Latest news with #JordanvandenLamb
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Radical fringe party vows to haunt Anthony Albanese as it unveils ambitious plan
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.
Daily Mail
11-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Squatting activist shares staggering 'Aboriginal Australia' justification for his antics - as he publishes DIY guide of how to take over someone else's house
A controversial squatter's rights activist has sparked fresh uproar after he published a DIY guide for his followers on how to detect whether a house is fit for squatting. Jordan van den Lamb, 29, collects addresses for abandoned or empty homes and provides them to Australians in need of emergency housing. In a recent TikTok video posted under his moniker Purplepingers, he shared what to look out for in identifying an empty home - from checking the fuse box and gas meter to researching online real estate listings. While the video received mostly positive reactions, a number of viewers were furious at the idea of having to justify their right to homeownership. In an interview with Daily Mail Australia, Mr van den Lamb claimed property owners had a responsibility to make productive use of their land. Where it was clearly demonstrated they had failed to do so by leaving it empty or abandoned - usually for at least two years - he claimed it was justified for a squatter to move in. He said the idea is embedded in Australia's cultural history. 'It's how we colonised the country. It was like: "this land was owned by no one", which is obviously flawed right. And therefore, the land rights were granted to colonial squatters,' he said. 'The song Waltzing Matilda is literally about that... read the lyrics, it's about a squatter evicting a swagman from their property.' Each state and territory in Australia has its own version of adverse possession laws allowing squatters to claim ownership over land they've openly and continuously possessed for a defined period of time. In most jurisdictions, possession must be held for 12 to 15 years. For his part, Mr van den Lamb believes this is excessively long. 'Twelve to 15 years is a ridiculous amount of time for a house to be empty, especially noting these houses are empty for much longer periods prior to them being squatted [in],' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'If someone's living in a house you've literally not bothered to check on for like two years.... You have a responsibility to use it productively'. Mr van den Lamb draws justification for encouraging Aussies to take ownership of empty homes in part from the vacant residential land tax in Victoria, which requires homeowners to pay a tax on properties left unoccupied for one year. He claimed many residents were committing fraud by failing to pay the tax, while others took advantage of the enforcement limitations. 'The data used to enforce [residential land taxes] is predominantly water usage. We've seen people go around every couple of months and just turn the taps on for a day and then leave the house empty,' he said. Mr van den Lamb has consistently warned his followers against breaking into the properties he assigns them, claiming it was unnecessary. 'I've been doing this for a while and, most of the time, they just have either an open back door or an open window,' he said. 'I've never encouraged anyone to break in to a property and I still would never encourage that. That's not what this is about. 'This is about the thousands of empty properties that we have around this country and the far fewer people who don't have roofs over their head every night.' Mr van den Lamb said it was his understanding that trespassing required forced entry to a property, for example, breaking a window or kicking down a door. But legal experts told Daily Mail Australia otherwise. Andre Ong, principal at Sharrock Pitman lawyers, said Mr van den Lamb had 'misconstrued' the criminal and tortious elements of trespassing. 'In a civil society, you are supposed to respect other people's property rights. What is relevant is that you were there without consent or other lawful entitlement to be there,' he said. Special counsel in commercial litigation at Attwood Marshall Lawyers Jade Carlson agreed, adding the legal question is whether Mr van den Lamb himself could be held liable for any trespasses he may help to facilitate. Ms Carlson said only the registered owner could raise a trespassing claim, meaning if a home were truly abandoned the likelihood of legal action would be 'remote'. She added, however, the program raises 'inherent risks' that could raise 'significant' legal consequences. Mr Ong said a court may look beyond the activist's insistence against forcing entry to a property to any reasonably foreseeable misconduct arising from the trespass. Asked by Daily Mail Australia whether he feared any legal repercussions, Mr van den Lamb said: 'Not particularly, no. People are dying. Me having a fight with a cop isn't gonna change much. 'At the end of the day, I'm a young white man who's tertiary educated in this country, so I'm going to be fine compared to someone who's not from my demographic and is sleeping rough on the street.'
