The Socialist Equality Party (Australia) is in the concluding weeks of its campaign to regain official party registration and put a socialist anti-war party on the ballot at the next federal election. Hundreds of workers and young people have signed up to support the campaign.

The SEP has been required to carry out this fight after anti-democratic legislation was passed in 2021 tripling the membership requirement for party registration to 1,500. This was an attempt by Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition to block workers from accessing a genuine alternative to the increasingly despised two-party system.

The World Socialist Web Site is today publishing comments from several workers and young people, explaining why they have decided to join the SEP as electoral members.

To follow their lead and apply to become an electoral member today, fill out the form at the end of this article, or click here.

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Jordie, a part Indigenous 25-year-old, signed up as a member on the New South Wales Central Coast. He said: “The Labor government is complicit in genocide, and they are skirting around the word ‘genocide,’ they don’t want to call it that. They are on the wrong side of history at the end of the day. I don’t stand for it. What is happening in Gaza is what the Aboriginals copped 200 years ago in this country, it is what this country is built on.

“It should be people’s right to choose who the government is. If we don’t get a say in it, what is the point? Capitalism is the cause of war and that is why it is opposed to socialism. If it is a good war, I’ll fight it until the day I die, but if it’s a bad war, if it’s for corruption or genocide, I’d rather go to jail. The war in Ukraine is one of those, it is just a proxy war, and there is so much money being funnelled into it and being wasted.

“The working class is always swept to the wayside. We’ll get taxed at times like this because we are the only ones who work! What about the 1 percent? The financial elites have infinitely more money than us. The capitalists benefit off it all. They want everyone to work for them. They don’t care about us or how well you get to work, they just want you to be healthy enough to keep on working.”

Speaking about the dire state of the underfunded public healthcare system, Jordie said: “That is what Medicare feels like for instance, the wait times for procedures are a joke. My sister had tonsillitis, and the only reason they operated on her was because she was about to have a heart attack and die, so they did it out of fear of her dying. Before that, she was on a two-year waiting list. Same thing with others with illnesses and injuries. The government could build more houses, but it’s more profitable to them to wring us for every cent we have through rents and mortgage payments.”

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Yalda, an 18-year-old student at Western Sydney University, signed up as an EM. “I come from a Hazara background, so my people have experienced persecution and inequality. What is happening in Palestine has nothing to do with religion. It’s to do with humanity. It is the government of Israel that is doing this.

“There are major countries like the US and UK supporting Israel. You can’t look at it as just two states, Israel and Palestine or Gaza, fighting. It is potentially affecting everyone else around them. People don’t want world war. There should be a ceasefire now.”

Yalda said, “I think socialism is really important in our day and age. It was popular before, but I think it should be really popular right now. Without a socialist perspective, no one would know what’s going on around the world in different countries. Everything we see in the media, we get gaslighted and told a different story. So, I think this perspective is really important.

“People need to put a lot of thought into this. This is the biggest genocide in decades. There are children dying, starving. But there are also kids in other countries like Afghanistan, all those poor third world countries. It is important to change that too.

“Other people should join [the SEP]. I’m talking to my friends, I’ll let them know, we have to fight to put us back on the ballot paper, because we are the majority.”

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A public servant, who needed to remain anonymous, joined the party at one of the weekly rallies against the Gaza genocide. He said: “I joined because the current choices we have in the electoral system in Australia are very limited. The Greens, for example, they’ll say the right things regarding arms embargoes and sanctions on Israel, but they’re not willing to question the fundamental underpinnings of imperialism and how, in its perpetuation, it will keep these conflicts worldwide going. Most starkly, we see that in Israel and in Gaza in particular.

“What we need is a mass movement of class consciousness and to be able to channel that in an effective way, to tackle the centres of power directly rather than just voting every three years and hoping things will change.

“Politics is something that’s been very important to me for a long time. Particularly as a Palestinian myself, I’ve always felt that all these systems of oppression are interconnected. We see that in the most violent and blatant way in Israel and in the occupied territories, but really the whole world is basically occupied by capitalism, by greed.”