I’m a trade unionist, a socialist, and a renter in Northcote. I grew up here, went to school and got my first job in the area.
For almost a decade, I worked on the railways, becoming the first female RTBU delegate at Flinders Street station. I organised rank-and-file actions in my workplace to improve wages and conditions, and in 2015 I helped lead the first strike on the Victorian railways in 17 years.
In recent years Australia has seen the biggest fall in working-class living standards in a generation. The cost of living is rising fast - driven overwhelmingly by profiteering by landlords, banks and big corporations.
Both in Australia and internationally we’re witnessing a growth in the far right - epitomised by Donald Trump in America but increasingly also by Peter Dutton’s openly bigoted Liberal Party here. Years of Labor’s neoliberalism, demonising of refugees and attacks on environmental activists have helped pave the way for this.
Socialists offer a genuine alternative to the self-serving politicians who mouth pleasant words while either directly ripping us off (look how many of them are landlords) or serving their big business mates in parliament.
From destroying the planet, to using racism to distract and divide us, and forcing the working class to pay for the cost-of-living crisis, capitalism fails to provide for the vast majority.
I will fight for housing for all, for genuine universal health care that’s free and accessible no matter where you’re from, to stop price gouging supermarkets with caps on essential goods and to reverse privatisation - which has seen the cost of everything from childcare to energy prices spiral.