The simple fact is that it is not enough to “punish Labor” in the coming elections. The real challenge is to build a political alternative to Labor that will act for the majority, not slavishly serve the billionaire class.
Aren’t the Greens running in a lot of seats? If there’s a hung parliament, Labor will have a hard time avoiding dealing with them.
You would hope so, but then again Labor could do a Macron and just keep looking further to the right.
There won’t be enough cookers in parliament to give them a deal. Which leaves them proposing a government of national unity with the Coalition. I’m sure Dutton’s demands for such would be entirely acceptable to them, given the reasonable fellow he is.
For the love of fuck: put a /s on your post.
The horror…
Are you saying you’re not looking forward to the Coalition Coalition winning government?
Yes. I am saying exactly that. The difference is that I wasn’t thinking about it before.
I like before better.
However, simply voting socialist and Greens is not enough.
The type of working-class political alternative we need must be able to help build the movements in our communities, campuses and workplaces. It has to be campaigning every day for progressive change, not just at elections.
This is the key, we’ve got to build the grass-roots power of unions and activist groups. It’s extremely hard, though, to convince people to do anything other than vote.
Before I burned out of the industry I tried to start a union at my old software company. It was highly specialised work and non trivial to replace people so we had a good shot. Just putting out feelers early on to find allies and one guy knew what was up, the rest (including many PhDs!) didn’t even fucking know that unions won sick leave.
They literally thought companies just started doing it because it was the decent thing to do. Alike for weekends, breaks etc.
It’s an uphill battle in aus to get even directly self serving organising going.
We do. Yes. Need the other parties to start acting like it too. Last election in vic Libs were busy sucking their thumbs and Greens wanted to make the yarra swimable. I mean c’mon guys… lets be real here.
Imagine rivers and creeks you could swim in. Tell ‘em they’re dreamin’.
Sorry but on the priority list it aint shit. Its a great idea, but the health system is in crisis, people cant afford homes, public transport frequency is a joke (to say nothing of the airport link) and the greens go “we’re gonna make the yarra swimable!” Like, really? thats up there with RFK Jr thinking that bear story was gonna make sense.
I don’t think it’s comparable to JFK’s bear crime thing.
I also wasn’t directly replying to your earlier comment (even though it was in a reply to a comment of yours and referencing something you said, sounds weird I know). I just really wish we had clean rivers and creeks to swim in among other things.
Maybe that policy was very localised and appealed to their members and supporters and was a winner for them. You might know more about how it came to be and whether it had any impact or not.
