Tag Archives: Greens

How We Can Resist the Australian Regime’s Participation in Israel’s Terror

Photo above: The suffering of Gaza’s people caused by Israel’s genocidal terror. Displaced Palestinian children are seen among temporary tents next to large piles of garbage in Gaza City on March 21 2025.
Photo: Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua

14 April 2025 – The Israeli military’s cold-blooded March 23 murder of 15 Palestinian medics and emergency workers who were travelling in two convoys of clearly marked ambulances says everything about the genocidal aims of its war on Gaza’s people. Every day, the Zionist butchers commit new gruesome crimes. Yet Israel would not be able to wage its war on the Palestinian people without the massive support that it receives from the U.S., German, British and Australian regimes. It is not only in Palestine that these regimes are causing immense suffering within the Middle East region. Over the last four weeks, the Donald Trump-led U.S. regime, with the assistance of its British and Australian counterparts, has been relentlessly bombing Yemen. These forces have killed a large number of Yemeni civilians, killing at least 31 of her people, mostly women and children, in just the first day of this latest wave of attacks on March 16. This operation not only seeks to stop Yemen’s brave actions in support of the Palestinian people but also aims to crush one of the only two remaining governments in the Middle East that are not under the thumb of the Western imperialists. The other remaining relatively independent state is Iran. But Trump is now threatening war against Iran too. There had been one other relatively independent government in the region – in Syria. But that government was ousted last December by a collection of “Rebel” proxies of the U.S., British and French imperialists and their Turkish, Qatari, Israeli, Saudi and Jordanian allies. The forces that the imperialists and their allies have brought to power in Syria are dominated by Al Qaeda-derived anti-secular extremists who are fanatically determined to subjugate women. This new Syrian regime’s forces have already massacred thousands of members of Syria’s Alawi minority. They have also attacked the country’s Christian and Druze communities, constricted the rights of women and subverted the country’s previously secular education system. The regime has also begun a Trump/Elon Musk-style mass firing of Syria’s public sector workers, while stating (actually re-stating) its intention to privatise most of Syria’s state-owned enterprises. This will “open” up the Syrian economy to much greater super-exploitation by Western investors and their counterparts in the Gulf states.

What the imperialists and their proxies are doing to re-shape Syria is closely connected to their limitless support for Israel’s tyranny over Palestine. For the ruling classes of the capitalist powers support Israel precisely because the Zionists are its most reliable attack dogs in the region who enforce their hegemony over the oil-rich and strategically located Middle East. Thus, Israel played a major role in the imperialists’ operation to bring its proxies to power in Syria. The Israeli military not only relentlessly attacked the previous government’s forces with air and missile strikes, it also armed and paid the salaries of at least twelve different armed “Rebel” factions based in the south of Syria. Today, Israel is its U.S. masters’ main attack dog to try and subjugate oil-rich Iran under U.S.-led Western domination.

We need to wage a powerful struggle to resist the Australian regime’s support for Israel’s genocidal terror against the Palestinian people and to resist the hegemony of the Western imperialists and their Zionist and other junior partners over the broader Middle East. Leftists in Australia have a big role to play in this regard. For the Australian regime is a major contributor to the military operations of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East. The joint U.S./Australia satellite ground station at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, is used by the U.S. to help its own military and that of its allies to locate targets for their missile, artillery and drone strikes. Today, the Pine Gap spy base is used to direct U.S. attacks in Yemen and Iraq. Pine Gap’s target data is also passed on real time to Israel to ensure that the bombs and missiles that the Zionist military unleashes on Gaza kill Palestinian people rather than fall on open space or empty buildings. It is likely too that through U.S. membership of NATO, Pine Gap spy data is also passed on through NATO to NATO member Turkey. Meanwhile, Australia’s air bases in northern Australia have been used to host aircraft conducting air-to-air refuelling of U.S. B-2 bombers attacking Yemen. When the Joe Biden-led U.S. regime bombed Yemen last October, the Australian regime bragged about the role played by Australian air bases in the attack. In addition to the undoubted role of Australian-hosted Pine Gap, it is likely that Australian air bases are also supporting the new Trump-led U.S. administration’s even more brutal bombing campaign against Yemen. However, given local anger at Trump’s tariffs that have hit Australia among other countries, the ruling class did not consider it opportune to boast about its role in facilitating this new wave of U.S. attacks on Yemen. In any case, in a mission dubbed Operation Hydranth, the Australian military has several personnel in the Middle East directly participating in the U.S. and British led assaults on Yemen. Meanwhile, Australian companies sell military equipment and supplies to Israel and continue to seek to expand this provision of support to the genocidal Zionist military. Earlier this year, Australian defence company EOS had its advanced weapon system trialled by the Israeli military as part of a bid to win a contract to supply it with counter-drone weapons. The Australian regime for its part boosts Israel’s arms providers. In February last year, the Australian military awarded a nearly $917 million contract to Israel’s biggest arms producer, Elbit Systems – known for supplying Israeli forces with killer drones and mortars. Australia’s capitalist rulers also support the U.S.-led drive to subjugate Iran. Thus, with the support of all the parties and “independents” currently in parliament, the Australian government has hit Iran with sanctions. Sometimes, Canberra disguises these as measures against the Iranian government’s repressive and anti-women policies. But Australia’s rulers care nothing for the Iranian masses. Their real goal is to support the U.S. and Israeli drive to bring Iran to heel. This was proven last October, when the Australian government unleashed new sanctions on Iran in response to her 100% justifiable, retaliatory missile strike on Israel. 

The Left and politically advanced sections of the workers movement must mobilise in mass actions to demand: Close Pine Gap! No refuelling or hosting of U.S. warplanes from Australian bases! Australian troops involved in the operation against Yemen: Get out of the Middle East! Lift the Australian regime’s “terror” listing of Hamas and Hezbollah! No military sales to Israel! Cancel Australian contracts to Israeli arms suppliers! Lift the sanctions on Iran! Down with the Australian regime’s attacks on pro-Palestine activists! It is possible to win sections of the Australian working class to fight for this agenda because doing so is in the very interests of the working class. When the power and authority of the capitalist rulers is strengthened, like it was when their side took over Syria, they are more able to get away at home with attacking militant unions, curbing leftist dissent, demonising Aboriginal youth and scapegoating refugees and immigrants. On the other hand, any setbacks to the Western imperialists – who the Australian ruling class are part of – in Palestine, Yemen, Iran and the broader Middle East will weaken the Australian capitalist rulers at home too and, thus, give the working class and all oppressed more possibilities to win struggles against this exploiting class.

Above: A B-2A bomber of the type used in U.S. bombing raids in Yemen. U.S. attacks on Yemen aim to crush Yemen’s actions in solidarity with the Palestinian people. They are also aimed at undermining one of the two remaining governments in the Middle East that are not politically subordinate to U.S. imperialism. The Australian imperialists have assisted the B-2 bombing attacks on Yemen by making Australia’s Northern Territory Tindal air base available for aircraft to provide air to air refueling of the B-2 bombers on route to Yemen from its base in the U.S. state of Missouri.
Below: People survey the rubble of a house hit by a March 16 U.S. attack on Saada, Yemen


Photo Above: The Aviationist
Photo Below: Naif Rahma/ REUTERS

It is important to understand why the Australian rulers are so avidly assisting U.S. intervention in the Middle East. The reason is not because they are servile to the U.S. rulers. As we are seeing with the very different stance taken by the Australian government and that of the Trump Administration over the Ukraine war, the Australian regime acts in the interests of Australia’s billionaires and other capitalist exploiters and not the American ones. Australia’s rulers want U.S. power to be defended and enhanced only because it is U.S. might that helps protect the Australian ruling class’ own imperialist plunder in what it claims as its “own backyard” – that is the southwest Pacific and southeast Asian region. So they naturally back the U.S. maintaining its hegemony over the strategic Middle East and inevitably back the U.S. rulers’ Zionist attack dogs. Like the other imperialists around the world, Australia’s ruling class is counting on the U.S. rulers to spearhead the Cold War campaign to destroy socialistic rule in China and, thus, wants the U.S. capitalist superpower to remain strong for this reason too. Therefore, when the Australian capitalist ruling class backs U.S. operations in the Middle East, they are ultimately doing so with the intention of advancing their own predatory imperialist interests.

The potential to mobilise resistance to Australian ruling class support for Israel’s genocidal onslaught and the broader Western hegemony over the Middle East is shown by the fact that hundreds of thousands of people, outraged at Western support for Israel’s genocidal crimes, have joined pro-Palestine marches in Australia over the last year and a half. But for this potential to be realised the political direction of this spirited movement must be properly oriented. To be sure, there have been strongly positive aspects to the political content of the protests. Aboriginal speakers in particular have rightly drawn the connection between Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the Australian rulers’ brutal subjugation of this country’s First Peoples. Some of the rally chants – like “Albanese You Can’t Hide – We Charge You with Genocide” – have powerfully exposed the Albanese Labor government’s complicity in Israel’s massacres of Palestinian people. However, there is another component of the movement pushing a, at bottom, very different slant. Promoted most openly by Greens politicians who address the pro-Palestine events, this stance appeals to the Australian government to “do a lot more” to support the Palestinians. Although accompanied by passionate – and in the case of speakers like federal Greens senator, Mehreen Faruqi, truly heartfelt – appeals for the government to put sanctions on Israel and condemnations of the Australian government “for doing very little” to solidarise with the Palestinian people, the effect of this “doing very little” apparent criticism of the government is to cover up the fact that the Australian regime is actually doing a lot – a lot, that is, to support Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, the futile appeals that the Greens and those Far-Left groups that tail after them make for “Australia to put sanctions on Israel” – something that will never happen while Australia remains under capitalist rule and Israel remains a crucial attack dog for Australia’s U.S. senior partner – distracts from the urgent need for mass actions to oppose the ten different means by which the Australian regime is today actively supporting Israel’s terror. To see how urgent this task is we should point out this important fact: no other regime ruling over a country with Australia’s population size or smaller does as much to support Israeli terror and U.S. hegemony over the Middle East as the Australian regime does.

In part, the Greens minimisation of the Australian regime’s crimes, even while delivering it in the tone of an angry denunciation, stems from the fact that the Greens are a capitalists-including, capitalism-accepting party that, like the ALP and the conservatives, wants to protect the image of the capitalist Australian state. So, they feel more comfortable criticising the government “for doing very little” than skewering the large amount of genocide-supporting crimes that the regime is actually committing. There is another reason that the Greens do not want to focus too much on the actual ways that the Australian regime is supporting Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinian people and the U.S. domination of the Middle East that underpins it. The Greens actually back some of these Australian government policies themselves! For example, the Greens support Australian government sanctions on Iran and have often demanded that these sanctions be escalated. Indeed, when Israel bombed Iran a year ago, the Greens refused to stand in clear solidarity with Iran but instead despicably called on the government to “condemn all sides”. Moreover, in some other cases, the Greens, while not openly supporting particular Australian government measures backing U.S. and Israeli tyranny over the Middle East, nevertheless refuse to oppose those measures. For instance, the Greens have failed to oppose the Australian regime’s participation in the U.S. and British-led operation against Yemeni supporters of Palestine. The Greens also refuse to call for the lifting of the Australian regime’s listing of Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorists”, a ban which is very harmful because it impedes Arab and Muslim Australians and other residents of Australia from sending these anti-Israel groups badly needed funds to finance their resistance operations. Indeed, while Greens politicians are keen to appear intransigent supporters of the Palestinian people when speaking at pro-Palestine rallies, all the better to gain votes from amongst the large crowds of participants, their actual stance towards the Palestinian armed resistance is hardly supportive. Several Greens statements in parliament have despicably equated the war crimes of the coloniser state Israel with the resistance actions of the largest Palestinian armed group, Hamas. For example, last June, Greens Spokesperson for Peace and Foreign Affairs, Senator Jordon Steele-John stated: “Our nation must respond to the State of Israel’s crimes in the same way we have rightfully responded to those committed by Hamas.” He further added: “We must always remember that peace is the goal and a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis has been made so much harder to achieve through the actions of the State of Israel and Hamas.” Notably, the Greens have also been aggressively demanding that Palestinian resistance groups release the Israeli hostages that they are holding (some of whom are Israeli soldiers), a demand that has been used by the Israeli and U.S. regimes as a big part of their justification for attacking Gaza. To be sure, it would better if there were no such hostages, at least civilian ones (however the Greens ought to be more energetic in demanding that the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners being held hostage in Israeli jails in horrific conditions be released). However, in the context of bloodthirsty Netanyahu and his even more extreme coalition allies wanting the hostages released so that they can pummel Gaza still more ferociously, to publicly demand that Palestinian resistance groups release the Israeli hostages is to call for placing the people of Gaza under even greater danger of annihilation. 

A screenshot of a 13 June 2024 posting on the Greens website that asserts their stance on Palestine. Although the Greens verbally oppose Israel’s war on Gaza they disgustingly equate the actions of the biggest armed resistance group of the oppressed Palestinian people, Hamas with the genocidal crimes of the Israeli oppressor state. This equivocal position is the real stance of the Greens. However, when Greens politicians speak at large pro-Palestine rallies, they dishonestly make out that the Greens are unwavering supporters of the Palestinian people’s struggle – all the better to gain votes from the attendees.

We must wage a political struggle within the pro-Palestine movement to stop the Greens and other pro-capitalist tendencies from diverting and distracting the movement away from the key task of opposing each of the actions that the Australian ruling class takes to support the Zionist war machine and the U.S. hegemony over the Middle East that this terror machine rests on. There is another political problem that needs to be corrected in the pro-Palestine movement. Significant parts of the movement promote the notion – or otherwise mistakenly believe – that the only reason that the Australian government is supporting Israel is because it is a puppet of the U.S. and/or a puppet of Zionist lobbyists. This notion is, for starters, plain wrong. For although the U.S. rulers and the pro-Israel lobby exert a nefarious influence, what primarily drives Australian government policy on the Middle East (and everywhere else) is the strategic interests of this country’s own super-powerful, ultra-rich exploiting class. The biggest problem with this notion is that it implies that the task of the movement is merely to pull the Australian government away from the clutches of the U.S. rulers and the detestable pro-Zionist lobbyists so that the government can finally act on its own supposed, innate, caged-up, “human rights”-driven inclination to come to the defence of the besieged Palestinian people. Such a notion greatly prettifies the Australian rulers – the same ones that continue to brutally subjugate this country’s First Peoples – and undercuts the need to relentlessly oppose them. Moreover, when the Australian ruling class hear the pro-Palestine movement delivering such a message, while it will of course anger them greatly, it won’t overly terrify them. For they will actually be relieved that the movement is not opposing them as an implacable enemy and that hard-hitting chants like “Albanese You Can’t Hide – We Charge You with Genocide” do not express the overall line of the entire movement. And when we are not politically threatening to the imperialist ruling class they do not feel like they need to make any concessions to us.

As well as turning the pro-Palestine movement into one that truly seeks to damage the authority and political stability of Australia’s imperialist ruling class we, of course, need to build more forces for the movement. We also need to win those who join actions sporadically to participate a lot more consistently. The biggest obstacle to doing so are the widespread illusions that the Australian government’s policy on Palestine can be changed through changing the composition of parliament through elections. Such hopes have even been expressed by some speakers at the pro-Palestine protests. As the federal election nears, such vain hopes will intensify. As long as many of the people who are hostile to the imperialist West and Zionist terror cling on to hopes of change through the ballot box, they will feel that it is not too important for them to participate in the actions on the ground that they would otherwise be joining. However, the reality right now is that even if a few pro-Palestine candidates were to win some seats, the fact that both major parties so strongly back Israel’s war on Palestine – and even more overwhelmingly back the U.S. dominance over the Middle East that underpins Israel’s actions – means that supporters of Western/Israeli tyranny over the Middle East will have a parliamentary majority regardless of who has any parliamentary balance of power between the ALP and the Coalition. More fundamentally, as long as they remain in power, the rich Australian capitalist class, driven by its own imperialist needs and through both its control of the media, think tanks and other means of influencing mass sentiment, on the one hand, and its web of influence over state institutions on the other will compel any parliament to support U.S. domination of the Middle East and the Zionist marauding that flows from this. Even in the hypothetical case that anti-imperialists truly committed to the liberation of Palestine were allowed to be elected to a parliamentary majority, the propaganda machine of the capitalist class and the capitalist state’s enforcement organs would sabotage implementation of any anti-imperialist policies; and topple the government in a coup should it persist in trying to implement them. Therefore, the only effective means from here to resist Zionist tyranny and imperialist domination of the Middle East is to build mass actions, linked to the power of the workers movement (including through strikes, pickets, occupations and marches), in opposition to each of the means through which the Australian capitalist regime is backing U.S. and Israeli forces in the Middle East. We must put all our effort into building such actions and knocking down all the political obstacles standing in the way of such mobilisations.

This does not mean that how people vote is unimportant. If a party stands genuinely opposed to imperialism and the capitalist system that imperialism is an extension of then supporting that party can help galvanise mass opposition to – and thus actions against – Australian capitalist rule and its support for U.S. and Israeli tyranny in the Middle East. But where is there such a party running in the elections? We have seen so clearly through the Albanese government that the ALP leaders are enemies of the Palestinian people, supporters of the imperialist takeover of Syria and vicious attackers of militant unions like the CFMEU. The ALP supports pro-speculator, pro-rich investor housing policies that drive low-income renters into poverty, all while engaging in the racism-inciting scapegoating of migrants, refugees and international students for the unaffordable rents and dwelling prices. The right-wing Liberal/National Coalition is all of this but in an even more shameless and extreme manner. Most rabidly hostile to the Palestinian people, Aboriginal people, other people of colour and our workers unions are the far right parties like One Nation and greedy billionaire Clive Palmer’s, Donald Trump-loving, Trumpet of Patriots party.

In contrast, the Greens not only oppose Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, they also condemn racist attacks on Muslims in Australia. Moreover, the Greens do promise more low-rent public housing than Labor do and have opposed the extreme character of the attack on the CFMEU (even though the Greens joined the rest of the parliamentary parties in calling for what is necessarily union-weakening, state intervention in the CFMEU). Thus, with the ALP so blatantly knifing the back of its working class base (yet again!), many former Labor supporters from militant unionists, to low-income renters, to progressive-minded youth to opponents of Israel’s Gaza genocide are now intending to vote for the Greens. However, it is telling that while the Greens have said that they will demand support for a big increase in environmental spending as a condition for supporting an ALP minority government, they have not stated that they will only back a Labor minority government if it stops its support for Israel’s terror and the U.S. hegemony over the Middle East that underpins it. Instead, in preparation for joining a potential coalition – or de facto coalition – government with Labor, the Greens have disgustingly begun whitewashing the Albanese government’s support for Israel’s genocidal terror by saying that Labor has now “finally shifted towards the Greens position”. Really? If true, that says a lot about the Greens’ actual position (as opposed to what Greens politicians tell us when they speak at pro-Palestine rallies)! Indeed, the Greens’ acquiescence to a Labor minority government’s support for Israeli terror is par for the course for them. During Israel’s November 2012 war on Gaza, when the Australian regime was, as now, giving military support to Israeli terror, the Greens remained in a de facto coalition government with Labor.

Not only is the Greens’ support for Palestine partial as we have detailed above, on almost every single other major international issue they side with the imperialist Western powers. For example, the Greens fully backed the imperialist proxies that have now seized Syria. Indeed, of all the parliamentary parties in Australia, the Greens were the most rabid in backing these misogynist, anti-secular fanatics. They often attacked the Australian government for not being belligerent enough in supporting these pro-imperialist forces and Greens politicians even spoke at the rallies held in Australia in support of these “Rebels” before they seized power. Moreover, while the Greens nominally oppose U.S.-led military action against Iran, they support all of the Western imperialists’ political attacks on Iran used to build up towards such a military onslaught. Thus, the Greens not only push for ever more Australian sanctions on Iran but, in August 2023, Greens federal senator David Shoebridge even joined hardline anti-communist and fanatically pro-Israel Liberal politician James Paterson – the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs – in hysterically demanding that the Australian Federal Police arrest more sympathisers of the Iranian and Chinese governments living in Australia that make social media comments defending these governments against criticism from opponents.

It is on the most important issue facing the world that the Greens show most clearly their pro-imperialist character – the new Cold War drive of the capitalist powers to crush socialistic rule in China. Although China’s transition to socialism is unfinished and deformed by hostile pressure, the capitalist powers are feverishly working to crush socialistic rule in China because they worry that the existence of a workers state in a country with more than one in six of the world’s people and one which is so successfully improving the lives of her masses will eventually encourage demands for socialism in their own countries. Moreover, even right now, China’s mutually beneficial cooperation with the ex-colonial countries is impeding the imperialists’ ability to plunder and exploit these countries. The Greens are fully behind the rest of the ruling class’ campaign to undermine the Chinese workers state. To be sure, the Greens do oppose AUKUS. However, in their political stance, they are along with the Far Right groups, the most extreme opponents of Red China. They not only voted for the draconian 2018 “Foreign Interference” laws that are aimed against people in the Australian-Chinese community and beyond who express sympathy for socialistic China but also demand additional measures to suppress expressions of sympathy (or even neutrality!) towards Red China and to persecute those who voice them. It was Greens federal senator David Shoebridge – when he was a NSW MP – who successfully spearheaded a campaign to drive out the Chinese language-teaching Confucius Institutes from schools, on the grounds that they were sponsored by the Chinese government. Shrieking that the institute was a tool for Chinese “foreign interference”, Shoebridge even attacked the then NSW Liberal government from the far right, accusing them of being slow to crack down on the Institute. Meanwhile, the Greens support every single lying attack made by the imperialist ruling classes against China over “human rights” and every single Western-backed internal force within China (and their exile allies) that seeks to destroy the Chinese workers state. Indeed, Greens politicians have even joined their Far Right counterparts like Craig Kelly (see the latter part of the following article https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/put-the-banks-under-state-control/ for photos) in guest speaking at the events of the extreme right-wing, anti-communist Falun Dafa outfit – an American government-funded Chinese organisation that supports Donald Trump and Germany’s Nazi-inspired, Far Right and rails Nazi-style against “race mixing” and gays.

For all these reasons, no genuine anti-imperialist should support the Greens at the upcoming election. A vote for the Greens is a vote for the continued escalation of the capitalist powers’ political and propaganda campaign to crush socialistic rule in China and the intensified McCarthyist repression that accompanies it at home. A vote for the Greens is a vote for endorsing the avidly Greens-supported takeover of Syria by fanatically anti-secular imperialist proxies. Although the Greens do state opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza, by supporting the efforts of the imperialist Western powers that back Israel to expand their global power, the Greens end up actually doing a lot of harm to the cause of the Palestinian people. Most directly, the triumph of the pro-imperialist forces that the Greens fanatically backed in Syria has led to Palestinian resistance groups having their bases ejected from that country and a government that was hostile to neighbouring Israel being replaced by one that craves friendly ties with Israel and was brought to power with the Zionists’ direct assistance. And what of the Greens’ support for a similar pro-imperialist regime change in Iran (as opposed to the replacement of Iran’s male chauvinist, capitalist, but currently Western-conflicting, regime by an even more militantly anti-imperialist state under workers’ rule which is what we stand for)? If the Greens side wins in Iran like they did in Syria, what would that do to the supply of arms to Palestinian resistance groups and to Hezbollah and Houthi allies of the Palestinian resistance? And what if the side that the Greens are on triumphs in the new Cold War too and socialistic rule in China is overthrown? How much more unchallenged and powerful would be the imperialist Western powers then – the ones that arm, finance and assist the genocidal Israeli military!

Because the Greens embrace actual capitalist exploiters in their ranks, as well as many capitalism-accepting upper middle-class elements, the Greens are unable to deliver on their more progressive promises. For they are unable to withstand the pressure of the capitalist class that would oppose implementing such policies. Only the class struggle mobilisation of the working class against the capitalists could achieve this – and the Greens do not even pretend to be a party that stands for this. Thus, as the federal election approaches and the possibility of a post-election Labor-Greens-Teals joint government looms, the Greens are going out of their way to ensure that the majority of the capitalist class does not campaign against the Greens’ presence in a future ALP-led minority government. They are doing this by showing that the Greens would be “responsible” administrators of the capitalist order. This was shown most clearly by the Greens Defence spokesman’s announcement in late March of a Greens promise to fund a massive $4 billion program for the Australian military to gain new missiles and drones. The Greens program is for a powerful Australian capitalist state that is, however, more independent of its U.S. senior partner. That is a recipe for the continued imperialist plunder and bullying of the peoples of the southwest Pacific and surrounding areas by Australia’s capitalist bigwigs – something that the Greens do not even acknowledge exists let alone oppose. Moreover, those who are considering supporting the Greens should consider this: with the Greens already making announcements trying to outdo the Liberals and ALP in anti-China militarism, how much further would they go to prove to the mainstream of the capitalist class that they are a “safe pair of hands” should the Greens actually become partners in an ALP-led alliance government? We actually don’t need to speculate. In Germany, the German version of the Australian Greens have been in a governing alliance led by the ALP-like, Social Democratic Party, for the last three and a half years. This German government that the Greens have been a key part of is noted for its militarism, its massive arms build up and for being one of the Israeli military’s biggest supporters – indeed second only to the U.S. regime.

Many working class people of Arab, Muslim and other people of colour backgrounds in Western Sydney are distrustful of the Greens. This is because they are wary of the Greens’, at best, indifferent attitude to the armed Palestinian resistance and because they understand the Greens to be a party led by upper middle-class whites with little real understanding of what they are confronting. As a result, a couple of independent candidates with the backing of Muslim organisations are running in two formerly safe Labor seats in southwestern Sydney. The mainstream media have dubbed these candidates “Muslim independents”, a description which the candidates themselves do not embrace. These particular independents are promising a tougher stance against Israel’s war on Gaza and more resources for the forgotten migrant-based communities in southwest Sydney. However, like the Greens, these candidates do not even claim to stand for the class interests of the working class against the capitalist ruling class. Indeed, the independent candidate running in Blaxland, a well-regarded migrant from Egypt, Ahmed Ouf, is himself a small-scale capitalist who owns a couple of pharmacies using hired labour and – like the Liberal Party – openly espouses a pro-business program. Without pushing back against the capitalist exploiting class – and this requires mobilising working class people in conscious class-struggle action – any promises by these independents to address housing unaffordability, the high cost of living and unemployment in their suburbs cannot be fulfilled. Still less can they force the Australian regime to pull back from its support for Israel which is driven by the overall interests of the rich and powerful Australian capitalist class. Therefore, while it is understandable that working class people of Arab, Asian, African and Muslim backgrounds in southwest Sydney may want to vote for these independents to register their anger at the Australian government’s support for Israel and the Islamophobia and white supremacist attitudes of the ruling establishment, they should not. Any vote by southwest Sydney’s working class people for capitalist independents, or pro-capitalist ones that do not even claim to stand for the particular class interests of the working class, represents a rejection of the basic socialist understanding that the interests of the working class masses, on the one hand, and the struggle against imperialism, on the other, can only be advanced by the struggle of the working class and its allies against the ruling exploiting class. Therefore, those working class people who get sucked into voting for such candidates will in doing so diminish their own class consciousness, thus making themselves less able to be mobilised in the class struggle and anti-imperialist resistance that we so desperately need.

In summary, we call on all working class people, all partisans of the downtrodden and all opponents of imperialist tyranny over the Middle East – and the Zionist terror that accompanies it – to refuse to vote for any of the parties in parliament or for any capitalism-accepting independents (which is, unfortunately, all the “independents” that we know of). Please convince your friends, co-workers and family members to do the same. For the main point of voting this way is to reject illusions in positive change through parliament so that we can better build the alternative path that is really necessary: determined mass actions – including strikes, pickets, occupations and rallies – that unite the power of the working class with all the oppressed and all anti-imperialists to demand the closing of Pine Gap, the ending of all Australian regime support to the U.S. and Israeli militaries, the removal of all Australian troops from the imperialists’ anti-Yemen operation, the smashing of the Australian regime’s racist attacks on Aboriginal people, a massive increase in low-rent public housing (including through confiscating the vacant houses of the ultra-rich), the nationalisation of the electricity, oil, gas and renewables sectors to drive down power prices and the booting out of the union-busting government administrators from the militant CFMEU construction workers union. In the process of such mobilisations, we can build a workers party that will truly stand for the interests of the working class masses and Australia’s subjugated Aboriginal people, while defending scapegoated Asian, Arab, Muslim and African origin minorities and championing the cause of women’s emancipation. Such a workers party would be very different to the ALP. The ALP seeks to administer the capitalist system in a way that supposedly improves workers’ lives, while craving acceptance from the powerful capitalist exploiters that would allow it to administer their system by constantly accommodating their interests and supporting all their overseas imperialist ambitions. In complete contrast, the workers party that we want to build would fight uncompromisingly for everything that the masses need, would oppose Australian imperialist tyranny over the southwest Pacific and southeast Asian regions, would resist Australian imperialist support for both U.S. intervention and Zionist terror in the Middle East and would have as its ultimate goal the replacement of the capitalist state with a state under workers’ rule.

Already, many working class people turn up to the polling booths to have their name ticked off to avoid a fine and then consciously cast an Informal vote by either leaving the ballot sheet blank or avoiding numbering all the boxes in the House of Representatives ballot; or, better still, by writing a quick political critique or an incisive message for the scrutineers of the ruling class politicians to read. In the seat of Blaxland, at the polling booth in Auburn where the most votes were cast in that suburb, the Auburn West polling booth, nearly one in five voters who turned up to the booth cast such an Informal vote at the last federal elections. At the Auburn Central polling booth, the Informal vote was nearly one in six of those who turned up. These figures do not include the many other people who risked fines by avoiding turning up to the booths because they could not bring themselves to support any of the candidates. Of course, people do vote Informal for different reasons. However, the wild fluctuations in the level of Informal vote in particular polling booths from election to election proves that the Informal vote is mainly not caused by people who do not know how to cast a valid vote. Moreover, the much, much higher Informal vote in working class, heavily people of colour areas, as compared to in wealthy, overwhelmingly white, blue ribbon Liberal or Teal areas, suggests that most of the people voting Informal are pro-working class, anti-racist minded people, or ex-Labor voters, who would rightly never support the Liberals or the more extreme Far Right parties but cannot, or can no longer, bring themselves to support a Labor Party that repeatedly stabs working class people (and most people of colour) in the back. That such people take this stance is absolutely great! However, for such people, voting Informal must only be the first step that they must take. It is important that their healthy distrust of the system does not turn into cynicism or despair that things can never be changed. We need to convince those pro-working class, anti-racist minded people who vote Informal that they need to actively support anti-capitalist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist mass actions that can push the Australian exploiting class back and make a real difference to our lives, while simultaneously helping build the organisation needed to mobilise more and more powerful struggles. This is the purpose of Trotskyist Platform’s policy for these upcoming elections. We urge all our supporters, friends and readers who agree with this perspective to help us carry out this work. For every pro-working class, progressive minded person, who would rightly never ever vote for the Liberals or Far Right parties and who, at the upcoming election also refuses to vote for Labor or the Greens or capitalism-accepting Independents, not because they are despairing of change but because they know that the road to positive change is not through these pro-capitalist entities, the fight to mobilise the class struggle and anti-Australian-imperialist resistance that we need will be advanced by one notch. This will be the case no matter which pro-capitalist party or parties end up administering the next government. Let us advance this struggle by countless notches in the lead up to the coming elections! 

To have the powerful actions that we need, we not only need large numbers of working class people and our allies mobilised behind the correct program, we also need these masses mobilised in an organised way. It is in our trade unions that class conscious workers are already organised into mass organisations. Therefore, mobilising sections of the union movement is key to having powerful pro-working class and anti-imperialist actions. It is through our unions that we can most easily organise industrial action – the most powerful of mass actions. We need such industrial action not only to smash the attack on the CFMEU, to fight for real wage rises and to win the rights of permanency for all casual and gig workers but also to oppose Australian imperialism and it’s meddling in the Middle East. We need, for example, right now, those unions that have given their verbal solidarity to the embattled Palestinian people to now unleash political strikes to demand the closure of Pine Gap, the removal of Australian troops from the U.S./British operation against Yemeni supporters of Palestine and the halting of all refuelling or hosting of U.S. warplanes from Australian air bases. To mobilise such actions requires a struggle against the capitalist-accommodating program that currently dominates our unions. At the moment our unions are largely led by members of the ALP with some unions flirting with the Greens as well. Therefore, the struggle to win unionised workers to turn their backs on the ALP and Greens at these elections – as well as obviously to continue to reject the thoroughly reactionary Coalition and Far Right parties (which all class conscious workers would do in any case) – is crucial to the struggle to orient our unions onto a new path of militant struggle and intransigent opposition to the Australian capitalist class and all its imperialist interventions abroad. It is a crucial part of building the resistance that we need to the Australian regime’s participation in Israel’s terror and its broader support for Western imperialist interference in the Middle East.

Sydney, February 2025: Sydney rail workers march in a union rally against the NSW state Labor government’s refusal to concede to justified union demands for better pay, conditions and training for workers. Although union leaders failed to pull out rail workers in all out, unlimited strike action, the rolling industrial action of Sydney rail workers over the last few months has given a real taste of the power that workers have when acting collectively. We need union action that combines the fight for real wage rises, the rights of permanency for casual workers and a massive increase in low-rent public housing, with demands to close Pine Gap, remove Australian troops from the U.S./British operation against Yemeni supporters of Palestine and halt all refueling or hosting of U.S. warplanes from Australian air bases.
Photo: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Kick the Administrators
Out of the CFMEU!

Photo Above: Tens of thousands of CFMEU members and other trade unionists march in Melbourne on 28 August 2024 as part of a series of a nationwide stop-work rallies by construction workers opposing the takeover of the CFMEU union by a government administrator.
Photo: Joel Carrett/AAP

Junk the ALP and ACTU Leaders …
and Never Let These Class Traitors Back!
Urgently Build a New Workers Party to Lead

Class War against the Capitalist Ruling Class!

Kick the Administrators
Out of the CFMEU!

26 August 2024 – The Albanese Labor government has launched the biggest direct attack on the union movement in Australia in nearly four decades. They have put the CFMEU construction workers union into “administration”. This means a takeover of the union by the bosses’ state. Already the regime has thrown over 280 CFMEU officials out of their positions.

In leading this attack, ALP leaders are bowing down to the demands of the capitalist class … as they always do! The owners of construction companies and labour hire firms are ecstatic. They know that if the CFMEU is gutted by the administrators, it will be much less able to defend workers’ wages and safety conditions. And it is not just the construction industry bigwigs who are celebrating. All businesses owners that make profit from stealing the fruits of workers’ labour are cheering. They know that weakening this country’s staunchest union will eventually lead to lower wages and weakened workers rights throughout the country. This means more mansions, more prestige cars and more luxury yachts for these greedy bosses.

But this attack can still be stopped! CFMEU rank and file members are defiant and don’t want to throw in the towel. There are huge numbers of members of other trade unions, other working class people and many others who are furious at this attack. Together we can defeat the administrators, AlbaNazi, Dutton and the capitalist bosses behind them all. So let’s: Boot the administrators out of the CFMEU! Kick the bosses’ state out of the union movement!

How can we do this? Some CFMEU leaders, ousted from their positions by the scum Administrators, are trying to beat this attack through various court challenges. But these are the very same bosses’ courts that have fined and persecuted hundreds of union activists for defending their members’ rights and safety. These courts are part of the same state as the cops who always side with the corporate bigwigs against striking workers. And these courts are part of the same capitalist state as the administrators now skewering the CFMEU! The whole state machinery in Australia has been established to enforce the interests of the capitalist exploiters of workers. It is futile to rely on the courts of this capitalist state to protect us from the capitalist bosses and their government! 

The way we can kick the administrators out is through strike action. That is the power that workers have. We need an indefinite, national construction workers strike. With the CFMEU under control of the bosses’ state and with many ousted leaders hesitating about full throttle action and distracted by their court strategy, the indefinite strike will need to be organised by rank and file unionists. Workers need to organise branch meetings, elect committees and then coordinate across sites. This can be done! And when indefinite strike action is launched, there will be plenty of members of other unions, other working class people and other decent people who will flock to the picket lines to help staff them. Other unions must also launch solidarity strikes – beginning with those that have stated support for the CFMEU like the Electrical Trades Union (ETU), the United Firefighters Union (UFF), the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). But there is no time to lose!

This Was Never About Stopping
“Corruption” and “Criminality”

The ruling class initially claimed that their war on the CFMEU was about rooting out “criminal elements” and “corruption”. But their allegations were vague and untested. To the extent that there is actually any truth to these accusations of “criminality” and “corruption”, they should be handled 100% within the workers movement. Definitely not by institutions of the bosses state! That means that these allegations must not be decided by government legislation or administrators; and they should also not be decided by the capitalist state’s courts, which are inherently biased against militant unions. Moreover, everyone knows that it is the construction firm owners who are the ones who are mafia-infested and corrupt as hell. The simple fact is that the Australian ruling class’ hyping up of claims of “corruption” and “criminality” within the CFMEU is entirely a smokescreen that they are using to de-fang the union that fights hardest to protect its members’ workplace safety and conditions.

Soon after being launched, the ruling class’ slander campaign mixed in their accusations of “corruption” and “criminal links” with claims of CFMEU “violence” and “intimidation”. However, these are two completely different things! If CFMEU members are using intimidation of non-union workers to enforce strikes and strengthen the union then that is completely necessary to defend workers rights. The capitalist bosses have great power through their power to hire and fire almost at will, through their massive wealth, through the governments that serve them, through the cops, courts and commissions of their state and through the media that they own. Against them, workers are powerless as individuals. Our only power comes through collective action. And against cowardly workers who buckle under the bosses’ pressure, unionists need to enforce the workers’ collective stance – sometimes by spirited means – for the benefit of all workers. It is just like stopping scabs trying to cross a picket line – if we don’t do this we lose! It turns out too that many of the accusations of “violence” and “intimidation” against the CFMEU are about delegates and organisers firmly standing up to construction and labour hire bosses. Well, if that is true, they are doing what union officials ought to do! If they fail to do this, greedy bosses will slash safety and more workers will get killed. Workers will get exploited even more. The real problem with our union movement is that our pro-ALP leadership are not “intimidating” the greedy exploiters consistently enough – especially through the main means of “intimidation” that we have available, which is strike action. Against the powerful capitalists, our unions must resist by any means necessary!

The ALP Has Always
Stabbed the Working Class in the Back

Australia’s capitalist ruling class and the regime serving them have been preparing this onslaught for a long time. In 2005, the right-wing Howard government introduced the draconian Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner to repress struggles for workers rights, impede union access to workplaces and attack the CFMEU. This body was given authoritarian, star chamber powers. The first Rudd ALP government disgustingly maintained this body and the Gillard government only later weakened it slightly when it established a revised version in 2012. The final version, the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) was abolished in 2023 but the Albanese government remained committed to gutting the CFMEU.

In September 2021, far-right factions serving the ruling class dramatically escalated the capitalist rulers’ war against the CFMEU. Egged on by the right-wing media, Australian white supremacist fascists, far-right anti-vaxxers, supporters of the ultra-right-wing Libertarian Party (then called the Liberal Democratic Party), some self-employed contractors who are CFMEU members and a few dozen ultra-right-wing construction workers – many of whom are supporters of the Croatian fascist Ustasha movement – violently attacked the CFMEU’s Melbourne office in opposition to COVID vaccine requirements and mask mandates. Ranting against communism and vaccines and hailing the Nazi-aligned Ustasha’s losing World War II war against Marshall Tito’s Yugoslav communist partisans, the far-right mob pelted and assaulted CFMEU rank and file members, delegates and officials who were defending the office. This right-wing attack intimidated union activists and caused divisions within the union. By softening up the CFMEU, that September 2021 assault has done much to prepare today’s full throttle attack on the union. CFMEU members – and their many supporters – furious about the government’s current takeover of their union should never forget this. We should deal with those who took part in – and supported – the September 2021, fascist-driven attack on the union in the appropriate way!

The spearhead of this latest and biggest onslaught against the CFMEU was the Channel 9 TV station and newspapers owned by the Nine Entertainment group, whose biggest shareholder is right-wing Australian billionaire, Bruce Gordon. Then all the right-wing forces joined in: Peter Dutton’s conservative Coalition, right-wing “independent” Jacqui Lambie and the far-right parties. The most extreme has been Pauline Hanson’s racist One Nation Party which denounces CFMEU members as “criminals” and “thugs”. Yet the present takeover of the CFMEU by the bosses’ regime would not be possible without the ALP’s support for it. Due to its current leadership of the workers movement through the ACTU bureaucrats, the ALP tops feel confident to launch brazen attacks on the working class that a conservative government would not dare attempt. Let’s not forget that the previous attack on the union movement of this scale, the mid-1980s deregistration of the militant Builders Labourers Federation, was also conducted by a Labor government (the Hawke-Keating government). Indeed, when they are worried about facing working-class resistance, the capitalist exploiters actually prefer having a Labor government in office, because they think that they can do a better job of keeping workers obedient than the openly anti-working class Liberals. Thus, during the mid-1980s, powerful media tycoons Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch supported the Hawke-Keating ALP government and in the 2007 federal elections, the Murdoch newspapers backed Kevin Rudd.

Therefore, we in Trotskyist Platform are not at all surprised by the Albanese government’s assault against the CFMEU. At the last federal elections, we opposed any support – either directly or through preferences – to the ALP or indeed to any of the other parties currently in parliament. As we stated in our pre-election statement:

“The Labor Party (ALP) `alternative’ is hell bent on proving to the big business owners, the people who really hold the power here, that an ALP administration will enforce capitalist interests as reliably as the Coalition does. Albanese’s ALP even proclaimed that a Labor government will not increase the paltry JobSeeker payments. So, at the upcoming elections, no vote should be given to either the Coalition or the ALP and Greens `alternatives’ and obviously not to the racist One Nation or the other nationalist far-right outfits like the United Australia Party. Instead, we need hard-fought strikes and other mass actions by the workers movement and its allies to turn back the capitalists’ exploitation of workers, to resist their oppression of Aboriginal people, women and coloured ethnic communities and to oppose their regime’s military buildup. The more that the working class understands that their position will not be advanced through supporting any of the current parliamentary parties, the more determined they will be to build the mass struggles needed.

However, this kind of stance was rejected by most of the rest of the Far Left. They instead, either directly, or through preferences, called for a vote for Albanese’s ALP. Even after the elections, some on the Far Left continued to express critical support for the Albanese government. Thus a month after the Albanese government took over, the Communist Party of Australia’s National President sent a letter to the prime minister expressing warm solidarity with the new government and praising his government’s stance on a number of issues, while politely urging him to take a more progressive stance on others. However, authentic communists were never in any doubt that this is a capitalist bosses government running a bosses state. Although the ALP is a party whose base is made up of workers, its agenda and leadership have always upheld the political order that serves the capitalist big end of town. The strategy that the ALP offers workers is to try and win some gains for working class people within this anti-working class system by winning and retaining government office. To do so, it ensures that its demands for workers are so restricted as to avoid annoying the big end of town and their state institutions enough for them to oppose the election of a Labor government or undermine one that already exists. That means, Labor governments uphold the capitalists’ interests on all the issues of greatest concern to them, which today includes: maintaining anti-strike laws, allowing Australian mining tycoons to continue to plunder billions in profit from stolen Aboriginal land without having to share it with this country’s people, maintaining a pro-speculators housing policy, supporting the rape of the South West Pacific and Southeast Asia by Australian corporations, rabidly participating in the new Cold War drive to crush socialistic rule in China and … pulling the teeth out of the CFMEU! Yet, it is simply impossible to implement the capitalists’ agenda on all major questions while simultaneously improving working class people’s rights. The interests of the capitalist exploiters and those of working class people are completely counterposed. That is why to working class people who fall for Labor’s promises, new ALP governments are greeted with hopes that “this time they will be a real Labor government”, always followed, a few months later, by abject disappointment and mythical nostalgia that “Labor used to be much better”. But the truth is that ALP governments have always disappointed their working class base and have always betrayed workers’ interests. ALP leaders have always been class traitors. They did not just start last month! If the ALP today is more openly attacking workers’ rights and more brazenly right wing than it was, say, five decades ago, it is only because the capitalist ruling class is today less willing to grant even the slightest concession to the masses because their capitalist system is today in a more advanced state of decay. Understanding all this, we authentic communists headlined our article analysing the then new Albanese government: “Like the Deposed, Much Hated, Right-Wing Morrison Government, Albanese Heads an Administration Serving the Capitalist Exploiters. His Majesty’s Labor Government Marches the Same Path as Her Majesty’s Liberal Government … Only With Less Odious Regalia”.

Junk the ALP and ACTU Leaders …
And Never Let These Class Traitors Back!

The Labor government would not have tried to push through this regime takeover of the CFMEU if they did not know that they had the support of the pro-ALP, ACTU bureaucrats. That Sally McManus and the other ACTU leaders are supporting this attack on the CFMEU proves that they are as much traitors to the working class as their ALP parliamentary mates. However, this despicable treachery has caused outrage within union ranks and even parts of the ALP’s ranks. We need to leverage this to urgently loosen the influence of both the ALP and the ACTU tops. This is needed to not only reduce their ability to prevent the rest of the working class from coming to the defence of the CFMEU but to stop them holding back working class, anti-capitalist resistance more generally. In response to the ALP government appointing an administrator to take over the CFMEU, the ETU will stop all political donations to the ALP for the next federal election. This is a good first step. But they must go further. We call on militant union members – beginning with members of those unions that have openly stated solidarity with the CFMEU like the ETU, UFF, CEPU and MUA – to demand that their leaders completely dump their union’s affiliation to the ALP.

We welcome the CEPU’s decision to split with the ACTU in solidarity with the CFMEU. The ETU Executive has also resolved to stop paying affiliation fees to the ACTU while the CFMEU remains suspended from the organisation. We say that they must now take the next step too. We call on those unions that have stated solidarity with the CFMEU to follow the lead of the CEPU and break with the ACTU.

In rightly junking the ACTU, the CEPU has criticised the ACTU for only representing white collar workers and talked about establishing a blue-collar worker rival to the ACTU. But that misses the point! In stabbing the CFMEU in the back and thereby weakening the entire union movement and emboldening all the capitalists, the ACTU are betraying white collar workers as much as they are their blue collar counterparts. Moreover, the ACTU tops’ loyalty to the ALP, its strategy of collaboration with the capitalist exploiters and its subordination of workers rights to the “national interest” has led to a big increase in the rate of exploitation of workers, a surge in workforce casualisation, a deterioration in union strength and a marked reduction in workplace rights for workers and our unions over the last four decades. This has hurt workers in all types of industries. The truth is that no matter what collar shirt a worker physically and/or mentally toiling for wages wears to work, the capitalist bosses are exploiting us and the ACTU leaders are selling us out. What we need is not division in the union movement over the type of industries that workers are employed in but a union movement reinvigorated on a new, militant strategy. That means dumping the ACTU traitors and building a new leadership of the workers movement on an agenda that says: “The capitalists have been waging class war on us for the last more than four decades. We are no longer going to beg them to stop. Instead we will be mobilising all our ranks to wage full-on class war against this exploiting class.” Such a new militant union leadership must be linked to a new workers party that would advocate for the new class-struggle agenda amongst all the masses and defend it on the ideological battlefield.

Such a militant workers party is not going to come from a revamped ALP. Many in the workers movement still cling to the idea of making the ALP “truly stand up for workers”. But what we have with this current Labor government, led by so-called “Labor Left” Albanese, is just about the “best” that one can expect from an ALP government in today’s world. In the era of rapid decay of capitalism, the social democratic/ALP strategy, of restricting worker demands to what the capitalists will grudgingly tolerate, can “deliver” little more for workers than what Albanese and Co. are “offering”. Which is nothing good at all! As a means to improve workers’ lives, the ALP social democratic project is dead. Let us not try to revive it! Instead we need to bury Laborism as fast as possible!

27 August 2024, Brisbane: Trade unionists rightly skewer Labor prime minister Albanese and ACTU leader Sally McManus at a large construction workers stop-work rally in defence of the CFMEU. They compared Albanese to Adolf Hitler and McManus to right-wing, union-busting former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.
Photo: Jono Searle/AAP

For a New Workers Party to Lead
Class War Against the Capitalist Exploiting Class!

With the ALP selling out workers so blatantly, some workers are looking to the Greens. But let’s not forget, the Greens also fed into the anti-CFMEU propaganda surrounding the Albanese government’s placing of the union into administration. To be sure, the Greens ended up voting against the ALP’s anti-CFMEU laws and some Greens MPs are trying to leverage this to gain workers’ votes. However, the Greens made clear that their No vote was only because the ALP chose not to negotiate with them to get the bills pushed through the Senate and instead did a deal with the Liberals that made the laws even more extreme. Indeed, Greens leader Adam Bandt openly stated that the Greens were in principle willing to support the anti-CFMEU laws: “The Greens told the government we were prepared to negotiate on the legislation and seek to address some of the serious concerns in the bill, but instead Labor has worked with the anti-union, anti-worker Liberals.”

For the Greens are ultimately a party representing the capitalist class – albeit its liberal-“progressive” wing. This is proven by the fact that the Greens accept the capitalist order, refuse to even claim to be a party that stands for workers as distinct from the capitalists and include actual big-time capitalist exploiters within their ranks. In the lead-up to the last federal elections, the Greens received tens of thousands of dollars from the pastoral companies owned by the filthy rich capitalist Langenhoven family, thousands more from Australia’s fifth richest person – greedy billionaire Scott Farquhar – and over a half a million dollars from capitalist investor, Duncan Turpie. To be sure, because the ALP’s craven loyalty to the capitalist class has meant that the Greens have sometimes taken positions that are less hostile to the working class, some left-leaning workers have now thrown their support behind the Greens. However, such lash ups involving outright capitalists and pro-capitalist upper-middle class elements in the same organisation as some worker activists and leftist youth are inevitably held together on the lowest common denominator: it is the usually the worker activists and other more left-leaning Greens who end up having to compromise to keep the party together. That is why when the ALP and the Greens were in a de facto coalition administering this country from mid 2010 to early 2013, they did almost nothing for working class people, maintained the original version of the hated ABCC for much of this period and then later converted it into a still anti-union ABCC-lite type body.   

Whereas the ALP are the traitors to the working class from within the movement, the Greens are a party whose agenda kneels to the “nice” bosses within the party. But every class-conscious worker knows that when their need for profit truly demands it, the “nice” bosses will attack workers rights as ruthlessly as the rabidly anti-worker ones will – only that the latter will laugh at your face when they retrench hundreds of workers while the “nice” bosses will be apologetic and teary when they do exactly the same thing. Thus, if the on-going dumping of the ALP ends up in increased worker support for the Greens it will not at all be a step forward for the workers movement. Indeed, if anything it will be a step backwards for workers’ political consciousness, because it represents a rejection of the need for workers to have our own party separate from the capitalists who exploit us. Workers who give their allegiance to the Greens will now be putting their faith in a party politically dominated by a section of the capitalist class – albeit the “progressive” exploiters.

The ongoing break of some sections of the workers movement with the ALP will only have an unambiguously positive significance if it results in the building of a new workers’ party that is committed to fighting for what workers actually need and not limiting our demands to what the bosses will concede without excessively antagonising them. Such a party would understand that improvements in workers’ lives are not going to come through gaining parliamentary office and making reforms in the interests of workers. This truth can be hard for some to accept. After all, it would be a lot easier if we could defend workers rights by simply getting the correct party elected at an election and wait for them to do the rest in parliament. However, given the enormous power of the capitalist class, this will never happen. History has proven that such a parliamentary-based strategy for workers rights simply does not work. For the state institutions – from the courts, to the various commissions, to the police, to the upper ranks of the bureaucracy and to the military – that any government in a capitalist country administers are themselves tied to the filthy rich capitalist owners by millions of threads. And those governments are in any case beholden to the control that the capitalists have over the economy and the capitalists’ ability to utilise their enormous wealth to swing “public opinion”. That is why every significant gain that the working class has ever won has been a result of industrial action, other mass struggles, or the fear put in the hearts of the capitalist exploiters by revolutionary workers’ victories abroad. When capitalist parliaments or courts have instituted some pro-worker measures this is only ever a codification of struggles actually won by workers in the arena of mass struggle, or a concession to working class political agitation that threatens to incite such struggle. The new workers party that we need must be a party dedicated to organising such militant class struggle and mobilising the entire working class and big chunks of the broader masses behind the class-struggle agenda.

The Need for All-Sided Resistance
Against the Capitalist Ruling Class

The new workers party that we must urgently build would unite defence of the CFMEU with struggles for what all sections of the working class and other oppressed groups need. It would fight for big across-the-board wage hikes to make up for the plummeting real wages that workers have copped over the last few years. It would fight for the immediate conversion of all gig and other casual jobs into secure, ongoing ones with all the rights of permanency. To relieve the suffering of huge numbers of low-income renters, it would demand both a massive increase in public housing and the confiscation of the vacant homes of the ultra-rich and their transfer into public hands. Such a party would actively join with the hundreds of thousands of people in this country who have participated in marches over the last ten months against the Australian bosses’ regime’s participation in the U.S./Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. It would support the struggles for liberation of the brutally oppressed Aboriginal people who are being targeted by the very same media, the same police and the same ruling class that have been attacking the CFMEU. The party would fight to mobilise workers’ action to deter Australian regime authorities from killing Aboriginal people in custody, stealing Aboriginal children from their families and imposing discriminatory laws that target Aboriginal people – like compulsory income management rules and curfews in heavily black areas.

The workers party that we need would also make a point of standing with migrants – especially those from non-European heritage – against the ruling-class politicians and mainstream media blaming them for every problem and against violent attacks and intimidation by racist rednecks. Such a party would point out that today’s assault on the CFMEU is being conducted by the same ruling class that is determined to scapegoat immigration for the suffering that their capitalist system causes. Opposing racist scapegoating of people of colour is especially crucial because any racial divisions within the workers movement undermines workers’ ability to unite in struggle against the union-busting ruling class. In the CFMEU, in particular, there are many workers of Maori, other Pacific Islander, Asian, Middle Eastern and African backgrounds. Racist scapegoating and racist attacks often have the effect of intimidating people of colour and making people of Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Islander backgrounds feel more isolated and more wary of putting their heads up in struggles than they otherwise would. So a true workers party would mobilise mass action uniting workers and people of colour to smash any racist provocation by far-right white supremacist groups. This would send a message to the more numerous garden-variety racists out there that they had better pull their heads in. Moreover, in carrying out such action, we will not only be getting revenge for the Melbourne far-right attack on the CFMEU in September 2021 but would be standing on the traditions of a very proud moment in CFMEU history: when a large group of CFMEU construction workers formed the vanguard of a hundreds strong anti-fascist mobilisation that drove the white supremacist Australia First Party off the streets of Brisbane on 2 May 2014.

The militant workers party and new union leadership that must be built would also demand the granting of full citizenship rights to all migrants working here. This would make it much easier for workers with insecure residency status to stand up to their bosses. It would also facilitate, for example, the CFMEU organising into the union the many isolated Afghan, Korean and Chinese background workers working in areas like plastering and tiling. A workers party and union movement that strongly defends the rights of migrants and uncompromisingly wages war against racist attacks will then be boosted by the fact that working class people from Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Pacific Islander backgrounds will become the most energetic and loyal supporters of workers’ struggles and union picket lines – as these workers often are even today.

A genuine workers party must also champion the cause of women workers and women’s rights. Women workers are especially hard hit by casualisation and low-income single mothers are especially suffering from the rental affordability crisis. We must demand equal pay for women workers. We must also make it easier for women to leave violent partners through the fight for a massive increase in both the number of free women’s shelter places and the amount of low-rent public housing. Right now, there is an added urgency to fighting for such an agenda. To facilitate their attack on the militant CFMEU, the ruling class and their servants in the ALP and the ACTU leadership are hurling accusations about “misogyny” within the CFMEU. The people making these accusations do not truly care about women’s rights one bit! Let’s recall what happened in April when Albanese drove to tears a woman survivor of misogynist violence, Sarah Williams, when he arrogantly made a lying swipe against her and other organisers of a tens of thousands strong rally against gender-based violence against women, when he took the microphone after being heckled by attendees. Yet to justify their campaign against militant unions, Albanese and the other enemies of the working class have been able to point to some real male chauvinism that does exist within parts of the CFMEU leadership. That it is even worse within the ALP, within the notoriously male chauvinist conservative parties and within the corporate board rooms does not absolve the need for an uncompromising political struggle within the workers movement to root out any instances of male chauvinism. Most importantly, the new militant union leadership and workers party that we must build must mobilise the mass of workers behind the struggle for women’s emancipation. If they do, women workers – many of whom are already the most strike-happy workers in the country – will surely be in the forefront of the class-struggle fightback that we desperately need.

Let’s Not Bow to the Mythical “National Interest” –
Let’s Fight for Working-Class Rule Instead!

Many of the union officials who are rightly opposing the CFMEU being forced into administration have described the attack as “unAustralian” or “not how we do the rule of law in Australia”. However, the fact is that this attack on the CFMEU is all too typical of the way that the Australian capitalist class and their ALP lackeys deal with militant unions that dare to struggle. In 1949, the then Chifley ALP government actually unleashed troops to smash the huge NSW coal miners’ strike. Then Chifley’s conservative successor, Robert Menzies, unleashed the military against striking seamen and waterfront workers several times, including against a 1953 waterfront workers strike in the Queensland port of Bowen. In 1981, Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser used the RAAF to scab on the 1981 Qantas workers strike. Eight years later, the Hawke Labor government did the same to smash the pilots’ strike. Then in late 1997, one Australian stevedoring company assembled current and former Australian SAS troops and commandos to be trained to take over the wharves as scab labour. A few months later, Australian-owned Patrick Corporation, backed by the then Howard Liberal-National government, sent in balaclava-wearing security guards, attack dogs and scabs to the wharves to lock out workers and operate the wharves with scabs. Talk about “violence” and “intimidation”! Such aggressive union-busting is indeed the way that the Australian capitalist class does “the rule of law in Australia”. As far as Australia’s greedy capitalist ruling class is concerned: forcing the CFMEU into administration is very Australian! And here is the point: there are no common “national values”, “national way of doing things” or indeed “national interest” between, on the one hand, the working class and most middle class people and, on the other, the capitalist exploiting class. Our interests are completely counterposed. Let us be aware, that it is in good part in the name of the “national interest” that the capitalist class is waging war on the CFMEU. For as long as the capitalist class rules Australia, the “national interest” will always mean their interest. It is in the name of serving the “national interest” that one Labor government after another has been selling out workers. Therefore, the new union leadership and workers party that we must build must explicitly reject subordinating itself to the “national interest”. It must instead stand proudly for the class interests of working class people and their allies, which are synonymous with the interests of all workers of the world.

In mobilising militant action for what workers need, our enemies will counter that this will lead business owners to stop hiring and stop investing. That is actually true – but only if we let them continue to run the economy. Therefore, in fighting for workers rights, we must also fight for measures to ban profitable companies from laying off workers and measures to, instead, force them to increase hiring of permanent employees at the expense of their own profits. We must combine such demands with a program to confiscate key sectors of the economy from the capitalists for transfer into public hands – including the banks, the mining companies, the energy resource and power industries and the medical service, aged care and childcare sectors. To secure such gains and open the road to the full liberation of the working class and all of the oppressed, our end goal must be the sweeping away of this existing capitalist state and the construction of a new workers state to run an economy dominated by public ownership. This means that the new workers party that we need must be a revolutionary party committed to this goal. And when the enemies of the working class say that such a socialist system “does not work” and “look at China”, this party will respond:

“When your media that vilifies militant unions demonises socialistic China, we do not believe them one bit. Although China’s socialism is quite unfinished and deformed by intense hostile pressure from the capitalist world and although her leaders are not perfect (somewhat like the leaders of our unions), her socialistic system, in which her key economic sectors are under public ownership, has brought immense benefits to her working class masses. China has lifted all her people out of extreme poverty, has a high percentage of her people living in low-cost or low rent public housing and has a much lower proportion of homeless people than we do here – despite still being a poorer country overall.  Socialistic China has also achieved, by a huge margin, the fastest rate of real wage growth in the world. In socialistic China, workers’ real wages have tripled in the last fifteen years! So socialism, in even a distorted and incomplete form, works. Unlike in China, a future workers state in Australia will not be burdened by the difficult task of having to lift the whole country up from extreme poverty in the way that the Chinese workers state had to lift her people out of the terrible poverty of China’s pre-1949 capitalist, imperialist-subjugated days. And through our future workers revolutions in Australia and other developed countries, we will join hands with China to advance both our socialist causes and bring the full complementarity of our economies together for the benefit of all our peoples and all the peoples of the world. On the one hand, this will ensure that the Chinese advanced guard in the struggle for socialism can reach its final destination. On the other, it will enable Australia’s masses to no longer be burdened by having such a huge part of our resources being diverted into long-range missiles, nuclear submarines and other weapons being procured to attack a workers state.”

Sisters and brothers, the capitalist ruling class and the class traitors heading the ALP and the ACTU think that they have scored a decisive big victory in forcing the CFMEU into administration. But there is massive anger at this amongst working class people. Out of adversity, let us rise in militant struggle to smash this attack on the CFMEU and make the enemy regret that they ever launched it. Let’s not only kick the administrators out of the CFMEU but use this as an opportunity to get rid of all the anti-strike laws and all the laws restricting union access to workplaces. And let’s seize on the exposure of the ALP and ACTU leadership’s true nature to build a new militant leadership of the union movement linked to a revolutionary, internationalist workers party. Let’s advance these goals by building an indefinite national construction workers strike backed by solidarity strikes in other industries! Let’s then build mass picket lines to stop scabbing on this strike; and to enable the huge numbers of other working class people and workers’ allies to unleash their support for the CFMEU!

None of the Parliamentary Parties Defend Workers’ Interests – FOR MILITANT WORKING-CLASS RESISTANCE!

Photo above: Sydney bus drivers picket during their December 2021 strike action against poor wages and conditions following privatisation.
Photo credit: AAP

None of the Current Parliamentary Parties
Defend Workers’ Interests

FOR MILITANT CLASS STRUGGLE
AGAINST AUSTRALIA’S CAPITALISTS!

Capitalist Rulers’ Hostility to China is Due to Their Hatred
of Her Public Ownership-Based System

STAND WITH SOCIALISTIC CHINA TO
STAND FOR WORKING CLASS INTERESTS!

25 April 2022: Working class people are sick of the Morrison government. They are angry that while their rich bosses are looting ever greater profits, their own wages are barely rising, even while prices skyrocket. Many young people, women and migrant workers in particular are frustrated that they are stuck in casual positions with no job security. Meanwhile, Aboriginal people and Asian, African and Middle Eastern communities can’t help but notice that nine years of right- wing government has seen Australian society become even more racist and hostile towards them.

Yet the Labor Party (ALP) “alternative” is hell bent on proving to the big business owners, the people who really hold the power here, that an ALP administration will enforce capitalist interests as reliably as the Coalition does. Albanese’s ALP even proclaimed that a Labor government will not increase the paltry JobSeeker payments. So, at the upcoming elections, no vote should be given to either the Coalition or the ALP and Greens “alternatives” and obviously not to the racist One Nation or the other nationalist far-right outfits like the United Australia Party. Instead, we need hard-fought strikes and other mass actions by the workers movement and its allies to turn back the capitalists’ exploitation of workers, to resist their oppression of Aboriginal people, women and coloured ethnic communities and to oppose “their” regime’s military buildup. The more that the working class understands that their position will not be advanced through supporting any of the current parliamentary parties, the more determined they will be to build the mass struggles needed.

THE DEAD END OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY’S APPROACH TO
“SUPPORTING” WORKERS RIGHTS

The ALP does raise issues of concern to the masses. The problem is that because ALP leaders are so in awe of the economic power and capacity to swing public opinion of the tycoons (the likes of the Murdochs, the Lowys, Kerry Stokes, Andrew Forrest, Gina Rinehart, Anthony Pratt and Bruce Gordon), the ALP does not dare anger these oligarchs by even merely promising the measures actually needed. Thus, the ALP’s rental affordability plan will not increase badly needed public housing but rather promises funds for just a modest increase in “community housing”, notorious for its private operators who skimp on repairs and shun the most hard-up would-be tenants. Similarly, even as the ALP promises higher wages and secure jobs they commit to maintaining nearly all the anti-strike laws that restrict workers ability to fight for these needs.

With no program to secure jobs through struggle against the bosses, the ALP resorts to policies favouring procurement (ie buying) from businesses owned by local capitalists. Such measures will inevitably provoke countermeasures by trade partners overseas to favour their own firms over Australian exporters. In the end, rival protectionist schemes end up with workers in no country better off. What they do “achieve” is to make workers mistakenly side with the interests of the very local bosses that exploit them. This harms the building of union resistance against the bosses. Moreover, such protectionist agendas set local workers against their counterparts abroad. This is totally against what the 1st of May international workers day is based on: the truth that only by fighting as one worldwide class can the interests of workers everywhere be advanced.

The ALP kowtows to the capitalists most cravenly on external issues. Thus, the ALP backs Morrison’s anti-China military buildup. ALP leaders even criticise him from the right for not bullying enough the Solomon Islands into renouncing their security cooperation with China. In backing the Western imperialists’ Cold War against socialistic China, the ALP is acting completely against the interests of its working class base. Mutually beneficial cooperation between China’s state-owned firms and countries like PNG, Fiji, Solomon Islands and East Timor has allowed Pacific peoples to gain more independence from the Australian capitalists that have long looted their resources. This has enraged the corporate bigwigs here because it has made them lose some of the super profits that they were looting in the Pacific. Yet this is good news for the working class as it weakens the bosses of Australian multinationals and makes them less able to face down union action here. Similarly, while Western capitalists are terrified that the successes of China’s socialistic system will inspire workers in their own countries to fight against capitalism, any true partisan of the toilers should want precisely such “Chinese influence” here in Australia.

PROMOTING THE GREENS MEANS OBSTRUCTING
THE CONSTRUCTION OF WORKING CLASS RESISTANCE

Given how similar Labor’s agenda is to the Liberals, some support the Greens. They do promise some progressive policies like increasing public housing. However, to implement such reforms, let alone any decisive anti-poverty measures, requires defying the capitalists. The Greens cannot do this because they reject a class struggle outlook. In fact, the Greens actually embrace capitalists in their party. Thereby lacking both the will and ability to confront capitalist power, any Greens MPs in government will inevitably bend to the demands of the powerful capitalists. In the early 2010s, when The Greens ran Tasmania alongside Labor, they cut nursing positions and public housing repairs. Today, they are part of the capitalist class’ drive to strangle socialistic China. Indeed, while opposing the nuclear submarine plans, The Greens are even more rabid than the Liberals in spewing the lying “human rights” attacks on China that “rationalises” such military escalation.

Despite this, The Greens are backed by parts of the Left – such as the Socialist Alliance. After all, such reformist socialists share not only The Greens’ better positions but many of its worst ones; such as their support for anti-communists attacking the Chinese workers state – like the pro-colonial, rich kid rioters in Hong Kong. Pro-Greens socialists do acknowledge The Greens’ capitalist essence. However, they say we need to “support the lesser evil.” Yet, backing The Greens actually means supporting another form of the same evil – the tyranny of the capitalists. Moreover, those advocating a vote for The Greens are undermining class struggle by promoting the false notion that a wing of the capitalists – represented by The Greens – can aid the workers’ cause. This is as harmful to the building of militant unions as the idea sometimes heard in workplaces that workers should focus on helping supposed “nicer” managers rise to become the head henchmen of their firm’s exploiters.

LET’S BUILD A PARTY TO ORGANISE MILITANT CLASS STRUGGLE
RESISTANCE AGAINST THE CAPITALIST EXPLOITERS

The current mass workers party, the ALP, is selling out its base. But we still need a workers party! But completely unlike the ALP, it should be built to organise class struggle against the capitalist ruling class. Recent nurses and transport strikes show the potential for such resistance. However, the current pro-ALP union leaders see such actions as supplementary to the parliamentary game. The new workers party must have the inverse perspective: class struggle is its main game. Such a party would not limit its program to what the capitalists can accept but will doggedly fight for what the masses actually need: big wage rises, a huge increase in the dole, the conversion of all casual jobs into ones with all the rights of permanency and the abolition of anti-strike laws. It would struggle for a massive increase in public housing and completely free medical and dental care. It would champion the cause of oppressed women workers through demanding equal pay and free childcare.

To be able to win in struggle against the powerful capitalists, the workers movement must draw alongside it all the oppressed by standing with the Aboriginal people’s struggle against racist state terror, by championing women’s rights and LGBTQI+ rights and by defending persecuted ethnic minorities. Our side also needs maximum unity to win. That means anything that undermines workers unity like protectionism and the scapegoating of migrants must be rejected. The working class and our unions must demand all the rights of citizenship for all refugees, guest workers and international students.

Whenever we demand decent wages and job security, the bosses threaten that this will cause job losses. We must respond by demanding the banning of all job cuts by any firm making a profit and laws to force them to increase their hiring at the expense of their profits. When they scream that this will cause economic collapse, the new workers party would respond: if your system cannot provide secure jobs for all then the economy needs to be immediately ripped from your hands and brought into socialist, state ownership under a state run by the workers. The workers party that we need must be a revolutionary party.

Advancing towards the overturn of capitalism requires defending already achieved anti-capitalist conquests. That means defending the Chinese workers state – despite its bureaucratic deformations – that was created by the Chinese toilers through their 1949 anti-capitalist revolution. So down with the lying propaganda war against socialistic China! Australia’s imperialist rulers: Hands off the Pacific! Down with the anti-China AUKUS alliance! Not one submarine, not one missile, not one soldier for the Australian military – a force that only serves the interests of Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer, Andrew Forrest and their ilk.

Western rulers’ hostility to Russia is of a very different character to their enmity to Red China because Russia is a capitalist country just like them. But their anti-Russia campaign is aimed at suppressing an emerging competitor so that they can continue to exclusively dominate and exploit most of the world’s peoples. If their campaign succeeds it will embolden them to further attack the rights of workers and other oppressed at home and bully still more arrogantly the people of the Pacific. So down with U.S., Australian and other Western arms shipments to Ukraine! Lift all sanctions on Russia!

The way that the U.S. and its allies provoked the Ukraine War and then pour oil onto an already burning conflict that pits their ally against their rival nuclear power shows just how dangerous the Western capitalist rulers really are. These rulers could not protect “their” vulnerable populations from the terrible COVID carnage. What chance do they have then of making an effective response to the threat posed by climate change?! More immediately, rampant inflation in their countries is threatening a new global capitalist crisis that will impoverish billions – just like the late noughties Great Recession did.

With every passing day, the urgency of opposing the capitalist “order” becomes ever clearer. However, the masses are held back by the mainstream consensus that privatisation, submission to the tycoons and suppression of wage rises are what is needed. However, events in the world’s most populous country are proving that things don’t have to be this way. In China, the state has been rapidly increasing wages, massively boosting public housing, forcing companies to guarantee gig workers at least the minimum wage and suppressing greedy billionaires. Far from privatising, the Chinese state has maintained public ownership of banking, ports, major construction and all other key sectors. And despite an incomplete transition to socialism, their system works. Let us be inspired by this to resist the class war that the capitalists have been waging against us. They have been winning because the Laborite heads of our movement have accommodated them rather than been at the forefront of a militant resistance against the exploiters. We need to change this! Let us wage class war back against the capitalist class! Let us slash away the illusions in salvation through parliament that are restraining a truly powerful working class fightback!