Australia

Lilly Murphy, who died from cancer on 4 November 2021, joined the Socialist Alliance in Melbourne when she was in high school. Like many other children of socialists, Lilly was in agreement with her parents’ general worldview. Her parents, Maureen Murphy and Richard Lane, met through left politics, and share a similar commitment to anti-capitalist, democratic, working class, revolutionary socialism, that fights for the rights of all oppressed people. Richard Lane has been a supporter of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and predecessors since 1981. Lilly, unlike most children of socialists...

On 15 September, the Australian, UK and US governments announced AUKUS – a pact to share and jointly develop military technology, and to deepen military coordination in the so-called “Indo-Pacific” ocean region. Though this was officially unstated, and even tokenistically denied by Boris Johnson, the pact is universally understood as a move to counter and contain China. Submarines The most prominently-advertised of the pact’s initial actions will be to equip Australia with a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines – taking the place of a now-scrapped deal in which a French manufacturer was set to...

Even with high rates of vaccination COVID disease will still be a risk. Employed workers could be organising now, including legally refusing to work in unsafe conditions, in order to protect themselves, their households and communities. Workplaces are not only the origin of most COVID spread. Workplaces are where the case for collective safety through solidarity can be won amongst workers, and forced onto employers and the government. The work health and safety (WHS) legislation in all Australian jurisdictions gives workers the right to refuse unsafe work. The United Workers Union has promoted...

Roger Clarke reviews Beyond Labour and Liberal, edited by Robert Leach

Uncharted waters: social responsibility in Australian trade unions , by Greg Mallory (2005) investigated the NSW BLF Green Bans. Until recently Greg had been President of the Brisbane Labour History Association for 17 years. Workers Liberty has previously reported on his research into Green Bans: see here and here. Janet Burstall asked Greg some new questions, to help uncover issues for eco-socialist trade unionists to take into account, in promoting workers' control as a means for tackling climate change. JB: The NSW BLF Green Bans must be the most quoted example around the world of workers...

The Covid 19 pandemic has seen unprecedented relocation to regional north coast New South Wales. Better-off people have been leaving the capital cities, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. For some "professionals", working from home, or working primarily from home, has become a very desirable option, and more workable. In the destination areas, this has exacerbated an already overburdened housing and rental market for young people and working families. Demand has outstripped supply for both rentals and for house-purchase, though new housing is are being built at an increasing pace to try and keep...

Without Rod Webb, there may not have been a consistent group of supporters of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in Australia, advocating the ideas and principles of third-camp Trotskyism. It was because of Rod that I became a Trotskyist, and because of people he put me in touch with, even after he became less active himself, that I discovered the literature of the forerunners of the AWL, made contact with Martin Thomas, and helped to establish Socialist Fight, as a group of co-thinkers of the now AWL. This is part obituary, and part story of how Rod’s ideas and connections contributed to the...