The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) calls on workers and residents to unite against the Victorian Labor government’s plan to demolish 44 Melbourne public housing towers. We are holding a public meeting, in Melbourne and online, to discuss how to take forward this struggle. It is titled: “Ban Labor’s demolition of Melbourne’s public housing towers! Fight for a socialist housing program!”
WHEN: 3:00 p.m., Sunday 27 July
WHERE: Supper Room, Kensington Town Hall, 30-34 Bellair Street, Kensington VIC 3031
The demolitions will displace about 10,000 people from more than 6,600 homes. This is the largest destruction of public housing in Australia’s history. We urge residents and workers to form rank-and-file committees to organise resistance, independent of the trade unions and parliamentary parties.
Time is of the essence. The first five towers are set to be demolished this year. Two have already been emptied. Labor aims to rid valuable inner-city real estate of workers and the poor to create new profit opportunities for property developers and parasitic financiers.
Many displaced residents are migrant families, elderly or disabled. They are being forced to relocate to the city’s fringes, severing their ties to jobs, schools and communities. Even the promised “right of return” has been undermined, while rent caps are set to rise and security of tenure decline.
The SEP condemns the role of the CFMEU and other unions, which have occasionally made vague criticisms of the demolitions, while refusing to mobilise their members to halt the demolitions. The unions, tightly integrated with the Labor Party and the capitalist state, are actively suppressing opposition. Meanwhile, the Greens and fake left organisations like Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative are attempting to channel opposition to Labor’s plan behind useless appeals to parliament.
The SEP’s perspective is the opposite of this illusion.
To stop the destruction of public housing, workers will have to take matters into their own hands. Through rank-and-file committees, building workers can fight for a sector-wide ban on demolition work at the towers, as well as broader actions against those companies involved in the destructive operation, and the Labor government itself.
The SEP proposes as initial demands to be fought for by rank-and-file committees of residents and workers:
* Halt the demolition! Hands off public housing! Invest public funds to upgrade and refurbish all public housing.
* Expropriate vacant investment properties that are being hoarded for profit—make these available to the homeless.
* Cap rents and mortgage repayments to 25 percent of a family’s income.
* Allocate billions of dollars for the construction of new high-quality public housing to provide for those currently on waiting lists and everyone in dire need of secure housing.
The attack on housing is part of a wider assault on workers’ rights and social services amid a global push by capitalist governments for war and austerity.
In Victoria, Labor is sacking thousands of public sector workers and withholding billions of dollars in funding for schools, to make the working class pay for the state budget deficit. The demolitions are one plank of this agenda. Similar measures are being carried out in other states, including a parallel destruction of public housing by the New South Wales Labor government in the inner-Sydney suburb of Waterloo.
Nationally, Labor’s housing policy is entirely geared to the interests of the property developers and the banks. While hundreds of billions are being made available for the military, for preparations for war against China, and the ultra-wealthy are richer than ever before, Labor claims there is “no money” to address the massive cost-of-living and social crisis afflicting ordinary people.
That underscores the reality that workers can only defend their social rights, through a political struggle against the Labor governments, the entire political establishment and the capitalist system they defend. The only way to secure the right to decent, affordable housing for all is through a frontal assault on the wealth of the banks and the major corporations.
That means a fight for socialism, and the establishment of a workers’ government which would reorganise society to meet social need, not private profit.
Join our meeting to discuss how you can become involved in this struggle. Invite your friends, family, co-workers and classmates!