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Australians go to the polls this weekend to vote in the first national elections since 2019, the ballot determining which party and prime minister will gain power. People there will vote for all the seats in the House of Representatives, and just over half the seats in the Senate. The result that comes from the House of Representatives ultimately decides which party forms the next government, and one party needs to win at least 76 of the 151 seats to form a majority government.

If it fails to gain the required number of seats the closest party must try to win the support of independent MPs or those from minor parties.

Unlike in many other countries, voter turnout in Australia is extremely high, with the 2019 ballot seeing a turnout of 92 percent.

This is because voting is mandatory for the over-18s and comes with a hefty fine if an individual fails to do so, with more than 17.2 million people 96 percent of eligible voters signed up for this year's election.

Currently, the Liberal-National Coalition is in power with 76 seats in the House of Representatives, followed by the opposition Labor Party with 68 seats, and various other independents and minor parties with the remaining seven seats.

Earlier this year, Australian Labor leader Anthony Albanese travelled to the UK to meet with politicians in Westminster, including the former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

He posted a photograph of himself and Mr Corbyn smiling together, with the caption: "Great to catch up with @jeremycorbyn today in #Westminster at a critical time in British politics."

Terry Barnes, a political consultant who writes about Australian politics, shortly after questioned to what extent Mr Corbyn may influence Mr Albanese in a piece for The Spectator titled, 'Could Australias answer to Corbyn become PM?'

He noted how on becoming Labor leader after his second attempt, Mr Albanese "cast around for role models and settled on Jeremy Corbyn."

Mr Barnes wrote: "Indeed, Albanese and Corbyn became friends, and in 2019 Albanese didnt hesitate to tweet a selfie with the then Labour leader, two brothers in socialist arms."

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Like Mr Corbyn, Mr Albanese has his roots in radical socialism, this going back to his student days when he emerged as a key player in the left faction of the Labor Party on the Students' Representative Council.

He led a group within Young Labor that was aligned with the faction's 'Hard Left', and which maintained "links with broader left-wing groups, such as the Communist Party of Australia, People for Nuclear Disarmament and the African National Congress".

His hard-left stance has continued throughout his career, but now, with the prime minister's seat a real prospect, Mr Albanese appears to have toned down his radical roots and taken a more clinical approach to his campaign.

Unlike Mr Corbyn who was often seen walking through the halls of Westminster in his tweed blazer and pens tucked into his shirt pocket, Mr Barnes said: "He has sharpened his image and found a good tailor, lost weight and sought to look the prime ministerial part."

However, he added: "But he hasnt disowned his radical socialist past."

Currently, things are looking hopeful for Mr Albanese and the Labor Party, as according to most of the polls coming out of Australia Labor leads by nearly ten percentage points.

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Many of his campaign pledges have caught the eyes of millions of Australians: Labor has promised to deliver tax relief to more than nine million citizens through tax cuts that would benefit everyone with incomes above AUD$45,000 (25,365).

It has also pledged to increase low-and-middle-income tax offset by AU$420 (236) this year, and promises to build 30,000 new social and affordable housing units over five years much like what Mr Albanese grew up in with his mother in Sydney.

Gender equality, like within Mr Corbyn's manifesto, is also a key issue.

Since the coalition came into power in 2013, Australia has fallen in the global gender gap rankings to its worst-ever ranking, currently placed 50th of 156 countries around the world.

Mr Albanese has moved to try and win the female vote by suggesting Australia closes its gender pay gap and improves career options for women, in the process attacking the coalition under Prime Minister Scott Morrison by saying "women are being left behind".

Mr Morrison has a bad track record of being accused of sexism and misogyny, last year being awarded The Trump Award at the annual Most Sexist Remarks of the Year, prizes handed out to people in Australia each year for outrageous comments.

One of the remarks included his comments on the Women's March4Justice march, where he told Question Time that 'not far from here, such marches, even now, are being met with bullets, but not here in this country'.

LadBible said: "Essentially, he was saying women should at least be happy they're not being shot dead."

Another awkward moment came when he revealed that his wife, Jenny, told him he "had to think about this as a father first" when referring to when Brittany Higgins alleged she was raped at Parliament House.

Meanwhile, Mr Barnes, writing in The Spectator, ended his analysis on a sombre note: "Its clear many Australians either arent put off by Albaneses hard-left roots and personal values, or simply dont care. And an antipodean Corbynites election victory could only give heart to Corbyns ostracised Labour followers in Britain."

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Jeremy Corbyn tipped to influence Australia's 'next' socialist PM: 'He's a role model' - Express

Around the world, in developing and so-called advanced countries alike, millions are facing food insecurity and hunger amid soaring prices and shortages of food.

Last month, the World Bank estimated that food prices will increase by 22.9 percent this year, driven largely by a spike in global wheat prices. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of a basket of food commodities such as sugar, dairy, cereal and vegetable oil, is nearly 30 percent higher than in April 2021.

In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that overall food prices rose 9.5 percent last month, and meat costs are 20 percent higher than in 2021.

As inflation continues to rise, workers wages are failing to keep pace. Calculations by Business Insider last week found that when factoring in inflation, real wage growth for workers in the US in the information technology, utilities, financial activities, mining and logging, manufacturing, construction, education and retail trade sectors decreased from January 2021 through April 2022. Most industries, including trade, manufacturing and construction, saw a decline between three and four percent.

As real wages decline for millions of workers throughout the world, the over 40 percent increase in wheat prices this year has already led to a substantial increase in global hunger. A report released last week by the UNs World Food Programme (WFP), titled A hunger catastrophe, estimated that 811 million people around the world, or one-seventh of humanity, face food insecurity and go to bed hungry every night.

The same report noted that the number of people suffering from acute food insecurity has more than doubled, from 135 million in 2019 to 276 million last year, to an estimated 323 million this year. An estimated 48.9 million people are currently on the very edge of famine and at risk of starvation.

This seismic hunger crisis, the report notes, was driven by four factors: war, ongoing crop failures due to the effects of climate change, economic consequences from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the overall increased cost of food. The WFP remarked that the organization paid 30 percent more in 2022 for the same food products than it paid in 2019.

The increase in food prices led UNICEF on Tuesday to release an emergency child alert, warning that without emergency funding, 600,000 children are at immediate risk of severe acute malnutrition. The report revealed that this leading cause of preventable death in children, also known as severe wasting, has increased by more than 40 percent since 2016.

In a statement accompanying the report, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell wrote, The world is rapidly becoming a virtual tinderbox of preventable child deaths and child suffering from wasting. According to UNICEF/WHO/World Bank statistics, India leads the world in children affected by severe wasting, with over 5.7 million children under the age of five suffering from severe malnutrition.

Following India, some 812,564 children in Indonesia are suffering from severe wasting, putting them at risk of dying from common childhood illnesses. This is followed by 678,925 children in Pakistan, 482,590 in Nigeria and some 327,859 in Bangladesh.

The food crisis is not limited to developing countries. Expressing the globalized nature of modern production and the catastrophic impact of inflation on the working class the world over, a survey conducted in the United Kingdom and released Tuesday by Sky News found that, to alleviate inflation burdens, 27 percent of Britons aged 16 to 75 skipped meals in April. Another 65 percent sought to reduce costs by not turning on their heating.

Speaking before the Treasury Committee at the House of Commons on Monday on the danger of rising inflation, already at a 30-year high of 7 percent, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey frankly admitted that theres a lot of uncertainty.

Bailey confessed, Sorry for being apocalyptic for a moment, but that is a major concern. Verifying Baileys concerns, British retailer Marks & Spencer warned the following day that food price inflation could increase by a further 10 percent in the UK by the end of the year.

In the United States, parents around the country are unable to locate baby formula. In some instances, parents have been forced to drive to Mexico to find formula, while others have nowhere left to turn but the hospital.

On Tuesday, multiple news outlets reported that two children, a toddler and a preschooler, had to be hospitalized at the Le Bonheur Childrens Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee in cases directly related to the formula shortage, Dr. Mark Corkins told WHBQ-TV.

This is literally not just Memphis, not just Tennessee or the South. This is literally all of North America being affected, Corkins said. Dr. Corkins added that he was forced to treat the children with IV fluids and nutrients because neither the hospital nor any stores carried formula the children could tolerate. He said he expects that more children will end up in the hospital unless action is taken soon.

Driving up the cost of food prices is a global fuel shortage that is affecting farmers and workers alike. In the United States on Tuesday, for the first time ever, the auto club AAA reported that the average price for a gallon of gas in the US was more than $4 in all 50 states, with California leading the nation at an average of $6.02 a gallon.

High prices at the pump most profoundly affect lower-income families, as they spend a higher proportion of their earnings on gas and are less likely to drive electric vehicles, Mark Finley, a fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, told Bloomberg.

There are many factors that are contributing to the rise in fuel and food prices, including the ongoing war in Ukraine. When it comes to wheat, Russia and Ukraine account for 30 percent of all global wheat exports. More than 26 countries, including Egypt and Somalia, rely on these two countries for between 50 and 100 percent of their wheat imports. Currently, some 4.5 million tons of wheat are sitting in Black Sea ports, unable to be shipped out due to ongoing hostilities.

Data from the International Food Policy Research Institutes food trade policy tracker shows that since the outbreak of the war, 23 countries have imposed export restrictions on food, affecting over 17 percent of the total calories traded on global markets. In addition to restricting staple foods, countries have placed restrictions on potash and nitrogen fertilizer, leading to increased prices. These price increases have in turn forced farmers globally to compensate by planting less crops, further driving down supply and increasing consumer prices.

While US President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have attempted to pin rising food and gas prices on Russian President Vladimir Putin, repeatedly referring to inflation as Putins price hike, the reality is far different. The war in Ukraine has contributed to further increases, but, as any worker who has had to pay rent or buy groceries knows, prices were soaring long before February 2022.

In reality, the surge in prices and inflation is the outcome of bipartisan monetary policies pursued by both big business parties, particularly since the 2008 financial crisis, during which President Barack Obama, through the Federal Reserve, printed up trillions of dollars to prop up the financial markets and guarantee the wealth of the super-rich.

In March 2020, the US government passed another massive bailout for the financial oligarchy in the form of the multitrillion-dollar CARES Act, which has led to a more than doubling of the Fed balance sheet, from $4.1 trillion in February 2020 to over $8.9 trillion as of May 2022.

The direct intervention of the US government to save the banks and stock prices of the ultra-wealthy has resulted in American billionaires increasing their wealth by 62 percent during the pandemic, while workers nominal wages have risen by only 10 percent over that same period, according to an April report by Oxfam.

The ruling class is determined to make the working class pay for the bailouts of the rich and the cost of the war. While there is supposedly no money for COVID vaccines, child tax credits or pandemic-related unemployment programs, the two big business parties have provided the Ukrainian military with some $53 billion this year.

The surging cost of living and the unavailability of basic goods have triggered mass protests around the world. This has been most vividly seen in the mass movement of workers in Sri Lanka. Similar large-scale protests against food and energy prices have also taken place in Tunisia and Peru.

These protests are coupled with a growing movement of the working class in the United States. Last week, in a powerful show of the power of rank-and-file health care workers, nurses organized independently of the unions to oppose the unjust persecution of Tennessee nurse RaDonda Vaught, forcing the judge to ignore prosecutors demands for an outrageous six-year prison term and instead grant probation.

In Detroit, Michigan last week, 79 percent of Detroit Diesel workers overwhelmingly rejected a contract that would raise wages just 8 percent over the span of six years.

The soaring level of hunger, amid the vast and continual enrichment of the financial oligarchy, is a testament to the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. As workers enter into struggle all over the world, they must demand that the financial oligarchs, not the workers, pay for the crisis of capitalism and fight to replace this irrational social order with socialism.

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Soaring food prices threaten workers with food insecurity and starvation - WSWS

China has a new official political doctrine.

Its called Xi Jinping Thought, and it is everywhere. Schools, newspapers, television, the internet, billboards and banners all trumpet the ideas of Mr. Xi, the countrys president and Communist Party leader.

Officially known as Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, the ideology will soon be given an even more prominent platform: the preamble of Chinas Constitution.

Boiled down, the doctrine is a blueprint for consolidating and strengthening power at three levels: the nation, the party and Mr. Xi himself.

The doctine, like Mr. Xi, is not going anywhere soon. The Party on Sunday abolished the presidential term limit, meaning Mr. Xi could remain in power indefinitely. Heres your guide to understanding the ideas likely to guide China through the next decade, or possibly longer.

The Nation: Make China Great Again

Since Mr. Xi became chairman of the Communist Party in 2012, he has vowed a great rejuvenation to restore China to its ancient prominence and glory.

In recent decades, China has become the worlds second largest economy and a powerhouse of global trade and investment. Xi Jinping Thought promotes taking the next step, making China not only prosperous but also politically powerful.

Never before have the Chinese people been so close to realizing their dreams, Mr. Xi is often quoted as saying. Implicit in the dream of being counted among the worlds powers is the idea of China nearing the United States in strength and influence.

To sustain Chinas global rise, Mr. Xi is modernizing Chinas military and investing heavily in a $1 trillion international trade initiative known as Belt and Road. Under Mr. Xi, China has expanded the size and scope of its military, purged corrupt officers and built military installations in contested waters of the South China Sea.

The Party: Chinas Best (and Only) Option

Mr. Xis nationalist message of China as a strong, highly respected world power resonates with many Chinese.

But the promise of national glory comes with a catch: single-party rule.

Xi Jinping Thought promotes the supremacy of the Communist Party to growing numbers of avid consumers, internet users and world travelers a group fundamentally different from the workers and peasants who were supposed to be the soul of the Communist Revolution.

Mr. Xis philosophy teaches that the goal of a powerful, unified China can be achieved only if the Communist Party stays firmly in control of China. The party, he says, is the solution to Chinas problems, not their source.

Harping on the importance of one-party rule is not new in China. But Mr. Xi has taken aggressive steps to revitalize the Communist Partys grip on business, the news media, the internet, culture and education. The influence of party permeates every corner of society even rap music.

Official news media routinely point to the corruption and failings they see in Western democracies. Why question the Communist Party when the alternative is chaos and corruption? goes the message.

The Man: The National Patriarch

The third piece of Xi Jinping Thought is Mr. Xi himself.

Central to the doctrine is the idea that for China to continue its global rise, and for the party to maintain its rule, a decisive leader is needed at the helm. And the man for the job is Mr. Xi.

A new security deal. The Solomon Islands signed a sweeping security agreement with Chinathat could threaten the stability of the entire Asia-Pacific region. The deal gives Beijing a foothold in an island chain that played a decisive role in World War II and could be used to block vital shipping lanes.

A pause on wealth redistribution. For much of last year, Chinas top leader, Xi Jinping, waged a fierce campaign to narrow social inequalitiesand usher in a new era of common prosperity. Now, as the economic outlook is increasingly clouded, the Communist Party is putting its campaign on the back burner.

Xi Jinping Thought was seen in action this week when the Communist Party announced it would abolish presidential term limits, allowing Mr. Xi to remain in power, perhaps indefinitely.

In propaganda, Mr. Xi is referred to as lingxiu, a reverent Chinese word for a leader that was also used for Mao Zedong. In official imagery he is portrayed as a visionary leader on a historic mission brave, wise and decisive.

Xi Jinping Thought still reveres the teachings of Mao and Karl Marx, but it also links Mr. Xi to even older Chinese traditions, especially Confucianism.

Mao said he wanted to smash the grip of Confucius on China and ignite revolution. But Mr. Xi regularly quotes Confucius and other ancient sages, stressing their teachings on obedience and order, and promoting the idea that the party is the custodian of a 5,000-year-old civilization.

Party propaganda now even equates Mr. Xi to a Confucian patriarch who runs the country as if it were his own family.

And all good Confucian children must observe filial piety.

Read more:
Xi Jinping Thought Explained: A New Ideology for a New Era

A BIG thanks to Caileen Gallagher for her article on Joe Hill (A man sacred and secular, canonical and communist, May 7). Joe Hill was of course executed by the state for the trumped-up charge of murder but in fact he was shot for being a socialist or indeed communist. How good to see the words in print in our newspaper.

Socialists and communists have had many martyrs in the fight against poverty and hunger which capitalism inflicts on the majority of the workers all over the world, but countries never build memorials to them as they do for generals in battles which use workers as expendable fodder. I hope young people are learning the history of socialism and can see the injustice perpetrated by the capitalist class against ordinary workers and therefore carry on the fight for a more equal society.

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To paraphrase Germaine Greer from BBC Question Time some years ago: The reason that politicians get away with so much is because of the demise of the Communist Party, who kept an eye on them. At a time when we are losing the right to demonstrate, we need the youth to step up to the plate and fight for our rights.

Rosemary SmithEast Kilbride

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I hope youngsters are learning about socialism and will carry on the fight - The National

Use the word socialism in the last decade, and youll likely conjure images of political ads claiming takeover of the United States by the countrys coastal elites.

But from the turn of the 20th century through the end of the World War I, socialism was commonplace throughout much of the country, including finding a substantial support system among Oklahomans.

Proportionally it (Oklahoma) was the largest Socialist Party given the small population of the state. It had more dues-paying members thanNew York State at its height, said Stephen Norwood, history professor at the University of Oklahoma. At its peak strength, the Oklahoma Socialist Party could pull close to a third of the vote.

East Coast and Midwestern cities led much of the early socialist movements where the focus fell on those workers in industrialized areas. However leaders of the movement like Oscar Ameringer soon saw an opportunity among those living in rural areas of the country, as well.

When Ameringer came to Oklahoma in 1907, he realized looking around that you could not build a socialist movement on the traditional socialist base, Norwood said. There wasn't much industry in Oklahoma."

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Ameringer, originally from Germany, first found his way into organizing with labor movements in Ohioand Louisiana before moving to Oklahoma to work in the Socialist Party.Instead of focusing on the traditional views driven by Marxs writings and the belief that industrial workers would lead the movement, what Ameringer found in Oklahoma was an impoverished state made up of largely agricultural workers. Many of those workers were tenant farmers who did not own the land on which they worked.

Norwood said after the Land Run, much of the land in the state ended up in the hands of coal companies, oil companies, railroad companiesand other wealthy landowners, leaving small farmers no choice but to rent from them.

That meant that if you're in that situation, you don't have any real hope for a future. You'll be living in poverty generation after generation like sharecroppers in the South, he said. The socialists provided some hope for these people."

An earlyAmeringer meeting took place in Harrah, Norwood said, as he began traveling across the statesharing the socialist platform and message. Norwood said Ameringer describes this meeting in his autobiography.

"He notices that the man whogreeted him and was going to introduce him to the audience was really soaked to the skin, and he asked him why that was, Norwood said. There had been a torrential downpour, the sort that we often have in Oklahoma, and the bridges had been washed out but he wasn't going to miss the opportunity to introduce Oscar Ameringer so he swam across the river.

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Ameringer was impressed by the dedication of the farmers who were living at little more than a subsistence level. However, in addition to changing their message and leaning away from some of the stronger Marxist ideals, the socialists also had to lean into religion for the poor rural populations of Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, rather than denouncing it as other socialists throughout the country did.

They used religious imagery, Norwood said. People come from all around in their wagons, or on horseback or on foot and they're used to listening to ministers preaching, so the socialist orders would adopt the same kind of almost a fire and brimstone, apocalyptic style in presenting the socialist message.

Norwood said unlike the National Socialist Party, Oklahomas socialists did not advocate for the traditional ideal of publicly owned resources, often seen as being on the left-wing of the party or the part of socialism known as red due to its affiliation with Marxist ideals.

Now in Oklahoma, that's not going to work. If you make that your message, you're not going to get anywhere; you have to be more flexible, he said. What they proposed was taking the big landholdings and dividing them into small farms that would be individually owned private farms.

Candidates representing Oklahomas Socialist Party often polled close to a third of the statewide vote in elections. Ameringer himself would capture about23% of the vote in the 1911 race for mayor of Oklahoma City.

In the 1914 gubernatorial elections,Fred W. Holt received 41% and 35% of the vote inMarshall and Roger Mills counties, respectively,where socialism was strongest, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

In 1917 at the height of World War I, a group of tenant farmers in Oklahoma staged a revolt along the banks of the South Canadian River. This uprising, known as the Green Corn Rebellion, was in protest of the countrys forced draft or conscription policy.

According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, men planned to march to Washington and end the war, surviving on the way by eating barbecued beef and roasted green corn, the latter giving the rebellion its name.

It didn't get very far, and it was suppressed posses were quickly recruited and went after these armed men and suppressed the uprising, Norwood said. But the green corn rebels did seize some banks and county offices.

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Norwood said the uprising, while unsuccessful, did denote larger pacifist anti-war sentiments that the rebels were playing off. While the Socialist Party and Ameringer discouraged the uprising andit was not an official socialist sponsored act, it led to the first wave of the partys decline.

"It's after 1920 or so it declines very fast, Norwood said. "The peak is really in the 1910s. Historically, the party itself is just really a shell after 1932."

There was a brief resurgence with the election of Franklin DelanoRoosevelt, a Democrat whounited many of the people who had supported socialism, includingsmall farmers, labor unionsand African Americans.

Like the rest of the country, Oklahoma saw the development of unions with the growth of the socialist movement. Most of Oklahoma's unions found their start with socialist leaders like Ameringer.

The Oklahoma Renters Union and Twin-Territorial Federation of Labor, later the Oklahoma Federation of Labor, were among the earliest established in the state. These unions like their national counterparts led pushes to improve working conditions for workers across a number of industries.

Ameringer and many leaders in the socialist movement across the nation were also advocates for African American rights. However, in Oklahoma this is one area where the party largely ignored progress, Norwood said. While Ameringer pushed to overturn Oklahomas grandfather clause, an amendment to the states constitution that took the right to vote away from most Black residents, many other socialists were not concerned with these matters.

That's always a problem in that period andfor labor organizing generally is that there is a significant amount of racism among poor whites, Norwood said.

More: Democratic US Senate candidate Madison Horn gets to stay on ballot in Oklahoma

The development of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union during the Great Depression, an interracial union that originated in Arkansasbut quickly spread to include many Oklahoma farmers, would begin a shift in attitudes.

Norwood said racism still existed in the Socialist Party, but the party did go beyond the two major parties in their proposals on civil rights. As the civil rights movement advanced, more socialist leaders in the African American community emerged, including Bayerd Rustin, the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.

I think the one thing that the socialists probablyput out there is allpeople are human beings deserving to be treated with dignity, to have a fair shake in life, to have some protection against sudden impoverishment.

Norwood says socialism todayis a "watered down" form of the earlier movement, adopted by others parties, including those who would now classify themselves as liberal Democrats or leftists.

Socialism as it's defined now is also not quite what it used to be, Norwood said. The classic definition of socialism is the public ownership of the means of production and distribution. Anyone calling themselves socialists now isnt going that far;it's more building a safety net.

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How Oklahoma's Socialist party shaped the state - Oklahoman.com