Socialist Alliance
https://socialist-alliance.org/
* Socialism is now the solution to climate change as well as inequality, according to this party.
* They have an extensive and radical (but vague) list of policies starting with a drastic
restructuring of tax, which abolishes GST and taxes the hell out of rich companies and
individuals.
* "Nationalise the mines, banks and energy companies, under community and workers' control", as
any good socialist should, I suppose.
* They're anti-nuclear to the entent of banning Uranium mining, which is going further than
most.
* 100% renewable energy in 5-10 years, undertaken by bringing power industries under public
ownership and phasing out fossil fuels by blocking new coal or gas projects while supply
guaranteed jobs to workers in those fields.
* They want a real transformation of democracy at a constitutional level. They support a
"publicly-funded citizen-initiated referenda on all issues of significant public concern"
which reads as a partial move to more direct democracy. Also "All government positions
subject to recall elections if 10% of electors petition for it". This seems like it would
make politics pretty complicated. Politicians get a pay cut down to "an average worker's
wage" and their election campaigns are all "publicly funded to a fixed amount".
* They want to treat migrants and asylum seekers more kindly.
* They want to "Defend and extend anti-discrimination laws" but also Adopt a Bill of Rights
including guarantees for freedom of speech, assembly and religion. Those aims are directly
at odds in my opinion.
* At least they want to repeal data retention laws, but they also want to Abolish ASIO and
all spy agencies - I'd like foreign spy agencies not to be given free reign over Australian
computer users like they are now, but getting rid of our own spy acency entirely is going
way too far.
* They love unions, and want "a 30 hour work week, with no loss of pay", somehow. Also reducing
the pension age to 55 and minimum wage up to $25/hour.
* Free child care. They have a rare, but unsurprising, answer to paying for this one: "funded by
a levy on business".
* They'll fix aged care by nationalising it. There was a time when it was sort of nationalised
in that old people were put in public-owned insane asylums. Mind you considering all the
recent horror stories from the private aged care industry it's hard to imagine even an
old-fashioned loony bin being worse.
* There's a lot covered in their policies, but I think you can generalise their approach
towards many industries as:
Rule 1: if it's public-owned throw lots more money at it.
Rule 2: If it's privately owned and causing a problem then make it public.
Rule 3: If it's privately owned and not causing a problem then tax the bejeezes out of it
to pay for rules 1 and 2.
* Well they want to increase in funding for ABC and SBS, and get the ads off SBS, so I'm
with them on that. They want to "democratise their boards" as well, and I'm not sure what
they mean by that - do we have a national ABC/SBS board election as well? I suppose I
wouldn't object to that - stop making terrible dramas and put on more boring documentaties
and old movies I'd say!
* "Shift to open source software use by government bodies" they even get a YES PLEASE out of
me on that one.
* They're very tough on animal welfare - banning live animal exports, hunting, "cuel" use
of animals in sport, recreation or entertainment. etc. That's not for me.
* They want to cut military spending by 50% and "Pay reparations to Iraq and Afghanistan for
the illegal invasions and occupations", while breaking ties with the US military. They
don't want to make friends with China either though because of their human rights issues,
so they want something of a neutral stance.
They're very radical and leftist, as you'd expect. Way too much of both for me. They have done
a decent job of forming their approach to socialism around modern issues such as climate change
though. Much of their policy is clearly unachieveable anyway, but the remainder is often
unattractive to me as well, things like opposition to uranium mining and live animal exports are
too leftist for me. Though I do at least give them credit for better ABC/SBS funding and the open
source software push.
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