By SP Councillor, Stephen Jolly
The public meeting two weeks ago was a great success and we will be meeting State Government representatives next week. If this doesn’t work (ie if the State Government prefer to bankroll private road providers and the Commonwealth Games rather than this vital service), we will have to step up the pressure and organise protests.

2. Banco development in Smith St

The Priority Panel (PP) that the Minister sent the application to, has established a three person ’sub-committee’ to ‘tweek’ (exact phrase!) the plans. We can therefore expect a dreadful recommendation from the PP - that didn’t stop ALP Mayor Kay Meadows gushingly welcome the establishment of this mini-group of three in this weeks Melbourne Times. I told the same paper that the final decision would be made by the Planning Minister and he would not be able to riggle out of it.

The Collingwood Action Group is organising a picket line/occupation training day next Saturday at the Smith St side of the proposed Banco site. This will teach locals the skills needed if we have to move to direct action in this battle.

3. Log of Claims/Peoples Charter for Yarra


The letters asking contributions on this have gone out (see Appendix 1 below to read it) and we have already got quite a few responses. The deadline is Tuesday November 15th - the day of the mass rally against Howard’s IR changes. Then we will call a public meeting to pull the different ideas into a coherent form, ready for the media, stalls, petitions, lobbying etc.

4. Big IR debate at Yarra

This ended in a great victory for workers. See Appendix 2 for my report on the public and private battles involved in getting this resoltion over the line.

Finally,

a) we are making a decision soon on who to stand in the seat of Richmond in the State election next November.

b) Weekly stalls outside Safeway in Smith St are going better than ever - reflecting a heightened class consciousness after Howard’s latest IR announcements.



c) Check out SP’s Council web site at: www.socialistpartyaustralia.org/council

Appendix 1 - Peoples charter for Yarra

Peoples Charter for Yarra - your input needed



PO Box 1015

Collingwood 3066

3rd October 2005

Dear subscriber to my Council email list,

I am asking you to get involved in a proactive and exciting process in your area; the development of a ?log of claims? or ?Peoples Charter? for Yarra.

There are a wide range of community concerns in the City of Yarra that I, as your local Socialist Party Councillor, have been taking up with local groups and individuals over the past year.

The common link is a conservative Council structure (with Councillors often compliant in this) as well as a State Government in love with market forces.

For example, ?Melbourne 2030? puts tremendous negative pressures on local residents and does nothing to ensure social services match new housing projects. On top of this Yarra’s Planning Department is considered too close to developers’ needs by many in our community.

Public housing is suffering from a lack of support for services, too slow refurbishment of housing stock, and a bleeding of services from Yarra.

Basics like recycling, rubbish collection, traffic management are not up to scratch.

Therefore we propose to do something about it. We want all community groups and individuals getting this letter to contribute 3 points to go into a pool of demands for a ‘log of claims’ or ‘A Peoples’ Charter for Yarra’ that will be used to lobby around for next years Council budget and to lobby the State Government in the key year before the state election in November 2006.

We want you to get your contribution in before November 15th if possible. A meeting will be then called before Xmas to draw up the demands. The Charter will be then launched publicly and we will generate political pressure through street stalls, petitions of support, endorsements, public meetings, media etc.

For more information or questions please contact me on 0437856713 or email jollys@yarracity.vic.gov.au

Yours in Solidarity

Stephen Jolly

Appendix 2 - Analysis of battle to get IR victory last Tuesday

The Socialist Party won a big victory at the October Yarra Council meeting.

A motion, initiated by our party, was passed 9-0 to create a situation where Council contracts will only be offered to companies with collective workplace agreements. (Two months earlier we had won a vote to only offer collective agreements to directly employed staff). We have created a bridgehead for other Councils to follow; if all ALP or Green-influenced Councils followed our lead it would protect tens of thousands of workers from individual contracts. Contractors at Councils employ some of the lowest paid workers in Australia, including staff delivering ‘Meals on Wheels’.

This reform by SP faced many hurdles before the vote. In the weeks preceeding the meeting both the ALP and Greens froze in fear at the thought of either voting with SP or, worse, voting against and being exposed in the workers’ movement. Unions such as the Electrical Trades Union and the Communication Workers Union wrote letters to Yarra’s 9 Councillors encouraging them to vote for the motion. Unbelieveably the leadership of the union covering Yarra Staff, the Australian Services Union, were apparently ‘upset’ that SP was pushing this motion without discussing it with them. This is untrue as we had discussed this with ASU delegates at Yarra and I had told their State Secretary. We too were ‘upset’ - that we had to substitute ourselves for a task that should have been pushed by the ASU leaders themselves.

We told these two parties that we were open to discussing any suggestions to improve or make clearer our motion. However we would not allow it to be gutted.

It was only in the 24 hours before the meeting that, facing a packed Council chamber and public humiliation, these Councillors started to offer alternatives to the SP motion. The Green Councillors (under pressure from their party which understood the political price they would pay statewide if they shafted workers by voting against our motion), proposed some changes to the motion that we could live with and didn’t substantially weaken it.

The ALP had a totally separate motion that was full of ‘motherhood’ statements but took out the action component of the SP motion. They were very confident, telling the Melbourne Times in advace that they would win the vote. This made for embarrassing reading for them when that paper came out the day after the vote!

On the night the tension was high when the agenda item came up at about 8.30pm. ALP Mayor Kay Meadows would have kept workers waiting longer if I hadn’t pressurised her to move the agenda item to an earlier spot! After a brief officers report, the Mayor asked for questions or amendments. Despite the fact that my motion had been ready for one month, she tried to call in first her party colleague Paul D’Agastino to move their weak alternative.



I aggressively challenged that decision and managed to delay proceedings by calling for suspension of standing orders to allow people in the public gallery to speak. Workers and trade unionists, including Phil Cleary, spoke brilliantly of the low wages faced by those working for contractors, and of the new IR regime of terror Howard is introducing. They all called for Councillors to vote for ‘the Jolly motion’.

By the time standing orders were resumed, Meadows had buckelled under the pressure and allowed my amendment to go first. I allowed D’Agastino’s motion to be added to mine and on that basis the vote was 9-0 leading to a spontaneous outbreak of applause from the gallery.

Well done to the SP members, ETU, CWU, ordinary workers and progressive elements in the Greens and ALP who helped get this over the line. This is a decision that will hopefully have national consequences.