The Socialist Equality Party will hold its final meetings in the 2019 federal election campaign over the next two weeks. SEP candidates for the Senate and the House of Representatives will speak on the urgent need to build an independent political movement of the working class, based on a socialist and internationalist program, against all the establishment parties—Labor, Liberal and Greens—and the myriad right-wing populist formations that their anti-immigrant and xenophobic policies have encouraged.
None of these organisations has any solution to the deepening global economic, political and social crisis of capitalism. Their promises amount to empty posturing, as the experience of the past several decades can testify. Over that period, wages for ordinary workers and young people have declined; social services, including public health, education and aged care, have been gutted, while deeply reactionary measures, such as the new foreign interference legislation and the elimination of the right of dual nationals to stand for parliament, have been introduced to attack and destroy fundamental democratic rights. This is part of a turn, by governments internationally, toward authoritarianism, the far-right and to advanced preparations for a new imperialist war.
Millions of voters regard politicians with distrust and contempt. So great is the hostility towards the current party leaders that, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Voting Compass site none of them scored a “pass” on either of the two qualities tested: trustworthiness and competence. More than 300,000 voters scored them less than 5 out of 10, with some as low as 1.2.
The government’s onslaught on democratic rights is expressed most sharply in its refusal to lift a finger against the arrest and jailing of Australian citizen and WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. Assange’s “offence” is that he uncovered the war crimes, lies and conspiracies of the major imperialist powers and exposed them to the world. In doing so, he was carrying out his responsibilities as a journalist—to stand up for the democratic rights of all to be informed, to freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of expression. That is why the SEP has placed our demand that the Australian government use its legal and diplomatic powers to bring Julian Assange home at the very centre of our election campaign.
The defence of democratic rights requires the struggle for socialism: that is, the mobilisation of the Australian and international working class to abolish the moribund capitalist profit system, and establish a workers’ government, which will expropriate the billionaires and nationalise the major corporations, banks and finance houses, placing them under the democratic control of the working class to fulfil social needs, not private profit. It is these critical issues that will be addressed at the SEP’s final election meetings.
Details:
Sydney
Date: Wednesday, May 15
Time: 7pm
Place: Boronia Room, Holroyd Centre, 17 Miller Street, Merrylands
Tickets: $5/$3 concession
Melbourne
Date: Sunday, May 12
Time: 2.30pm
Place: Broadmeadows Leisure Centre, 41-85 Tanderrum Way, Broadmeadows
Tickets: $5/$3 concession
On the previous day, the SEP is holding a rally in Melbourne: Free Julian Assange! Defend Democratic Rights!
Date: Saturday, May 11
Time: 1pm
Place: Hume Global Learning Centre, 1093 Pascoe Vale Rd, Broadmeadows
Newcastle
Date: Saturday, May 11
Time: 2.30pm
Place: North Cessnock Community Hall, Cnr of Church and Jurd St, Cessnock
Tickets: $5/$3 concession
Brisbane
Date: Wednesday, May 15
Time: 7pm
Place: SEP Oxley election office,
5/12 Queen St, Goodna,
(upstairs, above coffee shop, with lift access),
Tickets: $5/$3 concession
Authorised by James Cogan for the Socialist Equality Party, Suite 906, 185 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000.