By Lachlan Malloch
SYDNEY — "The Democratic Socialists' campaign is different — it's out in the streets. Our fundamental conviction is that society can be changed for the better by people power", declared Sam Wainwright at the launch of the Democratic Socialists' federal election campaign here on September 10.
Wainwright, the Democratic Socialists' Sydney branch secretary, told the gathering of more than 50 people that the next opportunity to oppose the major parties on the streets would be a community march against racism, being organised by the Democratic Socialists and Resistance, along Glebe Point Road, Glebe, at midday on September 19.
Green Left Weekly correspondent Sue Boland explained that opposition to the Liberal government's GST is a central plank of the Democratic Socialists' campaign. The thrust of the Coalition's tax package is reducing big business's share of taxation and shifting the burden to workers and the unemployed.
Democratic Socialist Senate candidate Peter Boyle described the "great predicament" Labor and Liberal politicians face in the 1990s.
"They can only deliver more pain and cuts to the living standards of ordinary people; that is their mission on behalf of big business. Labor merely carries this out in a slower, less blatant way. Little wonder that dissatisfaction with the major parties is at an all-time high", he observed.
Surveys show that only 7% of Australians believe politicians are ethical, compared to 19% in 1976. A recent Bulletin poll revealed 67% of Australians were dissatisfied with the major parties.
"It is in this context that the rise of One Nation marks a new and potentially dangerous stage in people's disgruntlement with the parliamentary parties", said Boyle. "But rather than just reviving the reactionary racist guts of old-style Laborism, as Hanson has done, the Democratic Socialists are about mobilising people's anger to the left — towards real solutions to people's problems.
"It is not possible to seriously address humanity's worsening problems — from unemployment and poverty to racism and environmental destruction — without confronting the dictatorship of private property", Boyle concluded.