Socialists assess Brisbane council result
By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — "In the context of alternative party politics in this country, the vote of more than 6% for Democratic Socialist candidates in the March 15 Brisbane City Council elections is quite significant", Coral Wynter, Democratic Socialist candidate for Dutton Park ward, told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly on March 20.
"This was a conscious vote for socialist policies, as we stressed our platform of 'People before profit' at every opportunity in the campaign", Wynter added.
At close of counting on election night, Wynter had gained 891 votes, or 6.4%, and running mate Kathy Newnam had received 823, or 6.6%, in Central ward.
"In the absence of the Democrats, and with only one Green candidate, also in Central, we feel our socialist campaign played an important role in raising important progressive issues around jobs, the environment, public transport, low-cost housing, social justice and community control", Wynter said.
Newnam's campaign stressed opposition to the federal government's "work for the dole" scheme, and pledged to actively counter any attempt to implement such a scheme at the local council level.
"Our campaign was not merely aimed at winning votes, although that is important", Newnam said. "We sought to use the campaign as a platform to build struggles."
The socialists' election manifesto called for a radical program of real job creation, not a "slave labour" project based on super-exploiting youth.
The Democratic Socialist campaign won widespread support among the progressive community in Brisbane's inner suburbs. The West End-based radical publication Neighbourhood News gave critical but strong support for the Democratic Socialist campaign in a front-page editorial in its March issue.
It said in part: "... the [Democratic Socialist] candidates ... should get the support of all those who believe that Australia's problems must be dealt with in a way that does not benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest of us ...
"[T]heir campaign calls for real jobs not private profit. Thus they stand clearly to the left of Labor and victories for Wynter and Newnam would at one stroke confound the Tories and remind Labor that they cannot take us for granted and that we have not forgiven them for the treachery of 13 years of Hawke and Keating."