The Sound of Solidarity

New Caledonia is less than 1500 kilometres from Brisbane but it's essentially a French colony. France is pushing ahead with a referendum on independence despite a COVID surge, hoping to kill off the drive for Kanak liberation. Nic Maclellan is a journalist who specialises in Pacific affairs. He explains the background to the vote, its links to French domestic politics and France's imperialist inte...

The Coalition government has announced its support for the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which has been used to mute support for Palestine and muzzle the left overseas. We talk about the issues with Rob Ferguson, a Palestine solidarity activist and SWP member in Britain, who has written about the misuse of the IHRA definition.

Martin Empson and Erima Dall discuss the failure of the COP26 summit and what socialists say needs to be done. Martin is a socialist and climate activist from Britain and the editor of the book System Change not Climate Change: A Revolutionary Response to Environmental Crisis. Erima is a climate activist and a member of the Maritime Union of Australia and Solidarity.

Sarah Thorne destroys the so-called environmental case for nuclear power, arguing that the industry is dangerous, dirty and no alternative to renewables, and that it exists primarily to support the production of nuclear weapons. Sarah is an activist with Workers for Climate Action in Melbourne and a member of Solidarity.

Trans people face high rates of violence, catastrophic suicide rates and frequent exclusion from public life. But trans people and their allies are organising and resisting. We talk about the issues with Dani Cotton, a member of the National Tertiary Education Union, an activist with the NTEU casuals caucus at the University of Sydney, and a member of Solidarity.

Nearly 467,000 people in Australia rely on support from the National Disability Insurance Scheme, or NDIS. We talk to two experts about problems with the system and about alternatives. Professor Gemma Carey is the Academic Director of the Centre for Social Impact at the University of New South Wales. And "Jim" works in the NDIS. He’s a workplace delegate with the Australian Services Union.

The new military pact with the US and the UK (AUKUS), which includes the purchase of nuclear-powered submarines, makes a disastrous war with China more likely. Many have described the deal as a surrender of Australian sovereignty and call for an independent foreign policy. But as Phil Griffiths explained at a recent Solidarity forum, Australia's rulers have always been enthusiastic to take part in...

Solidarity hosted a forum to discuss how to respond to vaccine mandates. The discussion was opened by Geraldine Fela, a member of the NTEU branch committee at the University of Melbourne and a member of Solidarity. Then we heard from Argyri Erotokritou, a doctor in Athens, a health union activist and a member of SEK (the Socialist Workers Party), Solidarity's sister organisation in Greece, who has...

NAPLAN testing in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 is supposed to improve school standards. But 13 years after it was introduced, it's obvious that NAPLAN distorts students' education, demoralises teachers and entrenches inequality. We talk to Jonathan Sherlock about the issues. Jono is a teacher at Mount Alexander College in Melbourne, a workplace delegate with the Australian Education Union and a member of S...

Celeste Liddle is an Arrernte woman, a union activist, social commentator and the Greens candidate for the federal seat of Cooper in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. She has spoken out regularly against the heavy policing of the pandemic. We talk to her about the growth in heavy-handed police tactics, the need to fight for social support for those suffering under lockdown, and why when it comes...

On the day that Morrison announced the AUKUS military pact and the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, Solidarity hosted a forum with Clinton Fernandes, Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of NSW in Canberra and author of Island off the coast of Asia: Instruments of statecraft in Australian foreign policy. Ian Rintoul from Solidarity opened the conversation ab...

Solidarity recently hosted a forum on the struggle for Palestinian liberation. We were joined by Antony Loewenstein, independent journalist and author of books including After Zionism: One State For Israel And Palestine and My Israel Question. Following Antony's talk, we also heard from Caitlin Doyle, a refugee and climate activist and a member of Solidarity. We publish their presentations here.

Police and soldiers are on the streets in growing numbers, enforcing lockdowns. What are the alternatives? We talk to Vicki Sentas, a senior lecturer in law at the University of NSW who writes on the subject of COVID and policing, and Cooper Forsyth, a casual worker at the Annette Kellerman pool in the Sydney suburb of Enmore, a member of the United Workers Union and of Solidarity, who recently he...

Spurred by the latest round of COVID crisis in Malaysia, resistance is stirring against poverty and repression. Doctors walked off the job on 26 July and activists have rallied on the streets against the government of Prime Minister Mahiaddin Yassin. We talk to Aisyah Huzani, an activist based in Kuala Lumpur, and Jason Wong, a Malaysian student studying in Melbourne and a member of Solidarity, ab...

The struggle for Palestinian liberation continues. We talk to Jamal Nabulsi, a diaspora Palestinian writer and researcher living in Meanjin/Brisbane, about the patterns of resistance, the prospect of a Palestinian state, and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The government is talking about economic recovery but there are still three million Australians living in poverty. We talk to former Centrelink worker and now university researcher Marcus Banks, and to Lachlan McGowan from the Australian Unemployed Workers Union, about poverty in Australia today and how we can abolish it.

We talk to Penny McCall-Howard about the myths behind Morrison's "gas-fuelled recovery". Penny, who is the national research officer with the Maritime Union of Australia and a member of Solidarity, discusses why we need to ditch gas, why the private energy sector cannot manage a transition to renewables, and what a just transition for workers would look like.

The pandemic has hit workers worst of all. In this episode we talk to Kosmos Samaras, a former Victorian ALP campaign director, and Chris Breen, a teacher union activist and Solidarity member, about the impact of the pandemic on workers in Melbourne. Kos grew up in the northern working class suburb of Broadmeadows and Chris works there.

We talk to Joe Carolan, a socialist and union organiser in Aotearoa / New Zealand about politics under the Ardern government, ranging across Maori and union struggles, the Christchurch massacre, and the problems facing migrants and refugees. 

We talk to longtime refugee activist Ian Rintoul about the situation for refugees and asylum-seekers, the power of protest and the way forward for the movement.

We talk to Veronica Koman, an Indonesia human rights lawyer exiled in Australia, about the struggle for liberation in West Papua and the rise of solidarity within Indonesia.