Socialist councillor Sam Wainwright has vowed to run a fierce campaign for the seat of Fremantle aimed at winning public support for confiscating the wealth of the mining billionaires and the big banks.
“The mining boom reveals starkly the manifest inequality of capitalism in Australia today,” Wainwright told Green Left Weekly.
“On the one hand, we have Gina Rinehart — who has become the richest person in Australia — and on the other hand we have homeless people on the streets of Fremantle.
“And at a time of boom we still find the federal government is launching attacks – such as on single parents – and that Gina Rinehart hasn't retreated from her suggestion that Australian workers should 'compete' with African workers on $2 per day,” Wainwright said.
Wainwright has identified the climate crisis as one of the major issues that needs to be addressed, yet he says “the ‘carbon price’ supported by Labor and the Greens is not the way to do it”.
Already the government has handed billions to Australia's biggest polluters without any prospects that the carbon price will reduce emissions.
Wainwright believes that there is no way that we can solve the social and environmental problems that we face without breaking the power of the big corporations.
“Our campaign aims to win support for measures that can do exactly that,” he told GLW.
Wainwright was preselected at a Fremantle Socialist Alliance meeting on April 3.
The Socialist Alliance is also planning a state conference on April 21 that will discuss a proposal that Perth and Fremantle branches of the Alliance concentrate on a campaign for the seat of Fremantle in the upcoming elections.
The rationale for this proposal is that a united campaign could make more impact in advancing socialist ideas in WA.
“We will be calling our supporters from all over Perth to come to Fremantle to support this campaign,” said Wainwright, “because this will be the best way to support the kinds of policies that can actually make a difference.”