Hi, my name is Madaleine Hah and I’m running as the Victorian Socialists candidate for Pascoe Vale. I’m a socialist activist and a food service worker, and I want to fight for a better world for everyone who is oppressed and exploited in our society. A second generation Chinese-Malaysian immigrant, I’ve helped organise campaigns to combat racism, Islamophobia and the far right with Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, and for climate action with Uni Students for Climate Justice. I’ve been volunteering with Victorian Socialists since it launched in 2018.
I got my first taste of activism in 2017, protesting cuts to higher education. Alongside hundreds of other student activists, I got up at five in the morning to spoil a fancy brunch at Crown casino for then-Treasurer Scott Morrison, who was proposing $8 billion in budget cuts to universities, as well as an 8 percent increase in student fees. On that freezing early morning, I decided I would forever be on the side of those rattling the glass, while inside the rich and powerful dined, discussing how to best screw over the working class.
Life is becoming even more unbearable for working-class people. As inflation rises, we’re asked to take a pay cut for the sake of corporate greed. Shopping to feed our families, filling our petrol tanks, and paying the rent is becoming a near impossible task, all while we work longer and longer days for worse pay and conditions. Bosses expect business as usual while homes across the country are flooded or burnt down. They expect us to risk our lives and our family’s health for them while the pandemic rages on.
To stop this misery, we need to fight back in our workplaces and on the streets. I want to use my platform as a candidate to tell the truth about our daily struggles, and to encourage everyone who is enraged by the scourge of capitalism to become activists and fighters themselves.