Green Left Weekly spoke to some of the progressive candidates running in the November 27 Victorian state elections.
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Stephen Jolly
Stephen Jolly is the Socialist Party candidate for Richmond. He was elected to the City of Yarra council in 2004. He first came to prominence in the campaign to reopen Richmond Secondary College. He spoke to GLW’s Narendra Mohan Kimmalapati.
What is your platform for the election?
We are contesting the election on the issues of inappropriate planning and development in the electorate, expansion of public transport and tackling climate change through measures like shutting down Hazelwood power station.
In this election voters have a clear choice. If they’re happy with gridlocked roads, underfunded public transport, planning laws that favour developers and inaction on climate change, then a vote for Labor will ensure four more years of the status quo.
Planning is a big issue in our area. Big developers have been heavily backed by the state government while residents’ concerns have been consistently ignored. Developers have had free reign to build expensive high-rise residential apartments.
A socialist planning policy would not only guarantee low-cost housing built to the highest environmental standards, but would create more services to meet the needs of new residents.
What support have you had from unions and community groups?
We have received great support from community organisations, tenants in public housing and the unions. The Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union and Electrical Trades Union have donated funds to our campaign and the firefighters’ union has backed our campaign.
How will you differ from the Greens, if elected?
I will accept only the average wage of a skilled worker and donate the rest of my parliamentary income to public causes including the campaign to close all of Hazelwood. I will work to build the political space for a new left party. Over 100 years ago, Marx spoke of parliamentary cretinism. Unlike the Greens, there is a need to build a party independent of parliamentary politics.
On issues surrounding the environment, the Socialist Party is “greener” than the Greens. On the Yarra Council, I pushed through a zero emissions policy, targets for the energy foundation, led the fight to stop the council banning planter boxes and community gardens and got council support for the Yarra Climate Action Network.
Where will you be directing your preferences?
We had doubts about preferencing the Greens because of the possibility of them forming a coalition with the Liberals. At the end of the day, we decided to give the Greens our second preference because we think they are still to the left of the ALP. We will preference the ALP ahead of the Liberals.
What about the possibility of the Greens forming a coalition with the Liberals?
This is a shock to progressive supporters of the Greens. How will they tackle climate change or implement their policies? The Liberals will not allow them to shut down Hazelwood. The Greens seem to have forgotten the Kennett government’s closing down of public schools, slashing funds for health and the attacks on public transport in the 1990s.
I would refuse to go into a coalition with either of the major parties if I held the balance of power. The two major parties represent the interests of big business. They are almost indistinguishable.
Brian Walters
Brian Walters is the Greens candidate for the seat of Melbourne. He was previously president of Liberty Victoria where he worked on issues such as asylum seekers, terror laws and police powers. He spoke to GLW’s Sue Bolton.
What are the key issues in the campaign?
The Liberal Party is preferencing Labor, showing how close those parties have become.
Labor is preferencing the Country Alliance in two upper house regions. Country Alliance stands for no action on climate, wants coalmining to continue, opposes any new national parks and wants open-slather on hunting.
The community has been frustrated by the big money politics which has captured the Labor Party and has long since been part of the Liberal Party’s approach. We want to give the community its voice on issues like a properly managed public transport system, back in public hands and run for the public good.
How has the ALP responded to the rise of the Greens?
The Labor Party is petrified by the rise of the Greens … They’ve responded by moving closer to the Liberal Party and attacking the Greens — everything from calling me anti-semitic to a flyer that is being delivered in the Northcote area asking why the Greens are in bed with the Liberal Party.
What would the Greens’ position be in the event of a hung parliament?
We will use all the negotiating power we have … We’re not going to say in advance to Labor that we’ll support you no matter what because then we’d have no negotiating power. But we have a progressive agenda. We want to form a progressive government. If Labor thinks it can’t be more progressive than the Liberals, it should say so.
What is the Greens’ attitude to Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)?
Public Private Partnerships have proved a means of funding things which in the end is far more expensive and less efficient. We have many people employed on the public payroll whose only job is to examine contracts when they would be better off working to provide the services that we want to pay for. PPPs is a failed model.
Will the Greens oppose PPPs?
We’ll look case by case. Overall, we’re not attracted to the PPP model. We live in a world where governments enter contracts, they have to abide by those contracts or pay damages. We’re not about just breaking contracts.
Would you take the energy industry and utilities back into public hands?
You’ve got to do a cost-benefit analysis and look at it case by case. It would be much more sensible to have it in public hands, but you need to know much more than is publicly available about the contracts to know how financially viable it is to do that. Major infrastructure in Australia is a job for government, not the market.
What is the Greens’ attitude to the Beyond Zero Emissions plan for 100% renewable energy by 2020?
Our position is that we should be at 100% renewables by 2050 or sooner. We haven’t gone the full way with BZE to 100% by 2020, although if we could get that, we would love to. It’s a question of finding the money to do that. We do need to move rapidly to re-tool the Victorian economy and to move at emergency speed but the Greens need to carry other parties along with us.
Margarita Windisch
Margarita Windisch is the Socialist Alliance candidate for Footscray, one of four SA candidates in the election. She is a TAFE teacher involved in campaigns defending workers’ rights and opposing racist policing in the western suburbs. She has pledged to accept a skilled worker’s wage if elected, donating the rest of her wage to community campaigns. She spoke to GLW’s Sue Bolton.
What are the key issues?
Key issues for Socialist Alliance are expanding public transport and bringing public transport and utilities back into public hands.
We are campaigning against the skyrocketing cost of living. People are hurting. Each time they get a water or electricity bill, they have to work out whether to pay the rent or their bill.
We think that everyone should have a basic allowance for water, gas and electricity, either free or at a very cheap rate, with allowances for people with special needs (such as pensioners, people who are sick, large families) but with tariffs rising steeply according to use thereafter.
What is your approach to PPPs and the desalination plant?
We are opposed to PPPs like the desalination plant at Wonthaggi. The water bills of all Victorians will triple to pay for this plant. The desalination plant is only at a very early stage of construction and can still be stopped. The money that would have been spent on the plant could be spent on stormwater harvesting and water recycling.
The contract for the desalination plant is secret. We don’t believe that we need to honour contracts which are secret or which cause great harm to people and the environment.
How will you differ from the Greens, if elected?
There is a lot that the Greens have in common with the socialist candidates but the socialist candidates would prioritise building the extraparliamentary movement for social justice.
At the end of the day, you can’t do much if you just get one or two progressive candidates elected to parliament, especially if the two major parties vote together, as often happens.
But you can do a lot if there is a powerful mass movement pushing for change. If elected, I would aim to help build such a movement as well as voicing its aims inside parliament.
What advice would you give the Greens if there is a hung parliament?
While we understand that the Greens don’t want to be taken for granted by Labor, they should stop toying with the idea of possibly supporting a minority Coalition government.
If they helped bring to power a Kennett-style Coalition government that took the hatchet to working class rights and conditions, they would lose their newfound support.
Greens supporters should let their leadership know that their party will lose support if they continue flirting with this idea.
Where will you be directing your preferences?
We don’t believe in horsetrading over preferences. We have a policy of supporting other socialist candidates first, then the Greens before Labor and putting the Liberals and other far right candidates last. We can’t risk a Coalition government.
But we also disagree with the unions giving another blank cheque to the Labor government. The Brumby Labor government has demonstrated time and time again that it will put the interests of its big business mates ahead of working class communities.