Now a spokesperson for Lismore's No War on Iraq group, I've been an environment and social-justice activist for more than 20 years, and am proud to say I was one of those arrested for blocking bulldozers on Mt Nardi (near Nimbin) in 1981. Those protests, involving hundreds of people, resulted in the establishment of the Nightcap National Park.
During those protests, I saw the timber companies use the threat of their employees losing their jobs to mobilise support for logging. That convinced me that environment and employment issues need to be dealt with simultaneously in order to win community support broad enough to address the fundamental problems facing society.
Our society has the resources to solve the problems we face. A rich country like Australia can afford free health care and education for all its citizens. It can afford to comply with the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases and it can do much more to develop and utilise alternative energy sources.
Energy is a good example because it is at the core of our society's ecological sustainability and it is also a key to our capacity to produce the things we need. The fossil fuel industries and the government argue that alternative energies are too expensive. But the only balance sheet they look at is the industry balance sheet, in isolation from the broader environmental and social costs they generate.
In addition to the greenhouse effect (which could cost us a livable planet!) the fossil fuel industry is a major polluter. The costs in terms of our quality of life, and to the health system, never appear in the companies' books. Profits are kept privately but costs are passed onto the rest of society — its called capitalism.
The problem with capitalism is that money means power, and the more ruthless you are with that power, the more money you can make and the more power you gain.
Socialist Alliance believes that, in order to achieve the policy goals of social justice and ecological sustainability, we have to replace the capitalist system with a socialist system that puts people and the environment before profit.
Having had discussions with Greens about this point, I know I need to clarify it further. Its not enough to put up good policies in a range of areas when real power in society is held by the corporations. Parliament can't succeed in legislating fundamental change without a corresponding change in the real balance of forces in society.
The only counter power to the corporations is people power, that is, ordinary working people involving themselves in politics in their communities, unions and workplaces, organising themselves to have their say, and withdrawing their labour if necessary to keep their bosses in line.
The Socialist Alliance is contesting these elections to put forward radical, alternative policies to the policies of the corporate bosses, to convince people that things can be fundamentally different, and to encourage people to become actively involved in the movements to carry through the necessary changes.
Tom Flanagan
[Tom Flanagan is the Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Page, in northern NSW.]
From Green Left Weekly, September 15, 2004.
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