PARTISAN!

Sylvia Siebel, Brisbane

Three weeks ago, the Queensland branch of the Socialist Party, officially known as the “Queensland Socialists” (QS or QSocs) announced their candidate for the Stafford by-election on the 16^th of May, called following the sudden death of previous incumbent Labor-come-independent Jimmy Sullivan. Stafford-based Socialist Alternative member Liam Parry was preselected as the candidate by QSocs members based in the nominally safe Labor seat comfortably nestled in suburban inner-northern Brisbane.

Although QSocs were in the final stages of registering as a party at the moment the election was called (thus putting a pause on the party registration process, as per Queensland electoral law), it is the first election that the Queensland Socialists are participating in, even if the candidate must be listed on the ballot as an “Independent”. This is a huge milestone for the Queensland branch, and will help to steel the party’s electoral apparatus in advance of the “triple election year” of 2028, in which voters in the state will more than likely (according to the latest possible date for each election), head to the polls to vote for all three levels of government within the same calendar year.

The choice of Liam as a parliamentary candidate is not surprising, given that he was the first person arrested under Queensland’s new so-called “hate speech laws” aimed to repress the Palestine solidarity movement by effectively outlawing the public usage of specific pro-Palestine slogans. Strategically, it was a smart decision for Socialist Alternative to challenge the laws as soon as they were set to come in, as was getting comrade Liam arrested for using a banned phrase within an hour of the law being passed through Parliament. SAlt then pushing for the SP to rally around Parry as the party’s first candidate in Queensland was therefore a wise move in the context of the struggle.

Whilst the campaign has so far focused on his arrest and acted as a protest against the Crisafulli government’s repression, in terms of policy, the party’s platform is as shallow and non-existent as it is in the rest of the country. The Queensland branch does not have a platform, and party propaganda such as leaflets are adorned with the few policies held by the party, shortened to the point of effectively being mere slogans, despite for the most part being worthy of a place in a (hypothetical) party program. These include putting politicians on a worker’s wage, rent freezes, and more funding for hospitals and schools. More controversial is the party’s new focus on opposing the rural petit-bourgeois One Nation, who have no meaningful basis for support in most areas The Socialists can seriously consider running at this time, least of all in Stafford.

In the interests of progressing towards necessary re-groupment, all communist organisations in Brisbane should lend their (not uncritical) support to Liam’s campaign, regardless of their existing relationship to the Socialist Party. This has obviously failed to eventuate, and no such principled outlook will develop for some time as the socialist movement remains bestrode by sectarianism. In the meantime, however, unorganised socialists interested in starting to rebuild a fighting movement of the working class should join the Socialist Party and the Communist Caucus and lend their support to the campaign to get Liam Parry elected to Parliament.