Vote 1 Socialist Alliance for public ownership of mines banks and energy

Ordinary people are under attack
Nobody doubts that Abbott’s upcoming budget will feature major attacks on ordinary people. Medicare, pensions, ABC & SBS, education funding, women’s rights, Tasmanian world heritage forests, unions and workers’ rights, the Great Barrier Reef, anybody who cares about climate change, refugees, Aboriginal people and sole parents are all under attack. And the list goes on.

Attacking refugees won’t create jobs
It won’t create more houses, public transport or shorter hospital queues either. Abbott campaigned to “Stop the boats” because he wants you to blame refugees for society’s problems, not the politicians and billionaires who are responsible. Locking up refugees in offshore detention centres is a human rights abuse designed to distract attention from Abbott’s real agenda: cutting social services and the public sector and attacking trade unions. To defend our own interests we have to say “no” to Abbott’s human rights abuses against refugees.

Our solutions
We advocate bringing the mines, banks and power companies under public ownership so they can be run democratically for the public good. This would be the only way to ensure we move as fast as possible to 100% renewable energy. It is also the best way to ensure that the wealth produced by the community can be used for the benefit of the community. The detailed policies on our website can be summarised as standing for the billions, not the billionaires.

Preference progressives Socialist Alliance preferences go first to the Greens and other progressive candidates and then to Labor before Liberal. Socialist Alliance never engages in dirty preference deals. We support candidates with policies closest to our own. We need your number one vote in order for your support to register.

Our pledge
We promise, if elected, to reject the high parliamentary salaries and perks and to live instead on the average wage of a skilled worker. All excess will be donated to social justice and environmental campaigns.

Alex Bainbridge is a trained teacher and coordinator of the Perth Activist Centre. He is an active campaigner for refugee rights who joined the socialist movement in 1990. Chris Jenkins is a nursing student at Notre Dame university who campaigns against the federal government’s attacks on education.