Youth candidate: ‘Climate change is a social issue’

Newcastle resident, hip-hop performer and socialist activist Zane Alcorn is the Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Newcastle in the next federal election. Leela Ford spoke to Alcorn about the politics and messages he will bring to his campaign.

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How long have you been involved with the Socialist Alliance and activism in general?

Since around 2004. My first union protest was back in about 1992 or 1993, both my parents were high school teachers at that time and I attended a rally at NSW parliament house with them and my sister Lucy who was about four at the time.

Do you think it's important to be involved in activism as well as running in elections?

Absolutely. I think activism is actually more important than running in elections but it's still important to run in elections to present a socialist alternative to the mainstream parties at election time.

I'm quite interested in climate change and renewable energy and I've found that Liberal and Labor candidates are generally breathtakingly ignorant of these two important things. It's good to get in their faces about that at candidates forums and the like. They don't generally have any comeback, they just avoid the topic to hide their complete lack of leadership and answers.

What do you believe are the top issues in Australia that need to be addressed?

I think that climate change and moving to renewables are really important. I grew up very aware that Australia is a relatively wealthy country but the majority of the planet live on very little.

Climate change will massively amplify existing inequalities — if we don't make a crash conversion to renewables there is going to be vast food and water shortages affecting hundreds of millions of people.

So I see climate change as a social issue really, not an environmental one, and it never ceases to amaze me the way that mainstream politicians avoid this reality despite it being repeatedly pointed out to them by bodies like the climate commission, the intergovernmental panel on climate change and sea ice experts.

Meanwhile lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people are in this limbo waiting for equal rights even though the majority of the population supports equal marriage.

Refugees are scapegoated — there is this disgusting hysteria about “the boats, OMG the fucking boats”, and refugees are apparently even to blame for neoliberal governments not investing in schools and hospitals.

Trade unions have to jump through 50 hoops before they are “allowed” to go on strike. Aboriginal people don’t have land rights, are imprisoned at apartheid rates and continue to be killed in custody and don’t have access to the same basic levels of housing, water, education and health care that white people do.

How do you and the Socialist Alliance believe they should be addressed?

Coal is the new asbestos and rather than wait for the coal bubble to collapse even further governments need to step in and nationalise it and have a controlled phaseout that protects the livelihoods of those currently employed in the industry.

Profiting from coal should not go on any longer. All coal revenue must go towards a transition away from it. Putting a carbon tax on electricity consumption allows the producers to pass the cost on rather than directly making the polluters pay from their total profits, or directly forcing the polluters to cut their emissions.

Taxing consumption is politically unpopular and at the end of the day fails to address the core problem which is that there is a highly lucrative industry which is unfortunately putting all future generations of this planet in grave danger, and it should no longer be in any way legitimate, legal or allowable that people are making money from this. And moving to renewables is entirely practical and affordable.

Every power station in this country is a product of public investment — we can and should have a 10-year program to get this country onto 100% renewable energy.

We need to legislate equal marriage rights already and officially recognise that love is equal in all its forms. We should have community processing of refugees which, lo and behold, is simultaneously way cheaper and way less sadistic than paying Serco to torment people in faraway concentration camps.

We should have a government which calls a spade a spade and tells scummy right-wing media moguls to shut their proverbial face and stop demonising refugees.

We should tax the rich and re-nationalise wealth-making industries that were once public along with companies like ford that seek to lay workers off and go offshore.

What are your plans for the future in relation to activism and your campaign?

I’ve been involved in the Coal Terminal Action Group in Newcastle, which is a community campaign to stop a fourth coal loader getting built and to get tighter dust controls on the existing coal export chain. There is a candidates forum by Refugee Action Network Newcastle that I’m attending on August 9.

In a nutshell our campaign message would be “stop scapegoating refugees, and wake up and smell the climate revolution”. Elections can often act as a catalyst for more people to get involved in the ongoing operation of the branch and that’s certainly something we will be looking to take away from the current campaign.

Are there any campaigns that you've been involved in over the last few years that you feel have been successful or have left a positive mark?

There was a fantastic marriage equality rally in Newcastle recently. There's all these rednecks on council that have been waging a war on chalk rainbows and this group put on a really vibrant rally outside the council meeting.

It's exactly the sort of action we see as being really crucial to developing and expressing community power and tackling homophobic stooges like those in Newcastle council.

There was a Coal Terminal Action Group rally of about 1500 people in Newcastle back on March 16. This was a very diverse rally — there were people from various groups fighting the coal expansion from as far away as the Central Coast, the Hunter Valley and Upper Hunter, Sydney, Gloucester and the Manning Valley. There were people from diverse political backgrounds there too which is important.

There has been a simmering community activism against the coal expansion in the region for several years, both on rural fronts and in Newcastle itself. I think this has laid the foundation for quite a big chunk of the population to really start questioning king coal.

I think that is a healthy thing and it will continue and there is the potential for coal workers and resident action groups to start to work together.

I think if the workers and the tapestry of community groups work together, we can really challenge the industry and do so in a way which ensures coal workers aren’t just thrown on the scrapheap but are afforded opportunities to get into alternative, secure jobs.