"If there's an organisation that can lead the trade union movement to where it should be going, it's this one", Chris Cain, Western Australian state secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia told the opening plenary of the 5th Socialist Alliance national conference held at Geelong Trades Hall on October 29.
Fifty five delegates from across Australia met in regional Victoria to discuss how to help defeat the Howard government and build fighting social movements - in particular in the trade unions - the only force capable of holding governments to account.
Reflecting on the current push to join or back the ALP as the only way to defeat Howard, Cain said he'd been approached on many occasions to join the ALP. But, he said, "I know how to be a trade unionist and if that means becoming part of something humanitarian, then I won't be budging from the Socialist Alliance."
Commenting on the attitude among many union leaders about the movement's relationship with the Labor Party, Cain said, "I'm not going to say that if the ALP doesn't get in at the next election we're all finished. The reason is that the way to get rid of Howard is not what the majority of trade union leaders are saying." He went on to argue for an independent trade union movement to take the fight for workers' rights up to the government of the day - Liberal or Labor.
Cain's comments encapsulated the fighting spirit and optimism of the 130-strong conference.
Delegates unanimously adopted the draft resolution presented by the outgoing national executive, which states: "The Socialist Alliance will campaign for the defeat of the Howard government in the next federal election and for its replacement by a Labor government". It continues: "However we have little confidence that a Beazley government will stand by its promise to rip up Work Choices and Australian Workplace Agreements and introduce an industrial relations system that enshrines our rights at work unless there is sustained political pressure from below, expressed in independent union and broader community mass mobilisation and protest."(The full text of the resolution can be found at
The discussion about fighting Work Choices continued from the previous day's union seminar on the same issue (see article on page 8).
Other priority campaigns adopted were: building the anti-war movement (with an immediate focus on next year's anniversary of Iraq invasion protests and the APEC meeting in September attended by US President George Bush); defence of Indigenous peoples' rights; the ongoing struggle for equal rights for gay, lesbian and transgender people; and against racism and Islamaphobia.
The resolution also committed the alliance to help build the movement against global warming, uranium mining and nuclear power. A specific resolution from the conference's environment workshop requires the alliance to help build the broadest possible coalition against the nuclear industry.
Other workshops discussed and produced resolutions on election campaigning, Indigenous deaths in custody and ending the ban on same-sex marriage, as well as on building the Socialist Alliance in regional areas, through the internet and through the alliance's partnership with Green Left Weekly.
One deeply felt issue was the Howard government's attacks on civil liberties. Rob Stary, lawyer for the "Barwon 13" - young Melbourne men from Muslim backgrounds who have been charged with offences under the "anti-terror" laws - launched a discussion on that theme in the first conference plenary.
Stary poured scorn on the government's case against the Muslim men and its campaign for a retrial of Jack Thomas. The reason that the Commonwealth was pursuing the men was not because they were engaged in any terrorist activity, Stary argued, but because it had to show something for the $6 billion it had already spent on "anti-terrorist" activity since the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
Another highlight was the address by Queensland Murri leader and alliance member Sam Watson, who said that the "partnership" in Brisbane between the Socialist Alliance and the Murri community - particularly around the police murder of our brother Mulrunji on Palm Island - had moved up a few notches this year.
"One of the main reasons that SA ran me in the seat of Brisbane Central was to highlight the failure of the Beattie government", Watson said. "The only place that Beattie found any real opposition, or any real scrutiny, was in Brisbane Central, and that was because of Socialist Alliance."
Watson called for a national day of action on November 18 to protest the murder of Mulrunji, one day before the second anniversary of his death in police custody on Palm Island. "The Socialist Alliance are the only people with the courage to take this up", he said.
Amelia Taylor, alliance member and a founder of the United Casual Workers Alliance (UCWA) on the Gold Coast, which is unionising workers who have previously never heard of unions, reminded us about the reality of life under Work Choices for many in her region. She recounted how, after the June 28 Brisbane rally against Work Choices, rally goers flocked to the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane's CBD in search of a coffee. Unprepared for the influx, the cafe and sandwich shop workers went into a "sweat" to satisfy demand, while having to put up with many snide remarks. "So many people don't regard the person making the coffee, or serving, as a worker", Taylor said. "The day that you can't get a coffee after a union rally is the day that rally has been a success."
Taylor described how the UCWA organises un-unionised workers and informs them of their rights, including the right to be paid. In one case, deck hands on fishing boats were being regularly paid only in fish. In another case, workers on tourist boats were being paid with free whale-watching passes for their families!
The discussion was rich, with a variety of organising experiences and networking openings being relayed from across the country. But delegates were conscious that the Socialist Alliance is still in its early stages of building a political alternative to Labor.
This is how the conference resolution summed it up: "Socialist Alliance reaffirms its core objective of promoting left unity and regroupment. However we recognise that the Socialist Alliance will have to go through a more extended period of united campaigning and political convergence with the broader forces generated by a new upturn of resistance before it can develop the social base and harness the leadership resources needed to take a significant step towards creating a new mass socialist party."
Greetings came from a range of groups in Australia and internationally, including the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) from El Salvador, Turkey's Party of Labour, Australians for Palestine, the Islamic Girls and Women's Group, the Federation of Australian Muslim Students and Youth, the WA branch of the MUA and Cristobal Zelaya from the Association in Solidarity with Latin America.
Chilean journalist and Mapuche Indigenous activist Rosa del Carmen Curihuentro, Maria de Lourdes Vicente da Silva, a leader of the landless workers movement from Brazil (MST) and Mexican land and peasant rights activist Heriberto Salas also gave greetings. They, along with a solidarity message from Nelson Davila, the Venezuelan charge d'affaires in Australia, were greeted with much applause.
The conference elected five members of a new Socialist Alliance national executive of 17. The remaining 12 are to be elected by state and territory committees. In motivating the new structure, outgoing Socialist Alliance national coordinator Lisa Macdonald described it as "much more grassroots, and in tune with what the Socialist Alliance is doing".
The conference ended with a performance from Aboriginal rap artist and Socialist Alliance upper house candidate in the NSW election, Jakalene X-treme.
For Dick Nichols, newly elected Socialist Alliance national coordinator, "Socialist Alliance remains at the heart of any serious discussion about building a working-class alternative to the Labor Party". Nichols told Green Left Weekly that alliance activists are central to a range of campaigns, most notably the campaign against Work Choices, and that the alliance's focus on activism is critical.
But he added a caution: "We need to guard against the problem of over-expectation. The fact that the Greens are receiving the lion's share of the vote to the left of Labor doesn't mean there isn't a need for left organisations and individuals to come together.
"We want to, and do now, work with the Greens wherever possible, but we also know that the initial steps the alliance has taken towards left unity are important steps. The door is always open, including to those left groups that have become disenchanted.
"If you didn't have Socialist Alliance, it would have to be re-invented. The main challenge facing the alliance right now is to expand our reach."
[For more information about the conference, visit