Election statement by Hamish Chitts, Revolutionary Socialist Party candidate for Griffith.

Regardless of which party gains government from Saturday’s Federal Election the majority of people in this country, the working class, will be worse off. Whoever wins will continue to oversee measures that will profit a tiny minority of super rich, the capitalist class.

Whoever wins will continue to oversee the decline of real wages (i.e., wages have increased over time, but not anywhere near the rate of inflation) that we have seen since the 1980s. Workers’ safety will continue to be sacrificed for the greater profits of a few. Jobs will continue to be casualised and while some workers will be forced to work more hours many more will be forced onto piecemeal, basically part-time hours. As monopolies (or duopolies) like Coles and Woolworths continue their stranglehold on markets the cost of living will continue to rise. As fewer and fewer people own all the housing, the cost of renting or buying a house will become more and more expensive.

Whoever wins will continue to promote racism to scapegoat super-exploited workers from overseas for the ever increasing burden that capitalism and the government policies that protect capitalism will place on us. The winner will continue to promote the lie that it is in the interests of workers here to go off and kill workers in other countries like Afghanistan. We have more in common with the workers and subsistence farmers in Afghanistan than we do with the Murdochs and Packers of this world. Whoever wins will increase the apartheid measures against Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to drive them from their land, their home for tens of thousands of years, for the profit of people that own the mining companies.

For these same minority interests, whoever wins will continue to promote and subsidise wasteful environmentally and climatically destructive methods of production driven by consumerism rather than social need that ultimately threaten our very existence. The government cannot see past short term profits for their backers nor their own privileges that they gain from capitalism.

Whoever wins will continue to promote sexism and homophobia in the name of so-called family values. These values are a deception to reinforce gender roles that through the particular oppression of women save the capitalists billions of dollars in unpaid (or low paid) labour as carers for the young, old and sick and as domestic slaves.

Whoever wins will continue the socially, economically and environmentally unsustainable system of capitalism. A system that enslaves the majority of the world’s population, including the majority of people in this country for the wonderful lifestyles of a few. The ALP and Liberal National Coalition have always supported this system and the only difference between now and 40 years ago is that the requirements of this flawed system can no longer handle the diversity of policy that existed in the past.

Workers of all nations need to unite against the parasites that feed off our hard work and to raise the red banner of 21st century socialism, the banner of true democracy and egalitarianism, for a better future all can enjoy.