This statement was distributed by Socialist Alliance members to delegates at the January 29-31 ALP conference.
The Howard government is creating a two-tier Australia — one for the rich, another for the poor.
It is trying to smash the unions, destroy Medicare, make universities too expensive for workers, and seal a free trade agreement with the US which will line big business pockets while impoverishing ordinary people.
It created the asylum-seeker crisis, took us into the Iraq war and is flexing its military muscle throughout the region in the hope that fears about national security will overwhelm the resentment that working people feel at the attacks on our living conditions.
Working people desperately want the Liberals out at the next election — but the ALP leaders are offering a paltry alternative. To be an opposition that's actually worth voting into office, this ALP conference needs, at the very least, to commit the party to:
End Australia's economic and military alliance with the US
- Immediately withdraw all Australian military personnel from Iraq, and pressure the US to do the same;
- Stop the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement; and
- Close all US bases in Australia.
Free the refugees
- Let the refugees in;
- Close all detention centres; and
- Give full rights and support services to all temporary protection visa holders
Stop the racist war on terror
- No ministry of homeland security;
- Repeal all anti-terror legislation and protect all people's civil rights; and
- Repeal the Border Protection Act
Strengthen public health and education
- Defend and extend Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and end private health insurance subsidies;
- Massively increase funding for public hospitals and health care services; and
- Provide free, quality public education at all levels, and end government funding to private schools.
Reverse the attacks on workers and trade unions
- Repeal the Workplace Relations Act and legalise industry- and category-wide bargaining and contracts;
- Repeal Â鶹´«Ã½ 45D and E of the Trades Practices Act, which outlaw solidarity actions across industries; and
- Put real penalties into industrial health and safety legislation.
This short list of basic measures would make a huge improvement to ordinary people's quality of life. If the ALP was to adopt these policies, it would not only regain much of the credibility it has lost over the last decade as a real opposition, it would decisively win the next election.
The Socialist Alliance calls on all delegates to the 2004 national conference who believe that putting working people's needs before private profit is a principle worth fighting for to take a much-needed stand at this conference and provide a voice for all those — both inside and outside the party — who want an end to war, refugee prisons, privatisation and poverty, and who want a government that will represent the millions of ordinary people, not the corporate millionaires.
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From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, February 4, 2004.
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