The Socialist Equality Party will launch its campaign for this year’s federal election in Australia at public meetings in Sydney and Melbourne on May 5.

The SEP’s election intervention over the next four and a half months will be part of a coordinated campaign by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its sections throughout the world to unite the working class in Australia, the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, the Middle East, and internationally in the struggle against the growing danger of war. In the midst of the most serious economic breakdown of world capitalism since the Great Depression, the seeds of World War III have not only been sown, they have already sprouted and are rapidly growing, in the form of the US military “pivot” against China.

The Gillard Labor government, with the complicity of the Greens and the full backing of the Liberal and National Parties, has placed Australia on the very frontline of these imperialist war preparations. Behind the backs of the population, Gillard has extended unconditional support to the Obama administration’s anti-China pivot to Asia, signing military agreements and sanctioning new US bases, while concealing, in tandem with the corporate-controlled media, their extent and implications.

The SEP’s election campaign will expose the accelerating drive to war and give the widespread opposition to militarism a powerful voice and the means for its conscious political expression. It will provide decisive leadership to the working masses of Australia, China and throughout Asia in the struggle against war, social counter-revolution and dictatorship. We urge WSWS readers and SEP and IYSSE members and supporters to attend our meetings in Melbourne and Sydney to participate in the launch of a campaign that has as its central objective the development of a broad, international anti-war movement among workers and young people, on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program, against the capitalist profit system itself—the fundamental source of war.

Sydney:

Sunday, May 5, 2pm
Redfern Town Hall
73 Pitt Street, Redfern

Melbourne:

Sunday, May 5, 2.30pm
Arts House, Meat Market,
5 Blackwood St, North Melbourne
Melway Reference: 2B A9

Tickets: $3/$2 concession