Socialist Alliance NSW

Stop CSG - a fight for our future

2011-12-04T17:22:00.003+11:00

December 3, 2011
By Jess Moore
In the face of a broad and growing campaign, rhetoric from the NSW government is beginning to match some of the risks when it comes to coal seam gas (CSG) mining. This begs the question: what is being done when it comes to CSG?

In an interview about CSG mining on December 1, NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell told 2GB’s Alan Jones: “I don’t intend to allow — particularly after the drought we went through over a decade — mining or any other activity to threaten water resources.

“[CSG] exploration licences have been granted, in some cases permission to mine has been granted, in areas, frankly, that should never ever have been on the list.”

He said this was a legacy of the previous Labor government. But he also said his government was developing policy about “not surrendering all our land to mining interests.

“What we’re trying to ensure is that, before any of these things proceed, there is proper scientific study.” O’Farrell summed up the direction of government policy: “I don’t think any government — particularly the NSW government — is going to approve mining that is going to decimate the land or be unsafe for communities.”

These words mark a significant change to the government’s declared intent when it comes to CSG.

As recently as May this year, the NSW minister Duncan Gay told parliament: “The government provides a number of attractive incentives to encourage exploration, development and utilisation of the coal seam gas industry in New South Wales.”

In August, energy minister Chris Hartcher told mining executives that the NSW government is “open for business” — backing mining growth to drive the NSW economy.

Of course, there’s a context in which this change is happening.

An August 2011 Galaxy poll found 74% of people in NSW support a moratorium on CSG mining until more is known about the health and environmental impacts.

On October 16, thousands rallied across the state, as part of a national day of action to defend water resources.

A report by the Senate committee on rural affairs and transport, handed down on December 1, recommended no further CSG approvals be granted until further research is carried out. It also said some areas may need to be excluded from CSG mining altogether.

However, despite O’Farrell’s recent acknowledgement of the potential risks CSG poses to water resources, existing projects are not being stopped.

Given 25% of NSW is already under CSG exploration licences, his rhetoric is at odds with reality. Water resources are at risk and the government is not stopping it.

Further, it’s still the case that there is no legal requirement for the public to be told about a CSG exploration licence application. Nor do landholders get a say in exploration or production licence decisions.

Worse still, on November 21, a new CSG well was approved in NSW.

It was approved in a Sydney Catchment Authority Special Area — an area designed to protect the quality of drinking water for more than 4.3 million people.

The well flouts local environment controls and was approved despite concerns raised by the Sydney Catchment Authority — the government body tasked with maintaining healthy catchments.

The new well was approved during a parliamentary inquiry into CSG, under a process put in place by the O’Farrell government,

In this context, O’Farrell’s assurances that CSG is a Labor legacy issue, that his government will protect water, and that scientific research must come before further development, are clearly false.

The O’Farrell government is feeling public pressure, but it is clear the health of communities, drinking water, agricultural land and the environment are still at risk. The campaign to stop CSG must continue to grow to win the changes that match O’Farrell’s rhetoric.

Meanwhile, communities can, and are doing, what the government refuses to do.

In the Illawarra, CSG exploration has stalled as a direct result of public opposition. The November 26 Illawarra Mercury reported that Andrew Davis, who chaired CSG company Ormil Energy’s recent annual general meeting, said: “There has been considerable criticism … which has made the obtaining of approvals rather more difficult than was originally anticipated.”

In the Liverpool Plains, a three-week blockade by farmers ended in victory in mid-November, when Santos put off plans to drill exploratory CSG wells at Spring Ridge.

Lock the Gate Alliance president Drew Hutton calls these blockades the “people’s moratorium” against CSG. At a Sydney rally on November 22, he said industry and government could expect this to continue until government action catches up to the needs of communities.

Orica plant shutdown affects coal industry

2011-12-01T19:08:00.001+11:00

November 26, 2011
By Niko Leka, Newcastle
After ammonia gas leaked from Orica’s Kooragang Island chemical plant on November 9 and made two people four kilometers away very ill, the Environment Protection Authority ordered the plant to shut down.

But because Orica is its major supplier, the Hunter’s coal industry has as little as three to four weeks of explosives in stock.

The largest Hunter mining company, Coal & Allied, told the November 22 Newcastle Herald it had cut production due to the explosives shortage.e

The Herald reported that Premier Barry O’Farrell said through a spokesperson: “While the NSW government recognises there are some impacts on industry, it is up to Orica to do the work required to convince the relevant authorities that it can operate safely.’’

Stockton Community Action Group members are concerned about the plant and wanted it kept closed, spokesman Keith Craig said. In August, another leak from the Orica plant covered Stockton — a nearby suburb — with toxic chemicals.

Environment Protection Authority chief Greg Sullivan told the Herald he understood the concerns of Stockton residents in nearby suburbs but had no grounds to keep the facility shut once Orica had satisfied the “prevention notices” issued by the authority.

New Wollongong council backs community

2011-12-01T19:06:00.002+11:00

November 25, 2011
By Chris Williams, Wollongong
Wollongong City Council, elected on September 3, has so far made several decisions that reflect community will in the area. This is a refreshing change from the years of corruption scandals that rocked the last elected council and the four-year unelected administration that followed it.

All 13 councillors, including four Liberal, four Labor, three independent and two Green, are under immense pressure to deliver outcomes for the community. Key election issues included democracy, transparency and accountability.

On October 10, council resolved unanimously to scrap an unpopular development plan at Bald Hill in the northern Illawarra, urged the NSW government to rule out coal seam gas (CSG) mining in the region's water catchments, and said it will work with state and federal governments to purchase and protect 586 hectares of environmentally significant escarpment land at Maddens Plains.

The meeting also resolved, with the four Liberal councillors voting against, to work to protect the Dharawal State Conservation Park from any activity that could adversely affect its ecological integrity.

On October 31, council resolved unanimously to ask the Southern Councils Group and other local councils in the water supply catchment area to urge the NSW government to rule out CSG in the catchments.

It also voted to canvass private and public sector partners to fund free WiFi in Wollongong Mall, to reinforce its opposition to deeply unpopular Calderwood residential development and to join the legal case against the Cringila dump.

The council’s decision to join the Cringila dump case is a response to overwhelming local community opposition to the dump proposal.

Council also unanimously resolved to establish an Environment and Sustainability Reference Group and a Bicycle, Pedestrian and Public Transport Reference Group, for “promoting cycling, walking and public transport for improved health and environmental outcomes”.

More Orica toxic chemical leaks in Newcastle

2011-11-21T07:50:00.002+11:00

November 19, 2011
By Niko Leka, Newcastle
Two people were hospitalised with breathing difficulties in the Newcastle suburb of Mayfield East on November 9. NSW Fire and Rescue crews identified the cause as ammonia gas blown from the Orica chemical plant five kilometres away on Kooragang Island.

The Environment Protection Authority ordered the entire Orica site to be closed. A Fire and Rescue spokesperson said an estimated 900 kilograms of the gas had escaped over about an hour.

On November 10 NSW environment minister Robyn Parker said: “There is something systematically wrong at Orica and I am calling on the top person at Orica whoever that might be to step up and explain to the community.” When asked, she could not name the “top person”.

Greens councilor Michael Osborne told a November 14 public forum, which was held as part of a NSW upper house inquiry into an August 8 hexavalent chromium leak from the Orica plant, that 44,000 people lived within a four-kilometre radius of the plant.

On November 15, Orica chief executive Graeme Liebelt told the upper house inquiry he didn’t think the leaking of carcinogenic hexavalent chromium onto suburban Stockton should be called a “serious incident”.

The November 16 Newcastle Herald said that Orica admitted the hexavalent chromium leak was probably twice as large as previously thought, and that “it then emerged, from official statistics, that the plant had released 69,000 kilograms of ammonia in uncontrolled leaks over the previous year”.

Orica’s annual report, released on November 14, showed a full-year after-tax profit of $642 million. The August leak had cost Orica $21 million to September 30, the annual report said.

Police try to ban Socialist Alliance from Newtown Festival

2011-11-13T15:02:00.006+11:00

Sunday, November 13, 2011
By Peter Boyle
Socialist Alliance (SA) stallholders at today’s Newtown Festival were told today by a festival organiser that NSW Police had urged them to ban SA and Occupy Sydney from the festival.

The SA has paid for and run a stall every year at the festival. But this year police threatened organisers — the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre — with a $16,000 bill if they did not carry out the ban, saying that the presence of SA and/or Occupy Sydney might incite trouble.

The festival organisers allowed the SA stall regardless. But early on the day a squad of armed police and a private security officer who pointed to our "Socialist Alliance supports Occupy" banner and said: "That is the problem"

SA activist and local community activist Rachel Evans spoke to festival organisers who said that they had no problems with the stall or the banner.

Later acting Superintendent Anthony Metcalf from Newtown Police station came to the stall and told the Socialist Alliance’s Susan Price that the police wanted to protect the safety of the festival goers, which could be disrupted if far right-wing groups were to approach the stall.

Socialist Alliance’s Pip Hinman told Green Left Weekly: "Socialist Alliance members, along with many others with a broad range of political views, have been active in Occupy Sydney, which opposes the tyranny of the richest 1% over the 99%. We are proud of this involvement and support for the global Occupy movement.

"This an outrageous attack on freedom of political expression in Newtown which has a strong tradition of political and cultural diversity. Socialist Alliance is a respected political party in this community. Any attempts at political censorship by the NSW police or any other authority will meet strong opposition from local residents."

NSW teachers vote for 24-hour stopwork

2011-11-06T10:21:00.001+11:00

Saturday, November 5, 2011
By John Gauci, Sydney
Thousands of New South Wales high school and primary school teachers stopped work for two hours on November 2. They voted overwhelmingly to reject the Coalition O’Farrell state government’s salary offer.

Ninety-nine percent of teachers at the stopwork meetings also voted to hold a 24-hour stopwork action on November 29 if the government refused to make a reasonable salary offer.

Teachers will consider further industrial action at the start of 2012 if a reasonable offer is not made by then.

Teachers rejected the government’s 2.5% yearly pay rise. This amounts to a real wage cut, as inflation is running at 3.5%.

The offer is also tied to negotiations around the government’s Local Schools Local Decisions policy. This policy aims to replace permanent teacher positions with fixed-term contracts. It also shifts the responsibility to staff schools from the government to local schools.

Most NSW TAFE teachers were advised by the NSW Teachers Federation not to take part in the November 2 stopwork action for fear of breaching federal industrial laws. But some TAFE teachers who were not rostered on to work were able to take part in the meetings.

A danger of underpaying teachers is that it risks creating a teacher shortage. Many teachers from the baby boomer generation are due for retirement and fewer young people are choosing teaching as a profession.

Teachers federation president Bob Lipscome said: “No parent will thank the O’Farrell government if it succeeds in making teaching such an unattractive proposition that it becomes impossible to ensure there is a properly qualified teacher in front of their child's class.”

On November 1, Justice Trish Kavanagh of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission ruled the government’s salary offer was inconsistent with its stage wages policy. She said because the offer was made in late October, it did not allow a reasonable bargaining period.

The decision is a slap in the face to the O’Farrell government, which made an election pledge of openness, transparency and good faith bargaining.

NSW public school teachers to stop work

2011-10-31T19:21:00.002+11:00

Saturday, October 29, 2011
By John Gauci, Sydney
NSW secondary and primary public school teachers will stop work for two hours on November 2 to consider any salary offer from the state government. Should no fair and reasonable offer be made, the meetings will consider taking a 24-hour strike at the end of November.

The NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF) is demanding Barry O’Farrell’s government begin good faith negotiations immediately.

The federation has proposed an offer, but the Liberal state government has failed to respond or begin negotiations for a new salaries award.

The current award agreement expires on December 31. In the past, new award negotiations have taken several months. The new state industrial laws do not allow retrospective payments, which explains why the government is delaying negotiations.

The NSW government wages policy requires the government’s Wages Policy Task Force or its Expenditure Review Committee to begin the bargaining process three months before an existing industrial agreement expires and before an offer is made.

But it also requires government agencies to approach negotiations in a cooperative manner, which the O’Farrell government has failed to do.

So far, there is no evidence of compliance with either the spirit or the word of these aspects of the Wages Policy. Alarmingly, by failing to make any offer and trying to change the employment arrangements of thousands of TAFE teachers without notice or negotiation, the government seems intent on disrupting and delaying negotiations.

TAFE teachers who are rostered to work are prohibited from taking part in the November 2 stopwork and face severe fines if they take part in industrial action.

O’Farrell to savage TAFE teachers' wages, conditions

2011-10-26T15:13:00.002+11:00

Wednesday, October 26, 2011
By John Gauci
Teachers say the Barry O’Farrell Coalition state government has divulged its plans to cut TAFE wages and conditions and then likely privatise it by splitting TAFE teachers away from the collective bargaining power of their primary and secondary teacher colleagues.

Education minister Adrian Piccoli introduced changes to the TAFE commission act into the NSW parliament on October 11 without notice or consultation with the New South Wales Teachers Federation (NSWTF).

On October 19, the bill to amend was passed by Parliament with the support of the Shooters and Fishers Party. This means that once the bill is proclaimed, the TAFE Commission will once again employ all staff working for TAFE NSW.

High school and primary school teachers plan to stop work for two hours on November 2 to discuss their forthcoming salary campaign. However, these changes will stop TAFE teachers from taking part in these stop work salary negotiations.

The bill will only preserve core TAFE conditions for a 12-month transition period. TAFE employees will then be forced to negotiate one or more enterprise agreements. Existing award conditions that are not permitted under the Fair Work Act 2009 will be lost.

If negotiations fail, it is likely TAFE teachers will fall under the federal Educational Services (Post-Secondary Education) Award 2010 where the maximum rate is $52,000 a year. This is a significant pay cut.

Wollongong TAFE Teachers Federation spokesperson Rob Long said: “Teachers are shocked by the disgraceful attack on TAFE teachers by the O'Farrell government.

“At a time when TAFE will need to retain and recruit the best employees, this attack on wages and conditions will have a detrimental effect.”

Piccoli’s manoeuvre is an attack against all NSWTF members because it will delay award negotiations with primary, secondary and TAFE teachers, which were scheduled to begin this month.

The NSWTF recently wrote to the government to commence negotiations for a new salaries award, but currently no salary offer has been made. Worst of all, this is a direct attack on the wages and conditions of fellow NSWTF members.

Federation president Bob Lipscombe also condemned the government's decision.

He said on October 11: “In what appears to be little more than a cynical move to stop TAFE teachers negotiating fair and reasonable salary increases as their current salaries award ends, the O'Farrell government is attempting to shift the teachers from their state award to coverage under the Federal government’s industrial legislation.”

Greens upper house MP John Kaye said on October 12: “Education Minister Adrian Piccoli is deliberately undermining the collective strength of public sector teachers and their union. Splitting TAFE teachers away from their colleagues in schools will no doubt make it easier for the O’Farrell government to attack wages and conditions.

“Teachers forced onto the Federal award are likely to face individual contracts. Staff will have to work longer hours for less pay. Student learning will inevitably suffer.

“This is a direct attack on the union. Under federal law, payroll deduction of membership fees is illegal, making it much harder to maintain density in a highly casualised sector.

“Minister Piccoli's decision to cut TAFE off from the state public sector is another cog in the wheel of vocational education and training privatisation. Both the Gillard and O'Farrell governments have no interest in public provision.”

The NSWTF has urged its members to write to their state member, the Minister and Premier to express their anger. Collective industrial action across all education sectors will be needed to defeat these attacks.

Coal seam gas on the ropes

2011-10-17T14:23:00.002+11:00

By Ash Pemberton
More than 3000 people turned out on October 16 to walk across the Seacliff Bridge in the Illawarra in protest against coal seam gas mining plans in the area. The protest was further proof the coal seam gas (CSG) industry is in trouble. Its problem? An informed public.

The Australian said on October 10 that a survey had showed the CSG industry was “losing the PR battle”, with 63% of respondents recalling a negative media story about CSG.

Driving the bad coverage has been the large grassroots campaign against the industry.

The CSG industry has responded to its unpopularity in two main ways. It is carrying out a rapid expansion of drilling to embed the industry in the economy. And it is trying to counter concerns about CSG by blurring the facts and attacking its opponents.

The CSG industry has increasingly resorted to media spin to try to set aside concerns about toxic chemicals, water contamination, destruction of farmland, damage to human health and fire hazards. Its biggest lie is that CSG is a “clean” alternative to coal.

The widely mocked “We Want CSG” ad campaign sponsored by the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) is the most brazen example of this so far. The ads claimed CSG produces “up to” 70% less greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

Matthew Wright of climate solutions research group Beyond Zero Emissions told the October 8 Sydney Morning Herald that CSG was “perhaps 30% cleaner than new black coal-fired plants. After conversion to liquefied natural gas, CSG is likely to prove, at best, marginally cleaner than new coal, and possibly worse”.

APPEA has based its claims of CSG’s “greenness” on a report it commissioned from engineering company WorleyParsons. However, APPEA has refused to release the full report to the public saying the information is a commercial secret.

APPEA also attacked a submission to a Senate inquiry by rural anti-CSG group Lock the Gate by quibbling over a small details in order to undermine the entire submission. Lock the Gate spokesperson Drew Hutton told Ninemsn: “APPEA misinterpreted and took out of context parts of Lock the Gate’s submission.”

The CSG industry has also launched personal attacks on anti-CSG campaigners.

The Australian, the NSW Coalition government and APPEA tried to manufacture a scandal on October 11 by targeting campaign group Stop CSG Illawarra for using a post office box shared by several left-wing groups. They also attacked Stop CSG Illawarra members Jess Moore and Chris Williams for being members of the Socialist Alliance.

This clumsy attempt to divide the movement has brought the CSG industry’s propaganda efforts, and their connection with the mainstream media and government, into sharper focus. That people from the left are involved in environment campaigns is hardly news.

Williams told Green Left Weekly the attacks showed CSG supporters were afraid of honest debate.

“The CSG industry is losing this debate,” he said. “And so they should: the facts are not on their side. In a desperate attempt to divide and undermine the community campaign, they're trying to discredit leading campaigners.

“But people in our community can see straight through it. They know the fight to protect our water, health and environment is too important to risk.”

He said the threat of CSG mining had united and empowered a large and diverse group of people who would not have otherwise engaged in activism.

“The stop CSG campaign here is the broadest, deepest and most democratic campaign the Illawarra has seen for many years. The mass participation — not only during actions but also for our 100-plus monthly organising meetings — is testament to this.”

Occupy to put human need before corporate greed

2011-10-14T12:56:00.002+11:00

The Socialist Alliance released the following statement on October 14, 2011.
The Occupy Wall Street protest started small. But it has now become a global movement, with occupy events planned in about 1500 cities worldwide.

It’s born out of the recognition that, in country after country, ordinary people are being made to pay for an economic crisis caused by the super-rich. The 99% are being told they must surrender their livelihoods, their future, their security and their dignity to keep a broken system afloat.

In contrast, the 1% are having a wonderful crisis. The world’s biggest corporations have emerged stronger, more profitable and more powerful than ever before.

To add insult to injury, the 1% want to convince us that we, the 99%, are to blame for the crisis. They say our wages are too high and that we don’t work hard enough. They say our social security systems are not affordable and that our rights at work are should be done away with. They say our public education and health systems are not efficient and that our public services must be privatised.

The occupy movement is raising a challenge to the power of the 1%. Its strength lies in its diversity, breadth, unity and grassroots democracy.

In New York, after two weeks of discussion, the protesters agreed on a declaration that said none of our big problems can be overcome unless the 99% can unite in a movement for real democracy.

The occupy movement has spread to Australia, with protests planned to start here from October 15.

It’s true the economic situation here is not yet as dire as in the US, where the richest 400 Americans have more wealth than the poorest 150 million.

But Australia is headed in the same direction. We should not wait to protest until things get as bad as the US, Spain or Greece, where inequality reigns supreme.

Inequality in Australia is large and growing. Already, the richest 20% of Australians have 61% of the wealth. The poorest 20% have just 1% of the wealth. Australia’s richest 11 individuals have more than the poorest 800,000 households combined.

Further, there are many reasons why we should take this opportunity to start to bring Australia’s own 1% to account.

We should occupy because White Australia has occupied stolen Aboriginal land for more than two centuries. The dispossession of Aboriginal land and culture continues today with the infamous Northern Territory intervention, which is forcing Aboriginal people from their traditional homelands. Today, Aboriginal Australians are the most imprisoned people in the world. To Australia’s eternal shame, their life expectancy is still 19 years lower than other Australians.

We should occupy cities in Australia because the richest mining and energy corporations already occupy our atmosphere, pumping it full of greenhouse gases and ignoring the warnings from scientists that climate change threatens to destroy life as we know it.

We should occupy because coal seam gas and other fossil fuel companies already occupy our farmlands, our forests, our drinking water catchments and our communities. With government support, the fossil fuel industry has free reign across the country, regardless of the serious health and pollution risks.

We should occupy because the Australian military already occupies other countries, and is bringing endless war and countless civilian deaths to Afghanistan.

We should occupy because Australian governments, Liberal and Labor, have occupied Australia with refugee detention centres — modern-day concentration camps that bring immense suffering to desperate asylum seekers that deserve our help.

We should occupy because government laws already occupy our relationships, denying the right of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people to marry if they choose and making queers second-class citizens without equal rights.

We should occupy because restrictive anti-union laws already occupy our workplaces, denying the right of working people to organise to defend their rights at work.

We should occupy because governments have helped corporations occupy our public assets, turning services for the public good into profit machines for the 1%.

And we should occupy because Australia’s richest corporations already occupy our parliaments, state and federal.

The best democracy capitalism can deliver today is the right to tick a box once every few years. Between elections, corporations have open access to politicians while the rest of us are shut out, expected to bear the consequences in silence.

The 1% give millions to the big political parties each year and they demand a return on their investment. They skew the mainstream media debate in their interests because they are the mainstream media. They pour millions into cynical public relations and advertising campaigns. Corporate power over the political process is growing relentlessly.

The global 1% will not change their ways on their own account. Profit and greed are their only gods. Only the 99%, acting together, can put an end to the system of corporate rule and build something new in its place, a system that puts human need before corporate greed.

We won’t be silenced. Our power lies in our numbers. United as communities, with our unions and with each other, we can raise a challenge to corporate power.

O’Farrell government attacks TAFE

2011-10-10T11:40:00.002+11:00

By John Gauci, Sydney
NSW education minister Adrian Piccol has announced a process of “community consultation on the reform of TAFE and the vocational education and training sector in NSW”.

The NSW Liberal government plans to repeat its Victorian counterpart’s attacks on public education and further privatise vocational education. The government plans to encourage private colleges and universities to undercut TAFE providers. It will offer a publicly-funded student voucher system to achieve this.

Private providers will be financed by public funding for every student they attract through the proposed voucher system. Students on low incomes would also be forced to repay HECS-style student loans once they begin working. These attacks were announced in a discussion paper released on September 28.

Charging students for the right to be educated is likely to discourage people on low incomes from post-school education for fear of accruing further debt. Peter de Graaff, the assistant general-secretary of post-school education with the NSW Teachers Federation, told the September 29 Sydney Morning Herald: “Students are already entitled to go to TAFE now at a modest cost. What we’ve seen in Victoria is that a student entitlement means driving fees up and it means forcing people into debt.”

Greens MP John Kaye condemned the student loans proposal.

“It will put an even greater financial burden on the shoulders of students. Adrian Piccoli is clearly playing with the same disastrous privatisation agenda that is devastating TAFE and pushing up student fees and charges in Victoria. In the brave new world of training markets, students will pay more and TAFE will be forced into a race to the bottom in quality,” he told the SMH.

NSW has the largest vocational education and training system in Australia with more than 2000 training organisations and an estimated 830,000 students. TAFE NSW currently educates more than 550,000 TAFE students across 10 institutes and more than 130 campuses.

Under government’s plans, a public subsidy for a student is cashed in by whichever education provider the student chooses, forcing TAFEs to compete on every course they offer and close if they fail to attract enough students.

Private colleges can undercut TAFEs by providing an inferior education — forcing teachers onto lower rates of pay with lower working conditions, employing teachers with less qualifications and increasing class sizes.

Ultimately, teachers, student and the community lose out because teachers will be forced to do more work for less pay, students will accrue huge debts and the community will be serviced by graduates with inferior levels of education.

Last year, NSW TAFE and adult migrant education services (AMES) was stripped of $50 million worth of federal funding. The federal government's competitive tendering policy took funding from TAFE Language, Literacy and Numeracy Program (LLNP) courses. In NSW, many TAFEs lost their tenders to private providers.

Local audits of the LLNP at TAFE colleges showed that delivery was of high quality with successful outcomes. TAFE teachers had university teacher education qualifications and experience working with adult learners. Teachers in private colleges are paid well below the TAFE award and endure inferior working conditions.

As a result, students were pushed into lower quality education. Hundreds of TAFE and AMES-equivalent full-time teaching positions were lost.

Many students yet to finish TAFE or AMES courses were forced to attend private institutions. Many private providers lack infrastructure and university qualified teachers, as well as the counselling services offered by TAFE and AMES.

NSW to charge fees for preschools

2011-10-10T11:30:00.003+11:00

By John Gauci, Sydney
As part of its attacks on the NSW public sector, the O’Farrell Liberal government will begin charging parents up to $40 a day for each child they send to the once-free public preschools run by the Department of Education and Community Services (DEC). The fees will be introduced next year to the 100 DEC preschools across NSW.

These preschools were established to improve the educational opportunities for students in poor socio-economic areas, including communities that may be isolated, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

These schools are located in places such as Boggabilla, Claymore, Doonside and Walgett. Education research highlights that children with the opportunity to access preschool education have significant improvements in learning outcomes, including numeracy and literacy.

Most DEC preschools are attached to public schools, which receive substantial additional state and federal funding aimed at providing more support to overcome educational disadvantage in their communities. These attacks on public education could impact on enrolment numbers in the most disadvantaged communities.

On September 16, NSW Minister for Education Adrian Piccoli said the fees would not go back to preschools.

“The idea wasn’t to inject more funds back into the system, but to bring public preschool funding in line with community preschools.”

The government is justifying its measures on the grounds of “consistency across the early childhood and care sector”. However, salaries, teacher qualification and teacher to child ratios are superior in DEC preschools. Will they also be subject to the “consistency” test?

The DEC has issued a schedule of fees to groups of schools based on their Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage rating. Families will be charged fees ranging from $1 to $40 a child, depending on the socio-economic status and Aboriginality. Some may be exempt from any fee.

Schools will also be burdened with a huge administrative workload. Principals will be left open to complaints regarding the level of fees charged and exemptions.

In August, Piccoli acknowledged that NSW “lags behind other states and territories in both participation rates and affordability” in preschools. Introducing fees in DEC preschools will only widen this gap.

Public education must be free and accessible to all. The New South Wales Teachers Federation is encouraging members of the community to voice their opposition to fees by writing to the premier and Minister for Education.

Newcastle residents not happy with coal seam gas

2011-10-10T11:23:00.002+11:00

By Niko Leka, Newcastle
Dart energy has a licence to drill for coal seam gas in a 2000 square kilometer area (in pink) that includes suburban Newcastle. Just about every passerby stopped at a recent Green Left Weekly stall in Hamilton, Newcastle, to sign a Lock the Gate Alliance petition for a moratorium on coal seam gas (CSG) mining.

All those who stopped were concerned about plans to mine CSG at nearby Fullerton Cove.

The Newcastle Herald reported on a recent community consultation held by Dart Energy, where Fullerton Cove residents’ spokesperson Sue Walker said: “The environmental concerns over the water table, salinity, subsidence — regardless of what Dart says — remain real, but on top of that, if they end up building a spider’s web of drilling rigs out behind our houses, we won’t able to live in them and nobody is going to want to buy them.”

One online comment on the article asked: “Why does Dart think only Fullerton Cove residents would be concerned about this drilling? It has the potential to affect everyone accessing Hunter Water reserves if it is a threat to the Tomago Sandbeds.

“They [Dart Energy] should be holding meetings in Newcastle and Maitland as well — not expecting people from Swansea to travel to Williamtown.”

The Herald reported that Dart Energy Australia chief executive Robbert de Weijer said the Fullerton Cove drilling was a small “test appraisal program” and that commerical drilling would be “a number of years away”, and then only after “community consultation, public scrutiny and government approvals”.

The Dart website purports to address “myths” about CSG.

Unfortunately it does not list what these myths are, nor provide any evidence of their existence.

In giving an overview of CSG, the website repeatedly claims CSG is “natural” gas. First it describes CSG as “simply natural gas extracted at low pressure from coal”. Then it states that “as an end-use product” CSG is the same as natural gas.

A third repetition declares that “the only difference between CSG and natural gas is in the way that it is formed by nature. CSG is composed predominantly of methane and small percentages of nitrogen and carbon dioxide.”

Digging deeper into the site, it seems there is an intent to portray the amount of water made toxic by CSG mining as minimal. It advises “the volume and quality of water produced during CSG at this stage varies greatly between areas”.

It adds “typical water volumes in the NSW are significantly lower than other CSG areas such as Queensland”. It does not provide any facts or explain the significance of this.

Just how “typical” these volumes of water are at Fullerton Cove, and how they vary in the surrounding 2000 square kilometres (stretching from Belmont in the south to Myall Lakes in the north) remains a mystery.

The website claims that it’s community consultations are “about being open and honest ... about our activities”. However, it does not supply any local contact details.

It claims: “If you agree to let Dart operate on your land, we will negotiate a land access and compensation agreement with you.” It does not say if Dart will accept a blanket refusal.

The CSG companies are unlikely to simply go away. Dart cites a CSIRO estimate that “CSG resources in QLD and NSW are in excess of 250 trillion cubic feet, enough energy to power both states for 400 years at current demand ... [and] gas demand in NSW is expected to triple over the next 20 years”.

People in Newcastle are not satisfied with Dart Energy’s so-called public consultation. Many will come to the Newcastle protest on October 14 at Foreshore Park, part of national protests against CSG.

Groups call on O’Farrell to back wind power

2011-09-25T15:13:00.002+10:00

Several community environment groups released the statement below on September 22.
* * *
Environment, health and community groups have gathered in Sydney on September 22 to discuss the future of wind energy in NSW. As electricity prices continue to rise for most NSW households, the groups have welcomed reports from South Australia that wind power is cutting pollution and lowering the wholesale market cost of electricity.

Nature Conservation Council of NSW CEO Pepe Clarke said: “NSW should join South Australia who are not only benefiting from the reduced emissions of wind power but cheaper energy prices at the same time.

“Wind power is a mature technology capable of providing a proven, cost-effective way of meeting the NSW government’s 20% renewable energy by 2020 target.”

Beyond Zero Emissions strategic director Mark Ogge said: “Right now, there are more than $10.4 billion worth of wind farm proposals waiting for the green light to generate enough power for more than 2.3 million homes.

“A huge opportunity for new investment and job creation awaits NSW.”

100% Renewable campaign spokesperson Lindsay Soutar said: “The state government’s own research, together with local community surveys of more than 12,500 people show high levels of public support for renewable energy.

“Nearly 90% of people we spoke to supported the introduction of more renewable energy as a way of managing rising energy prices.”

Community support for wind is also strong in regional areas where community groups are starting to initiate their own wind projects.

Adam Blakester from New England Wind, which is working to establish Australia’s first large-scale community wind farm, said: “In the New England, our survey of 1300 people showed overwhelming support for wind power and 110 landholders have expressed interest in hosting the community wind farm.”

This contrasts with Victoria, where new and unworkable wind farm guidelines are causing a big community backlash.

Friends of the Earth Melbourne campaigner Ben Courtice said: “The Victorian premier is facing a huge amount of heat from communities who were looking forward to the economic benefits of wind.

“But Victoria’s loss is NSW’s opportunity.”

University of Sydney School of Public Health’s Professor Simon Chapman said: “A review of all evidence on the health effects of wind turbines published this week concluded there is no evidence that wind turbines directly cause diseases.”

Doctors for the Environment spokesperson Dr Merryn Redenbach said: “As a clean, healthy and safe source of power, wind energy will play a critical role in the transition away from polluting and dangerous coal power to a renewable energy future.”

The groups are calling on NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell to ensure the wind guidelines that are being developed incorporate measures for strong community consultation and the continued growth of the wind industry in NSW.

Locals lose confidence in Orica after spill

2011-09-20T10:28:00.002+10:00

By Niko Leka, Newcastle
As time passes, the reasons the public might have for trusting chemical company Orica and the NSW environment minister Robyn Parker are evaporating.

On the night of August 8, highly toxic hexavalent chromium leaked from Orica’s Kooragang Island plant and blew over the Newcastle suburb of Stockton.

Orica notified the NSW environment department at 10.45am the next morning. Orica representatives began doorknocking residents in Stockton on August 10. Parker says she was not told of the accident until that night.

Stockton residents were not officially notified of the accident until August 11.

The residents, angered at the company and the government’s response, have called for the an “independent monitoring system” for the plant, said the September 14 Newcastle Star.

The September 14 Newcastle Herald said the company was also “battling to contain the environmental effects of decades of arsenic sludge dumping on its Kooragang Island site”.

The arsenic is leaking though the groundwater into the Hunter River. The Herald uncovered the reports of the remediation attempts.

Newcastle City Greens councillor Michael Osborne told the Herald the council not been informed of Orica’s arsenic remediation efforts previously. “I have no confidence in Orica’s processes whatsoever,” he said.

On September 15, the Herald published an opinion piece by Parker, which defended her response to the Orica spill.

Parker claimed that since the leak there had been a “great deal of misinformation in the public arena”.

She claimed Orica’s delay in notifying the public of the August accident was “totally unacceptable”, saying Orica should have “done as they were supposed to and picked up the phone to Hazmat immediately”.

Yet she also said “current procedures were responsible for the delay”.

She said there was a need to “change inadequate laws” to “ensure the regulator is doing its job”. However, she claimed that when she was notified “all authorities were doing their job, as they always had.”

O’Farrell slashes jobs, flags privatisations

2011-09-19T12:37:00.003+10:00

By Anabel Morales Nogues
Green Left Weekly, Saturday, September 17, 2011
The Barry O’Farrell Coalition government has promised it will make “New South Wales number one” again. We are assured this will mean improving transport, health and education infrastructure and strengthening the public sector that delivers these services to the people of NSW.

The “horror budget” some media promised was delivered on September 6. This budget does little to improve public services. Instead, the state’s fiscal output rests on strengthening private sector spending.

This is to be delivered by closing three of the state’s prisons, privatising Sydney Ferries, selling the Sydney desalination plant and outsourcing road maintenance services.

It is expected that additional budget announcements, detailing a further $8 billion in cuts, will be made over the coming months.

Outsourcing of information and communication technology jobs and further privatisations are on the cards.

Former premier Nick Greiner, now head of Infrastructure NSW, believes this would be “absolutely unavoidable” if the government intends to keep its promise to fund infrastructure projects.

Greiner said on September 16 that to fund improvements to infrastructure “you’ve got to get the money from somewhere”.

That is, somewhere other than the state’s senior executive service, who were afforded a generous 4% pay rise late last year under the previous ALP government, taking the maximum senior executive annual salary to almost $500,000.

The stage for September’s budget was set as far back as March 29, only days after O’Farrell’s election victory.

He announced a fictional $5.2 billion budget “black hole” and told the public tough decisions needed to be made to fill it.

The Labor opposition quickly jumped on these reports, claiming up to 80,000 public sector jobs were in the firing line.

So when the budget was handed down, little fanfare was made of the 5000 public sector jobs to go.

Even the assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, Steve Turner, told the September 7 Sydney Morning Herald this number was “heartening” because it was lower than the rumoured 20,000 job losses.

Yet this figure represents more than the total workforce employed in Community Services (formerly the Department of Community Services, now part of the new Department of Family and Community Services.)

The 5000 jobs cuts are to be made by “voluntary redundancies” of employees the government identifies as excess.

The policy for managing excess staff was implemented on August 1, in preparation for September’s budget.

In cases where the initial retrenchment offer is not accepted, the policy allows staff a three-month window to seek redeployment. If unsuccessful, they will be retrenched on a significantly reduced package.

The government has promised to deliver improvements to the state’s services and provide value for money to the NSW taxpayer. These promises will be achieved by sacking thousands of public servants and reducing services to those most in need.

The Department of Family and Community Services has acknowledged it is characterised by growth — growth in demand for disability and ageing services, a growth in housing crises with more than 43,000 people on the Housing NSW waiting list, and a 15% a year growth of the 17,400 children now in out-of-home care.

The state budget passed on these costs by raising public housing rents and lowering the allowance paid to foster carers.

To fund improvements to frontline services, support roles will be cut across the public sector. This means frontline staff will instead be tied up doing this work.

NSW Health is to lose 300 administrative jobs, and a further 350 will be shed from transport services.

An additional 350 jobs will be lost from corrective services. This brings the 5000 job loss figure to 6000.

Add to this the job losses previously announced and additional jobs to go that are being identified within state departments.

The 2010 public sector staffing freeze remains in place. This prevents any non-frontline jobs from being filled and has created numerous vacancies. Public sector jobs, therefore, were already artificially low.

The NSW Treasurer Mike Baird announced in his budget that further cuts to the public sector workforce will occur through staff turnover and natural attrition — that is, not replacing workers who resign or retire.

The 2.5% public sector wage cap and forced “productivity savings” is expected to save the government $2 billion a year.

However, $1.5 billion of this is already eaten away with poker machine tax breaks provided to pubs and clubs, payroll tax relief, and the $7000 handout for families to move away from Sydney.

Even the thousands of new jobs promised to be generated in the private sector statewide are in doubt, with employment in fact decreasing.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show 10,000 jobs were lost across Australia in August, full-time work was lost to part-time positions and the private sector is becoming circumspect about future recruiting, warning 2011 will be the worst year for job growth in 19 years.

This puts into question the NSW budget’s revenue forecast and the expected return to surplus.

Senate, NSW Legislative Council slander BDS protesters

2011-09-16T15:44:00.004+10:00

By Tony Iltis
Green Left Weekly, Friday, September 16, 2011
A motion condemning anti-apartheid protests targeting the Max Brenner chain of chocolate and coffee shops was passed by the Australian Senate on September 13.

The motion was moved by Queensland Nationals Senator Ron Boswell and supported by all parties except for the Greens.

Another motion, from Liberal Senator Eric Abetz, “condemning the Australian Greens and their leader for failing to condemn the vile boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel” was defeated. The Senate debate, premised on the slanderous assumptions such as that Max Brenner was targeted for being Israeli-owned or even for being Jewish-owned, was littered with accusations of anti-Semitism and lurid comparisons to attacks on Jewish businesses in Nazi Germany.

Liberal and Labor politicians, like the mainstream media, have consistently ignored that Australian BDS supporters have targeted the Max Brenner chain because of its advertised support for the Israeli military.

Promotional material on the Hebrew language website of Max Brenner’s parent company advertises the company’s adoption of the elite Golani and Givati brigades, both of which have carried out atrocities against Palestinians including house demolitions, massacres, extrajudicial executions and killing children.

On September 15, the NSW Legislative Council adopted a similar motion condemning the Max Brenner protests, put by Liberal David Clarke. In this instance, the slurs of anti-Semitism were included in the motion as well.

Putting the motion, Clarke singled out federal Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon who he colourfully described as “at the apex of the BDS campaign here in Australia”.

In a diatribe straight out of the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, he tried to link her with “the Soviet Union or Cuba or North Korea or any of the other satellite communist nations of Eastern Europe” because of her one-time membership of what is now the Communist Party of Australia. She left that party more than 20 years ago.

Continuing with the redbaiting, he accused her of uniting in the BDS campaign with the Socialist Alliance, “an outfit that has its origins in the Trotskyite Socialist Workers League”.

“It is anti-capitalist and it is linked with the Green Left Weekly … In its pantheon of heroes, apart from Karl Marx himself, you will find Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Apart from BDS, the Socialist Alliance has been active in all sorts of campaigns. For instance, in 2008 it organised protests against the visit to Sydney of Pope Benedict XVI,” he warned.

In reality, the Socialist Alliance is just one of many of the groups involved in the BDS campaign and Max Brenner protests.

NSW Greens policy supports the BDS campaign, and some Greens members have been involved. But the NSW Greens have not been part of organising the Max Brenner protests.

Greens MP John Kaye responded in parliament: “This motion is a cheap attempt to smear the boycott, divestment and sanction movement as anti-Jewish when it is not.

“It is an attempt to allege that there is anti-Semitism on the side of the boycott, divestment and sanction debate when there is no evidence of such anti-Semitism.

“There is direct evidence that the anti-boycott, divestment and sanction side is being supported by those with excellent fascist connections, the Australian Protectionist Party — and not just fascist connections, but connections to holocaust deniers.”

He accused the motion of pointscoring, which “cheapens the memory of the six million people who died in the holocaust and the many more who suffered terribly under Nazism”.

He said: “Just as the consumer, trade and sporting boycotts against South Africa brought about change in that country, it is the Greens’ belief that these boycotts can bring about change in Israel and Palestine …

“The Greens recognise that there were those during the campaign against apartheid in South Africa who … felt that the boycotts would not help the blacks in South Africa — the Liberal Party and the Nationals were full of such people.

“Who can forget Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a former Premier of Queensland, who fought vigorously against the boycotting of South African sporting events? History shows that those people were dead wrong.”

Kaye pointed out that Clarke “twice — once in April 2005 and then in April 2007 — attended a commemoration of the rise of the fascist Ustasha government into power in Croatia in April 1941 … There is no excuse for … David Clarke moving this motion when he so shamefully supported the celebration of the Nazi regime in Croatia.”

Kaye and NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge voted against Clarke’s motion.

However, NSW Greens MPs Jeremy Buckingham, Jan Barham and Cate Faehrmann voted for it.

Faehrmann repeated the baseless accusation against BDS supporters of anti-Semitism. She told parliament that “certain chants used at the [Max Brenner] protest have descended into that domain”.

In the federal parliament, Boswell also successfully put anti-BDS motions in the Senate on August 18 and August 23.

The Coalition is using the broader campaign of slander against BDS to tar the Greens as “extremist” and to create and exploit divisions in the Greens.

Boswell’s September 13 motion included a clause that agreed “with the New South Wales Greens MP Mr Jeremy Buckingham’s assertion ‘that the tone and the public perception of the Max Brenner protests may be counterproductive to the cause of peace and human rights in the Middle East’”.

Buckingham’s remarks were reported in the September 9 Sydney Morning Herald, which said “he [had] also joined the Parliamentary Friends of Israel, as well as the equivalent Palestinian friendship group”.

Other Greens politicians, including federal parliamentary leader Senator Bob Brown (who opposed the anti-BDS motions in the Senate), have also expressed concern about “the public perception” of the NSW Greens’ support of BDS.

Following Marrickville Council’s December 2010 resolution supporting BDS, the Murdoch media led an intense campaign slandering the Greens as anti-Semites.

“Max Phillips, a Greens councillor on Mr Buckingham's staff … was one of two Greens on the council who changed their vote and sided with Labor and independents against the mayor, Fiona Byrne, to scrap the policy,” the SMH said.

However, responding to Clarke’s September 15 motion in the NSW upper house, Shoebridge quoted Nobel Peace Prize-winning South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s letter to Marrickville Council.

The letter said: “Sometimes taking a public stand for what is ethical and right brings costs, but social justice on a local or global scale requires faith and courage.”

Orica pollution scandal not an isolated case

2011-09-05T16:34:00.003+10:00

Saturday, September 3, 2011
By Niko Leka, Newcastle
The Orica chemicals plant at Kooragang, near Newcastle NSW, released hexavalent chromium (VI) into the atmosphere on August 8. Up to 20 workers were exposed in the accident.

The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) was not notified of the accident for 16 hours. Residents of nearby Stockton were not told that the toxic pollutant blew over their suburb for 54 hours.

Their reaction to the exposure was outrage. The Newcastle Herald reported on a community meeting where a resident asked: “Didn’t you know there was wind blowing or did you think you could get away with it?”

Orica described the exposure on its website as a “small amount of diluted airborne sodium chromate”.

Chromium (VI) is mainly produced through industrial processes. It is about 100 to 1000 times more toxic than the naturally occurring chromium (III).

Yellow-brown droplets of it were deposited within the Orica site and in Stockton.

The EPA reported 11 out of 71 samples taken in Stockton a few days later showed low levels of Chromium (VI).

The degree of exposure to the workers, and the levels within the site itself, are not known.

Before the testing was completed, University of Wollongong Professor Alison Jones said at a joint press conference with environment minister Robyn Parker and NSW Health environmental health director Wayne Smith that she hoped to be “in a position very shortly to say the risk is zero”.

Greens Newcastle City councillor Michael Osborne told Green Left Weekly “you can never say the risk is zero”.

A parliamentary inquiry will be held into the incident. Shine Lawyers are also investigating on behalf of residents.

A few days later, Orica announced another accident. This time it discharged 1.2 megalitres of effluent containing 0.067 milligrams per litre of arsenic into the Hunter River on August 19.

It described the discharge on August 20 as equating to “70 grams diluted in approximately 30 swimming pools full of water.”

But it didn’t say the concentration was 34% higher than its environmental protection licence allows.

Orica announced a net profit of $264 million for the half-year ended March 31. In 2009, the former Orica CEO Malcolm Broomhead received a golden handshake of $4.8 million.

In 2009, Orica also successfully appealed to Newcastle City Council for a massive discount on the development levy it owed for its proposed $490 million expansion.

Instead of paying the standard 1% charge, or $4.9 million, Orica paid just $272,000.

Orica’s website claims it is “committed to effectively managing all events which cause or have the potential to cause … damage to the environment or public alarm”.

The claim of effectiveness is contentious. The Nature Conservation Council says Orica’s Kooragang facility has breached its pollution licence 131 times since 2000. Orica’s Matraville plant in Sydney has breached its licence 177 times.

Osborne told GLW that it is time to review the concept of giving companies licences to pollute. “They should be treated the same way as car licences,” he said. “If you break the road rules you face fines, loss of licence and imprisonment.”

Liberals attack workers' rights, public services

2011-09-05T16:08:00.002+10:00

Saturday, September 3, 2011
By Susan Price, Sydney
The day after the Barry O’Farrell Coalition government was elected in NSW in March, NSW Business Chamber CEO Stephen Cartwright said he wanted action in the first 100 days of the new government.

He said business wanted O’Farrell to cut government spending, sign up to the weaker federal occupational health and safety laws (OH&S), appoint a Small Business Commissioner, establish Infrastructure NSW, and produce the first report card on the progress of the Pacific Highway upgrade.

These priorities reflected the chamber’s "10 Big Ideas to Grow NSW", which was released in June last year. Well, the NSW Business Chamber got its wish and then some.

In its first 100 days, the O’Farrell government began to attack public services. It began plans to lease out Sydney Ferries, announced a cap on pay rises of 2.5% for public servants and linked any higher wages to employee-funded savings.

In late June, it said it would end the public service “no forced redundancies” policy.

O’Farrell was quick to commit NSW to the national harmonisation of OH&S laws. But action in parliament from opposition Labor and Greens MPs preserved unions’ right to prosecute employers for breaches.

In April, the government reversed its commitment to fund the Pay Equity claim for more than 30,000 community sector workers in NSW to rectify the 30% wage gap between community and government sector employees.

A Small Business Commissioner was appointed and the government introduced legislation to create Infrastructure NSW.

Newly appointed Infrastructure NSW CEO Paul Broad expressed his admiration for the privatisation of rail networks in Victoria under Jeff Kennett. He told the June 30 Sydney Morning Herald NSW would “benefit from something similar”.

In early July, the Chamber endorsed Finance Minister Greg Pearce’s push “for a more aggressive approach to the contestability of services throughout government” — that is, the outsourcing of government services.

Welcoming the appointment of Phil Gaetjens as NSW treasury secretary in August, the Chamber urged treasury to prepare “for real electricity privatisation in NSW, not poisoned by the compromises and handouts of the past”.

The premier and treasurer have also spent serious time preparing the ground for a tough budget.

No sooner had the new government taken office than it said it had inherited a $5.2 billion budget deficit and accused the former Labor government of “cooking the books”.

A report commissioned by Unions NSW, released on September 2 and undertaken by BIS Shrapnel chief economist Frank Gelber has cast fresh doubt over the claim.

Job cuts have been announced in the departments of primary industries, health and corrective services. The government’s Victims Compensation Scheme was targeted for review.

Sydney’s ferry services have already been franchised out to private operators.

The NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF) says the O’Farrell government’s new wages policy means an effective pay cut for teachers of about $75 a week after four years for an experienced teacher.

This will affect the recruitment and retention of new teachers as the workforce ages and retires.

Future pay rises depend on increasing teacher workloads and worsening the quality of education for students by increasing class sizes, reducing release time for professional development, reducing or eliminating the employment of casual school teachers and using part-time TAFE teachers to replace absent colleagues.

The NSWTF was the first union to announce a 24-hour stop work on September 8. It and was the first union targeted by the O’Farrell government for sanctions in the Industrial Relations Commission.

Thanks to draconian industrial laws, workers in NSW do not have the right to strike outside a bargaining period —denying a basic right for all workers.

This means unions are forced to defy the law to organise stop work and strike action to defend the public sector.

The NSW Public Service Association (PSA) has launched a legal challenge to the new public sector industrial relations laws.

PSA general secretary John Cahill said the union thinks the law is invalid because it interferes with the independence and institutional integrity of the Industrial Relations Commission and Industrial Court of New South Wales.

The NSW Industrial Relations Commission is yet to decide on the case.

Unions NSW launched a campaign against the attacks in June. Stopwork and other protest actions were organised on June 15 at short notice. Twelve thousand workers took action in Sydney.

Progressive activists within unions have begun to organise and network to push for a serious industrial campaign to defeat O’Farrell.

Since June 15, hundreds of people have taken part in community rallies across regional NSW and in Western Sydney.

These rallies include a protest by Port Macquarie workers outside a community cabinet meeting and then the office of local National MP Leslie Williams on June 28.

The same day, about 100 people in Broken Hill, including teachers, firefighters, nurses, prison officers and police officers protested outside Nationals MP John Williams’s office.

On July 12, more than 350 people marched on Penrith State Liberal MP Stuart Ayres’ office in protest.

On July 13, 300 public servants rallied in Dubbo, outside the office of Nationals MP Troy Grant.

On July 14, about 500 public sector workers rallied in Gosford and in Orange.

On July 15, 50-100 people rallied in Tamworth. In Bathurst, about 500 public sector workers protested at the office of National MP Paul Toole.

On July 26, 300 public sector workers rallied in Lismore against National MP Thomas George.

In Tweed Heads, nurses, policemen, teachers, firefighters and public servants gathered outside Tweed MP Geoff Provest’s office. A small rally was held in Queanbeyan on the same day.

On July 27 in Coffs Harbour, more than 200 public sector workers marched on local MP Andrew Fraser’s office.

In Grafton, hundreds of public sector workers rallied against local member Steve Cansdell’s support for the industrial relations legislation.

In Kempsey on July 28 more than 60 public sector workers protested. Hundreds of public servants also rallied against the new laws July 29 in Newcastle.

On August 25, teachers with other community members protested in Muswellbrook. Teachers travelled from from Singleton and Scone to support the protest.

On August 31, protesters took to the streets of Orange to protest job cuts.

Progressive activists within unions have begun to organise and network to push for a serious industrial campaign to defeat O'Farrell, and are circulating a statement which can be found here.

Community Voice calls for more support for Wollongong culture, music

2011-08-26T13:07:00.001+10:00

Friday, August 26, 2011
By Chris Williams, Wollongong Wollongong’s city centre experienced something special on August 25: an explosion of art, culture and youth talent.

During Community Voice's public launch of its cultural policy, a crowd of more than 200 people swelled around the mall's amphitheatre.

As young musicians performed, graffiti artists Adam Rizvik and Josh Harris produced an amazing piece in real time that simply said “create art” on stage.

For two hours the mall — not known for its social atmosphere — was filled with beautiful music, inspired speeches, happy people and the smell of spray paint.

Musicians included Jane Aubourg, Bennie James, Jack Reilly, The Yetis, Avaine and Dlinkwnt.

Speakers addressed the need to support the local music and arts scene. They included Glenn Hayworth from Hayworth Music; Tim Day from Dicey Rileys; Lincoln Piper from LPJ Entertainment; Karen Crowe from Better On the Big Screen (BOBS); Eleise Bott from What's on in Wollongong; music producer James Lopes; and local musician Jane Sproule.

The event was organised by Adam Jordan and Rob Carr, who are Community Voice candidates in the Wollongong City Council elections.

Jordan owns Main Street Studios, just north of Wollongong, and has produced records for many local artists.

He has a strong community focus, recording for schools, churches and other non-profit organisations and donating studio time to help young, underfinanced musicians get started.

Carr, a local musician and media studies teacher, spoke on behalf of Community Voice at the event. "If we are a city void of free space and space for creative free thinking, then there is something wrong with our local government," he said.

Carr said he hopes to see a “Gong spring” of participation in politics and community with the incoming council.

“Our campaign is a movement, not a party,” he said. “Our members help out if they can, when they can. Our movement is organic, and there is growing excitement about what could be a renaissance for community democracy in our city.

Both Jordan and Carr are also organisers of Rock the Vote Wollongong! — an initiative by members of the local music scene to celebrate the return of democracy in the city.

Rock the Vote aims to promote progressive outcomes in the Wollongong City Council elections, and will culminate in a CD compilation as well as a live rock show featuring local and touring bands on September 2 — the night before the election.

Community Voice’s Community and Culture policy says the “council has a critical role in bringing people together in a liveable city”.

The policy says Community Voice “will give priority to supporting those who don’t have a voice.

“We will work towards a city that empowers citizens to work towards a shared goal of living in a healthy, creative and vibrant city with distinctive and caring towns and villages …

“People with few resources should be able to enjoy and participate in a rich artistic and cultural life.

“Community Voice will facilitate access to community facilities and public spaces. We will look at ways of lowering costs such as insurance so people can participate more in exhibitions, performances and events.”

[Read the full policy here. Chris Williams is a candidate for Community Voice in the September 3 elections.]

Wollongong’s south needs more attention, say candidates

2011-08-22T16:35:00.002+10:00

Saturday, August 20, 2011
By Stefan Skibicki, Wollongong
The people of Koonawarra, Berkeley, Warrawong and Port Kembla are being neglected while redevelopments such as the Blue Mile (a foreshore development around Wollongong harbour) and $14 million Wollongong mall makeover soak up limited funds, say Community Voice Ward 3 candidates for council elections Adrianne Talbot-Thomson [pictured] and Ken Davis.

“Council’s city-centric approach needs to be replaced with a more geographically equitable distribution of resources, services and projects,” said Talbot-Thomson.

“While Wollongong CBD development is important, residents want input into how council allocates its funds across the city.

“Priorities should include activities for young people in Berkeley and Koonawarra, better access to West Dapto and the provision of seed funding and ongoing support for community driven revitalisation projects.

“Project such as Red Point Artists Association have shown how local efforts can help to transform neglected areas such as Port Kembla.”

Community Voice’s vision for a people orientated council includes the provision of services such as local swimming pools.

“The people of the Dapto want their pool back,” Davis said.

“Through the imposition of pool fees and charges council is denying struggling families and the region’s most disadvantaged access to important health, fitness and social networking facilities.

“Free access to public pools was a feature of Wollongong pools for around 30 years, prior to the introduction of fees at Corrimal and Dapto pools around [the year] 2000.

“Communities chipped in with cake stalls, raffles and hard labour to build these pools in partnership with Wollongong City Council.

“With the introduction of fees these once crowded public places became deserted overnight,” said Davis.

“In 2009, local residents organised a ‘Pool Party’ calling for the removal of fees, and over 500 people turned up — yet council ignored them. With council considering further charges, there is talk of another ‘Pool Party’ on October 8.

“At present no pool is safe from future fees, especially the North Wollongong and Port Kembla Continental Baths.”

Talbot-Thomson told Green Left Weekly she wants to bring a new kind of politics to council.

A community development practitioner, she believes a community is responsible for its own culture. This means the problems and their solutions exist within the community itself.

“My fundamental belief is that human beings have both the capacity and the heart to create vibrant, safe and healthy communities,” she said.

“I believe that in the modern world we have found ourselves disconnected not only from each other but also the environment.

“A councillor is just one part of the decision-making process and not the actual decision-maker. That is how I have worked in community development.

“Whether or not I am elected, I will keep working to open up neighbourhood forums so that many diverse voices are heard. I am also committed to ensure that effective systems allow these forums to inform council business.

“The practice of democracy is an everyday one and we need to enable responses from the whole of the community. This is basically what a community development approach is.

“These sorts of neighbourhood meetings allow real conversations to generate real solutions.”

New England group forms against coal seam gas mining

2011-08-22T15:39:00.003+10:00

Saturday, August 20, 2011
By Bea Bleile, Armidale
After a screening of Gasland on August 10 attracted 60 people to Armidale’s Progressive Cinema, more than 30 people stayed after the film to discuss what to do locally.

Carmel Flint, from the Northern Inland Council for the Environment, alerted those present to plans for coal seam gas mining in the Pilliga forest south of Narrabri and new coalmines endangering native forests.

The meeting decided to form a local action group to stop coal and coal seam gas mining on agricultural land, as well as in native forests.

The No Fracking Way concert by the band Dead Letter Circus at the University of New England was held on August 17.

Plans are under way for a field trip to the Pilliga from September 16 to 19 organised by the Armidale National Parks Association (NPA) and the Armidale leg of the Defend Our Water tour by the Lock the Gate Alliance on September 29.

Sustainable Living Armidale and the Socialist Alliance New England will be present with stalls at the concert and the Armidale NPA will provide information about the Pilliga.

The campaign against coal seam gas mining is attracting a lot of media attention, but also a broad range of people of diverse ages and political convictions.

Traditionally, mining and farming were seen as complementary parts of many rural communities.

Now, even farmers who at first welcomed mining companies onto their land are turning against them.

People in the cities are affected as well, if not directly then indirectly through the risks to our water and agricultural land. The risks are immense, but so is the potential for broad alliances resisting corporate might.

Community Voice ticket reflects youth concerns

2011-08-08T13:35:00.003+10:00

Saturday, August 6, 2011
By Chris Williams, Wollongong
The grassroots campaign for a community driven council in Wollongong is well underway, as the election approaches on September 3.

Community Voice is standing a full ticket across all three local wards including Michael Organ, former Greens MP for Cunningham, for mayor.

Organ is a local historian and environmental activist. He has been actively involved in campaigns to save Sandon Point and Wollongong's Regent Theatre. He is also part of the recent campaign to secure land at Hill 60 for preservation and public ownership.

Eleven other candidates are standing for mayor including Gordon Bradbery, the Uniting Church minister who nearly won the seat of Wollongong in the NSW election, and Rod Oxley, the former council general manager found by the Independent Commission Against Corruption to have displayed “conduct [that] was liable to 'allow, encourage or cause the occurrence of corrupt conduct’”.

In ward two, Community Voice candidates are campaigning strongly around issues that affect young people.

Part of the youth, student and cultural scenes, Community Voice candidates Rob Carr [pictured], Adam Jordan, Scott Burrows and Sophie Williams are familiar with the problems in these areas.

Carr is backing local live music venues, bands and recording studios as a way to reinvigorate Wollongong’s night-life.

“One of the major problems facing Wollongong’s night-life economy has been the monopoly held by the RDL group over entertainment venues — a business model that has failed to generate growth because it has virtually removed any significant competition,” Carr said.

He is calling on the city to invest more in community-driven businesses in the creative sector.

Williams is critical of the University of Wollongong’s plan to purchase the Hotel Ibis in the Wollongong CBD.

She said: “There is a rental crisis affecting University of Wollongong students, yet the proposed accommodation will remain out of reach of the majority of students, with average prices around $200 per week.”

Williams has called for more flexible and affordable housing services, including provisions for families and cultural and religious-specific spaces.

Community Voice is also campaigning for better public transport, including an extension of the free bus shuttle service, and socially useful jobs for young people.

For more information on the Community Voice campaign visit the Community Voice website. You can also follow Community Voice on Facebook and Twitter.

[Chris Williams is a Community Voice candidate.]

Newcastle hosts huge refugee rights forum

2011-08-08T13:14:00.003+10:00

Saturday, August 6, 2011
By Niko Leka, Newcastle
Mark Goudkamp from the Sydney Refugee Action Coalition, Gleny Rae, a participant in the SBS series Go Back Where You Came From, and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young addressed the biggest meeting supporting asylum seekers seen in Newcastle since the Howard era on August 4.

Goudkamp said 54 asylum seekers, 19 of them children, had recently arrived by boat on Christmas Island. They had not yet been told they would be sent to Malaysia. “The media reports extra riot police have been sent there,” Goudkamp said. “But the government is saying they have counsellors on hand.”

Rae described a midnight raid on asylum seekers she witnessed in Malaysia. Families were dragged out of bed, cable-tied and driven away. “We need to stand up and think what is right, and what is the humanitarian way of dealing with our brothers and sisters,” she said.

Hanson-Young said: “Australia is the only signatory to the [United Nations] Refugee Convention that has mandatory detention, and it is detention without any time limit.

“The rate of suicides, attempted suicide and self-harm in immigration detention centres is skyrocketing. An ambulance driver on Christmas island told me she’s called to treat attempted suicides almost daily.

“When I visit [detention centres] the most chilling thing is seeing grown men wandering up in a daze and breaking down on my shoulder. We have no limits on how far we push people. We push them to breaking point and beyond, it’s a system that ruins people.”

Turning to the “Malaysian solution”, Hanson-Young dismissed the idea of an orderly queue: “When you work out the numbers of people and the amount of time they’ve been there for, the ‘queue’ is 53 years long.”

She said the Malaysia solution undermined the idea of a Regional Protection Framework, because such a framework should mean countries in the region provide protection. Instead, Australia is shirking its responsibilities onto other countries, which sets a bad example.

She said: “The Australian government is going to spend $2.5 billion that it doesn’t have to, over the next four years, on what’s really just a handful of people.

“Prime Minister [Julia] Gillard said during her election campaign that she wanted to put all the facts on the table. She’s done nothing, but continues to peddle the myths. It’s up to you guys to continue to put the facts on the table.”

She concluded the ALP/Coalition policy of sending asylum seekers to other countries does not go to the heart of the problem. “What we should be aiming for is a practical solution, a human solution, an Australian solution.”

[Niko Leka is a member of Refugee Action Network Newcastle and the Socialist Alliance.]

Community Voice ticket elects candidates

2011-08-01T14:36:00.004+10:00

Saturday, July 30, 2011
By Stefan Skibicki, Wollongong
An enthusiastic group of community campaigners was chosen to run for the September 3 council elections in Wollongong.

About 100 people attended the preselection meeting for Community Voice at Thirroul Community Centre on July 24. CV was formed about a month ago.

The process was simple, democratic and transparent — values at the core of CV’s platform. Part of the reason for the formation of CV was to bring a community focus to council, standing against the entrenched corruption of local politics that culminated in the sacking of Wollongong council in 2008.

Unaccountable appointees of the former NSW Labor government have run the council since.

In Ward 1 (northern suburbs), community activists Jess Moore and Chris Williams were elected to lead the ticket. Both are well known locally for their work in Stop CSG Illawarra, which is campaigning against coal seam gas mining in the area

In Ward 2 (central suburbs) Rob Carr and Adam Jordan were elected. Both are well known in the local music scene. When Jordan was called to speak, some supporters in the back of the room started playing “eye of the tiger” on guitar.

In Ward 3 (southern suburbs), community leaders Adrianne Talbot-Thomson and Robynne Murphy were elected 1 and 2. They are part of a growing team that run the Port Kembla community centre and various pro-poor initiatives.

Bruno Conte, neighbourhood forum campaigner, was also elected in Ward 3.

A full team of twelve candidates will run as well as a mayoral candidate. These will be finalised at the mayoral preselection at Port Kembla Leagues Club on July 31. This will be followed by a fundraiser and campaign launch.

Prospective candidates were given two minutes to speak to the crowd before the election. One of the more important issues raised by many was the need for a more liveable city.

Plans for the future are to bring art and music to the city centre as well as the outer suburbs, most importantly developing the talents of the young people of Wollongong. Curbing unfettered development and beautifying the city was also an issue.

Proposals for making council more accessible include giving local neighbourhood forums greater scope in council decision-making with councillors to attend and bring proposals back to council meetings. There were also calls for amenities to be free and available to the community.

[To get involved or find out more, visit the Community Voice website, or contact CV at hoganbelinda@yahoo.com.au ]

3A lives on under O’Farrell: RTA bulldozing Aboriginal heritage and rare habitat at the Alum mountain, Bulahdelah

2011-07-20T14:23:00.003+10:00

The Socialist Alliance's Zane Alcorn speaks to Adele Carrall and her daughter Estelle who are part of the Save the Alum Sacred Mountain Bulahdelah campaign group. (First published here)

Adele has been a Bulahdelah resident for over 25 years and in that time has conducted extensive research into the cultural and ecological history of the town. Adele and Estelle are striving to have the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) halt construction of the Bulahdelah bypass. The bypass goes through the mid-slopes of the mountain, which adjoins the town and is its sole bushland recreation area.

Zane Alcorn: So the issue here is not that the RTA should not build a bypass – which of itself is a fairly logical proposition for various reasons – but that the route chosen is flawed for many reasons and has been opposed by a significant section of the community.

Do you think that the RTA, as a public body, has been transparent and democratic and genuinely consulted with the community – and taken their aspirations and concerns into account when planning this bypass?

Adele Carrall: I don’t know where to start! The RTA and consultants PPK sent a ‘newsletter’ to residents in early 2000 and had one public meeting to announce their presence and to form a ‘community focus group’. The letter did not let the community know of any proposed routes and simply showed a map with an orange blur over Buladelah area saying this was the ‘study area’ for the bypass which I would have thought was self evident.

Now, the name ‘focus group’ might be very familiar to the RTA but to many ordinary people – particularly in rural Australia – ‘focus group’ was a totally unfamiliar term.

Focus group meetings were held at night time which made attendance impossible for dedicated parents with children; and they were closed meetings. Several attempts were made by community members to join in with focus group meetings; one on occasion they were physically barred from entering at the door.

In late July 2000, the RTA’s newsletter #2 showed a series of routes, which included option ‘a’ and a similar variation passing to the west of the town, another option ‘c’ which basically involved widening and streamlining the existing road through the town, and then option ‘e’ – which would totally eradicate the most used area of the mountain.

The Alum mountain is quite famous in its own right, it’s the largest outcrop of Alunite in the western hemisphere; it is home to one of only three known types of orchid anywhere on the planet that flowers underground; it is home to other rare and threatened species including squirrel gliders and microbats and many Aboriginal sacred sites.

The western route was estimated in 2000 to be slightly cheaper [$4 million cheaper] than the route through the mountain. There are also safety issues for workers, road users and residents living at the foot of the mountain; the side of the mountain is actually a giant ancient landslip. The road is cut into this landslip and as such will be prone to future landslips.

At a ‘Value Management’ Workshop in August, 2000, four Bulahdelah community members joined representatives of various government departments for the purpose of deciding which route would be recommended to the then Minister for Roads as suitable to be pursued. Three of the four had either a direct pecuniary interest in the route that ended up being chosen, or a conflict of interest in that they were relatives or friends of people with a direct pecuniary interest. One was the owner of a highway located business and thus had an interest in the route; another was a nephew in law of a landholder who stood to gain from selling their property to the RTA; another, representing NSW police was a son in law of the person on the southern side of the river who was to sell his land to the RTA if the route went that way.

ZA: When the community found out that the focus group had decided that ‘option e’ was the ‘preferred option’, what happened?

AC: People who otherwise would not have been concerned at all started writing letters of complaint to the RTA; out of a population of 1300 people, over four hundred individual complaint forms were handed to the then parliamentary secretary for roads Reba Meagher in early 2001 with many more sent after; over 500 in total that we know of.

ZA: And the bypass being built does not go far past the town?

AC: One of the bases upon which route ‘e’ was approved by Frank Sartor, the minister for planning, was that it would be connecting to the existing highway approximately 4 kilometres to the north of the town. That is not what is happening; it will meet up in Bulahdelah near the caravan park with a massive interchange.

ZA: So it’s not a very good bypass really?

AC: It’s not actually a bypass at all, in any sense of the word, because it goes through what is traditionally the heart of Bulahdelah – the mountain itself; immediately adjacent to the town and a highly used respite and educational area, of great ecological and cultural significance.

ZA: And route ‘e’ is dangerous isn’t it, in terms of traffic flow and geological issues?

AC: The western route, option A, is not through an unstable mountain, and is not prone to rockfall from boulders which, on impact, shatter into fly rock and fly through the air. There would be free flow of traffic because there would not be a hill (not a steep incline anyway). It was estimated in 2000 that route ‘a’ was to be $145million to construct compared to $149million for the route through the mountain.

Part of the route would be through an existent landslide zone; the RTA has estimated that landslide as being 25 metres deep; so road users would be at risk of batter (that is, the slopes each side of the road) collapse.

ZA: And you believe that blasting may destabilise what is already a geologically fairly unstable area that is prone to landslip?

AC: There is government documentation galore not only in this state but in other states clarifying the fact that any sort of vibration can cause landslides; loss of vegetation can be a contributing factor. And it’s not solely blasting; it is vibration from the compaction of the ground in preparation for the roadway; it’s the vibration from the pile driving (which at this stage Bulahdelah is yet to experience much of) and the rock crushing that is to be carried out.

ZA: And once it is built there will be more vibration from traffic?

AC: Yes, even the ongoing vibration from traffic can cause a landslide at any stage. And there was no assessment of risks of landslides from the mountain’s upper regions in the EIS in the landslide risk assessment.

ZA: Bulahdelah/ Boolah Dillah is not just a geologically unique area and an important place for the community, but this is also a traditional Aboriginal meeting place and carries a lot of cultural significance?

Estelle Carrall: The mountain itself is actually a sacred place, and on top of that it also had a lot of significant sites: scarred trees, canoe trees, shield trees, a big artefact scatter site. It had a lot of sacred sites too; it had the guardian tree, which was a hugely sacred site, and there is a healing stream which I guess is still there but they have built a power line easement through it.

We have had people here from all sorts of different nations and shown them around and they can see the area is sacred, and feel it is sacred.

With the guardian tree, that was destroyed /got cut down by the RTA in December 2009 after a meeting between the RTA and two or three members of the Karuah Land Council. But there were over 100 signatures collected in 2003 from Aboriginal people with an association to the area that said that the tree was sacred, and the area around the tree was sacred.

I don’t get how the RTA were allowed to just cut that down on the say-so of two or three people, when we had over 100 people that signed and said they wanted it protected.

ZA: Why do you think it is that those people from the land council did support cutting down the guardian tree and, in general, have seemed to support option E?

EC: I believe it is because they had two parcels of land which they owned in the path of where the highway would be, and they wanted the money from the sale [to the RTA]. It was even documented by the RTA that there was a scarred tree on one of the parcels of land that they owned and [the Karuah land council] didn’t even find that significant. I don’t know how they can find that land which has actual evidence of where their ancestors have been and carried out their traditions is not significant.

ZA: And you have helped Cynthia Dungay Dates – who is from Worimi and Dunghutti country – to lodge a heritage protection application for the site?

EC: Yes, it’s a section ten application made under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act. Basically it is for the long term protection of an area and it can stop things like development and so on. If that came through that would stop the RTA and the area within that boundary map would become protected as an Aboriginal place.

ZA: And this was lodged two years ago?

EC: Yes, it was lodged back in 2009, and the government kept stalling it and holding it up, for over a year, and it didn’t even get put through as a public notice in the papers until 2010 and the submission period was open until early 2011, so that’s just a hell of a long time.

There are so many sites in that application that have been destroyed in the time since it was first made. When it was first put through none of it had been touched; these sites have just gradually been destroyed bit by bit. They are just holding it up, holding it up… and I think it is pretty obvious why.

ZA: And there was a consultant engaged by the RTA to do an assessment regarding the cultural significance of this area?

Adele Carrall: Yes, his name is Kelvin Officer and he did both the indigenous and non-indigenous heritage reports for the RTA here at Bulahdelah. He was also the archaeologist employed to do the investigations for Sandon Point [where the developer Stockland is seeking to build a housing development on Aboriginal land including a burial ground].

At both Sandon Point and Bulahdelah people have given up almost eleven years of their lives trying to save what he is trying to destroy.

ZA: And what about the effect of route ‘e’ on the local community? This was in effect the local bushland, or park wasn’t it – it is where the local people go for walks and picnics and so on? Is it some sort of reserve?

AC: It is. The mountain is a state forests reserve. It was managed by NSW state forests for quite a long time. The mountain’s park is a registered public reserve and became such while under state forests’ management.

ZA: …but it’s not for sale for people to go and build houses on or anything like that?

AC: No, absolutely not. At one stage the mountain was to be transferred to National Parks and Wildlife; there is a national park area to the east of here leading out to the Myall Lakes. There was a successful mini-campaign on the part of some people, one gentleman who was involved later regretted it – because they wanted a small area to be left for a miniscule amount of logging so that children attending public school could see what logging was about.

There are other areas where this could have been done. I do understand that the man was well-intentioned and understand his remorse at trying to have the area retained for forestry.

It has only recently come to light that the Alum Mountain Park itself – that’s a picnic area and a small area just to the east of that which is called the ‘sporting recreation area’, which is for people playing ballgames etc not to hit picnickers and people relaxing in the larger body of the park - is a listed public reserve. It is called Bulahdelah Mountain Park – and is meant to have absolute protection.

It is not to be interfered with in any way; it took an Act of Parliament to make it a public reserve and it is meant to take an Act of Parliament for that so called protection to be undone. And as far as I am aware that has not happened.

ZA: And if this route ‘e’ is finished and built, there will be some sort of overpass and pedestrian underpass but essentially you are going from this being a quiet area which is easy to access on foot, to being something you will need to go through this overpass or underpass across a huge freeway at that point you will still have a freeway right next to you, yeah?

AC: It takes away Buladelah’s only natural asset of any worth whatsoever.

Emphasis is being placed on the river, where the RTA in its impact statement claimed there was a reserve. But no such reserve can be found in the geographical place names index.

They intend to put a new children’s play area down near the toilets and there will be massive noise from the traffic and trucks- something like 20,000 vehicles per day are to pass along that road. All those big trucks that form a large part of that 20,000 vehicles are burning diesel which is known to be carcinogenic.

There was a nomination put in by an NPWS employee to have the mountain protected as an Aboriginal cultural place. An associated study was carried out by Umwelt consultants.

Estelle Carrall: The thing about the Umwelt report too is that this was a report commissioned by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, carried out by qualified archaeologists and they recommended that the mountain become an Aboriginal place, including the area that the road passes through.

As far as I know that report is being ‘held up’ by the government too. And that was done back in 2003.

ZA: The report was released in 2003?

EC: Yes. So this was an official report, and it finds that the whole area should become an Aboriginal place. And yet that just seems to have been totally ignored. Even without it being put through, the fact that the Umwelt report recommends that this area be protected should have meant that the RTA should have to have used another option.

AC: And it’s not a matter of people trying to stop the bypass, it’s a matter of people trying to stop this particular route from being used.

ZA: Is it too late?

AC: The RTA will not stop anything they are doing. But they can be made to stop. All of this destruction is for a dangerous-beyond-belief section of highway. Blasting and other earthworks are exposing human beings in Bulahdelah to silica rock dust. This is an asbestos-like killer which causes cancer and the terminal lung disease, silicosis. If a knife-wielding murderer were in the process of stabbing someone, should he be forced to stop? Or should he be allowed to continue on the grounds that money had already been outlaid on the purchase of the knife?

For more information and/or to lend your support visit http://bulahdelahbypass.wordpress.com/ (or if you are on facebook, visit the Save the Alum Sacred mountain page)

Australian government must pressure Israel to release activists imprisoned in Tel Aviv

2011-07-14T14:51:00.000+10:00

MEDIA RELEASE July 12, 2011
Vivienne Porzsolt (pictured in centre), spokesperson for Jews Against the Occupation and a member of the East Sydney branch of the Socialist Alliance, was arrested at Tel Aviv airport on July 11. Her crime? Trying to visit Palestine.

Ms Porzsolt joined the Freedom Flotilla 2 along with hundreds of other pro-Palestine activists from around the world.

Three other Australians, including former Greens NSW MP Sylvia Hale (on left) and youth worker Michael Coleman (on right), also took part in the protest which was aimed at highlighting the illegal blockade of Gaza.

Following a series of attempts to leave Greece, she and Ms Hale decided to visit Palestine at the invitation of Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh, a co-founder of the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.

But on arriving at the Tel Aviv airport, Ms Porzsolt was arrested on July 11, along with Ms Hale. They are challenging the arrest.

The previous day dozens of other international activists were arrested when they landed at the same airport. They too were invited to visit by Palestinians.

Ms Porzsolt and Ms Hale were keen to visit Bethlehem – the sister city of Marrickville council.

Before leaving to join the Freedom Flotilla 2, Ms Porzsolt she said she could not abide what Israel is doing to Palestine.

“As a Jew I feel a special obligation to oppose it in the traditions of Jewish ethics abandoned by Israel and its Zionist supporters …

“I am sailing on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza to help pose a real challenge to the cruel, illegal imprisonment of the people of Gaza and to make it visible to the world. We hope to shame all those governments who are complicit with this injustice and lawlessness. Ordinary people must act when their governments won’t.”

Vivienne Porzsolt has been a courageous and consistently active Palestinian rights supporter within the Jewish community in the face of hostility and denigration from Zionists.

Fellow Jewish activists are very concerned that Ms Porzsolt could be subject to the harshest treatment by Israeli authorities while in detention. They are also calling on the Australian government to act immediately to ensure that she and the other activists are released and their visit to Bethlehem facilitated.

What does Israel have to fear, they ask?

Socialist Alliance is asking concerned people to contact Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd’s office on (02) 6277 7500 or Fax (02) 6273 4112 or email kevin.rudd@dfat.gov.au

For more information contact Pip Hinman on 0412 139 968

New Sydney Resistance Centre Grand Opening!

2011-07-13T14:19:00.004+10:00

Saturday July 16, with drinks from 4pm.
22-36 Mountain Street, Ultimo

After 28 years, the Resistance Centre is moving to a newer, better, snazzier location! Come and help warm the new home for Green Left Weekly newspaper, Socialist Alliance, Resistance socialist youth, plus a space for many social justice and environment campaigns.

Enjoy food, drinks music + toasts from David Shoebridge (Greens MLC); Antony Loewenstein (Independent journalist); Lek Jimdaratana (Thai Red Australia); Mel Barnes (Resistance); Peter Boyle (Socialist Alliance) Cathy Peters (Greens Marrickville councillor); Mark Goudkamp (Refugee Action Coalition and Solidarity) + Aboriginal Rights, trade union, Latin American and more campaigners!

Address: 22-36 Mountain Street, Ultimo (just off Broadway).

When: Saturday, July 16, 4-8:30pm

Contact: Paul 0410 629 088/ 8070 9331

Stop O’Farrell’s worse than workchoices laws

2011-07-12T14:16:00.001+10:00

The 12,000 who rallied outside parliament house against NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell’s “worse than WorkChoices” laws on June 15 showed how much anger there is about his attack on public sector workers.

A continued campaign of protests and industrial action can make it impossible for him to use these laws. It's not good enough to simply focus on the hope of voting out O'Farrell at the next election — which is four years away.

Unions NSW is planning another day of action in August. We need to generate pressure to make sure this includes serious stop work action and protests — on a larger scale than June 15.

What you can do:

• Contact your union organiser and ask what your union has planned for the August day of action. Make it clear you want the union to authorise stop work action at your workplace.

• Call a union branch meeting and move this motion (or at the regional delegates meetings — please email successful motions to nswunionactivists@gmail.com):

This meeting calls on Unions NSW and affiliates to call a 24-hour stop work for all public sector workers in August 2011. We also call for Unions NSW and affiliates to hold state-wide cross-union delegate meetings, including in metropolitan Sydney, in the lead up to this stop work to ensure public-sector wide participation and support.

• Attend the symposium jointly organised by Power to the People and NSW Union Activists: “Resisting & repelling the NSW O’Farrell government attacks on workers, public assets and services”, 2-4pm, Saturday July 16, MUA offices, 365 Sussex St, Sydney.

• Get involved in the NSW Union Activists Group to help organise pressure on Unions NSW and public sector unions to build a campaign to stop O’Farrell’s laws.

Contact nswunionactivists@gmail.com for more details.

[This statement has been circulated by the NSW Union Activists Group.]

Inspiring launch for progressive council ticket

2011-07-12T14:13:00.002+10:00

Saturday, July 9, 2011
By Chris Williams, Wollongong
Community Voice — a united grassroots ticket to contest Wollongong City Council elections — was officially launched on July 8 at Wollongong Town Hall.

The ticket is an exciting development for the Illawarra community. It will contest all positions in the September 3 election, including Lord Mayor.

Community Voice has developed a platform based on community democracy, social justice, job creation and sustainable development. It will preselect candidates for councillors on July 24 and for Lord Mayor on July 31.

Participants will spend the next two weeks holding conversations and discussions with community groups, neighbourhood forums, migrant communities and other groups to ensure the process is as inclusive as possible.

Present at the launch were rank-and-file trade unionists, community activists, and high profile community members such as Reverend Gordon Bradbury, who nearly won the seat of Wollongong in the NSW elections, and Michael Organ, Greens federal member for Cunningham from 2002-04.

The Illawarra Greens have decided to stand against Community Voice in two of the three local wards in Wollongong, despite helping to develop the ticket’s platform.

Participants in Community Voice will continue to urge the Greens to rejoin the process to maximise the community’s chances of gaining a real voice on council.

Community Voice spokesperson Felix Bronneberg said at the launch: “The September election provides residents with an unprecedented opportunity to create real change in the administration of our city.

“Let us not forget why our previous elected Council was sacked — because of closed-door deals done by corrupt Labor councillors and senior bureaucrats.

“The Labor party, which is yet to apologise to the community for its abuse of power, is a reminder of the most shameful episode in the history of our local government.

“Community Voice represents the interests of the community, not developers. The community must decide how to create a brighter future for our city.”

[For more details phone Felix 0434 264 171 or Mike 02 4268 1580.]

Aboriginal heritage, rare habitat bulldozed at Bulahdelah

2011-07-12T14:09:00.003+10:00

Saturday, July 9, 2011
By Zane Alcorn, Newcastle
The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) is continuing to build the Bulahdelah bypass, north of Newcastle, despite a community campaign to halt the project.

The bypass road was first proposed in 2000. Three main routes were canvassed: one to the west of the town, passing through several flat paddocks; another to the east, cutting through the foot of the Alum mountain; and an option that involved widening the existing road.

The safer, more geologically stable and slightly western route was ditched in favour of the mountain route. Following this decision in mid-2000, about 500 of the town’s 1300 residents submitted letters to the RTA opposing the chosen route. Their concerns were ignored.

The bushland that is being cleared to make way for the road was, until recently, home to many Aboriginal historic and cultural sites.

Campaigner Estelle Carrall told Green Left Weekly the RTA had bulldozed “scarred trees, canoe trees, shield trees, and a big artefact scatter site” as well as “the guardian tree, which was a hugely sacred site”.

The cultural heritage of the site is contested. A group representing the Karuah Local Aboriginal Lands Council signed off on the bypass despite the concerns of other Aboriginal people from the Worimi and Birupai countries.

A report prepared for the National Parks and Wildlife Service by Umwelt consultants in 2003 recommended the site be protected as an Aboriginal place, however this recommendation has been put “on hold”.

Similarly, a section 10 application lodged in 2009 under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act has been put “on hold” also.

The latest Aboriginal place to be threatened is frog rock, a traditional meeting place.

The RTA is blasting very close to the rock. Despite prior claims it will not be damaged, it is doubtful it will survive the blasting.

Campaigners against the bypass have also raised safety concerns about the route. Unlike the western route, they say the mountain route presents the risk of landslides and slope failures.

The area immediately in the path of the bypass is also home to 90 of Australia’s 800 species of orchids, including a rare type of orchid which flowers underground.

There are only three known species of orchid like this anywhere on Earth and the roadwork has eliminated the “type site” or main base of this particular genus.

Campaigners have also faced physical violence and intimidation in their efforts to have the site protected.

The project is another example of the legacy of the former NSW ALP government’s notorious part 3A planning laws.

The new Liberal government was elected on a promise of scrapping part 3A. But it has not undertaken a review of projects such as the Bulahdelah bypass that were approved under part 3A and are still in a relatively early phase of construction.

Community activists say they will keep up their campaign to halt the project and protect the remaining sacred sites.

[For more information on the campaign visit http://bulahdelahbypass.wordpress.com ]

Union fight can beat O’Farrell back

2011-06-27T21:37:00.002+10:00

Saturday, June 25, 2011
By Susan Price
In a show of anger against the attacks on workers rights by NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell, 12,000 public sector workers stopped work and rallied outside NSW parliament on June 15.

The protest was organised in just over a week, and several unions, including the Nurses Federation and the fire fighters took stopwork action on the day.

In spite of constant rain, the rally spread out for more than a block along Macquarie Street and into Martin Place.

The date was chosen to coincide with the sitting of the NSW Legislative Assembly, which passed the industrial relations legislation into law that night.

The new law passed through the Legislative Council the previous day after a lengthy debate, including a historic fillibuster by Greens and Labor MPs.

When challenged by the opposition to respond to the presence of 12,000 workers rallying outside parliament, O’Farrell said, “that the biggest protest we have seen this year was on 26 March” referring to the recent state election, when voters punished the then-ALP government and voted in the Liberal government.

The ALP was rightly thrown out of office for years of developer deals and sell-outs, and the claims by O’Farrell that the new government was implementing Labor’s policy is not a complete lie.

The former ALP government policy included a 2.5% salary cap on public sector wages. Further rises were subject to productivity agreements.

The ALP’s 2007 Public Sector Wages Policy said: “Agencies must fund any increases above 2.5% per annum to wages, or other employee related expenses such as allowances, superannuation etc, through employee related cost saving measures.”

Quoting anonymous sources, the May 26 Australian accused the Labor treasurer in 2004, Michael Egan, of floating the idea of legislating “to force the industrial court to observe the government's wages policy when making its determinations”.

Thanks to Labor’s legacy, O’Farrell can now broaden the attacks on public sector workers to undermine the whole state industrial relations system and concentrate industrial relations powers in the hands of the finance ministry.

Finance minister Greg Pearce will now have the power to review any new and existing awards, even where these have already been determined. He can demand trade-offs in conditions and job cuts in exchange for wage claims above 2.5%.

The June 15 rally heard from a mix of union officials and rank-and-file public sector workers.

The mood of the crowd was angry defiance. Some made calls for a 24-hour, statewide strike.

These sentiments reflected a debate among union leaders that took place in the week before the rally. Some unions were prepared to lead their members out for 24 hours, while others were not committed to industrial action on the day.

The nurses union put the question to its members, who answered with an overwhelming vote for stopwork action on the day.

Other unions, such as the NSW Teachers Federation, would not commit to industrial action, but sent delegations to the rally from schools across Sydney.

Rank-and-file delegates, including a teacher’s aide, a nurse and a firefighter, did not mince words when they said they were not going to accept this new law, telling O’Farrell to “dump this law or we’ll dump you”.

By contrast the message coming from the officials was a call for a four-year-long campaign to oust O’Farrell.

Throwing out O’Farrell and the Coalition at the next election should be one outcome of this campaign, but allowing this battle to become focussed on electing the ALP back into office in four years’ time would be a serious setback.

Illustrative of the worrying signs that this campaign could become subordinate to the ALP’s electoral aspirations, the Greens were prevented from speaking on the rally platform outside parliament, in spite of the leading role they are playing in this campaign.

Protests and delegates meetings are being organised across regional NSW and outer Sydney in the lead up to the next statewide mobilisation on August 22.

In Newcastle, a rally is being organised to coincide with a government Community Cabinet meeting.

These delegate meetings have so far been organised only in marginal seats (see details below) and no cross-union delegates meeting is planned for metropolitan Sydney.

It is also unclear whether August 22 will be called as a 24-hour, statewide strike.

Workers and their unions need to fight with every ally they can to build the major industrial, community and political campaign in the short term that is needed to defeat these laws by making them unworkable.

As such, there need to be motions and debate from the floor about the next steps in this campaign, including a concerted industrial campaign to force O’Farrell back.

All progressive activists (including socialists, Greens, ALP rank-and-file activists and others) will need to push for strong action in August.

There is also an important role for local union and community activist groups to play in ensuring local grassroots leadership and direction.

In this context of the need for left unity, the emergence of “Community Voice”, a united front of the left and progressive community, which was launched on June 18 in the Illawarra, is a welcome sign.

The power of the NSW minister to set award wages and conditions is an attack on industrial relations that goes beyond the attacks by former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, which adopted harsh anti-worker laws in 1992.

In response, unions across Victoria mounted a huge industrial campaign and 200,000 workers took part in a 24-hour strike and marched on the state parliament.

Kay McVey, then-president of the State Public Service Federation, told Green Left Weekly: “All our members are aware that just one 24-hour general strike will not achieve our objectives. We need a concerted campaign until this offensive legislation is withdrawn or repealed.”

This is exactly the kind of campaign we need in NSW.

[Susan Price is the national trade union convener of the Socialist Alliance.]

DETAILS OF REGIONAL DELEGATES MEETINGS AND ACTIONS

Newcastle — Rally at Civic Park at 5pm Monday 27th June 2011 at 6pm
Prior to the Community Cabinet meeting at Newcastle City Hall, King Street Newcastle.
Contact: Garry Kennedy 0438 550 508

Dubbo — Delegates Meeting 12:30pm -1:15pm Monday 27th June
Dubbo RSL Club, Corner Brisbane St and Wingewarra St, Dubbo
Contact: Paul Doughty on 0418 290 945

Orange — Delegates Meeting 5:30pm – 6:30pm, Monday 27 June
Tobruk Room, Orange Ex-Services Club, 231 – 243 Anson St, Orange
Contact: Paul Doughty on 0418 290 945

Bathurst — Delegates Meeting 5:30pm – 6:30pm, Tuesday 28 June
Heritage Room, Bathurst RSL Club, 114 Rankin Street Bathurst
Contact: Paul Doughty on 0418 290 945

Shoalhaven — Rally outside Shoalhaven City Council at 4:30pm Tuesday 28th June
Bridge St, Nowra
Contact: Arthur Rorris 0409 223 029

Sutherland Shire — Delegates Meeting 4:30pm Tuesday 28th June
Sutherland Trade Union Club, Eloura Room,
Contact: Ted Kenny Teachers Federation 9217 2100

Central Coast — Delegates Meeting 6pm Wednesday 29th June
Ourimbah RSL, 6-22 Pacific Highway Ourimbah
Contact Adam Kerslake 0425 231 820

Penrith — Delegates Meeting 12:30pm-1:30pm Wednesday 29th June
Venue – TBC
Contact: Mary Yaager 0408 931 899

Coal Seam Gas policy

2011-06-27T21:31:00.003+10:00

The gas industry is rapidly increasing its scope in the Australian energy market. Gas is talked up as by some as a clean energy source, or as a “transition fuel”, while we develop renewable energies. But gas is a fossil fuel. Burning it creates carbon emissions.

For a safe climate, we need to cut net emissions almost totally within the next decade. In fact, we then have to move below zero net emissions: to draw down more carbon than we produce. The single biggest contribution to a safe climate future in Australia will come through making the switch to 100% renewables*, with stationary energy currently responsible for 51 per cent of our total emissions.

Australia's approach to stationary energy must acknowledge the science and use societies resources to give us a chance at a safe climate future. This means no new gas.

Particular concerns with mining coal seams for gas - that require policy to address existing projects - include possible water, air and environmental contamination with toxic and radioactive compounds, salt and heavy metals; damage to aquifers and groundwater systems; gas explosions and flammability; sizeable footprint of gas fields and the networks of wellheads, pipelines and roads that fragment the environment; fugitive emissions and truck movements. Coal seam gas mining has also been linked to increased rates of cancer, kidney, heart lung and neurological problems, asthma, eye irritation, endocrine disruption and headaches.

Socialist Alliance campaigns for:

- A public inquiry into the health, safety and environmental impacts of coal seam gas mining.
- A moratorium on all coal seam gas mining until outcome of inquiry.
- A ban on all coal seam gas mining under cities; water catchment, supply and storage areas; farmland; and other environmentally significant areas.
- A ban on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).
- No new coal seam gas mines or power plants; and invest in renewables. Investment in energy must be limited to technologies that can move us to a zero emissions economy, not commit us to other carbon polluting technologies.

* The Zero Carbon Australia 2020 (ZCA2020) Stationary Energy Plan shows that Australia could meet all its energy needs from 100% renewables within 10 years, using technology that is commercially available today. It is the product of collaboration between the University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute and Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE).

[Adopted as interim policy by Socialist Alliance National Council, 26 June, 2011]

Wollongong: United ticket bids for community voice on council

2011-06-25T19:21:00.003+10:00

Saturday, June 25, 2011
Chris Williams, Wollongong
Community Voice, a united ticket of the left and progressive community in Wollongong, was formed on June 18 after a thorough discussion focussed on putting local council back in the hands of the community.

More than 40 people attended, including Reverend Gordon Bradbery (pictured), who nearly won the seat of Wollongong in the recent NSW election; Dr Munir Hussain, chairperson of the Omar Mosque; leading members of progressive parties the Greens and the Socialist Alliance; independent and community activists; trade unionists and other activists.

The meeting adopted a platform based on community democracy, sustainability, socially useful development and job creation.

The Liberal Party, confident after its landslide win in the NSW election, has declared it will contest the council elections.

Some Labor Party members have indicated they will stand as candidates, but it is unclear whether the party itself will officially stand and back candidates.

Wollongong City Council has been under administration since March 2008 after it was sacked for unprecedented levels of corruption.

The Labor-appointed administrators have become increasingly unpopular and calls for fresh elections have grown.

Residents will go to the polls on September 3 to elect councilors for the Wollongong and Shellharbour City Councils.

Bowen confronted on ‘live export of people’

2011-06-22T11:47:00.002+10:00

Saturday, June 18, 2011
By Paul Benedek, Sydney

Chanting “refugees — freedom now, don’t treat people worse than cows”, 50 refugee rights protesters confronted immigration minister Chris Bowen at a refugee conference on June 17.

The protest, which was called by the Refugee Action Coalition, marched into the University of NSW lecture theatre in which Bowen was addressing the conference, before police and security ejected the activists.

Many of those inside the conference, which was organised by the Centre for Refugee Research, supported the protest. About half the room turned their backs on Bowen.

One protester dressed as a cow carried a sign that read: “Ban live human exports to Malaysia”. Other demonstrators carried cow bells, pointing out the hypocrisy of the federal government’s treatment of cattle compared to human beings.

While acting to prevent degrading treatment of cattle exported overseas, the government is promoting degrading treatment of asylum seekers by sending them to Malaysia, a country that is not a signatory to the refugee convention and is notorious for mistreatment of asylum seekers.

Refugee Action Coalition spokesperson Ian Rintoul told the rally there could be no confidence in Bowen’s assurances that asylum seekers sent to Malaysia would not be caned or abused.

He gave the example of an asylum seeker who was recently sent back to Syria by the Australian government, at a time when the Syrian regime has killed more than 1000 political opponents.

Other speakers said Bowen was responsible for the unlawful detention of hundreds of children.

Throughout Bowen’s speech chants of “shame” and “no human exports, no Malaysia solution” could be heard from outside, before the minister departed through a rear exit escorted by police.

Make O'Farrell’s industrial laws unworkable

2011-06-18T19:09:00.002+10:00

Saturday, June 11, 2011
By Susan Price
A bill attacking the rights of NSW public sector workers pushed by the O’Farrell Coalition government are set to pass through the upper house on June 14, with the support of Fred Nile’s Christian Democrats and the Shooters Party.

It can then be put through the Liberal dominated lower house on June 15.

The anti-union bill is a draconian measure. If passed, it will give the state government the power to unilaterally set the wages and conditions of public sector workers.

It means the government could not only freeze or even cut wages but also cut penalty rates, shift allowances, maternity leave payments, redundancy payments and other entitlements without public sector employees having any redress to the NSW Industrial Relations Commission (IRC).

The government’s wages policy will limit pay rises for new agreements to 2.5%, despite inflation running at more than 3%.

The laws mean that if public servants strike for better pay, the strike could be stopped by the Commission. If public servants tried to bargain for better pay, the government could simply refuse to bargain.

No public sector worker is safe. The state government could decide to review all current awards and change them through regulation.

This could also open the floodgates to more attacks on workers' rights outside the state public sector. If the Coalition wins at the next federal election, these kinds of attacks could be generalised across the country.

NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell’s attacks are worse than Howard’s Work Choices. They will place the wages and conditions of 400,000 NSW public sector workers in the hands of the finance minister. No new awards will be able to be made unless the minister says so.

The new laws will give NSW public sector workers the worst industrial rights of any worker in Australia. They will end the independent role of the IRC; cut the pay and conditions of public sector workers in NSW; undermine the ability of public sector unions to represent their members, and cut services to the community.

In response, unions have chosen June 15 to hold a big protest at parliament house, which will be built through stop work actions across NSW by public sector unions.

In early June, a key meeting of public sector unions took place. The meeting heard proposals for a 24-hour strike on June 15. Most union leaders opted for a four-hour stop work action and some will take the proposal back to members for debate.

Unions NSW has launched a petition campaign, with a target of 20,000 signatures by June 15.

The rally follows several snap protests outside parliament over June 2-4. These actions attracted hundreds of workers.

The initiative for these mobilisations came from the NSW Public Service Association (PSA) and the NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF), with support from the bus drivers’ section of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU), the Fire Brigade Employees Union (FBEU) and the NSW Nurses Federation.

These snap protests took place against a backdrop of one of the most historic filibusters in NSW parliamentary history.

In an effort to delay the passing of the legislation, Greens Upper House MPs David Shoebridge and John Kaye delivered speeches of almost six hours. Labor's industrial relations spokesperson, Sophie Cotsis, spoke for three hours. Debate was finally suspended after 11 hours at 3.19am on June 3.

On June 9, 16 branches of the NSW Nurses Federation (which has 35,000 members), fresh from their campaign for better nurse to patient ratios, voted to take a four-hour stop work action on June 15. This represents 80% of the federation’s NSW branches.

The FBEU also voted to stop work across metropolitan Sydney, the Illawarra and the Hunter Valley on June 15.

The NSWTF Executive has not yet voted to take stop work action, but has decided that delegations of its members will mobilise from schools across Sydney to attend the rally, leaving a skeleton staff behind.

The Health Services Union will also take stop work action for the rally.

The NSW PSA (which represents 45,000 members) has left it to sections and workplaces to vote on strike action. At least one PSA workplace has voted unanimously to take strike action if its request for leave is not granted.

The PSA is also organising buses to transport members to the rally.

The RTBU have responded strongly to the attacks and will mobilise for the rally. It is considering stop work action.

There has been a lot of talk in the media about the so-called deal to exempt police from the changes. Nile pushed the government for the exemption because the police had a wage case before the IRC.

But apparently the police exemption is not a certainty. O'Farrell has even denied any such exemption exists, saying that any wage rises for police above 2.5% will have to be funded out of the Police Officer Death and Disability Scheme.

The Police Association have said 500 of its members will attend the June 15 rally. NSW Police threatened to take strike action over wages in 2008, but they haven’t actually taken such action in about a century.

They should join the campaign rather than allow themselves to become O’Farrell’s shock troops deployed against their NSW public sector colleagues.

The attacks have taken many union leaderships by surprise, but already there is talk among unions about a statewide general strike in August, with regional actions in the lead up across the state.

Progressive unionists and activists across NSW are organising to help ensure the June 15 rally is huge, and that momentum builds for a general strike across NSW.

After all, the state runs on the labour of public sector workers, so withdrawing that labour is the only way to make these laws unworkable and force O’Farrell to back off.

The most effective way to ensure union members and workers across the state are mobilised is to explain the seriousness of these attacks and to show how industrial organisation is the key to defeating these laws.

Cross-union delegate meetings and building strong union-community alliances is essential. This will also allow non-public sector workers to join the campaign, plus students, parents, churches, other concerned citizens and users of public services in NSW.

Liberals backflip after solar outrage

2011-06-13T11:44:00.000+10:00

Saturday, June 11, 2011
By Zane Alcorn, Newcastle

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) organised a “save solar” rally in Newcastle on June 6. The rally was at the office of Liberal MLA Tim Owen and was the latest in a string of protests calling for planned retrospective cuts to NSW’s solar bonus scheme to be abandoned.

The rally attracted about 250 people and included many solar industry workers.

SEIA representative Chanti Richardson chaired the rally and introduced Solar Newcastle (SN) director Adam Dalby.

Dalby said that sales of panels by SN had all but evaporated since the new NSW Coalition government cut the “solar bonus” feed in tariff scheme.

He said that the media needed to stop listening to politicians who were scapegoating the solar bonus scheme for rises in the cost of electricity and do some investigation of their own.

If they did so, Dalby said they would find that the main reason for power price rises is NSW’s ageing fleet of coal-fired power stations and the maintainance of the grid that carries power from these centralised plants across the state.

He said that people who installed panels should receive payment from the power companies at the same rate that those companies were retailing electricity to other households. At the moment, in the absence of any feed in tariff, power retailers will profit from surplus power generated by any new solar panels.

Solar panel owner Barbara Rae from the Newcastle suburb of Mayfield, told the crowd that she and her husband had taken out an $18,000 loan to get a 4.2 kilowatt solar panel system.

Rae said she felt “sick” when the state government announced it would be retrospectively cutting the feed-in tariff for eligible recipients such as herself from 60c per kW/h down to 40c.

Duncan Jinks from Climate Action Newcastle said the attack on the fledgling solar industry was a backward step for climate action.

Greens MLC David Shoebridge also addressed the rally. He said the Coalition government’s estimates regarding the output of the 355 megawatts of installed panels (and thus the cost of the scheme) were way out.

The Liberal member for Newcastle, Tim Owen, addressed the crowd at the end. He defended the government’s solar industry policy.

Owen received a grilling from the crowd, who demanded that he “cross the floor” and oppose the cuts.

The day after the rally, the O’Farrell government announced it would abandon its plans to retrospectively cut the feed in tarriff rate.

Owen hailed the decision as “a victory for commonsense” despite having defended the cuts the previous day.

The Sydney Morning Herald said June 7 also marked the day that rooftop solar company Clear Solar went into receivership, with forty jobs lost.

A steep cut in business stemming from the weakening (and then axing) of the feed in tariff was cited as the main reason the business went under.

Teachers rally outside parliament against IR assault

2011-06-06T11:38:00.002+10:00

June 4, 2011
John Gauci, Sydney
Three hundred teachers from across NSW rallied outside NSW Parliament House in Macquarie St on June 4. They were joined by members of the Public Service Association, the Fire Brigade Employees Union, the NSW Nurses Federation and other unionists.

The teachers left a session of the New South Wales Teachers Federation (NSWTF) council to protest the Liberal government’s plan to strip away conditions and limit wage rises of public sector workers.

At the rally, the NSWTF councillors declared their support for other public sector workers and the unions NSW campaign against the changes.

Council authorised its senior officers and federation executive to take whatever action is necessary to defeat the attacks on teachers wages and conditions.

Speakers at the rally included NSWTF president Bob Lipscombe and Unions NSW secretary Mark Lennon.

During the protest, the government moved to shut down the parliamentary debate on the controversial industrial relations bill.

Greens MP David Shoebridge, who was taking part in the attempts to filibuster the bill inside parliament, said: “The new coalition of Barry O'Farrell, Fred Nile and the Shooters Party today took the extreme step of shutting down debate in the upper house of the NSW Parliament," Mr Shoebridge said.

“This right wing cabal of the Liberals, Nationals, Fred Nile and the Shooters has broken a 100 year tradition of open debate in the NSW Upper House in a direct attack on the democracy in NSW.”

Shoebridge said muzzling the debate “set a dangerous precedent, and should be a warning sign of how Barry O'Farrell and his right-wing crew intend to proceed over the next four years”.

Wollongong left: can we unite for elections?

2011-06-06T11:32:00.002+10:00

June 4, 2011
Chris Williams, Wollongong
More than 40 people attended a meeting on May 22 in the Wollongong suburb of Corrimal titled, “The future of local government in Wollongong; can it be community driven and democratic”?

Wollongong City Council has been under administration since March 2008 after the ALP-dominated council was sacked for systemic corruption.

An election is scheduled for September 3 for all councillor positions, including Lord Mayor.

Trade unionists, socialists, Greens and community activists attended the meeting, which was organised by Broad Left.

Participants discussed ways to deepen community democracy, increase participation in local politics and policy ideas for left candidates.

An important discussion focused on left collaboration for the council elections. Several of the meeting participants were signatories to a call out for the progressive community to unite for the elections.

The call out, which is independent of Broad Left, said: “[Left independent] Gordon Bradbery’s campaign in the seat of Wollongong [in the recent NSW elections] showed that the community can challenge the major parties.

“It showed that we can convince large numbers of people to vote for a real alternative. We can make a difference in the council elections, and create a real community voice, but only if we unite.

“A united, full ticket of community independents — backed by progressive groups and individuals including the trade unions, Greens, socialists, young people, migrant communities and other independent activists could reclaim Wollongong and Shellharbour councils for the good of the community.

“This approach may be our only chance to avoid major political party interests controlling councils here in the Illawarra.

“If we continue with business as usual and stay divided its hard to see what can change. But if we can seize the opportunity to unite we can begin to take the Illawarra in a new direction: away from corruption scandals, exclusion and poverty, and toward good governance, sustainable policies, jobs and inclusive local politics.”

Supporters of the call out for a united ticket will organise a meeting in the coming weeks. For details phone Felix Bronneberg on 0434 264 171 or Mike Donaldson on 0420 889 565.

'Worse than WorkChoices' - O’Farrell to slash public service wages

2011-05-30T21:59:00.002+10:00

Saturday, May 28, 2011
By John Gauci
The newly-elected Barry O’Farrell Coalition government in NSW has introduced a bill that gives it unprecedented power over pay and conditions for the state's 400,000 public servants — gutting the NSW Industrial Relations Commission’s (IRC) role.

The Industrial Relations Amendment (Public Sector Conditions of Employment) Bill 2011 amends the state industrial relations act to require the IRC to “give effect to aspects of government policy declared by the regulations relating to NSW public sector conditions of employment”.

Industrial relations minister Greg Pearce told parliament on May 24 that the policy was intended to cap annual wage rises at 2.5% a year in cases where they are not funded by trade-offs in working conditions.

He said the bill was meant to ensure the “wages policy or the government’s fiscal strategy is not rendered ineffective by decisions of the Industrial Relations Commission”.

The proposed 2.5% capped wage rises are less than the rate of inflation. This would mean a wage cut for NSW public sector workers.

The amendments will apply to claims already before the IRC — which include cases brought by the Public Service Association (PSA) and the Police Association. It will also apply to appeals to any matters already decided.

NSW public school teachers are scheduled to begin bargaining in December 2011.

One of the government’s proposed amendments explicitly requires the IRC to give effect to the government’s policy on conditions of employment for the public service when it makes or varies an award or order.

Pearce said that the “policy on conditions of employment” reference was “intended to be broad enough to enable all relevant elements of the public sector wages policy to be included in the declaration made under the regulations”.

This “may also refer to other relevant conditions of employment, such as increased leave entitlements or a new classification structure”.

He said the regulations “may declare particular aspects of government policy on public sector conditions of employment, or they may adopt an existing policy set out in a relevant document”.

Under subsection (3) of the proposed section 146C, any award or order that is inconsistent with the government's declared wages policy will have no effect.

Pearce said that the government was “mindful of concerns about the independence of the judiciary”, and the legislation did not apply to the NSW industrial court.

Public sector employees are defined in the bill to include public servants, teachers, police, and health services employees. Pearce said the new requirements “clearly” wouldn’t apply to local government employers and employees.

Pearce told parliament that each 1% rise in public sector wages permanently raised government expenses by about $277 million a year.

He said the former Labor government had introduced the 2.5% cap on unfunded public sector payrises but had failed to implement it, leading to a wages “blow-out”.

Justifying his move to take the public sector wage-setting power away from the IRC, Pearce maintained the tribunal had rejected key aspects of the former government’s wages policy on a number of occasions, and it was “not a good outcome for NSW when government wages policy is disregarded”.

Opposition Leader John Robertson, formerly the secretary of Unions NSW, said the bill was “worse than Work Choices” and would give “unprecedented powers to the O'Farrell government to slash wages and conditions for nurses, teachers and police”.

He claimed: “Every single condition of employment is now at risk, including wages, penalty rates, nurse ratios, shift allowances, sick leave, long service leave and maternity leave.”

Unions NSW secretary Mark Lennon told the government to expect a campaign against the changes.

“The government has a right, as an employer, to go and argue their case for wages and conditions that they think are fair for their employees,” he said on May 25.

“But ultimately the decision has to be made by the independent umpire, and that's the right that will be removed as a consequence of this legislation.”

Greens NSW MP David Shoebridge said the powers the bill would give government were “frightening”.

The PSA also condemned the legislation, saying it would remove the union’s right to bargain for wages and conditions for its members.

It said: “The PSA will campaign across its entire membership base to oppose this legislation which will adversely affect the lives of more than 300,000 NSW public sector workers and their families.

“The campaign will commence immediately and will involve all PSA structural units including workplace groups, branches and departmental committees, and will continue until wage justice is achieved.”

The Police Association described the bill as a “betrayal of every police officer in NSW”. and said it would give the new government powers to cut “pay scales that reward experience; special rates for detectives; protections for injured police officers; provision of uniforms; and annual and long service leave”.

On May 25, O'Farrell said the changes were “minor”, and said the only difference between his government's and Labor's 2.5% curb on unfunded pay rises was that he was going to make sure the policy was carried out.

He said NSW public servants had on average won wage increases of 4% a year since 2007, but only 54% of productivity offsets had been delivered.

The Coalition is still to prove a “budget black hole” actually exists, especially during a mining boom. Of course there is no “budget black hole”, only the desire to further drive down the wages and conditions of public sector workers and make cuts to badly needed public services.

On May 26, the PSA announced it would place a ban on overtime in response to the attacks.

But unfortunately, instead of organising a coordinated public sector-wide campaign that coordinates industrial action and mobilises public sector workers and the community against the attacks, Unions NSW is focusing on an online campaign where public sector workers are asked to email members of parliament.
NSW public sector workers need to demand their union leaders organise cross-union mobilisations against these attacks. Only united action will defeat them.

NSW Liberals ditch solar rebate

2011-05-26T12:44:00.003+10:00

Coral Wynter, May 22, 2011
New Coalition premier of NSW, Barry O'Farrell, may be rethinking his decision to slash the electricity power rebate to solar power customers after some of his own Liberal Party MPs vowed to vote against it.

About 1500 angry people rallied at the plaza of Sydney’s Customs House on May 18 to protest the slashing of the rebate from 60 cents a kilowatt hour to 40c. The rally had to be moved from an overflowing indoor location.

Many farmers have invested from $55,000 to $90,000 in solar panels so they can sell excess unused electricity back to the grid to earn extra income during the hard times of long droughts.

The decision could also mean a great loss of jobs for many of the 8200 people employed in the solar industry, which was one of the fastest growing employment sectors.

Nearly 60% of solar installations in 2010 were outside the Sydney metropolitan area, confirming that a lot of employment was generated in the regional towns.

Nearly 120,000 household and small businesses have solar power, so many people will be affected by the 30% loss of income.

The solar power systems installed in 2010 have led to the abatement of 204,000 tonnes of CO2 in NSW alone. About 40,000 electricity customers who applied to join the scheme since April 28 this year will be allowed to do so only at the rate of 20c a kilowatt hour.

O'Farrell will have to introduce legislation retrospectively to enforce the new rates of rebates, an unprecedented step.

The chairperson of Solar Energy Industries, Ged McCarthy, said they will launch a class action against the retrospective legislation if it goes ahead.

O'Farrell and energy minister Chris Hartcher have lied about the real cost of the scheme, saying it was still underfunded by $749 million. But the solar industry says the cost is only $263 million a year.

On May 24, the government will hold a crucial party-room vote on whether to abandon the solar feed-in-tariff. Protest organisers have called on people to encircle NSW parliament when the legislation to slash the payments is debated.

But there is a very simple solution to the solar power rebate. The privatised electricity companies are making huge profits from the solar bonus scheme by reselling the electricity generated by solar power to other customers.

Greens MP John Kaye said all the government has to do is force the utilities to pay for this solar-generated electricity, which at the moment they are getting free.

It’s clear the Coalition government, like the Labor government before it, has no commitment to renewable energy, while it continues to subsidise the coal companies and go down the path of reducing the solar power rebates.

A conference you should not miss - Climate Change Social Change 2011

2011-05-11T16:13:00.005+10:00

Humanity is in a race against time to avoid environmental catastrophe and social collapse.

We sometimes seem to be losing that race. Climate change, no longer just a prediction, is already extinguishing species, destroying essential food production and forcing thousands of people to flee their island homes. More people are directly affected by more wars than ever before in history. And while the structural causes of last year’s global financial crisis continue unabated, governments are imposing vicious austerity policies on the majority in both the Global North and South to pay for the capitalists’ bail-out.

But recent events show that there is great reason for hope and inspiration, because masses of ordinary people are determined to fight for social justice and human survival, even if most governments aren’t. When peoples of the Arab world rise up and overthrow dictators; when the revolutionary government of tiny Bolivia refuses to bow down to the rich countries’ attempts to impose fake solutions to climate change; when millions of workers, students and unemployed take to the streets of Greece, France and Wisconsin saying “enough is enough”; when asylum seekers in Australia’s refugee prisons won’t stop protesting despite severe repression; and when Wikileaks reveals the moral bankruptcy of international capitalism for all to see, we know that it is possible to rescue and change our world.

The second Climate Change-Social Change conference aims to contribute towards understanding and collective action, in Australia and internationally, to urgently address the climate and social emergencies that we must overcome if humanity and the planet are to not only survive, but thrive.

Bookings open now
Friday, September 30 – Monday, October 3, 2011
Melbourne University

Featuring:

JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER, renowned US economist and ecologist, Monthly Review editor and author of The Ecological Rift, The Ecological Revolution, The Great Financial Crisis (with Fred Magdoff); Marx’s Ecology; Ecology Against Capitalism; and The Vulnerable Planet.

IAN ANGUS, a founder of the Ecosocialist International Network and editor of climateandcapitalism.com. Author of Confronting the Climate Change Crisis: An Eco-socialist Perspective; Food Crisis: World Hunger, Agribusiness and the Food Sovereignty Alternative; and The Global Fight for Climate Justice.

Three days of feature talks, panel discussions and more than 20 workshops to discuss solutions for a world in crisis

Including: Capitalism, socialism and ecology ● People’s power and democracy ● The climate debt and the Global South ● Refugees, racism and internationalism ● Food security and survival ● Building movements that can stop climate change ● The global nuclear threat ● Indigenous resistance and sovereignty ● Imperialism, war and oil ● The market Vs social ownership ● The dirty record of carbon trading ● Population and the planet ● Agro-business and sustainable alternatives
…and much more

Sponsored by the Office of Environmental Programs, Melbourne University
Organised by Green Left Weekly and the Socialist Alliance

Register now:
Whole conference: $100 solidarity rate $60 waged $20 unwaged
Per day/session: $55 solidarity rate $35 waged $15 unwaged
John Bellamy Foster keynote presentation only:
“Capitalist crises, ecology and socialism” (Friday September 30, 7pm): $15 solidarity $10 waged $5 unwaged

To register, offer a presentation or display, or for more information:
BOOKINGS: http://climatechangesocialchange2011.wordpress.com/registration-form/
EMAIL: climatechangesocialchange2011@gmail.com
PHONE: (02) 9690 2508
POST: PO Box A2323, Sydney South, NSW 1230

Socialist Alliance May Day Statement 2011

2011-04-27T22:43:00.005+10:00

The ALP took government on the back of the Your Rights At Work Campaign. But Labor has failed to "rip up" Work Choices. Australian Industry Group boss, Heather Ridout, told the 2011 HR Nichols Society conference: "There were many positive elements of the previous [Coalition] Government’s work place relations laws that have been retained by the Labor Government".

Fair Work Act lacks justice

At a 2010 speech to the NSW Nurses Association in Sydney, Julia Gillard warned that Tony Abbott would reintroduce individual workplace contracts and would abolish penalty rates. Yet under Gillard's leadership, the ALP govt has been hard at work undermining the right to organise.

Labor's record includes:

* In four years, Labor has failed to get rid of the Australian Building and Construction Commission;
* Flexibility clauses in Awards and collective agreements that undermine Awards and introduce AWAs by stealth;
* Wages and conditions stripped back through Labor's "Award modernisation" process;
* A minimum wage freeze in 2009 not compensated for fully in the 2010 wage adjustment;
* Entrenched restrictions on the right to strike - strongly criticised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO);
* Limiting right of access for union officials to meet with workers on the job;
* Prohibiting industry-wide pattern bargaining, yet employers can collaborate across industries to undermine union action;
* No right to unfair dismissal for workers in small companies for the first 12 months.

In her first term as Industrial Relations and Education Minister, Gillard threatened to bring in scabs to administer the NAPLAN tests to undermine the campaign by teachers unions against school league tables.

The Gillard government has not committed to funding pay equity for social and community sector workers.

This month's federal budget will see cuts to welfare and other social services.

And if all that isn't bad enough, the ALP is determined to adopt a national standard of OHS laws that will undermine OHS rights for workers in NSW and will shift the onus of proof in favour of employers.

ALP failing on transition to green jobs

The job cuts in the Victorian car industry is a signal that we need a plan for a just transition due to climate change.

Last month, Ford announced 240 voluntary redundancies in Victoria, and Toyota has reduced its production forcing 3300 workers to work half the hours and receive three-quarters of their weekly pay. The companies say that this is due to a drop in demand for large cars. These cars are high in emissions.

Instead of publicly investing in retooling and retraining car workers for the production of zero emission cars or alternate transport solutions and other green jobs, the Federal government is sitting on its hands and insisting that a price on carbon will fix the problem by creating a market for private investment in clean technology.

Carbon taxes in Europe have been found to be ineffective in developing new jobs in renewable industries. Leaving new job creation to "the market" is a recipe for more inaction.

ALP punished

Decades of neoliberal attacks have seen the ALP being punished in state elections — first WA, then Victoria and now in New South Wales.

NSW Labor's program of privatisation, attacks on teachers and the public sector and its pro-developer agenda sealed its fate. But an O'Farrell Liberal-National government is no friend to workers!

O’Farrell's 'discovery' of a $4.5 billion 'black hole' in the state budget will mean public sector job cuts and cuts to essential services and more sell-offs.

In Qld, the ALP government under Anna Bligh has privatised QR freight rail. Union leaderships opposed to the privatisation agenda have been threatened with expulsion from the ALP, and in one case, Peter Simpson, Qld Secretary of the Electrical Trades Union is currently fighting his recent expulsion.

United action is the answer

In December 2010, 300 union and community activists from around Australia met in Melbourne at the Union Community Summer School – an initiative of the Socialist Alliance and others on the left – to discuss practical collaboration across the left and in the progressive wing of the union movement. The success of the UCSS was that it showed that there is still a significant network of active left wing, militant unionists willing to work together.

Socialist Alliance is committed to uniting with other left and progressive activists within and outside of the ALP and to supporting the development of militant union and community action against the pro-big-business agenda of the two major parties.

We also stand in solidarity with those who struggle across the globe for a society that puts people before profits - Socialism!

Who’s afraid of the Green Left?

2011-04-11T12:13:00.004+10:00

Sunday, April 10, 2011
By Peter Boyle
For more than a week, Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian has been on the warpath against green and left “extremists”. It began by attacking the NSW Greens for supporting the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid. The Greens are organised in independent parties in each state, but the Murdoch flagship demanded that Australian Greens leader Bob Brown bring its most left-wing branch into line.

Labor PM Julia Gillard joined the fray, branding the Greens as “extremists who do not share the values of everyday Australians.” Former PMs Bob Hawke, John Howard and Kevin Rudd were rolled out to attack the Greens. Former NSW Labor premier Bob Carr accused the Greens of being “overtaken by hardline leftist Greens”.

In some wild responses to an ABC Drum website opinion piece by Socialist Alliance Marrickville candidate Pip Hinman defending the Greens’ BDS stance, the Greens were accused of being taken over by the Socialist Alliance. This of course is a lie.

Then the April 2-3 Weekend Australian declared: “Brown puts Greens Left on notice”. It quoted Brown as saying the NSW Greens BDS position had cost it votes in the March 26 NSW election.

The attacks continued during the week and on April 8, The Australian quoted former Queensland Greens leader Drew Hutton and Tasmanian Greens co-founder Norm Sanders of having strayed from the party’s environmentalist roots.

According to The Australian, Hutton said there had always been “tension in the Greens between those who come from a Left background, and those who come from a green background.”

The article ended with an outrageous quote from Sanders: “Bob and Christine are the only ones who’ve been on the barricades. They’re the only activists in the Greens. I don’t know where the rest come from.”

So what has stirred the right-wing hornets’ nest?

Ironically it is the silver (or should we say red-green?) lining to the dark cloud of the landslide Liberal-National Coalition victory in the NSW elections.

The Coalition enjoyed a 13% swing as most angry voters punished the hated and corrupt former Labor state government. However, there was also a smaller but significant gain by progressive parties and independents that campaigned not just on environmental issues but also in opposition to privatisation and in support of workers’ rights.

The Greens won their first lower house seat in the state and look like increasing their upper house representation from four to five. In addition, the Greens’ statewide vote increased from 9% to 11%.

In the seat of Marrickville, the Greens’ Fiona Byrne came just 700 votes short of knocking off former deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt despite a campaign full of dirty tricks and anti-Green smears.

Byrne had been slandered as an extremist, an anti-Semite and a Nazi-lover because, as Marrickville mayor, she, along with Greens and Labor councillors, had supported a resolution supporting the BDS campaign.

Initially, her attackers bragged that her support for Palestinian rights had cost her the seat. But their triumphalism soured when they realised she had nearly won, despite a smear campaign amplified by right-wing radio shock jocks and big business newspapers.

Although earlier polls had predicted a Greens vote as high as 19%, and they only got to 11% on average, the Greens came second in primary votes in 12 seats. They won more than 19% of the primary vote in seven electorates and scored more than 10% in 34 (half of these in traditional Labor seats).

Most of the bigger Greens votes were in electorates traditionally held by Coalition parties, but their two highest votes were in Labor strongholds. The Greens vote was about 5% or less in many western Sydney working-class electorates, there were significant combined Greens and left votes in a couple of working-class electorates.

The total primary vote for candidates to the left of the big parties in Marrickville was 39.01%, In Wollongong it was 39.08% (independent Gordon Bradbery won 29.51% of that) and in Newcastle it was 20.02%.

An article by Hall Greenland on Crikey.com said the Greens won Balmain because “nearly a third” disregarded Labor’s official how to vote and preferenced the Greens.

Despite the unease from more conservative elements in the Greens, the NSW election result shows a growth in the number of people looking for a left and green political alternative.

This is what has stirred the right-wing hornets’ nest. They are worried about this trend and are trying to shift the Greens to the right or isolate the left inside and outside the Greens.

They are afraid of the people being offered an alternative to the corporate-profits-first and imperialist agenda of the big parties.

This latest torrent of red-baiting from the big business media and conservative politicians is a reminder that we live in a sharply class divided society.

A small minority monopolise the wealth in Australia and they use it not just to extract even more wealth by exploiting workers and the country’s resources, but to wield tremendous power.

The Merrill Lynch-Capgemini World Wealth Report, which tracks the fortunes of the world’s richest investors, revealed that the combined wealth of Australia’s high-net-worth individuals (who comprise just 0.8% of the Australian population) increased by almost 37% during 2010, from US$379.8 billion ($433.6bn) to US$519.4 bn.

The super rich have become fabulously richer, and they want to keep getting richer. Dare to question any part of their agenda and they set their hounds on you.

NSW Elections: Back into the two-party cage?

2011-03-28T13:55:00.002+11:00

By Peter Boyle, March 28, 2011
A preliminary analysis of the NSW election result
If the last federal election promised the beginnings of a break from the two-parties-for-capitalism electoral system that has plagued Australian politics for the last century, the March 29, 2011 NSW election seems to be a lurch in the other direction.

The Liberal-National Coalition won dominance of the Legislative Assembly and (with small right-wing parties) control of the Legislative Council because large number of working class voters punished the Labor party with a -13.5% swing in primary votes.

The Sydney Morning Herald estimated that 623,500 voters deserted the ALP and most of these voted for the Coalition.

While the Greens vote increased by about 2% in the Legislative Council and they probably gained one seat there (giving them a likely five seats in this upper house), the Greens appear to have failed to win the Legislative Assembly seat of Marrickville which they were tipped to win. The Greens may have a chance of winning Balmain after distribution of preferences – but it will be tight. See here for latest figures.

The left-wing independent Gordon Bradbery, a popular Wesley Uniting Church minister who was sacked for his progressive views, looks like winning the seat of Wollongong. The Socialist Alliance and other lefts in Wollongong supported his campaign.

The Socialist Alliance increased slightly or held its vote. Pip Hinman, its well-recognised candidate, got 1.9% of the vote in Marrickville (compared to 1.6% in the 2007 election). The Socialist Equality Party also stood James Cogan as an independent in this seat and took 1.3% with the top spot on the ballot paper.

Zane Alcorn, another well-known Socialist Alliance candidate, won 1.7% in Newcastle while Rod Noble, a leader of the Progressive Labour Party won 3% stranding as an independent in the same seat.

Duncan Roden, who ran in the federal election in the same area, won 1.6% in Parramatta. Paola Harvey won 1.4% in Keira (one of the seats in the Illawarra area). Daicy Olaya, a late Socialist Alliance candidate in Fairfield, won 0.7% of the vote.

It the Legislative Council, where the Socialist Alliance won 15,142 votes in 2007, at this early stage of the count we appear to be down slightly by 0.15%. Counting won’t be complete for a couple of weeks.

The Socialist Alliance used its election campaign to further unify the left. Its Legislative Council ticket included several left independents and a number of leftists who had just broken from the Labor party.

The Socialist Alliance and the Communist Party of Australia also initiated a joint left statement on the elections and CPA members helped out with the Socialist Alliance campaign in western Sydney on polling day.

The critical dynamic of this election was the large numbers of traditional Labor voters in working-class deserting straight to the Liberal-National Coalition rather than to the Greens or to left-wing parties.

Many progressive booth workers reported the heart-sinking sight of many working-class voters grabbing just the Liberal how-to-votes and rushing into the polling booth.

While some in the Greens may be thinking that their party needs to abandon some of its more progressive policies to win more votes, in reality what the Greens should do is to be more conscious of working class interests. It alienated many working class people with its embrace of the Gillard federal Labor party’s regressive carbon pricing scheme (which is to morph into a pollution rights trading scheme). This gave the climate change denialists a free kick.

If the Greens want to win the mass of working people to the fight for serious action on the climate change crisis, they need to champion public investment renewable energy and public transport, funded by taxes of the big corporations which are ripping out record super profits and which are also the biggest polluters.

Regressive carbon taxes (which operate like the GST to shift the tax burden from the rich to the poor) will neither produce the scale and urgency of investment needed while it will destroy the chance of mobilising the great majority against the powerful vested interests that are blocking real action on climate change.

The left needs to work harder to unify and to work closely with the Greens to advance progressive struggles.

If we want to reverse this lurch back to the two-party system (where the working class alternately punishes and rewards Labor or the Coalition and gets nowhere) the Greens and the left need to reach out more effectively into working class heartlands.

How to Vote Socialist Alliance on March 26

2011-03-25T11:59:00.007+11:00

NSW is at a critical turning point. We need a radically different plan to the business-as-usual approach of the major parties.

* Read Socialist Alliance's contribution to that plan here.
* Read 5 key reasons to vote Socialist Alliance here.
* Read the rest of our policy here.

Follow the voting instructions below to show your support for the Socialist Alliance and a progressive NSW:

In the Legislative Council, Socialist Alliance recommends that you vote "1" above the line for the Socialist Alliance, then "2" for the Greens and "3" for Labor/ Country Labor.

To see our How to Votes cards for the Legislative Assembly, download the files below (PDF):

Fairfield
Keira
Marrickville
Newcastle
Parramatta

But don't just vote - get active in fighting for social justice and environmental sustainability! Join the Socialist Alliance today!

Five reasons to vote for the Socialist Alliance

2011-03-23T11:39:00.006+11:00

Socialist Alliance: NSW is not for sale

Dear friend,

NSW is at a critical turning point. We need a radically different plan to the business-as-usual approach of the major parties.

Below are the key reasons to vote for and help us in this election. And if you like this list, please share it with your friends and networks.

The Socialist Alliance works with communities and unions to:

1. Reverse the privatisations and support public ownership and control of services;

2. Rescue our environment with a transition to 100% renewable energy and green jobs, and protect natural biodiversity;

3. Increase investment in improving and rapidly expanding public housing, health, education and transport;

4. Include and support women, Aboriginal people, Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Intersex (LGBTI) people, people with disabilities, refugees, the Muslim community and all those who are scapegoated or ignored;

5. Empower genuine grassroots, democratic control of our lives in our communities and workplaces.

Read our full Fighting Election Platform here.

Beyond March 26, we’ll still be campaigning for these changes. We urge you to join with us in the building the broadest possible alliance that will be needed to defend our jobs, our rights and our environment under a likely Coalition government.

We are running Legislative Assembly candidates in Keira, Newcastle, Marrickville, Parramatta and Fairfield, plus a full Legislative Council ticket with 21 candidates, to raise these ideas.

Our candidates include a few former long-term ALP members, who have joined us and are running on our Legislative Council ticket and in Fairfield.

But these urgently needed changes cannot be achieved just through legislation in parliament.

Real and lasting change comes about with the support of mobilised communities, unions and social justice activists. And the Socialist Alliance is committed to helping build these movements for change in communities and workplaces. We’ll help unite and mobilise the people's power required to take power back from the corporate rich and make society more democratic.

The Socialist Alliance will be directing our preferences to the Greens and other progressive candidates before Labor, and to Labor before the Coalition.

We formed in 2001 and are a growing party with 17 branches across the country. We already have one councillor – Sam Wainwright in Fremantle, WA – and many of our members are active unionists and involved in other social and environmental movements.

Please get involved and thanks for getting the word out.

Will Williams and Paul Benedek
Campaign coordinators, NSW Socialist Alliance

Authorised by Paul Benedek, 23 Abercrombie Street, Chippendale 2008

Pip Hinman: For moratorium on coal seam gas mining

2011-03-21T20:56:00.001+11:00

Pip Hinman, a community activist and a trade union member, is the Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Marrickville in the NSW elections on March 26, 2011.

Not gas or coal, but renewable energy

2011-03-21T20:53:00.002+11:00

Pip Hinman, the Socialist Alliance candidate for the NSW seat of Marrickville, spoke at a March 14 election forum at St Peters Town Hall organised by Climate Action Newtown and Sydney Residents Against Coal Seam Gas.
Hinman’s responses to the three questions put to her at the meeting appear below.
* * *

Will your party commit to not building any more coal or gas fired power stations in NSW?
We not only don’t support building new coal fired power stations; we call for their phasing out and for affected workers to be retrained to be able to take up green jobs in the renewable energy industry. We welcome the Greens’ call for three new baseload solar-thermal power stations — to be funded by Green bonds — and that remain in public hands.

Australia could meet its basic energy needs from a combination of non-fossil fuel sources, especially solar thermal with storage and wind power. Biomass from agricultural wastes, tidal power and geothermal power “hot rocks” could also be used.

We also campaign for the enormous subsidies to the fossil fuel companies to be slashed.
Lastly, we do not think that gas is a “renewable” energy — or a “transition” fuel.

Will your party introduce rigorous coal seam gas (CSG) extraction regulations and standards to protect human, environmental, and economic health introduce a ban on all CSG exploration until then?
The Socialist Alliance calls for a moratorium on all CSG mining until adequate public consultation and testing has been done.

There are promising signs that a campaign against CSG is growing. Communities across NSW and Queensland are getting organised, and with the help of Lock the Gate Alliance are challenging the government-industry power over their lives and livelihoods.

The Socialist Alliance also calls for a ban on all CSG mining under cities, water catchment areas, farmland and other environmentally significant areas.

We want fracking to be banned: it’s not good enough to hear the industry say “it’s safe” — and not to have to reveal the toxic compounds that they are using to extract the gas nor deal with the toxic waterproduced by the fracking process.

Does your party support a re-instatement of the NSW feed-in tariff to a viable level? Economic reports indicate this is 40-45c per kilowatt hour.
The answer is yes.

We support measures that encourage people to move to sustainable, use less energy and cut down on waste.

The 40-45c/kwh would be a good incentive for households to install solar panels. But the scheme relies on households having the money up front to make the installation — thereby limiting itself to that sector that can afford it.

Positive examples can help change people’s minds — but for real action on climate change, we need to look at the sort of energy that industry is relying on.

The feed-in-tariff needs to benefit generator-scale energy, not just solar panels on household roofs. We’d support a national feed-in tariff for large-scale baseload solar.

We need to look at renewables on a huge scale to make a dint in carbon emissions. But feed-in tariffs for household use are just not enough.

Two out of three voters support Zane!

2011-03-19T13:59:00.004+11:00

Media release, March 18 2011
A poll conducted by ABC Radio Newcastle on the voting intentions of young people at Newcastle TAFE on March 9 has found that two out of three students said they would vote for Zane in the coming NSW elections.

“Socialist Alliance is not poll driven – but 66% is very exciting” Zane Alcorn commented in an interview with ABC radio’s Maynard.

“Maynard’s poll illustrates that anything can happened in this election. With 40% of Newcastle’s population under 30 years old the major parties are making a big mistake by ignoring the issue of climate change and taking young people for granted” Zane said today.

“I also support free public transport and public education, especially TAFE funding.”

As Newcastle is a close race and could go to preferences the Socialist Alliance has made the following decision. We call for a preference vote for the following candidates in this order.

1. Zane Alcorn (Socialist Alliance)
2. John Sutton (The Greens) (although Socialist Alliance has differences with the Greens we respect their commitment to the environment)
3. Rod Noble (Independent)
4. Noel Holt (Independent)
5. Jodi McKay (ALP) (as bad as Labor has been the Lib/Nats will be worse by cutting public services and thousands of jobs)

Contact Zane (0401 466 831) or Katie (0433 695 693), or email newcastle@socialist-alliance.org
http://zane4newcastle.wordpress.com

Socialist Alliance pledges support for TAFE 5 Point Plan

2011-03-18T17:00:00.003+11:00

Media Release, 18th March, 2011
Armidale-based Upper House candidate, Bea Bleile, has pledged support - on behalf of all candidates on the Socialist Alliance Legislative Council ticket - for the TAFE 5 Point Plan.

"The TAFE 5 Point Plan drawn up by the NSW Teachers Federation calls for adequate government funding of TAFE courses and infrastructure, for more permanent teaching positions and investment in teacher training, for affordable access to TAFE and for TAFE jobs and courses to remain in public hands, not to be outsourced.

"Education is a public good and one of the basic human rights. Government funding of training and higher education has been decreasing for too long. This must be reversed immediately. As Harvard University President Derek Bok put it, 'If you think education is expensive, try ignorance'."

Ms Bleile is concerned at the casualisation of teaching positions at TAFE, having experience with the effects on universities from the commercialisation and commodification of education.

"Universities are run as if they were businesses, but education is not a product that can be sold or consumed. Real education requires a meaningful, sustained relationship between student and teacher. This is becoming harder and harder to achieve as student to staff ratios increase and decisions on academic and scholarly matters are taken out of the hands of academic staff.

"Universities have lost money in business ventures and too much of the revenue from teaching is gobbled up for management and bureaucracy.

"Core areas of study are neglected in favour of "boutique" courses as universities are looking for easy money. The environmental and economic challenges we are facing mean that we must invest in education and provide adequate funding for schools, TAFEs and universities.

For further comment call Bea Bleile on 0458 752 680

Queer candidates stand for marriage equality

2011-03-16T21:21:00.002+11:00

Media release, Monday March 14, 2011
Queer candidates Paola Harvey and Rachel Evans are standing for the Socialist Alliance in the NSW state election. Harvey is standing in the seat of Keira, while Evans is standing for the legislative council.

“The federal government is dragging it's heels on marriage equality,” said Harvey, one of the founding members of Equal Love Wollongong, a community based group that campaigns for marriage equality.

“The marriage ban must be lifted, there should be no laws that discriminate against a section of society.”

“But until we win the repeal of the marriage ban federally, states can take action. NSW should take a stand for equality and legislate to become Australia's first equal marriage state.

“This year's Mardi Gras showed clearly that the queer community wants marriage equality, and that the community supports us. It was the most political Mardi Gras in years with 15 floats calling for marriage equality, and about 300,000 people attending in support.

“For too long the relationships of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex (LGBTI) people have been classed as different and lesser under the law. Our relationships are equal and the law must reflect that,” she said.

Evans has been campaigning for marriage equality for the past six years and is one of the key organisers of Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) and one of the organisers of CAAH's marriage equality float at Mardi Gras. She has also campaigned for a public inquiry into the death of Veronica Baxter, an Aboriginal trans woman who died in an all male jail.

Evans said: “The marriage ban reinforces homophobia and transphobia in society. Just under one in three queer people will attempt suicide. Queer youth get bullied in schools, and trans people face horrific rates of violent attacks.”

“Legislating for marriage equality is a step towards ending homophobia and transphobia, it's a step towards making our society a safe and accepting place for all queers. But by itself it's not enough, we need build a movement that publically campaigns against all discrimination and against homophobic and transphobic attitudes in society.”

The Socialist Alliance campaigns for an end to homophobia and transphobia. It campaigns for full marriage equality, and equal rights for all LGBTI people in society.

Joint statement of left individuals and organisations on the NSW elections

2011-03-15T21:54:00.011+11:00

The Socialist Alliance and the Communist Party of Australia have agreed on the following text for a joint statement of left organisations and individuals on the March 26 NSW elections. A full list of current endorsees is at the end of the statement.

Any group or individual wishing to add their endorsement to this statement on should email: nsw@socialist-alliance.org and cpa@cpa.org.au, or phone Paul Benedek or Federico Fuentes on 02-9690 1977.

* * *
The NSW Labor Party is facing a trouncing in the March 26 elections because of the problems that have arisen from the ALP’s corporate profits-first, "economic rationalist" agenda. In the process it has carried out a privatisation spree, most recently selling off our state's retail electricity assets for next to nothing. NSW Labor governments have run down public transport, public hospitals and public schools and wasted billions of dollars in disastrous “public-private partnerships” (PPPs). Public housing has been run down even while more and more people face soaring rents and house prices.

But while many working people want to punish the ALP, a Liberal-National Coalition government will not be any better and most likely will be worse. Indeed it will take a sharp axe to already run-down public services and continue the privatisation madness.

The undersigned left and progressive parties and individuals see an urgent need to build a broad opposition to what has become a bi-partisan corporate profits-first policy of the major parties along the principles of:

* Putting the interest of people and the environment ahead of corporate profits;

* Opposition to privatisation, including subcontracting, outsourcing, greater casualisation of work and the ongoing sale of public lands to developers;

* Opposition to cuts to public sector jobs and attacks on working conditions.

* Support for serious public investment in public transport, renewable energy generation, public hospitals, public schools and public housing;

* Opposition to racism; active support for the rights of Aboriginal people; opposition to discrimination on the grounds of religion, especially Islam, and sexuality.

* Support for full funding for the equal pay campaign of the community sector unions;

* Investment in communities not in prisons.

We call for support for left, progressive and Greens candidates in the coming election but we also urge people to use their preferences to put Labor before the Coalition and the far-right parties and candidates, including the Legislative Council ticket headed by Pauline Hanson.

*****
Endorsees

Socialist Alliance
Communist Party of Australia
Sudanese Human Rights Association
Sudanese Communist Party in Australia (Western Sydney Branch)
Abdul Hijazi, Communist Party of Lebanon in Australia
Committee of Colombian Political Exiles in Australia
Professor Stuart Rees
Raquel Miriam Iglesias
Ray Jackson
Luis Ernesto Almario
Andrew Chuter (UNSW Mathematics teacher, IEU Council member)
Marlene Obeid
Tim Anderson
Brett Collins, Justice Action
Peter Perkins
Raul Bassi

Railworker says: NSW not for sale!

2011-03-15T21:49:00.001+11:00

Railworker and trade unionist John Coleman will be a Socialist Alliance candidate for the Legislative Council in the March 26, 2011 NSW elections.

Federico Fuentes: "NSW: No está para la venta!"

2011-03-15T21:46:00.002+11:00

Federico Fuentes, Socialist Alliance candidate for the NSW Legislative Council.

Federico Fuentes, joven estudiante nacido en Argentina, co-fundador del Foro Social Latinoamericano, periodista que resido por 3 años en Venezuela como corresponsal de Green Left Weekly y trabajando en un instituto gubernamental estudiando las nuevas formas de participación popular en la gestión publica, y miembro del la Coalición en Apoyo a Wikileaks. Federico es un candidato de la Alianza Socialista (SA) para el Consejo Legislativo en las elecciones estatales a realizarse en NSW el 26 de marzo.

Luis Almario: "NSW no esta para la venta!"

2011-03-15T21:44:00.002+11:00

Luis Almario, Socialist Alliance candidate for the NSW Legislative Council, explains why he left the ALP to run for the Socialist Alliance.

Luis Almario, junto con otros activistas latinoamericanos, tomaron la decision despues de muchos anos como miembros de renunciar al ALP para sumarse a la Alianza Socialista. Aqui, Luis explica por que tomaron esta decision y porque el ALP ya no representa una alternativa para los trabajadores.

Paola Harvey speaks to Wollongong IWD rally

2011-03-15T13:44:00.000+11:00

Watch Paola's speech to the Wollongong rally for International Women's Day, held on Saturday March 12, 2011. The main demand of the action was for pay equity - supporting the campaign of the Australian Services Union (ASU) for equal pay for equal work.

People's Blockade of the World's Biggest Coal Port

2011-03-14T17:09:00.002+11:00

Zane Alcorn, candidate for the seat of Newcastle in the NSW state election, speaks from People's Blockade of the World's Biggest Coal Port, 13th March 2011

Daicy Olaya, candidata para la Alianza Socialista en Fairfield: “El ALP y los Liberals no representan a nuestros intereses”

2011-03-12T15:21:00.004+11:00

[read the English version here ]
“Ambos partidos tradiciones han sido un tremendo fracaso en cuanto a los intereses de los trabajadores, los emigrantes y las mujeres de Nueva Gales del Sur”, explicó Daicy Olaya, candidata de la Alianza Socialista por Fairfield para las elecciones en NSW a realizarse el 26 de marzo.

“Ya muchos sabemos que el gobierno laborista de NSW recibirá una paliza en estas elecciones por haber implementado políticas en defensa de los intereses de sus amigos en el mundo de negocios, mientras la gente común ha sufrido las consecuencias. Han iniciado una ola de privatización, destrozaron el transporte público y derrocharon miles de millones de dólares en desastrosa negocios con empresas de construcción de peajes privado, entre muchas otras cosas.”

“Pero los Liberals no son una alternativa. Ellos seran peor: van a despedir trabajadores, atacar nuestros servicios, y privatizar lo poco que queda en manos públicos aún más ferozmente que el ALP.”

“Por eso, como una mujer emigrante de Colombia, que ha trabajado en la industria textilera y de limpieza, he decidido presentarme como candidata de la Alianza Socialista para Fairfield en las próxima elecciones estatales en NSW.”

Desde que llegó a Australia en 1989, viviendo en Fairfield por 18 años, la vida de Olaya ha sido un claro ejemplo de cómo las políticas neoliberales de los gobiernos laboristas y liberales han afectado las vidas de millones de personas.

Durante 16 años, Olaya trabajo en la empresa textilera, Pacific Brands. A pesar de que la empresa recibió $ 17 millones de dólares en subsidios entre 2007 y 2009, Olaya - junto con alrededor de 2000 trabajadoras, mayoritariamente mujeres emigrantes - se quedo sin trabajo en 2009, cuando Pacific Brands cerro sus fabricas para mudarse al exterior.

En lugar de proteger a estas trabajadoras o ayudarlas con cursos de capacitación y formación, el gobierno federal y de NSW no hicieron nada para las trabajadoras de Pacific Brands

”NSW necesita con urgencia un cambio radical en sus prioridades. El gobierno debería asegurar el retorno de estos servicios vitales a manos del estado; al mismo tiempo, se debe amplia el sector público.”

“Por ejemplo, ¿por qué el pueblo de Fairfield debe estar al merced de una empresa privada cuando se trata de la tema de los buses, tan importante para poder moverse? Necesitamos un servicio mejorado dramáticamente, y esto sólo se logrará a través de la inversión gubernamental en el transporte público.”

”Por otra parte, el gobierno debería expandir y mejorar los servicios de educación y formación en el área, especialmente para las mujeres y los emigrantes. Estamos hartos de ser relegados a los trabajos peor pagados, y con las peores condiciones. Queremos empleos reales, y para eso necesitamos una formación de verdad.”

“Todos sabemos que ninguno de los partidos tradicionales va hacer esto. La única opción que nos queda es construir una nueva alternativa de los trabajadores, los emigrantes y las mujeres. En estas elecciones, la Alianza Socialista representa una oportunidad para empezar este labor.”

Armidale forum: "NSW - Not for sale"

2011-03-11T18:32:00.003+11:00

Media Release 11th March 2011
A public forum titled "NSW not for Sale" will be held at 6pm on Thursday, 17th March, at the Armidale Club, 91 Beardy Street. Speakers include Pat Schultz, Greens candidate for the Northern Tablelands, Kate Boyd from the National Parks Association and Bea Bleile, Socialist Alliance candidate for the Upper House.

"It's a myth that the privatisation of public services and the sale of public assets lead to better services and increased economic efficiency. In fact, they are one of the main reasons for the crisis in NSW", said Karl Robertson who will be chairing the forum.

Ms Schultz stated "The electricity privatisation is one of many attacks on public assets and services. It will not only make it much more difficult and expensive to reduce NSW's contribution to climate change, but will hand over profits from electricity sales to the private sector while many of the financial risks will remain with the public."

"Experience shows that households can expect increased electricity bills as the new owners strive to maximise the returns on their investment," Ms Schultz said.

Ms Bleile agreed that electricity privatisation was another instance of making the public pay for private profits.

"Nearly two-thirds of people surveyed four years ago by Unions NSW said they would oppose selling off assets like power stations. Given current community feeling, the proportion of people opposing sell-offs might be even higher now."

"Even where public services are not privatised, they are being run like corporations. Students and patients are "clients" or "customers". Schools, TAFEs, universities and hospitals are under pressure to "produce measurable outcomes" to the detriment of the services provided," Ms Bleile concluded.

Ms Boyd will speak about the importance of keeping travelling stock routes and reserves in public ownership and about the risks to current and future natural values.

Mr Robertson calls on concerned voters to come along to support a different vision for our society and to discuss alternatives for the NSW election and beyond.

All welcome, for further information call Pat Schultz on 0428 725 852 or Bea Bleile on 0458 752 680.

Socialists preference Greens; Labor before Liberal

2011-03-11T18:00:00.000+11:00

Media Release, Friday March 11, 2011
The Socialist Alliance has decided to allocate preferences in the seat of Keira, where it's standing student and part-time worker, Paola Harvey. Preferences will first flow to the Greens' George Takacs and then Labor's Ryan Park. Socialist Alliance has also decided to back Independent Gordon Bradbery in the seat of Wollongong; the Greens' Peter Moran in Shellharbour; and the Greens' Phil Smith in Heathcote.

Socialist Alliance candidate for Keira, Paola Harvey, said: 'When allocating preferences we go from the most progressive candidates to the least progressive. We don't do deals with other candidates or parties, but prefer to decide on a principled basis', she said.

'In Keira we'll preference the Greens first. They have progressive policies that are far better than the major parties. George Takacs is a very good candidate and has been involved in many campaigns for social justice and the environment. We are hoping to see an increased vote for the Greens and are backing them in Shellharbour and Heathcote. In Wollongong we hope people will vote for Gordon Bradbery first and then the Greens' Brendan Cook. Gordon's campaign is a serious challenge to Labor from the left, and something everyone should get behind.

'Given how fed up people are with NSW Labor, the pressure to not preference them is enormous. They do deserve to get the boot but we honestly think a Liberal-National Government would be worse. There are clear signs now that this will be the case including Jeff Kennett's advice to Barry O'Farrell to 'go fast early on'. If we have an opinion on who would be better or worse in government for working people, then it's our obligation to indicate this in preferences. So we'll be preferencing Labor's Ryan Park before Liberal John Dorahy.

'Regardless of who's elected to government on March 26, we promise to continue campaigning for social justice, democratic rights and sustainability. Throughout history, unions and community campaigns have forced politicians to legislate for better social conditions and environmental protection. We'll have to keep this up under a Labor or Liberal government. We are urging people to vote socialist and green because we do need more progressives in the next parliament - progressives who will put their efforts into strengthening the unions and community-based organisations', Harvey concluded.

For interviews or more information contact Paola Harvey 0416 118 612 or Chris Williams 0425 329 963
Visit http://paolaharveyforkeira.blogspot.com/

Two more resign from ALP to support Socialist Alliance campaign

2011-03-10T13:19:00.003+11:00

Below is the letter of resignation of two more former members of the Labor party in NSW, Jairo Quintero (ex-member, ALP Parramatta branch) and Edgar Pena (ex-member, ALP Parramatta branch). They explain in their joint resignation letter below that "the ALP no longer represents the interests of ordinary working class people". This follows the resignation of Luis Ernesto Almario and Rosendo Duran. All these comrades have decided to support the Socialist Alliance campaign in the March 26 NSW election.

Attn: Kristina Keneally, NSW state premier
CC: Michael Lee, NSW ALP president Sam Dastyari, NSW ALP General Secretary

Pierre Esber, ALP candidate for the seat of Parramatta

March 8, 2011

Dear comrades,

After much consideration and thought, we have decided to follow the path of other fellow branch members, and many more ALP members across New South Wales, and have decided to resign from the party.

We have taken this decision because we no longer believe that the ALP represents the interests of ordinary working class people. Instead, the NSW government, run by the ALP, has worked systematically to undermine all those things that the party once stood for.

This government, under Kristina Keneally and the right wing powerbrokers that have destroyed our party, has been marked by its ever-increasing drive to sell off what rightfully belongs to the people, to run down services such as public transport, and wipe out community consultation on issues that directly affect them.

With its determination to the sell off our electricity retailers to corporate interests, the current ALP leadership has demonstrated that it would rather commit political suicide than stand up for the interests of working people — the ones who will pay the costs in higher bills and poorer services.

Such anti-worker policies have been accompanied with a sustained attack on internal party democracy, such as that which occurred in our local branch where, against the wishes of local members, Keneally imposed her own candidate.

We feel that the ALP leadership has made clear that there is no room for dissent. Those that have tried to oppose the current right wing, pro-corporate, anti-worker course of the party have been ferociously attacked, knifed in the back and discarded as worthless, despite years of dedication and commitment towards the party.

All of this means that the working people of NSW will most likely face a Liberal government after March 26 that we know will only be even worse.

We want to make one thing clear: any possible Liberal government will be the direct responsibility of the rotten, corrupt, anti-working class policies of the current leadership of ALP. It is you, not the voters who are sick of your government, who are responsible for what will inevitable come next for the people of NSW.

However, unlike the ALP leaders and parliamentarians, who like rats on a sinking ship are scurrying away towards the comfort of their cushy parliamentary pensions and jobs in the corporations that they so loyally supported in government, we will continue to fight for justice and workers rights.

It is for this reason, that like many others, we have decided to support the Socialist Alliance, which represents a working class and progressive alternative in these elections.

Regards
Jairo Quintero (ex-member, ALP Parramatta branch)

Edgar Pena (ex-member, ALP Parramatta branch)

Spanish translation:

Estimados compañeros,

Después de mucha consideración, hemos decidido seguir el camino de algunos otros miembros de nuestro branch del ALP en Parramatta, y de muchos otros en Nueva Gales del Sur, a renunciar del partido.

Hemos tomado esta decisión porque ya no creemos que el ALP representa los intereses de los trabajadores. Al contrario, el gobierno de NSW a cargo del ALP ha trabajado sistemáticamente para socavar todos eso principios que alguna vez tuvo el partido.

Este gobierno, bajo el mando de Kristina Keneally y la ala derechista que domina la cúpula del ALP y que han destruido nuestro partido, se ha caracterizado por su voluntad, cada vez mayor, de vender lo que por derecho le pertenece al pueblo. Han destrozado servicios como el transporte público, y han acabado con cualquier consulta a la comunidad sobre temas que les afectan directamente.

Con la reciente venta de los retailers de electricidad, los actuales dirigentes de la ALP han demostrado que prefieren cometer un suicidio político en vez de defender los intereses de los trabajadores, quienes son y serán los que pagarán los costos en cuanto al aumento de las tarifas y un peor servicio.

Estas políticas anti-obreras han sido acompañados por un sostenido ataque a la democracia interna del partido, y en particular contra los que sostienen posiciones progresistas. Esto lo vimos en nuestro branch, donde, en contra de los deseos de los miembros locales, Keneally impuso a su candidato.

Creemos que la cúpula actual del ALP ha dejado claro su posición en cuanto a que no hay lugar para el disenso dentro el partido. Aquellos que han intentado oponerse a las posiciones derechistas, pro-empresariales y anti-obreras del partido, han sido ferozmente atacadados, apuñalados en la espalda y han sido desechado como si eran inútiles, a pesar de años de dedicación y compromiso hacia el partido.

Todo esto nos ha dejado en un posición donde, después del 26 de marzo, los trabajadores de NSW tendran que enfrentar un gobierno Liberal, que sabemos será aún peor.

Pero queremos dejar una cosa clara: cualquier posible gobierno Liberal será la responsabilidad directa de las políticas podridas, corruptas y anti-obreras implementados por los actuales dirigentes de ALP. Son ustedes, no los votantes que ya estan hartos de su gobierno, quienes seran responsables de lo que vendrá para la gente de NSW.

Sin embargo, a diferencia de algunos líderes y parlamentarios del ALP que, como ratas en un barco que se hunde, están corriendo hacia la comodidad de sus pensiones parlamentarias o puestos en las empresas que por tanto tiempo apoyaron lealmente cuando estuverion en el gobierno, nosotros vamos a seguir luchando por la justicia y los derechos de los trabajadores.

Es por esa razón, como muchos otros, hemos decidido apoyar a la Alianza Socialista, que representa una alternativa progresista para los trabajadores en estas elecciones.

Atentamente
Jairo Quintero (ex-miembro, ALP Parramatta branch) Edgar Peña (ex-miembro, ALP Parramatta branch)

Parramatta Council censors John Pilger’s anti-war documentary

2011-03-10T11:28:00.002+11:00

Media Release, 10 March 2011
The Parramatta Council have refused council premises for a public screening of renowned journalist John Pilger’s new anti-war film, The War You Don't See. The Council denied the screening on the basis that the movie allegedly breaches “Condition 10” of the council’s terms, which disallows “discrimination, vilification, incitement, offensive conduct and public disorder”.

“The fact that this anti-war film, which will be screened on SBS television later in April, is being censored by the Council is outrageous,” Duncan Roden, Socialist Alliance candidate for Parramatta and organiser of the film, said.

“Pilger’s film concerns the horrors of United States led wars and occupations – that Australia has supported - and the corporate media's role in promoting and sanitising contemporary wars,” Roden continued. “By censoring Pilger’s work, Parramatta Council is outlawing the work of someone who has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and in 2009 was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize at the Opera House!”

“Certainly the film shows brutal footage of US soldiers slaughtering innocent civilians in Iraq, as uncovered by Wikileaks – but this is a truth that we have a right to see. Wikileaks has become popular because it uncompromisingly tells the truth – the Council is way out of line.”

“What is the Council afraid of? More people understanding the brutality of the US’s war on the Middle East?”

Roden concluded “it’s ironic that a Peace Prize winner and anti-war journalist face censorship over supposedly ‘inciting violence’! We have heard that other groups are also being denied access to Council premises, for similar spurious reasons. Socialist Alliance calls on the Council to declare its support for free speech, and freedom of expression.”

The planned screening, organised by progressive newspaper, Green Left Weekly, was to be held in Parramatta Town Hall. Green Left Weekly and Socialist Alliance intend to campaign to reverse the Council’s decision and ensure the film is screened.

Duncan Roden can be contacted on 0431 586 588.

"ALP and Liberals have failed migrant workers & women"

2011-03-09T16:16:00.003+11:00

Socialist Alliance announces Daicy Olaya as candidate for Fairfield
Media release: March 9, 2011 [en Español aquí]
“Politicians from both major parties have failed miserably in representing the interests of migrants and women here in New South Wales” explained Daicy Olaya, a resident of Fairfield for 18 years.

“That is why, as a woman migrant from Colombia, who has worked in the textile and cleaning industry, I have decided to stand as the Socialist Alliance candidate for Fairfield in the coming NSW state elections.”

Since arriving in Australia in 1989, Olaya’s life experience is a clear example of how the economic rationalist policies of Labor and Liberal governments have negatively affected the lives of millions.

For 16 years, Olaya was a dedicated worker at Pacific Brands, the producer of iconic brands such as Bonds, Hard Yakka and Berlei. Despite this - and the fact that Pacific Brands received $17 million dollars in subsidies between 2007/9 - Olaya, together with around 2000, most migrants women workers, were left without a job in 2009, when Pacific Brands decided to close shop and move overseas.

Rather than protecting these jobs or providing adequate re-training, the Federal and NSW government failed Pacific Brands workers.

“The closure of Pacific Brands is just one example of how government and corporate policies that priorities profits over people is devastating the lives of millions of working families.

“Under Kristina Keneally and parliamentarians like Joe Tripodi, all the ALP has done has been to defend the interests of their friends in the corporate world, while ordinary people suffer the consequences.

“The latest example of this is the sell off of our electricity retailers, handed over to these profit-hungry corporations. Once again it is working people who are already paying the cost for this outrageous decision, made against the wish of the majority of the population.

“I believe the government should instead be returning such vital services into public hands, at the same time as extending the public sector. For instance, why should the people of Fairfield be left at the mercy of a private company when it comes to buses? We need a dramatically improved service, and this will only come about through government investment in public transport.

Olaya added: “Moreover, the government needs to dramatically expand and improve education and training services in the area, particularly for women and migrants. We are sick of being relegated to the lowest paid jobs with the worse conditions. We want real jobs, and for that we need real training!

“That is why I am supporting the 5 point plan proposed by the NSW Teachers Federation for the TAFE sector which includes guaranteeing funding to TAFE, no contracting out of TAFE services to the private sector, and ensure affordable access to a TAFE education for all.”

For more information Federico Fuentes (campaign manager) 0412 556 527 for Daicy Olaya

100 years of IWD: much still to struggle for

2011-03-08T12:28:00.004+11:00

Media Release, March 8, 2011
Today – March 8 – marks 100 years since women garment workers in the United States organised a strike which involved 30,000 people and lasted three months – for their rights at work.

These militant women won the right to organise and bargain collectively – a right that many women (and men) still do not have in Australia today.

“Today, we are still campaigning for these basic human rights”, said Ms Daicy Olaya, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Fairfield in Sydney’s west.

“The last century of successful campaigns for women’s right to vote, attend university and join the work force has given many women much to celebrate.

“But for the overwhelming majority of women in Australia, and even more so in my birth country – Colombia – the demands of the first International Women’s Day have yet to be met”, said Ms Olaya.

Ms Olaya, a former garment worker at Pacific Brands for 16 years, said the structural inequalities women face at work and at home have to be tackled.

“Women still carry out the lion’s share of the work of raising the next generation and caring for the elderly. Without affordable, quality child-care and aged care, women are expected to pick up the pieces and this adds to the burden we are already carrying”, said Ms Olaya.

The first International Women’s Day rally in Australia, held in 1928, demanded an eight-hour day, equal pay for equal work, paid annual leave and a living wage for the unemployed.

“We ‘won’ our right to equal pay in Australia in 1972. But almost 40 years later, while women have become governor-generals, prime ministers and premiers, the gender pay gap is widening for most women”, said Pip Hinman, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west and a member of the National Tertiary Education Union.

“There are more women in the workforce and as the main family breadwinner than ever before. Yet, on average, full-time women workers earn 18% less than men: that’s 65 extra days each year that women would have to work to take home the same pay as men.

“Workplaces with a high proportion of women workers have lower rates of pay. Enterprise bargaining and individual contracts have severely disadvantaged women workers who are concentrated in the less organised sectors.

“These are structural problems and, like the US garment workers of 100 years ago, the only way to change it is to fight for it”, said Ms Hinman.

Ms Olaya and Ms Hinman will be joining the International Women’s Day rally on Saturday March 12, 12 noon at Town Hall.

“We are proud supporters of the Australian Services Union’s campaign for equal pay for women in the public sector. And we are also campaigning on a platform for equality for women. That must include our right to have control over our bodies. Abortion must be a women’s choice – and treated as a health issue. NSW must become the first state to grant equal marriage rights.”

Contact: Fred Fuentes for Daisy Olaya 0412 556 527 or Pip Hinman 0412 139 968

ALP deserves the boot, but a Liberal-National govt would be worse

2011-03-01T15:59:00.003+11:00

Media release March 1, 2011
Labor deserves to get the boot, but the Liberal-National Coalition will be worse, said Mr Peter Boyle, the lead upper house candidate for the Socialist Alliance.

“Given how fed up people are with NSW Labor, the pressure not to preference it at all is enormous.

“But, former Victorian Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett’s advice to Barry O’Farrell in the February 24 Sydney Morning Herald – ‘go fast early on’ – is a clear indication that the Coalition camp will look to unleash a Kennett-like drive to cut the public sector after March 26.

“Kennett said: ‘If you attack all areas of government at the same time, you break your forces and each then settle down to protect their particular patch. You divide your enemy — old military tactic.’

“A Barry O’Farrell Liberal-National government is going to be worse.

“With polls showing a wipe-out for the ALP across NSW, progressives have a responsibility to maximise the chances of progressives being elected.

"Socialist Alliance will be advocating preferences for the Greens and other progressives, and the ALP before the Coalition and other far-right parties.

“Our decision is based on the respective party's policies - with the Greens' policies being the closest to our own.

“Ultimately, however, we do not believe that long-lasting environmental and social change can come from within parliament alone.

“Without ordinary folk getting organised - in the workplaces and in local communities - all the good ideas will never get to see the light of day.

“Throughout history, unions and community campaigns have forced politicians to legislate for social and environmental sanity.

“We do need more progressives in the next parliament - progressives who will put their efforts into strengthening the unions and community-based organisations”, concluded Mr Boyle.

For further comment Peter Boyle 0401 760 577

Steel production for people and planet - not profit!

2011-02-28T17:55:00.002+11:00

Media Release, Monday February 28, 2011
The Illawarra Socialist Alliance has described BlueScope Steel's comments regarding a carbon tax as dishonest fearmongering. It has renewed calls for the Australian government to guarantee jobs in the steel industry and to get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Patrick Harrison, Wollongong based Socialist Alliance candidate for the Legislative Council, said: 'BlueScope threatening to move their operations offshore is short-sighted fearmongering. Such a move would be devastating to working people and the unemployed in Wollongong, who already face a high unemployment rate. The proposed carbon tax isn't behind BlueScope's threats; their unquenchable thirst for profits – at the expense of jobs and our planet - is.

'BlueScope, one of the top three polluters in the country, has known of the need to reduce pollution for decades; certainly since BHP first proposed building a cogeneration plant in 1998. Blaming the carbon tax is their latest excuse to cover the fact that they haven't allocated serious resources to reducing their carbon footprint. They also blame their last six-monthly loss but what about previous profits?

'Our scientists are telling us we need to dramatically reduce carbon emissions across all sectors or risk an uninhabitable planet. To do this we will need a strong manufacturing base - for the roll out of renewable energy or expansion of public transport for example. The steel industry needs to develop along sustainable lines as part of this process. Firstly, plans to build the co-generation plant - which could save one million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year – should be restarted. Secondly, resources need to be allocated to reduce the carbon intensity of the production process itself, something BlueScope is already researching with the possible replacement of coal with bio-mass as a reductant.

'A safe climate future depends on all of us helping to reduce carbon emissions. If BlueScope says it 'can't afford' to, then the government should require it to open its books to workers and the community. If BlueScope refuses this it should be placed in public hands for the common good. The government could then guarantee jobs in the community and a serious plan to reduce emissions.

'We shouldn't allow companies such as BlueScope to hold our future hostage. Politicians should have the courage to stand up to the big polluters and expose their lies. If BlueScope moves offshore it will be to further maximise their profits, not because they were 'forced' by a policy decision such as a carbon tax. Ours is a serious approach that puts the needs of people and the planet before profit', Harrison concluded.

Socialist Alliance election launch speech - Pip Hinman

2011-02-27T12:47:00.003+11:00

Dear friends,
A few days ago I participated in a meet-the-candidates in this hall. Also facing questions from local residents were the other declared candidates for Marrickville: Carmel Tebbutt, the sitting ALP member and deputy premier; Fiona Byrne, the Greens candidate and mayor of Marrickville, and the Liberal candidate (I can't remember her name).

Carmel Tebbutt said she acknowledged that the NSW ALP government had "made mistakes" but she pleaded that she was still committed to progressive ideals, renewals and change. But you know what? Nobody - except the ALP die-hards in the room - was buying it.

It was a bit like the the Egyptian people's incredulity and anger at Murbarak's last speech just before he was kicked out by a people's power revolution. Too little, too late and time's up!

Nobody is listening to NSW Labor's promises of "change".

In a desperate attempt to win back some ground, several of Carmel Tebbutt's supporters lined up to attack Fiona Byrne, the Greens candidate.

One of them claimed that she had looked on the Greens website and could not find any Greens economic policy!

This was an outrageous tactic to shift focus away from the right-wing policies that NSW government has been implementing: selling off public assets, for running down our hospitals and public transport, for subsidising the coal companies profits, for riding roughshod over community concerns to help their big developer mates and for TOTALLY failing to invest in a renewable energy future.

Calls from us for making a serious public investment in renewable energy, public transport, public housing, public health and public education were met with a sneering: "Where will the money come from?"

The real question that needs to be asked is where is the money GOING?

Record mining company profits, record bank profits, big developer profits, casino owners' profits... that's where the money is going! And the NSW "Labor" government has been subsidising those profits to the tune of billions of dollars a year.

Their policy is to privatise profits and assets and socialise corporate debt when the capitalists' greed brings on a crisis.

Both major parties committed to the discredited economic rationalist theory that the market knows best..

The people of NSW have found out the painful way that what the market "knows best" is to how make the rich even richer, full stop.

We need a reversal of this bi-partisan agenda. Tax the corporate profits, tax the rich, tax the privatisers, scrap the PPPs (they are a recipe for the public subsidising private profit), make long-term public borrowings to invest in renewable energy, public transport, public health, public education and public housing.

We need to build a real opposition to this reactionary bi-partisan profits-first agenda. A real opposition that goes beyond parliament. An opposition that builds people's power.

This is what all the Socialist Alliance candidates are pledged to do.

We have powerful sources of potential people's power:

* In our trade unions - if we transform them into democratic and fighting unions.
* In our social movements.
* And in our local communities.

In this community, local residents have successfully organised and won two victories last year.

Community action stopped homes being demolished in Leamington Avenue and it stopped an extension of the M5 in Tempe that would have wrecked a local park and made residents life hell (not to mention dones nothing to fix the trasport nightmare).

Now we have a powerful community struggle to stop deadly poisonous Coal Seam Gas mining under our city. The ALP government has given mining companies CSG exploration rights over most of Sydney and under prime farming land and water catchment areas elsewhere around the state.

But they are going to get a mighty fight from this and other communities over this.

We are fighting to take back control of our lives and our future.

This is our right and this is our duty to our children and generations to come.

NSW not for sale!

Community need not corporate greed!

Help fund the Socialist Alliance election campaign!

2011-02-26T18:22:00.002+11:00

Can you help fund the Socialist Alliance's NSW election campaign?

The right-ward shift of the NSW ALP has prepared the ground for a likely Liberal-National Coalition government. We know Labor deserves a big kick, but the Coalition will be worse. It's a crucial time to present a progressive alternative and maximise the Left vote.

Socialist Alliance's campaign is not just about the election, but also about preparing a real, fighting, opposition - on workplaces and in the various community and environmental campaigns.

This campaign will cost serious money, and - unlike Labor and the Coalition - we don't get corporate donations from the big end of town.

We are making a special call for members and supporters of the Socialist Alliance to join the "$100 club" - by donating $100 to our election effort. Of course, smaller amounts are also appreciated, as are larger ones.

Due to new funding laws in NSW [PDF], you must be on the electoral roll to make political donations, and donations must not exceed $2,000 (to a candidate) or $5,000 (to a political party). Any donations over $1,000 must be disclosed.

If you want to pay your membership as well as donate, please make you donation separately, and pay your membership here.

You can immediately transfer the money into our election account, the details are:

Name: Socialist Alliance NSW Election Campaign
BSB: 062-498
Acct: 1024 9186

Otherwise feel free to send us a cheque made out to "Socialist Alliance NSW Election Campaign", or pay cash at one of the Socialist Alliance branches.

In order for us to comply with NSW funding laws, and to provide you with a receipt, please send an email detailing your donation, as well as your full name, address, and contact details to sydney@socialist-alliance.org

Pip Hinman: "NSW is not for sale"

2011-02-24T17:18:00.003+11:00

[This is the text of a speech given by Pip Hinman, Socialist Alliance candidate for Marrickville to the 120-strong Newtown Neighbourhood Centre candidates meeting on February 23, 2011.]

I’d like to first acknowledge that we’re meeting on the land of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora nation - and I pay my respects to their elders past and present.

I’ve been campaigning to put people and the environment before profits all my adult life. I’m currently a member of the National Tertiary Education Union.

I’ve lived in Newtown for 16 years, I have a 14-year-old daughter and helped raise a step daughter - who’s now a mum herself.

I know full well the stresses and stains that come from raising families on low incomes and when services disappear.

The two most important issues in this state election is to call a halt to the privatisations of our public assets - NSW is not for sale - and to immediately start a radical shift away from using polluting coal – or gas – for our energy needs.

There are of course a host of other very important social issues at stake as well: the defence of public education, public land, public infrastructure, public housing and public sector workers.

I’d urge you to have a look at our Fighting Platform for the NSW elections.

We disagree with the major parties’ shared agenda of selling off our public assets. It is not is good for the state and its people.

[And, from today’s news, it seems the NSW upper house inquiry into the sell-off of the retailers agrees: it has recommended cancelling the sale!]

Selling our electricity trading rights is only good for big business - which is why the ALP has been keen to sell it to their mates.

But billions into private hands means billions lost for critical front-line services.

The NSW government should be spending our money on services that we all need: public schools, affordable housing; public transportation (very fast rail, light rail); better ratios of workers to public in hospitals (1:4 nurse patient ratio); childcare centres, TAFEs, schools and to protecting our environment.

The privatisation of the energy retailers will lead to higher energy prices and more blackouts and job losses - just as it has in Victoria. Both major parties know this - which is why they’re both offering the same rebates in this campaign - as bribes to try and snare a few voters with amnesia.

If NSW doesn’t have the money to spend on infrastructure, it should borrow – not privatise.

Another important reason not to sell off electricity is that by doing so it makes it even harder to to make the move away from fossil fuel-based energy.

The great majority of the world's scientists say that we have ten years – maybe even less – to avert catastrophic climate change.

This is the time to be bringing people together in a collective response to this challenge.

The 5-25% cut to greenhouse gas emissions promised by the federal Labor government, and supported by the NSW ALP, was NEVER good enough.

But federal climate minister Greg Combet has now admitted that it was an empty promise: Australia will pump out 24% more CO2 by 2020!

We’re going backwards - and fast.

We can address the climate emergency by: investing in renewables. A plan has been developed by the Beyond Zero Emissions group of scientists, engineers, economists and activists to take Australia to 100% stationary energy supply in ten years. They are devising one for NSW.

Nationwide it would cost 3% of GDP for the next 10 years - about $30 billion a year. NSW’s share would be about a third.

This plan – based on available technologies – would replace all our dirty, global warming inducing, coal-fired power stations with a combination of solar-thermal and wind technology.

Socialist Alliance believes the federal government should make this a public investment because the market has failed on climate change.

We’re not opposed to price signals and taxes on carbon polluters but this is not enough: it’s too inefficient and it’s too slow.

We say:

1. No new coal or gas-fired power stations – instead invest in the BZE plan for 100% renewable energy in 10 years.

2. Boost investment in public transport, very fast train, rail freight, regional and inter-regional services;

3. No coal seam gas mining

We've had 15 years of NSW Labor’s corporate profits-first agenda and, after March 26, it looks like we’ll have the Liberal National Coalition’s version.

While Labor claims it will be a good opposition, we know that they’ll do just what Barry O’Farrell’s Coalition has done in the lead up to this election: sit tight; say nothing and wait until people’s fury spills over and all they can think about is to “punish” the Coalition by voting for the other big party.

That’s unfortunately what politics is for the majority of people in this entrenched system of two-party politics.

Putting better community representatives into parliament can only ever be one step.

We need a radical expansion of direct democracy including the right to recall our representatives and community-initiated referenda on important social and environmental questions. A community which campaigns for its interests can hold politicians to account: we’ve seen this time and again.

I've spent my whole adult life campaigning for human rights, peace, social justice and people's power.

If elected I will continue to do so and I promise to do everything in my power to encourage, facilitate and build new institutions of popular power - including in communities and the unions.

This is what will be needed to stop the big business-backed parties from holding our common future to ransom.

This is what will be needed to begin to chart a people-first and safe climate future for NSW.

Campaign launch: 'Make all public transport frequent and free’

2011-02-24T16:55:00.002+11:00

Media Release, Thursday February 24, 2011
Paola Harvey, Socialist Alliance candidate for Keira, will launch her campaign this Monday February 28, 10am at the University of Wollongong's main bus interchange on Northfields Avenue, Gwynneville. She will be joined by local Socialist Alliance candidates for the Legislative Council, Jess Moore and Patrick Harrison.

The theme of the launch, ‘make all public transport frequent and free’, is a key campaign priority for Harvey. It reflects Socialist Alliance’s commitment to job creation, social justice and immediate action to combat climate change.

‘Public transport in NSW has been seriously neglected, but the free shuttle in Wollongong shows the benefits of an efficient, frequent and free service. Nearly five million passengers have now used the shuttle, an astounding success. Why not learn the lesson and dramatically expand the idea to encourage more people to leave the car at home?’ said Harvey.

‘Making public transport frequent and free will require a large increase in funding. But the benefits, including significant job creation and reduced pollution, would far outweigh the drawbacks.

‘The Begian city of Hasselt introduced free public transport and patronage increased by 870% within a year. The government found they saved money overall, given the subsequent savings on health, road maintenance and construction, and also on ticketing.

‘It's a socially just response to the chronic problems of traffic congestion, lack of parking and lack of mobility faced by poorer sections of the community. Having limited transport options is a major barrier to job seekers finding work, something that our proposal would help overcome.

‘Free public transport would see a dramatic improvement in people’s health. Not only would respiratory diseases and other illnesses associated with pollution decrease, but patient access to care would improve. The Cancer Council estimates that currently 90,000 people per year are refused health related trips on community transport due to lack of capacity. This is simply unacceptable.

‘We stand for putting people and the planet before profit. Making all public transport frequent and free is a common sense response to many of the problems faced by the people of NSW. The free shuttle service proves it’s viable, so let’s get on with the job’, Harvey concluded.

Public Transport policy

2011-02-24T13:59:00.002+11:00

Over the years the proportion of people in New South Wales using public transport has fallen steadily, from over 40% in 1945 to under 10% today.

Train travel across the state has been getting slower and slower and the public transport system only really gets used to capacity at peak hour. While train services have been reduced over the years spending on motorways has passed $10 billion.

Every 10% switch out of car and truck and into public transport will reduce the costs of air pollution, greenhouse gas emission, car accidents, traffic congestion, motor vehicle waste disposal, noise pollution and road maintenance by $1.4 billion at least.

That’s why the Socialist Alliance calls for a rapid transition to free public transport – to achieve the gains that could be made for our health and the environment by a radical switch back to public transport.

Such a shift would start by providing free public transport to pensioners, students, the unemployed and those under 17, until the system was ready to take a wholesale transition. The Alliance proposes an all-round rapid upgrade of the public transport system.

1. Extend and improve the network
After years of neglect the NSW Labor government has finally embraced a plan for increased rail infrastructure in the Sydney region. But NSW’s rail infrastructure is already 30 years behind where it should be and a rapid switch to public transport is needed if there is to be a serious impact on climate change and air pollution.

This requires:

• Implementing and rolling out a comprehensive metropolitan rail plan as soon as possible – not by 2020 or 2030. This is urgently needed to unclog freight and suburban and interurban rail networks, allowing more trains to run more frequently
• Committing to a further extension of the heavy rail network in urban centres (Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong) and investigating the extent to which this should be underground.
• Increasing capacity by developing an extensive network of light rail along arterial roads, as well as in between major centres, especially in Sydney’s West
• Expanding the rail freight network so as to serve all major industrial clusters and ports
• Upgrading and expanding the interstate and country rail network, reversing cuts to the CountryLink network and expanding it into new areas
• Superfast train linking Sydney with Brisbane, Canberra and Melbourne.
• Expanding bus priority programs and bus lanes through out Sydney and major centres
• Expanding public transport networks in rural and regional centres, through the provision of increased bus and light and heavy rail routes
• Rebuilding public transport staff numbers to ensure safe, comfortable and efficient services
• Upgrading railway stations, light rail and bus stops, ferry wharfs and interchanges to provide adequate seating, shelter, bicycle storage and decent facilities for the disabled.
• Expansion of the cycleway network and the provision of rental bicycles
• Planned integration of taxis and taxi cooperatives into the system

2. Public transport: publicly owned and democratically managed
While public transport in NSW has not experienced Victoria’s full-scale privatisation disaster, it has had its share of flops and crises, the most spectacular being the Cross-City Tunnel and the Sydney airport rail link.

The privatisation of CityRail and CountryLink maintenance work has lead to breakdowns and network decay – making short-term savings at the price of a longer term decline in standards as well as loss of expertise within the public system.

The Socialist Alliance stands for:

• Public ownership of all transport services and their administration by boards representing users, workers and managers
• Renationalisation of private rail freight companies like Pacific National
• An end to public-private partnerships
• The public takeover of private bus operations (already heavily subsidised)
• Fully integrated planning of all transport modes, creating a comprehensive plan that specialises each mode where it best fits

3. Making transport environmentally sustainable
Given that trains are 40 times and buses 3.5 times more energy efficient than cars, a shift to public transport will hugely benefit our environment. As public transport regains its place as the main transport mode, it can also incorporate the latest environmentally sustainable technologies (e.g., lightweight materials, alternative propulsion systems).

The Socialist Alliance stands for:

• Replacing semi-trailers and “B-doubles” as the major inter-city freight mode, with retraining on full pay for affected workers affected to incorporate them into the expanded public transport system
• Replacing trucks and vans with electric and hybrid vehicles for urban freight transport
• Ending the construction of new motorways
• Ending all tax concessions for company and company-purchased cars
• Developing biofuels only where there is negligible impact on productive agricultural land and biodiversity;
• Free carriage of bicycles on public transport;
• Making all new urban development dependent on the provision of adequate public transport

4. Funding
The shift in public transport infrastructure and services proposed here will require a large increase in funding.

The Socialist Alliance proposes:

• An increase in state debt to fund large-scale public transport infrastructure
• The imposition of a public transport levy on all CBD employers with more than 10 staff, along the lines of the French versement de transport.
• Special levies on developers who gain access to commercially profitable sites close to railway stations and bus interchanges.

The costs of free and expanded public transport will also be rapidly made up for by reduced health costs associated with road accidents and pollution related health problems.

Water policy

2011-02-24T13:56:00.002+11:00

Water is the essence of life – as drinking water, for maintaining hygiene, for industrial production, for agriculture and for maintaining the our fragile and unique ecosystems.

A sustainable water policy for New South Wales must recognise that Australia suffers extended periods of drought and flood, and that these fluctuations will worsen with anthropogenic global warming. It must act in the public interest to provide a socially just, ecologically sustainable and reliable water supply for our urban centres and for agricultural irrigation, while also maintaining the water necessary for our natural ecosystems to thrive.

It must also maintain water and water infrastructure under public ownership and fully democratic community control, to protect the environment and the public interest. Water trading and profiteering must be ended, and water transfers between catchments must be gradually phased out in order to maintain a sustainable water system.

Urban Water

Urban water supply, drainage and sewage systems are a key part of the water cycle and must be sustainably managed, with a focus on conservation, efficient use, reuse and treatment, and wastage through discharge must be reduced.

The Socialist Alliance promotes a water plan that focuses on reducing corporate abuse of the water system, on harvesting rain and storm water, and on localised water reclamation programs instead of more dams, de-salination plants and other white elephant "solutions".

Socialist Alliance stands for:

• Full public ownership of water and sewerage infrastructure and higher water efficiency standards
• Ending Sydney’s reliance on water from the Shoalhaven river and focusing on rain and stormwater capture and water treatment, not expensive desalination plants
• Using treated greywater and stormwater for parks, trees and other public areas
• Stricter controls on industrial usage and pollution, with increase prices and fines
• Mandating the use of recycled and reused water for all industrial purposes.
• Installing rainwater tanks on all public buildings and encouraging domestic water tanks
• A capital works program to urgently repair of Sydney's decrepit water infrastructure
• Preventing groundwater pollution from landfill, storage tanks and mining activities.
• Urgent action on dioxin leakage in Botany Bay and strict fines for industrial pollution
• Keeping urban groundwater use below recharge rates, enabling aquifer recovery
• Sewage treatment levels that match discharge environments, reduce water use and allow for on-site greywater treatment
• Decentralised sewage treatment, enabling water and nutrient reuse and toxin capture
• Phasing out of sewage ocean outfalls, which discharge over 450 billion litres per day.

Rural and Agricultural Water

Rural and agricultural water supply systems are interrelated to all parts of the natural water catchments and must be sustainably managed, not exploited for short-term profit. Agricultural water use – which accounts for around 70 percent of NSW water use – is already heavily subsidised. Unsustainable water uses must be reformed or phased out.

In particular, the Socialist Alliance supports a Murray Darling basin management plan – based on the co-ordination and co-operation between all governments, state and local authorities and communities in the basin – that takes into account the needs of farmers, rural populations and the environment, and creates a sustainable water use plan in consultation with all affected groups.

In addition, Socialist Alliance stands for:

• Full community participation and consultation in water management, with water allocations based on a balance between economic, social and environmental needs
• Preventing groundwater pollution from agricultural runoff, land use change and mining
• Reducing river pollution through regulation, economic incentives and education, with high standard waste water treatment to reduce nutrient-flow in creeks and rivers
• Ending inefficient irrigation practices and promote efficient measures such as drip irrigation and low water-demand agricultural crops
• Aboriginal Land Rights to be respected in all current and future water determinations.
• Flood control mimicking naturally ecosystems, and allowing tidal inundation in certain areas, with appropriate compensation. Engineering solutions only as a last resort
• Minimising flood damage by ensuring rural development that preempts and regulates flooding, rather than relying on post-flood mitigation
• No removal of native riparian vegetation or straightening of streams
• Protecting native eco-systems and indigenous aquatic flora and fauna by preventing the construction of new dams or the augmentation of existing dams
• Native vegetation retention and regrowth in riverine systems
• An end to land use practices that increase soil salinity and water table damage
• Ending the release of all non-native species into water systems

Water in Natural Ecosystems

Socialist Alliance believes in protecting our native eco-systems and endemic aquatic flora and fauna by ensuring viable environmental water flows that mimic natural variability by:

• Adopting a bio-regionalist approach in the allocation of water
• Increasing the frequency and duration of flooding of floodplain wetlands by 25% to 50%; Protect coastal estuarine processes and their maintenance with adequate flows;
• Legislating to protect aquatic systems, including reserve system similar to national parks for streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands
• Creating a freshwater reserve system over stressed rivers to rescue native fish stocks
• Preserving existing native vegetation to protect against greater salinity damage and to foster soil repair
• Protecting groundwater sources and reliant ecosystems by keeping groundwater extraction below recharge rates.
• Preventing river and groundwater pollution from landfill, fuel storage tanks and mining
• Preventing the cracking of rivers and creeks by mining operations by enforcing adequate safety zones around river systems
• Allowing sustainable, restricted, mapped and licensed capping and piping of bore water from artesian, sub-artesian and shallow aquifers as a priority for strategic pastoral land
• Mapping and protecting all NSW wetlands, and encouraging construction of artificial wetlands so long as natural wetlands are strictly protected
• Reducing the number of existing weirs and locks to the essential minimum and ensuring existing dams are managed to sustain and restore affected river ecosystems

Waste policy

2011-02-24T13:52:00.003+11:00

The Waste Crisis in NSW

In addition to the huge amounts of human waste generated by our population centres and industry, the overproduction and planned obsolescence that lies at the heart of the capitalist system and a learned culture of waste mean that vast quantities of consumables end up as waste in a short time.

Waste is one of society’s most important challenges, and New South Wales is in the middle of a waste crisis. Sydney is fast running out of space to store its waste, and the current plans to dump Sydney’s waste in the bush merely delay the inevitable need for a genuine plan to reduce and treat waste.

Most of our solid waste ends up in landfills, causing groundwater pollution, methane and toxic gas emissions, surface runoff into water courses, foul odours and encouraging vermin. While most waste can be recycled in one way or another, the best way to deal with waste is to avoid producing it in the first place.

The Socialist Alliance stands for:

Reducing Waste

• Mandated the use of ecologically sustainable development practices and materials
• Mandated container deposits to encourage reuse
• Audit supermarket food wastage and redirect all excess unspoiled food to food programs for the homeless, low-income families and for relief efforts (Sydney wastes $600 million of fresh produce every year, while food prices increase and thousands of families are forced to go without)
• No incineration of waste, a flawed process which introduces toxins into the air

Recycling

• Comprehensive community education programs to encourage reuse and recycling
• Encourage greater household waste composting and use of compost toilets. Organic waste makes up 40% of landfills, and produces methane, a greenhouse gas
• Provide municipal composting facilities to deal with excess food waste
• Establish comprehensive recycling systems for all wastes and reduce landfills. NSW produces one-third of Australia’s waste, yet only about 30% is recycled!
• Comprehensive sewage treatment plants, using appropriately treated sewage for fertiliser

Batteries and Industrial Waste

• Implement an emergency plan to prevent battery waste and other toxic leachate getting into groundwater and the ecosystem.
• Require corporations to fund the remediation of contaminated industrial sites and to pay for the safe disposal of all industrial waste – the “polluter pays” principle
• Force manufacturers of electronic equipment, white-goods, IT and other products to initiate recycling programs.
• Force industry to recycle all waste, wherever possible

National Parks and Forests policy

2011-02-24T13:47:00.002+11:00

National Parks

The National Parks are a jewel in the crown of our natural heritage and biological diversity, that were only won after years of active campaigning to protect these precious environmental resources. Many key ecosystems in New South Wales remain unprotected, however. Existing National Parks are under threat, and must be protected from human impacts, degradation and commercial use.

Under the guise of “sustainable nature tourism”, the NSW government has started to open up national parks to developers and a wide range of private commercial interests, threatening the integrity of the parks system and the fragile ecosystems housed there.

Invasive species continue to threaten vulnerable native species, and commercial activities such as grazing, and mining and logging continue to threaten the integrity of our National Parks and the ecosystems they support.

Socialist Alliance stands for:

• Expanding the National Parks system, creating a comprehensive conservation assessment process to identify areas requiring reservation, and make more parks.
• Ensuring clearly identified and maintained buffer zones for all National Parks.
• Nominating existing ancient forests for listing as National and World Heritage areas.
• Systematically removing all feral animals and plants from National Parks and vulnerable ecosystems using low-impact and natural management controls.
• Moving away from chemical pest control and burning.
• Preventing mining, grazing, bee-keeping, or logging in National Parks or other areas of environmental significance. Restrict vehicle access to designated roads.
• Preventing the commercialisation of National Parks. No development, “inholdings” or “concessions” in National Parks.
• National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) to refocus on their role as a conservation agency, with only a minimal tourist/ recreational role.
• Reversing the poor management of protected areas by increasing funding and ensuring greater public and Indigenous participation in National Park management.
• Recognising the rights and role of Indigenous Australians in the National Parks System. Amend the National Parks and Wildlife Act to allow appropriate Indigenous control, use and management of Aboriginal cultural sites and items.
• Better funding and expanding the NPWS, upgrade tracks and other basic infrastructure, and ensuring openness and accountability.
• Encouraging more Voluntary Conservation Agreements on private lands, especially lands bordering National Parks and vulnerable ecosystems, and those in important wildlife corridors.
• Creating expanded sanctuary zones in NSW marine parks to protect biodiversity
• Increasing public involvement in the planning and management of national and marine parks
• Identifying sources of marine and estuarine pollution, and making polluters pay clean-up costs.

Forests, Plantations and Timber

Mature, stable, forest ecosystems are vital in maintaining natural biodiversity and the water cycle. They also play a considerable role in mitigating the effects of Climate Change. Old growth forests can store up to three times as much carbon as young forests or plantations, and must be protected.

Enormous swathes of the Australian landmass which once carried forests have been cleared to make way for farmland. The ecosystems these forests supported are gone forever, and we are in danger of losing more.

Socialist Alliance stands for a genuinely sustainable forestry industry that is built around:

• An end to clear felling, the logging of old growth and high conservation value forests and logging in water catchments.
• An end the export of woodchips and whole logs from native forests, and restricting logging to designated areas under strict conditions and for specialty purposes.
• Creating a publicly owned timber industry based on sustainable plantations with a diversity of species, and ensure high value-adding in the wood products industry in order to provide skilled and sustainable jobs in regional areas.
• Funding retraining and assistance in the transition from native forests to sustainable plantations.
• Investing in the development of sustainable alternative fibres
• Developing large-scale reforestation programs aimed at strengthening natural ecosystems, stabilising soil systems, and maximising the use of forest ecosystems as “carbon sinks” to draw down carbon from the atmosphere
• Implementing a strategic hazard reduction plan to avoid bushfires, including controlled burn-offs and fire-smart development where appropriate
• Immediately putting an end to broad-scale land-clearing. Place strict and transparent controls on all land clearing
• Preserving and extending vulnerable ecosystems by designating as national parks, and protect such areas from over-exploitation and commercial development.
• Supporting strict programs to prevent and remove exotic species, while phasing out poisons like 1080 and chemical pest and weed control
• Providing full protection for endangered species and habitats.

Housing policy

2011-02-24T13:39:00.003+11:00

The Socialist Alliance believes that housing is a basic human right and that every person should have access to appropriate, safe and secure housing. We stand for affordable housing, quality public housing, an end to homelessness, and better tenants’ rights to stem growing social inequality and to build sustainable and democratic communities.

The Problem

Flush with campaign funds from private property developers and pro-market ideology, successive ALP governments have let public and community housing get run down or sold off, while encouraging high property prices that have pushed up rents. Sydney is now one of the least affordable cities in the world, and the housing crisis has spread across the state.

Due to increasing rents and interest rates, over 25% of the NSW population currently live under “housing stress”, paying more than 30% of their weekly earnings on rent or mortgages.

The shortfall of affordable rental housing for low and low-moderate incomes families is over 100,000, with vacancy rates at their lowest levels since the 1980s. There are still over 60,000 applicants on the public housing waiting list, even after the 2005 tightening of “eligibility criteria”. Over 20,000 people lack shelter; and 17% of people using homelessness services are Indigenous (while comprising less than 2% of the population).

The NSW government has a responsibility to take the lead in addressing these problems, but recent government investment in community and social housing is still far from adequate.

An emergency program to expand social housing

Only an emergency housing plan can turn around the current mess in housing (and urban development). The NSW government must boost public, community and cooperative housing, not just as welfare housing, but as a realistic alternative to the private housing market.

The Socialist Alliance calls for a large-scale program to build quality, environmentally sustainable, affordable public housing that will:

• Develop environmentally sustainable community and cooperative housing in cooperation with building industry unions, with special attention to sections of the community with special needs (young people, Indigenous and aged people).
• Provide high quality, community-based, supported accommodation for low income working families, special needs groups and homeless people in NSW
• Prioritise recreational, cultural, educational and social facilities in town planning, and ensure linkage of housing, employment opportunities, childcare and public transport.
• Fully fund refuges and other secure emergency accommodation for women and children escaping domestic violence.
• Boost special housing programs for Aboriginal people in the city and country, and offer ownership of some existing housing to Aboriginal people at no cost.

Elements of this emergency plan include:

Social and Affordable Housing

• Eliminating the 100,000 housing shortfall in 10 years (building one new public, cooperative or community house for every two private houses in this period).
• Increasing social housing availability by legislating the construction of one such home for every ten new private homes (approximately 4000 each year).
• A full maintenance program to bring Housing Commission stock up to standard.
• Immediately carrying out the more than $640 million of backlogged maintenance work.
• Stopping the mass privatisation of public housing buildings and land.
• Setting an upper limit for rent at 20% of tenant income
• A minimum of 10-20% of new social housing meets disability needs and access standards, including financial assistance to retrofit houses for wheelchair access
• Quality housing with security of tenure for lower income families, single parent families, disabled, elderly, the unemployed, and students.

Private Rental and Ownership

• A 6-12 month limit on the period landlords can keep housing vacant. Tens of thousands of inhabitable dwellings in Sydney have been deliberately left empty, pushing up rental and property prices. If not rented within a reasonable period, they should be forcibly made available for rent.
• Socialist Alliance supports ordinary Australians owning their own homes, and will facilitate families purchasing specific new public housing stock via rental payments.
• Tighter regulation of private accommodation standards, requiring landlords to maintain private housing stock in good condition or risk the property being taken over and renovated at the landlord’s expense.

Sustainable Planning and Development

• Mandate a 10 star sustainable housing rating for all new buildings
• Prevent developer greed and corruption from gobbling up new land on Sydney’s fringes, threatening the Sydney Basin food bowl;
• Promote medium density housing along expanding and efficient public transport corridors
• Long-term planning for affordable, well-resourced medium density housing in Sydney and throughout the state.
• Encourage job creation and expand public transport in rural centres to support housing growth

Community control and tenant rights

• Establish public housing tenant associations with real powers at neighbourhood and city-wide level along with similar forums for housing associations, co-operative and crisis housing tenants, as well as for those in the private rented sector.
• Put all Aboriginal housing under Aboriginal control.
• Amend the Residential Tenancies Act so that landlords are required to justify rent increases if contested by tenants and so that rents can only be raised once a year.
• Legislate to give boarders and lodgers tenancy rights.

Funding

• Establish a publicly owned and controlled housing finance corporation to provide low-interest home loans
• Increase land tax on luxury housing
• Campaign for the federal government to end negative gearing for residential property.
• Expand funding to housing co-operatives and other forms of community housing

Socialist Alliance also supports the general approach of Shelter NSW to the nine problems they have identified in housing in NSW

Cancel Keneally's $5.3 billion firesale now!

2011-02-23T18:06:00.001+11:00

Media release February 23, 2011

"Just do it now," the Socialist Alliance lead candidate for the NSW Legislative Council, Peter Boyle said today endorsing the call by the parliamentary inquiry into the privatisation of electricity for the contracts for the $5.3 billion privatisation to be canceled before they are completed on March 1.

"The people of NSW have made their views very clear. More than 80% oppose power privatisation. And the people of NSW are about to punish the Keneally Labor government on March 26 for ignoring them and more.

"Premier Kristina Keneally should admit her government was wrong and make some amends by canceling the contracts now."

Socialist Alliance also calls for a freeze on electricity prices pending a state-wide plebiscite on the future of the sale of the electricity sector. Whichever party wins the next elections should let the people of NSW decide whether to keep electricity in public hands.

"The Socialist Alliance believes the entire energy sector should be kept in public hands so that the state can begin a transition to 100% renewable energy generation", Boyle added.

"A responsible NSW government would enlist the help of the engineers, scientists and economists who have put together the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 and start a program of serious public investment for a transition to 100% renewable energy.

"The technology - concentrated solar thermal and wind power - is available now. All that is needed is a government with the political will to do the right thing."

Socialist Alliance also:
* opposes the building of any new coal-fired power stations
* supports a just transition for workers in the coal industry so they are guaranteed new jobs in a 100% renewable energy future
* opposes coal seam gas mining and the short-sighted turn to gas as a so-called "transition"

The Socialist Alliance will be launching its NSW campaign under the slogan "NSW Not For Sale! Community Need Not Corporate Greed" on Saturday February 26, at St Lukes Hall, 11 Stanmore Rd, Enmore.

For interviews contact Peter Boyle 0401 760 577

Law, Police, Prisons & Crime policy

2011-02-19T13:06:00.003+11:00

The “law and order auctions” that have characterised New South Wales election campaigns for decades show the total bankruptcy of both Labor and the Coalition. Years of a “tough on crime” approach, with tightened sentencing and bail guidelines have seen the NSW prison population increased dramatically, straining the public purse and condemning thousands to the revolving door of the criminal justice system.

The Socialist Alliance approach is the exact opposite of this ineffective law-and-order populism. We say reduce poverty, reduce crime. Only a sustained campaign to reduce long-term unemployment and low incomes, and to ensure the provision of decent services in housing, health and education, can start to turn the crisis around.

The cost of keeping one person in a NSW prison for a year is almost equal to the cost of two public school teachers. Instead of properly teaching and training our youth and rehabilitating those who have fallen into crime, taxpayers are instead paying to maintain an unjust and counterproductive prison system that does nothing to fix the problem.

Socialist Alliance stands for dismantling the ineffective and expensive prison system, and turning our money to better use – to prevention and rehabilitation.

How will we know when we’re making serious headway against real crime in NSW? When 26% of the prison population is not made up by Indigenous people but by the employers responsible for workplace deaths and accidents, and by corporate swindlers and crooks.

The police

• End zero-tolerance, military style policing. This hasn’t reduced violence and “anti-social behaviour”, which has simply been driven indoors and turned into strife within families – increasing self-harm, including suicide, among young people.
• Dissolve the Middle Eastern and South East Asian crime squads. In Arab-Australian and Muslim communities targeted police harassment reinforces discrimination, racism and divisions within the community.
• Dissolve the riot squad. Ever since the State government boosted the riot squad – equipping it with water cannon and taser guns – the possibility of serious injury or even death when the squad is used against protestors has increased.
• Ban tasers which have been continually and blatantly misused by police, resulting in serious harm and death, and risking the lives of hundreds.
• No use of police in industrial disputes or to reinforce unjust industrial laws.
• End police harassment of young people. The use of sniffer dogs in pubs and to harass youth at events like the Big Day Out is a complete waste of time and resources, and is often racially motivated.
• End special police powers to “lock down and take command” of an area. Under this power police are free to harass entire communities. The “special” police powers granted for the APEC Summit in Sydney – and maintained to the present day – are an attack upon democracy, are entirely unnecessary, and should be repealed.
• Reduce police numbers. One dollar spent on crime prevention programs can save up to $11 in spending on jails, police and compensation of victims. Shift the bulk of NSW’s record $2.8 billion police budget towards genuine crime prevention programs.

Jails and Prisons

• No new jails. Jails are schools of crime, and imprisonment should be the very last resort in sentencing, especially for those guilty of victimless crimes and on remand. Jails don’t rehabilitate, they wreck families, entrench violence in relationships and among communities, teach crime skills, punish the innocent, reinforce metal illnesses, make it harder for prisoners to get out of debt, breed drug addiction and stigmatise people for life. They are also an enormous waste of money (weekly “rent” for prisoner in NSW is almost $2000). This money could be better spent preventing crime, or rehabilitating offenders.
• Close the High Risk Management Unit at Goulburn Jail. The HRMU is NSW’s own Guantánamo. Abusive treatment of prisoners has been reported over a long time, and sounds very like prison regimes elsewhere in the “war on terror”.
• Transfer prisoners suffering from mental illness from the jail system to places where they can get proper attention. Too many people suffering from mental illness are caught up in the criminal system, where it is often “easier” to lock them up than to provide proper treatment and support.
• Reverse jail privatisations. Under Labor the jail system is becoming a private “industrial complex”. Private jails mean worse conditions for both inmates and prison guards, and jails become a way for corporations to profit from crime.
• No use of prisoners as cheap labour. Prisoners should not be treated as slave labour to make a quick buck for unscrupulous companies and taking jobs out of the community. All prisoners allowed to work should be paid a proper wage.
• Access to education and training. Prisoners should have full access to educational, training and health facilities to enable them to easily and effectively return to society.
• Restore full voting rights to prisoners. Denying prisoners the right to vote is a breach of their civil liberties. Everyone should have a say in deciding who governs and which laws rule our society – even those who have fallen foul of the law.

Legal Reform

• Set up an independent commission to help bring NSW law in line with international conventions. (NSW law is almost certainly in breach of police search powers, rights of accused people to bail, presumption of innocence, the right to silence and the equal treatment of witnesses by defence and prosecution).
• No mandatory sentencing, which eliminates judicial discretion in sentencing
• Full presumption in favour of bail, with less restrictions and reduce the use of prison for remand. Current bail laws consign thousands of potentially innocent people to indefinite incarceration until their trial is heard
• Maintain the principles of double jeopardy, the presumption of innocence and a trial by jury for all indictable offences
• No majority verdicts for jury trials. No preventative detention without trial
• Reduce the penalties for “riot” and “affray”. Under Labor the penalty for these offences were increased from five to 15 and 10 years, increasing the chances of long prison sentences for protestors – a clear example of the effects of a “law and order auction”
• Decriminalise personal drug use. Drugs should be treated as a social and/ or health issue, not a crime. Criminalisation of drug use only serves to alienate people, particularly young people, and encourages unnecessary police harassment
• Make the law accessible to all. Increase funding to Legal Aid and community legal centres, with an emphasis on law reform, free legal representation and community legal education to lower income, migrant and indigenous communities and youth

Indigenous Australians in jail

Indigenous Australians make up only about 2% of the NSW population, but 26% of its jail population. In the words of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) “the most significant contributing factor to incarceration is the disadvantaged and unequal position of Aboriginal society in every way.”

Until this massive injustice is tackled it is vain to hope that Indigenous jail rates will fall much. In addition to its program for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people and for an emergency attack on poverty, the Socialist Alliance stands for:

• Full implementation of the recommendations of the RCIADIC
• Boosted funding to Aboriginal Legal Aid
• Full training of court officials, police and prison officers in Aboriginal culture and values
• Proper representation of Aboriginal communities on law reform bodies
• Greater Aboriginal representation on juries and control over community policing
• Greater use of suspended sentences and community-based alternatives to prison

Prevention not punishment

• Greater use of community-oriented rehabilitation schemes. These programs reduce rates of re-offending, and are cheaper and more effective in reducing crime and recidivism than putting people through the criminal justice system
• Boost special developmental programs. Around Australia there are a number of developmental crime prevention programs, covering early childhood support, special health care, literacy, job skills, sport and self-esteem training. These should be boosted in NSW, with provision to meet the special needs of indigenous, migrant, women and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual prisoners
• Implement alternatives to imprisonment like restorative justice and circle sentencing. Restorative justice is concerned with repairing the harm caused by criminal behaviour to both victim and offender. Circle sentencing, which involves taking the sentencing court to a community setting, aims to build greater involvement from Indigenous people in the sentencing process, and create a sense of community trust and responsibility in order to reduce crime

Anti-terrorism laws

• Repeal the NSW anti-terrorism legislation. Existing criminal law is more than sufficient to protect against potential terrorist attacks. Specific anti-terrorism laws make it more likely that innocent people will be convicted and punished and increase the chances of people being criminalised for “thought crimes”, or found guilty on confessions extracted by torture or on the basis of secret “evidence”.
• Restrict NSW collaboration with federal police and military authorities until federal anti-terrorism law is repealed.