Radical fringe party vows to haunt Anthony Albanese as it unveils ambitious plan

Daily Mail​

3 days ago

Victoria's leading socialist party will expand nationwide in hopes of reviving the country's political left and holding Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accountable.
Founded in 2018, the Victorian Socialists decided at a recent meeting of the party's executive to rebrand as a nationwide party - starting with a proposal to shorten its name to 'The Socialists'.
The party will aim to achieve registration across all states and territories - joining only the two major parties, the Greens and the Animal Justice Party in doing so.
Given the opportunity, the party claimed it would abandon tax breaks for Australia's wealthiest individuals and businesses and redistribute wealth to the working class.
It would establish a public builder to construct one million new units of public housing over ten years, a renationalised Commonwealth Bank, a publicly-owned power grid and a wealth tax on billionaires.
Recent VS senate candidate and squatter's right's activist Jordan van den Lamb told Daily Mail Australia the party hopes to hold the Labor leader accountable.
'In the 19th century Marx talked about how communism was a "spectre haunting Europe",' he said.
'We hope to be a spectre haunting Albanese - both by arguing for a socialist vision of society that's better and fairer than anything Labor is offering, and by reminding him of the ideals that he, as someone who historically stood on the left wing of the Labor Party, once held and which he has failed to live up to as Prime Minister.'
Former senior Howard government advisor and political consultant Terry Barnes said Mr van den Lamb appeared to be suffering 'delusions of grandeur'.
'Marxism has turned out to be a discredited ideology so, if they want to stick on the fringe and have delusions of grandeur, good luck to them but they're not going to change Australian politics one iota,' he said.
Andrew Carswell, who served as press secretary to former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, agreed, adding the party would struggle to rival existing minor parties.
'It's very difficult to emerge from being a fringe protest party to a legitimate national minor party. Very few groups have managed to do that,' he said.
'They've either done it through longevity, like One Nation, or they've done it through money like Clive Palmer.'
He said the rebranded party would be lucky to secure a one-and-a-half per cent share of primary votes in a federal election in three years' time.
Mr Barnes was only slightly more optimistic. He claimed a victory for the rebranded party might resemble a five per cent primary vote in a federal or state election in coming years.
VS spokesperson James Plested said the expanded party hoped to deliver the changes Labor was unwilling to make.
'We were happy to see Dutton and his Liberal Party smashed, but we know Labor isn't going to deliver the kind of change Australia desperately needs,' he said.
'There's a class war going on in this country, and both Labor and the Coalition have, over many years, been waging it against workers and the poor on behalf of the capitalist class and the rich,' he said.
Earlier this month, the Victorian Socialists secured swings in a number of lower house seats including in the north Melbourne seats of Cooper (4.9 per cent) and Scullin (3.7 per cent).
In a number of booths in both electorates, the party secured primary vote shares of between 15 and 20 per cent - a significant improvement on year's past.
But Mr Carswell and Mr Barnes said the seven-year-old far-left party will face an uphill battle building on gains in their home state, let alone extending the results nationwide.
'If they're struggling to pick up a good trend towards them in Victoria, then they're going to struggle elsewhere,' Mr Carswell said.
'You would imagine there would be a higher proportion of people that are sympathetic to their political views in Victoria than there will be elsewhere.'
Both agreed socialism was a hard sell in Australia. Mr Carswell said the first thing the party should do is drop the word 'socialists' from its name.
'If they're using that name at the national level and they're getting one to one-and-a-half per cent, I think that's what they should be potentially shooting for,' he said.
Asked how the initiative should be judged three years from now, Mr Plested said: 'Our strength is in our volunteers.'
'For us, that is the key metric: how many people have contributed to our campaign? How many of them remain active in between elections?'
But, as Mr Plested insisted, the Victorian Socialists is more than a protest party and, certainly, more than an organiser. If all goes according to plan, votes will follow.