Zacharias Szumer is a Melbourne-based writer.
Australians under 40 face an uncertain future and lower living standards than their parents or grandparents enjoyed. To bring us back from the brink, Australia needs to end the neoliberal consensus.
Inflated housing prices and rapidly rising rents are disproportionately affecting younger and poorer Australians. The Greens are the only party in Parliament with a serious plan to build public housing.
The foreign affairs establishment describes Australia as a “middle power” in the “rules-based global order.” They’re wrong — Australia should be understood as a subordinate beneficiary of US imperialism.
Across Australia, power prices are rising exponentially while corporations rake in billions. It’s not the product of shortages or instability but of a market designed to let for-profit companies hold the public ransom.
As Australian journalist Julian Assange faces the hell of extradition, it is more urgent and necessary than ever for the Australian government to intervene on his behalf.
After East Timor declared independence from Portugal in 1975, Indonesian dictator Suharto ordered an invasion and tried to crush the national liberation movement. Australia knew Indonesian forces were carrying out massacres — and helped hide it from the world.
The super-profitable mining industry in Australia has produced a new class of ruthless billionaires. Their fortunes tower above those of the nation’s other business elites, and they’ve used this wealth to shape the political landscape in their interest.
Touring Australia in 1974, Frank Sinatra launched into a sexist tirade against female journalists. Trade unions hit back — by shutting down Sinatra’s tour.
Australian retail billionaire Gerry Harvey has rightly been vilified for describing COVID-19 as an opportunity for profitmaking. But Harvey was just stating the facts: the pandemic has enabled his class to get even richer off the backs of the working class.
Agricultural bosses and their allies are accusing Australians of being work-shy as they face a post-pandemic labor shortage. But it’s low wages and abusive working conditions that make it hard for them to find workers. The solution is obvious: decent pay for decent work.
In the wake of the pandemic, Australian renters are once again facing the threat of mass evictions. The militant renters’ struggles of the Great Depression are an excellent model for the movement that’s taking shape today.
Victoria’s lockdown has provoked a self-styled rebellion that postures as defending freedom against the state premier, “Dictator” Dan Andrews. But once you scratch the plebian surface, the “movement” is led by right-wing activists and funded by Liberal Party money.
For almost a decade, people in three Melbourne local councils — Yarra, Darebin, and Moreland — have elected socialist councilors to represent them. By standing up to developers, neoliberal local government managers, and the federal government, Melbourne’s socialist councilors have not let them down.
The Labor Party in Australia speaks a progressive language on climate change that it rarely enacts in policy. Now, under cover of the health crisis, the Victorian branch is expanding deforestation projects and onshore gas exploration.
Following cataclysmic bushfires, Sydney has spent the last fortnight choked by poisonous smoke. While Prime Minister Scott Morrison pretends all is normal, construction and dock workers have refused to put business as usual above their health, and are walking off the job.