led to rapidly increasing homelessness. Working families are in precarious conditions, having to find ways to keep up with extortionate rent increases or risk eviction. Many have been unable to keep up, shown by the growing number of families living out of cars. 

This is what the Labor party achieves when it faces no opposition.

With a record majority in Parliament, WA Labor promised to protect the State’s natural environment and heritage, while promoting sustainable economic growth. In the wake of the tragic destruction of Juukan Gorge in 2020, that vast majority of Western Australians were eager to see the arrogance of mining companies reined in. After introducing a new law to modernise the protection of Aboriginal heritage in WA, the WA government came under increasing pressure from pastoralists and smaller mining companies to water it down. Scared of a fight with industry, the WA Labor government revoked the law overnight and reverted our Aboriginal heritage protections to rely on a law from 1972. 

This disgraceful weakness of our ‘elected representatives’ and their deference to big industry continued throughout their term. Under pressure from mining and property developer lobbyists, the WA government introduced changes to our environmental protection laws with zero mandate or public consultation. These changes limited rights of appeal for the community, and changed the composition of the Environmental Protection Authority to enable greater representation of industry interests. The egregious lack of transparency in this process caused uproar for many Western Australians, but the WA Labor government was able to use their Parliamentary majority to push through the changes unopposed in late 2024. Shortly after, it was revealed that the WA Labor government also gave special privileges to Alcoa, allowing the mining giant to continue expanding its bauxite mine outside of Perth while an environmental assessment on that expansion was ongoing. It was further revealed that public servants advising the government told them that this could poison a significant portion of Perth’s water supply. Despite this, the WA Labor government allowed Alcoa to continue mining effectively without any constraints. 

This is how the Labor party uses it’s Parliamentary majority, not for the benefit of the workers, but to bow down to business interests.

With a record majority in Parliament, WA workers might have thought that the Labor government would enact policies from their allegedly ‘pro-worker’ platform. Instead, the WA Labor government used their majority to continue an attack on workers across the state. In 2022, WA nurses went on strike as part of their campaign for a pay-rise after years of being over-worked, understaffed, and protecting our community from Covid-19. Instead of supporting the workers, the WA Labor government attacked them through the Industrial Relations Commission. After continued pressure from the government, the nurses union were forced to call off their campaign and pay a $350,000 fine. 

In the Pilbara, where most of the State’s mining occurs, unions are looking to build up their membership and support mine workers who are experiencing worsening pay and conditions. Instead of supporting the unions, WA Labor has sided with their friends in the Chamber of Minerals and Energy, with the Deputy Premier stating that workers in WA ‘thrive without unions’. It should also come as no surprise that as the union presence in the Pilbara is growing, the WA Labor government joined in the attack on the CFMEU and introduced an arbitrary ‘fit and proper person’ test for any union representative seeking to enter a worksite. 

This is how the Labor party treats the workers when they fight for fair conditions.

The WA government has had a once-in-a-century opportunity to improve the lives of the WA community. With no effective opposition in Parliament and large public support, the government could have embarked on a series of reforms to ensure we have good housing, strong protections for our heritage sites and our natural environment, and good conditions for our workers. Western Australians can now see how the WA Labor government used their majority to cosy up to big business, for individuals to secure Board positions at Rio Tinto, BHP, or  FMG, and to attack the working class. The best thing to come out of this term of government has been that WA Labor has exposed to all Western Australians just how hostile they are to the working class. This is driving us to continue building the worker solidarity, to reject the bourgeois Parliamentary system, and to fight for a system that represents the working class and our interests.

Federal government breaks critical environmental promise

Written by: Leo A, on 25 March 2025

 

(Original image from the Australian)

On February 5, the Albanese Administration’s promise to create an environmental protection agency in the current parliamentary term was finally killed off. One Labor insider admitted to The Saturday Paper that this was due to the government having "the most powerful business interests in the country screaming" over the proposed legislation. 

In our current political system, it is easy for our so-called "leaders" to easily make promises that they know won’t be kept, and face no consequences in the aftermath. Similarly, it is easy for government to follow the will of big corporations and other fundamentally undemocratic forces, again without facing any consequences for betraying the interests both of the working masses and of our natural environments. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young described the decision as "a stunning capitulation to vested interests in the mining and logging lobby". 

The legislation aimed to establish Australia’s first independent national environmental regulator to enforce environmental laws, improve transparency, and enact stronger nature and wildlife protections. This, of course, is within a context of ongoing environmental catastrophe both in Australia and across the planet. And this catastrophe is affecting both well-documented ecosystems and species, and those which have yet to be sufficiently understood. Across the Pacific, the presumed-extinct South American Tapir has recently been sighted for the first time in over a century, and this Hidden Threatened Species is just one of countless examples that demonstrate that even the long lists of wildlife at risk of extinction are incomplete.  

Under capitalism, environmental protection is an uphill struggle, as any promises can be broken and any progress can be reversed. But it is a necessary struggle. For every presumed-extinct species that turns up alive, a dozen more - perhaps even a hundred more - are truly lost forever. Under socialism vast changes to protect these species will finally become fathomable, but we must still do what we can until then. 

 

 

Dan Duggan: A Tale of Two Pities

 Written by: Nick G. on 24 December 2024

 

Nothing says “hypocrisy” more than a Labor politician with words in his/her mouth.

On Monday, PM Albanese uttered certain memorable words in relation to Australian man Oscar Jenkins, captured by Russian imperialist troops in Ukraine.

Filmed being interrogated and slapped, Jenkins looked miserable.

Albanese vowed to “always look after Australians” after learning of Mr Jenkins’ situation.

It was a correct and appropriate response, albeit one that revealed the PM to be lying though his teeth.

For on the same day, the very same day, his Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus confirmed he has approved the extradition of US-born Australian citizen Daniel Duggan to the loving arms of the US judicial system as it passes under the control of incoming President Donald Trump.

Imperialism means persecution and oppression.

US imperialism and Russian imperialism are alike in that respect.

Dreyfus has just as vindictively slapped Duggan in the face by approving his extradition to the US. And not just Duggan, but his long-suffering wife Saffrine and their children who have now been separated from husband and father for more than two years while he has been held by US imperialism’s branch office in Australia.  

Saffrine said yesterday she felt the family had been "thrown out with the trash" by the Australian Government announcing Dan's extradition a few days before Christmas.

It is disgraceful and a complete injustice that Duggan has been held in solitary confinement in a NSW maximum security prison for 795 days having broken no Australian law and still innocent until proved guilty of fabricated Cold War charges brought against him by the US.

It must be a difficult thing to boast about “always looking after Australians” with your tongue stuck so fast to the big brown eye of your US masters!