* provided you have decently well functioning public service, and it's not a country with high levels of corruption.

I hold the belief that things being equal there is almost no situation in which privatisation of public services has ever been a positive for the average person.

However, I'm keen to hear arguments, examples or studies where privatisation has gone well [1], and has been a net positive to society, and could not have been performed by the government.

I don't believe there are such examples, and I believe (with too many real world examples to list) that privatisation always leads to enshittification and budget blow outs eventually because private companies exist to maximise profits.

This community (!aussocialism@aussie.zone) does not delete comments that disagree with socialism, so you're very much encouraged to share your views respectfully.

[1] for countries that have some level of democracy at that point in history i.e. I'm not really interested in the example of China becoming capitalist, 1. because Chinese "socialism" was never control of society by the workers, and was (and still is) a top-down hierarchical dictatorship - which had a ruling class determined by party position, and now also determined by wealth. No wonder that things were being run so poorly before they decided to be capitalist. Dictatorships don't usually breed very good conditions for sensible management. 2. They still have most core government services being administered by government departments.

Cross-posted to AustralianPolitics: https://aussie.zone/post/33395217

Mderator, remove if you think this opinion piece is not relevant enough to this comunity. I thought what the author says is of importance, e.g.

For a populace already demoralized by political gridlock, economic precarity, and an impenetrable morass of disinformation, resistance can feel like too much work. The only people left with any ambition are those bent on abusing it. When cynicism slides into compliance, the autocrat has won.

How do we fight this autocracy-enabling cynicism? We don’t have to fool ourselves that things are better than they are. It is “possible to imagine situations where we might be in a state of despair without being in the state of giving up”, writes the University of St Andrews philosopher Mara Van Der Lugt in Hopeful Pessimism. Similarly, the British left collective Salvage proposes “hard-won pessimism”. This “is neither cynicism nor hopelessness: it is about our clear-sighted analysis – of capitalism, of the class system, of the centrality of this antagonism to our lives – that we refuse to gloss over the scale of the difficulties we continue to face”. That analysis recognizes winnable battles and makes room for celebration of victories.

Join us at 3pm on Saturday 16th May at Coburg Town Hall to send a clear message: Melbourne Says No to Hanson.

We’re bringing together hundreds of socialists and anti-racists to hear from legendary Aboriginal activist Dr Gary Foley and Muslim Votes Matters spokesperson Ghaith Krayem. They will be joined by our state election candidate for Pascoe Vale Yasemin Shamsili alongside Omar Hassan, candidate for Northern Metro and host of The Party Line podcast. After the speakers, you will get the chance to have your say as our local branches organise their next activities.

Get your ticket for this unmissable event now - here. 

Pauline Hanson’s racist One Nation party has become a serious threat to Victorians. One Nation are consistently polling above the Liberals, a close second to an unpopular Labor government in Victoria. With just six months until the state election in November, the potential of a One Nation coalition government is more real than ever.

Hanson has the support of high-profile figures on the right including Gina Rinehart, and a growing coterie of rich right-wing donors. The party won four seats in the South Australian election with more than 250,000 votes. This result provides access to offices, staff and millions in public funding. At the same time, Liberal leader Angus Taylor is copying Hanson’s policies and has announced that an incoming Liberal government would implement an explicitly racist immigration policy. These disgusting politics need to be fought.

While Labor accuse One Nation of being ‘divisive’, they can not be relied on to do anything to challenge racism and the right. We remember how Labor adopted John Howard’s brutal policy of imprisonment and torture of refugees. We are witnessing Jacinta Allan bragging about locking up children under her new “adult time for adult crime” laws. We know that children in prison today are disproportionately from families of colour. At a federal level, we continue to see Albanese offer his full support to the US-Israeli war machine and willingly spend billions on nuclear attack submarines while implementing savage cuts to NDIS funding. Labor shamefully serves the interests of the rich while working-class people suffer one of the worst cost-of-living crises in generations.

We have already started to take action. We want to continue to build a movement of anti-racists, unionists, and socialists who can push back against Hanson’s bigotry. Over two campaign days so far, hundreds of Victorian Socialists volunteers have spoken to working-class people about our campaign and our vision for a socialist society. Get involved today. 

Chris Elenor disappeared for 6 months to run a secret radio during the occupation of East Timor.

He kept silent for 25 years.

Socialist Alternative leaders in the new electoral front want to ban caucuses from identifying with the party in public. NSW Socialists member Clarrie Lewis – writing in a personal capacity – argues this is a tipping point in defining the organisation’s democratic culture.

After the caucus publicly supported an ‘End the Blockade of Cuba’ demonstration in March, the secretary wrote insisting that Bread & Roses remove the reference to NSW Socialist Party from its logo.

Bread & Roses caucus members were told:

“The Bread and Roses Caucus has included NSW Socialists Party on its logo. I’m writing to inform you that this will need to be removed.”

[...]

“There are a whole series of political and legal implications if this is not adhered to. We are unable to authorise material produced by an internal grouping.”

Attempts to justify this restriction by invoking unspecified “political and legal implications” is a complete fabrication. A banner that says “Bread & Roses – NSW Socialist Party” is not an attempt to make statements under the NSW Electoral Act in the name of the registered party (New South Wales Soc). No reasonable person would think this.

The present dispute is therefore not about logos.

It is about what kind of political organisation NSW Socialists intends to become.

Crossposting from /r/AustralianSocialism

In this episode of Solidarity’s weekly podcast, David Glanz looks at why the US and Australia invaded Iraq in 2003, how it blew up in their faces and how anti-war activists responded to the crisis. He draws lessons for opposing war today.

Episode description:

David Glanz looks at why the US and Australia invaded Iraq in 2003, how it blew up in their faces and how anti-war activists responded to the crisis. He draws lessons for opposing war today.

Read more about the Iraq War.

Find out more about Solidarity.

This talk was given at a Solidarity meeting in Melbourne on 26 March 2026. The background noise in the first half of the talk was caused by an exceptionally heavy rain burst. Blame global warming.

You can find some of the headlines in Trove:

Some of you may have heard this interview last night. Worth Listening to.

This was published a couple of weeks ago, but I hadn't seen it here. I think it's an excellent pitch.

I'm only aware of one South Australian aussie.zone poster here so far, so this might be a quiet post, but I'm interested to see what lessons socialists are taking on board from their fresh first foray into the state elections.

Socialist Alliance put forward Anne McMenamin for Port Adelaide, while SA Socialists put forward Ahmed Azhar for Croydon and Leila Clendon for Enfield. As neither party was registered at the deadline, all three candidates were listed as Independent.

From the outside, and while the counts are ongoing, primary vote counts are listed:

• Anne McMenamin: 1.6% (300)
• Leila Clendon: 5.6% (948)
• Ahmed Azhar: 7.2% (1161)

What factors do we believe have contributed towards these counts? Do members of either organisation have insights? (Whether aussie.zone users or external publications)

From the outside, I can note that these results are not merely splitting The Greens – the total percentage of voters choosing either socialist or Greens is a net increase in all three seats (and overall).

@star@aussie.zone posted a podcast a few weeks ago and I found this episode particularly relevant:

In 1996, newly elected politician Pauline Hanson swept to national prominence after making an extraordinarily racist and inflammatory maiden speech in federal parliament attacking Aboriginal people and Asian-Australians. [...] Capitalising on her sudden celebrity status, Hanson announced plans to form a new political party, One Nation, which would have local branches and a mass membership, and polls indicated she would win widespread electoral support.

Anti-racists, however, had other ideas. Huge anti-Hanson rallies were organised in towns and cities across the country, and every attempt to run a public meeting featuring Hanson or to build a local party branch was met with large and militant protests that disrupted and often shut her meetings down. Support for One Nation dwindled and by 1999 the party had collapsed, never to return to its previous strength and prominence.

In this episode we chat with Vashti Fox, a socialist and anti-fascist campaigner, about the extraordinary movement to defeat Pauline Hanson and prevent the formation of a mass, racist party in Australia.

You can read some of Vashti’s work here, and you can view footage of protests against Pauline Hanson here and here (some of which is fairly biased and unfortunately also features an interview with Hanson, but the protest footage itself is excellent).

Got this email from Victorian Socialists about their candidate in Yan Yean. They'll be at the upcoming community festival at the Whittlesea Council grounds at Ferres Blvd this Sunday:

My name is Andrew, and I’m your local Coordinator, based in Mernda. There are two opportunities to meet other members and start getting involved I want to let you know about:

Firstly, this Sunday is the Whittlesea Community Festival, at the Civic Centre Lawns in South Morang. Our friends from VS Thomastown have arranged a stall - come say g’day. We’ll be chatting to locals about Victorian Socialists, and how we’re combating the rise of the far right.

Secondly, I’m calling a meeting of VS Yan Yean members (that’s you!) for Sunday 12 April, in Mernda (precise location TBC). Chuck it in your diary and I’ll send more details in the coming weeks.

If Sundays don’t work for you please let me know - there will be plenty more occasions to meet, and I can work around your availability.

And if you’re coming this Sunday send me an email or a text (0488 396 122) so I know to look out for you.

I’m looking forward to meeting you all.

In solidarity,

Andrew Bell Yan Yean

I might get around later to posting more union songs from this site.

In the 1940s, the Communist Party of Australia was approaching the peak of its power as the largest and most influential left-wing organisation in Australian history.

The Communist Party of Australia demanded far more of its members than an average political organisation. To be a communist, you were expected not just to become an activist and an organiser, but to read and study deeply, and to understand often complex theoretical texts. And so with thousands of new members flocking to it, the Communist Party established one of the most ambitious systems of adult education ever seen in Australia – the Marx Schools.

Based in several capital cities, the Marx Schools ran from 10am to 10pm every day of the week, and offered CPA members and sympathisers extensive, in-depth courses in socialist and Marxist theory, in the practicalities of union organising, in how to chair meetings and give public speeches, in anti-fascism and women’s rights, and in art, economics, philosophy and literature. With a pedagogy far more advanced and participatory than most universities, and in an era when most Australians had no formal education beyond age 13 or 14, the Marx Schools taught thousands of workers how to both understand the world and how to change it.

To discuss this remarkable experiment in Australian adult education, we’re joined in this episode by Bob Boughton, a former academic and social worker who’s done extensive research on the Marx Schools.

Boughton’s PhD thesis about adult education in the Communist Party of Australia:

https://www.academia.edu/19259023/Educating_the_Educators_The_Communist_Party_of_Australia_and_Its_Influence_on_Australian_Adult_Education

One notable difference in Australia's economic conditions is our near-compulsory superannuation retirement saving funds, and a few people I've talked to consider it to be one of the bigger unique challenges socialist movements will face in Australia.

An important aspect of it is that, assuming one will eventually retire, it attaches millions of working people directly to the stock market, and threats to stock prices can easily agitate workers against a government. In some ways, it systemically blurs class lines in a way which most other countries don't have to deal with.

I've heard one comrade suggest that, so long as super exists, funds could be set up to encourage financial investment in socialist-aligned causes such as worker cooperatives, however I don't know enough to judge how this could play out.

Do you believe superannuation is a notable hurdle to our country's socialist movement? And if so, how should we try approaching it?

I can't reupload the images from Instagram for now: the list of speakers includes Lidia Thorpe, a CPSU-SPSF state secretary, members of the Greens and Labor, and more, plus a great big list of org endorsements. 6:30pm @ Trades Hall

With some luck a Vic comrade on aussie.zone can tell us how it goes.

(15-02-2026)

ALP members must support these rebel MPs and force a repeal of these anti-democratic protest laws. The South Coast Labour Council posted a call by the President of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Timothy Roberts:

“We call on the Labor caucus to either bring this Premier to heel or turf him out.”

How the NSW Left will square this circle remains to be seen, but ALP activists must make it increasingly difficult for the NSW Government to carry on like this. An open rebellion is required.

The article also has a section critisising the Palestine Action Group's organisation of protests, as well as some socialist groups seeking to fill the gap:

The high political stakes of this demonstration demanded discipline, democratic transparency and collective planning; instead, the rally drifted.

X-Posted to:

• !melbourne@aussie.zone

Some selected quotes from the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Theatre,_Sydney

The New Theatre in Sydney is the oldest theatre company in continuous production in New South Wales.

Themes explored in the productions were mostly related to exploitation of the working class, sexism, racism in Australia, and against war.

[In 1936, both Sydney's New Theatre League and Melbourne's New Theatre] staged first Clifford Odets' play Waiting for Lefty, with the purpose of raising money for strikers, to great acclaim. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, then prepared to stage his play Till the Day I Die. After the German Consul General complained to the Commonwealth Government, the play was banned by Frank Chaffey, then Chief Secretary, but the theatre defied the ban and staged the play in private premises.

The Introduction page of their own wiki site gives a history of their various locations, as well as other cities which started similar projects, and their historical affiliations:

Sydney New Theatre is the sole survivor of similar groups which operated in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Newcastle and Lithgow. At Easter 1939 Sydney played host to the first New Theatre League Conference (attended by Melbourne and Newcastle).

In the 1930s the organisation was affiliated with New Theatre USA, the British Drama League (BDL), the Workers' Educational Association (WEA), the Australian Youth Council, the Central Cultural Council of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), and 15 trade unions.

I think it's worth having a small conversation about setting up this place properly. I've been in a few socialist chat rooms, forums, and more, many turning out great, but a lot of the ones that failed or devolved into drama did so because there was just an impulsive decision it should exist, and then reacting to problems after they've arisen.

Now obviously aussie.zone is casual and light, don't even bother writing a manifesto no visitors will read before posting. This is about the basics. In fact, even this OP might be too long.

Because this community is still small, we can have a go at discussing and reaching a consensus on fundamental ideas, like:

• Why we should exist: what usefulness this community serves for aussie.zone and other Aussie Lemmy users (who already have access to general socialist comms on other instances, and who doesn't want political drama pushed upon this lovely place)
• What kind of content and discussion we want to see here, and what we don't want to see
• Community rules to push us in that direction
• Other mechanical and cultural elements to promote these, like avatar and banner choice, choice of pinned threads (perhaps a reading list?), automoderation ideas.
• Other?

I also encourage discussion on what you don't want to see from moderators. The bottom line is, on everywhere from Lemmy, reddit, Discord and any other place with staff, most are there to fill a position and aren't given any training or briefing on expectations. I've seen some communities wait until they get a flood of unexpected attention, bring on new moderators without any instruction, then the new moderators start micromanaging discussion, banning people for flimsy or unclear reasons, or adding personal insults in bans, and other negligent or abusive behaviour. For that reason, I would like for us to also consider setting up some basic expectations for moderators. (Honestly I think all the volunteers so far seem chill, and moderation will be pretty minimal, but this is so much easier to figure out before any drama hits.)

I dunno what rules we want to have in this community, but thought I'd kick things off by this article I read, which forbodes 2026. A year (I suspect) that the centre right Labor governments and right wing LNP governments clamp down on political speech.

I wonder how long before the new federal hate speech laws are used to silence left wing