The ALP leadership crisis has dominated news headlines for weeks on end. While Julia Gillard was able to fend off a challenge from Kevin Rudd yesterday, the underlying issues that led to the tensions remain.

Many commentators in the capitalist press have tried to portray the Gillard/Rudd battle as one of competing personalities. While inevitably there were aspects of personality involved, the real underlying issues are political.

By Socialist Party reporters

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SP Newsletter No.387

Melbourne Pride March

The annual Melbourne Pride March was held in February for the 17th year running. This event is one of the most popular Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) celebrations in the country. Despite strong winds and rain on the day thousands of people came out to line the march.

The Socialist Party had a contingent on the march once again and our banner against homophobia was very well received. Thousands of leaflets urging people to step up the struggle for same sex marriage rights were also distributed. The next same sex marriage rights protest will be held on Saturday May 12 at 1pm outside the State Library in the Melbourne CBD.

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SP Newsletter No.386

As we go to press the success of the Victorian nurses’ dispute hangs in the balance. While a significant layer of rank and file nurses have a desire to take to the dispute in a more militant direction, they are being held back by the conservative leadership of their union, the Australian Nurses Federation (ANF).

Because of pressure from below, the ANF leaders were initially forced to endorse the closure of hundreds of hospital beds and a mass rally. In recent months however the union heads have attempted to wind down the campaign.

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QANTAS dispute update

QANTAS and two unions representing baggage handlers and long-haul pilots are still a long way from reaching a deal after industrial action in late 2011. The union representing licensed aircraft engineers however have signed a new 3 year agreement with the company.

The Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA) failed to secure a new hangar in Australia for heavy maintenance work but according to their federal secretary, Steve Purvinas, had won ‘all of our existing functions in a job-security clause”. The 1,600 engineers will keep their jobs which includes three percent wage rises annually over three years.

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SP Newsletter No.385

Some Gillard apologists and wishful thinkers have suggested that the December ALP National Conference showed there “was life left in the old beast”. This is apparently because the Conference votes were not known in advance to the same exactitude as was normal under the Rudd era. This is the low standard by which the ALP is judged by some in today’s world.

However to have this view would mean “you were conned”, as the Sydney Morning Herald bluntly put it. “Yes there were some set piece (debates), but their outcome had been predetermined along factional lines…with the Right prevailing with somewhere between 206 and 208 of the 400 conference votes.”

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December 2011 saw yet more asylum seekers tragically drown as their boat sank on the journey to Australia. The response of both major parties has been to descend into a vile contest of who can out do the other as the toughest on people smugglers.

The Greens refugee spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, simply stated that “accidents happen”. Such a statement distorts the reality of asylum seeker deaths at sea. These tragedies are not accidents, but the direct result of inaccessible, punitive and inhumane refugee policies supported by both Labor and Liberal.

In the media frenzy suggesting that Australia is being ‘flooded’ by refugees, both major parties want to be seen as keeping the number of boat arrivals down. This means making it as difficult as possible for refugee boats to find a route to Australian shores. The direct result of this is desperate people being forced to take the most dangerous routes to Australia, many not surviving the journey.

By David Suter, Socialist Party

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What has changed in 40 years?

January 26 marked the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. The establishment of the Tent Embassy in 1972 represented an historic watershed in the Indigenous struggle for self-determination.

The mainstream account of history teaches that it was the 1967 referendum that finally afforded rights and equality to Aboriginal people. This, however, was not the experience of Aboriginal people.

Aboriginal poet and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal (formerly Kath Walker) said after the referendum: “Looking back, the only major improvement has been the 93% ‘Yes’ vote of the referendum of May 1967; but this improvement did not benefit the black Australians though it eased the guilty conscience of white Australians in this country and overseas.”

By Mel Gregson, Socialist Party

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Ian Angus and Simon Butler’s book ‘Too Many People?’ provides a great service to the workers’ movement by systematically demolishing a key argument of the Right.

Since the 18th century, capitalism and its supporters have tried to ‘blame the victim’ for the horrors of their system. Arguing that over-population is a key contributor to scarcity has been the key point made by these types - from Malthus in Marx’s day to sections of the environmental movement and the political Right today. (Malthus falsely argued that population grows exponentially while food supply only grows arithmetically).

By Stephen Jolly

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SP Newsletter No.384

Last night Yarra Council, in inner-city Melbourne, held a special ‘ceremonial’ Council meeting to elect the 2012 Mayor. The meeting’s proceedings put a spotlight on the true nature of the Greens. Despite having more Councillors than any other party on Council, the Greens refused to accept the Mayoral position and instead voted for the most right-wing ALP Councillor, Geoff Barbour.

The current make up of the Council is 3 Greens, 2 Socialists, 2 ALP and 2 right-wing Independents. Alison Clarke from the Greens had the Mayor’s position this year and the Socialist Party encouraged them on several occasions to retake the position in 2012. The combined votes of the Greens and Socialist Party could have easily made this happen.

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Below we publish a perspectives document written by the CWI’s International Secretariat. This document will be discussed, and voted on, at the International Executive Committee of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) which will be held in Belgium next month.

A world in turmoil

1. Since the last World Congress, just over a year ago, the world has been in almost continuous turmoil. We have witnessed the Middle Eastern and North African revolutions, which still endure, as the bloody conflicts in Cairo and elsewhere in late November indicate. This in turn has been followed by the elections in Egypt. In the first stages of the Egyptian parliamentary elections the Islamic parties appear to have won two thirds of the vote. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party got 36.6%, according to preliminary results. However, the ultra-conservative fundamentalist al-Nour party, with its doctrine of Salafism gained nearly one quarter of the vote in areas which encompass nine of Egypt’s 27 provinces, including the main urban centres of Cairo and Alexandria. On the other hand, parties supporting the regime of Mubarak received only 3% of the vote! By the time of the IEC, the elections will have been completed and we will have a better picture of what this signifies.

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