Taylor Hernan, Socialist Equality Party candidate for the Senate in Victoria, spoke last Saturday at a Neighbourhood Action Committee meeting organised to discuss the way forward in the fight against the planned demolition of public housing towers across Melbourne.

It was the second meeting of the Neighbourhood Action Committee (NAC) since it was established at a forum organised by the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) last month. The state Labor government’s sell-off of 44 towers in Melbourne threatens about 10,000 residents with displacement, many of whom are immigrants, and other vulnerable and oppressed sections of the working class.

“I fully endorse the formation of the Neighbourhood Action Committee, and its fight against Labor’s criminal demolition of the public housing towers,” Hernan told public housing residents and others at the meeting.

The SEP candidate emphasised that the attack on public housing is part of a broader assault on the living and social conditions of workers globally. “The Socialist Equality Party is fighting for the development of independent rank-and-file committees to defend jobs and to oppose the ever-deepening attacks on healthcare and education,” Hernan said.

He explained that the gutting of essential social services was being carried out to allow a massive expansion of militarism in preparation for war. “The central aspect of the SEP election campaign is the development of an international movement against war,” he said. “Everything has been done and will be done during the election campaign to keep war off the agenda. All of the major parties—Labor, Liberal and the Greens—support war. And whoever wins the election will deepen the assault on the working class.”

Hernan also spoke on the ongoing assault on refugees, many of whom in Australia are public housing residents. He stated: “We call for an end to the persecution of refugees, which has gone on for decades. Refugees ought to have the right to full citizenship, to live and work where they please. The Labor and Liberal parties have already passed Trump-like legislation enabling them to deport up to 80,000 immigrants from Australia.”

The SEP candidate concluded by emphasising the need for a socialist perspective, oriented to the working class, to defeat the assault on public housing residents.

“Government policies increasingly have the character of social neglect and social murder,” he stated. “Housing, healthcare and education are basic, universal human rights. The decision by the Victorian state Labor government to demolish the public housing towers is socially and politically criminal—it is directly placing profit above the interest of thousands of people. The SEP will use the election to assist in the building of this committee, and in building a struggle to prevent the demolition of the towers. This fight can only be successful through the broader mobilisation of sections of the working class—building workers, teachers, healthcare workers and others in the community who want to take up a fight.”

Hernan was warmly received by the NAC meeting participants, which included more than 20 youth and workers, including residents from some of the public housing towers slated for demolition.

Sue Phillips, a member of the SEP’s National Committee, chaired the event. She noted that a similar plan to demolish government commission housing is taking place in Sydney’s working-class suburb Waterloo, and also pointed to a demolition last week of three public housing towers in Glasgow, Scotland.

Phillips said the brutal, anti-working-class policies increasingly adopted by governments worldwide were most sharply expressed in the administration of Donald Trump in the US.

“Trump is not just an American phenomenon, nor is Australia an exception to this global shift,” she explained. “In the coming weeks, in the federal election, what we will hear from Albanese, Dutton, and all of them is lies, misinformation and half-truths. Nothing will be resolved for the working class coming out of the election, whether it be the cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis, none of this will be resolved whoever comes to power.”

Peter Byrne, an architect and long-standing member of the SEP, presented the main report to the meeting. He exposed as a fraud the Labor government claims that the public housing towers are rundown and therefore need to be demolished. He highlighted the corporate interests, defended by both Labor and the Liberal National Coalition, that are behind the drive to replace public housing with social housing which would be more expensive, less liveable and more profitable for real estate companies.

For this reason, Byrne emphasised that the marches, meetings and pleas to the government that have been led by the Greens and fake-left organisations are a political dead-end.

In the discussion, public housing residents and other members of the NAC made important contributions.

Margaret Rees, a member of the SEP for more than five decades, spoke about the court decision handed down on Friday which she attended with a resident. After just seven minutes, Rees reported, court justice Melinda Richards ruled against the class action launched by a resident against the demolition and backed the government’s false claims that the public housing towers should be demolished for safety reasons.

“In her final judgement yesterday, she said there was no realistic possibility that Homes Victoria [the state government body which oversees housing] would have made a different decision, even if they had consulted the residents,” Rees reported. “She claimed there could only be a substantial increase in housing by demolishing the towers. Peter has already gone through what a lie that is.”

A public housing resident named Kate, originally from Somalia, spoke about her experiences living at the towers for more than 20 years. She denounced the government for forcing residents out. “Our children, they don’t have a place to go to school,” she said. “And the hospitals—we have a lot of people that have sickness, kidney failure, heart problems—now we don’t know the right place to go. And we don’t know, to be honest, what to do. We’re all suffering.”

She said that the residents of the towers had developed a close-knit community over decades, but are now being forced to move to distant suburbs of Melbourne: “It doesn’t matter where I come from—whether white or black or Asian—we are one family. But now some people have to go to Dandenong, or Truganina. You have no choice.”

Kylie, another resident, delivered a passionate contribution in which she spoke about her neighbours—a young family with two children. The mother was eight-months pregnant with a third—and they were forced to move out of the towers.

“This is where my anger has turned to hate for Homes Victoria,” she said. “My neighbours would have had their baby by now, but I don’t know how they’re doing. I don’t know where they are. My neighbour said to me before they left that she’s scared.”

Kylie spoke about the strong community ties that had been built, including other residents giving her food when she was struggling financially. All of this, she said, is being broken up.

Helen is another resident originally from Somalia. She told an SEP member: “I’ve been here 21 years. I have small kids. I’m by myself, and at one stage I had to go to the hospital with one of my kids. So I called a neighbour and she said, ‘You have to go and I will look after your other child.’ She came for three days to look after my kid as I had to take the other one to hospital. That is what it’s like in this community.”

She continued: “If the community is together that can happen, but if we are all far away, it won’t. If she had a problem, I would have done the same for her. Housing Victoria came around and they told us that we could not say no [to relocation]. They say you have to listen to us, you have to accept that you’re moving.”

Noor, who spoke at the SEP’s forum last month, is also originally from Somalia and grew up in the public housing towers when his family came to Australia about 20 years ago. “They’re dispersing everyone sporadically and that’s not how communities are made,” he told the meeting.

He related the brutal measures taken by the government to demolish the public housing towers to the broader attacks being carried out against workers internationally due to profit interests: “I can see that in America, where Donald Trump has appointed the billionaires to run the government, like Elon Musk. You can see it’s the billionaires, it’s the capitalists that are running the government.”

He continued: “The government is lying to us. I’m here to support the Socialist Equality Party because they’re the only group at the moment that are supporting us to have our own voice to be able to speak.”

NAC members at the meeting enthusiastically volunteered to join campaigns and discussions at building sites, schools, universities and working-class areas as part of the fight to build a broad-based movement against the attack on public housing.

Authorised by Cheryl Crisp for the Socialist Equality Party, Level 1/457-459 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, NSW, 2010, Australia.