The Socialist Party Interim National Executive sent the following correspondence to the Socialist Alliance earlier today. For additional background, see the statement put out last week about party registration federally and in NSW.

Proposal to Socialist Alliance from the Socialist Party Interim National Executive

To comrades in the Socialist Alliance,

We are writing to again raise the issue of unity between our organisations.

As you know, fascism is on the rise around the world. Not just the oft-cited right-wing populism that is increasingly obviously fascism, but even more reactionary varieties. The New York Times reports that open Nazis are taking over the Republican Party in the US. 

Here in Australia, the situation is less dire, but it is all relative. Thousands of far right anti-immigrant racists have marched on our streets, led by Nazis who terrorise immigrants and smash indigenous protest sites.

In working-class suburbs, the Labor vote is collapsing - because of their support for genocide in Gaza; because they do nothing about the cost of living crisis; because they rule for a billionaire elite who care nothing about the lives of ordinary Australians.

The great danger is that the far right will take advantage of this situation, as it has in so many countries around the world. It is the urgent responsibility of the socialist movement to provide a different way out of the crisis in our political system.

And we know we can. The victory of Zohran Mamdani in the New York Mayoral race demonstrates how to fight the right. Not with centrist technocratic platitudes, but with a clear, left wing, unified fightback, that puts forward clear class based slogans that attack the real enemy, the capitalist class.

There is an opportunity in Australian politics that has not existed for a generation, and arguably for more than a century. That is, an opportunity to build a socialist movement to be a force in society, and challenge Labor and the Greens, as well as the Liberals and the far right.

The Socialist Party currently has more than 5,400 financial members. That is a huge expansion from the 800 financial members Victorian Socialists had in December last year. 

We are at a third of the Greens national membership, as best as it is reported. Our membership in Victoria, in terms of activists, or in terms of financial members, is by some estimates not that far off that of the Liberal Party.

We have established an electoral presence in Victoria, both in liberal/youth areas, and in migrant/working-class ones. In the 2022 state election we averaged 5.4% of the vote across the 22 lower house seats we contested. There were standout results in places like Footscray (9.3%) in the west, and across the band of working class suburbs in the heart of the north (8% in Broadmeadows, 7.7% in Thomastown). In 2024 we ran in council elections and contested 76 wards across Victoria, winning an average of 10.8% of the vote. As many as 30 of our candidates got results that would have put them in a strong position to be elected in the now abolished multi-member ward system. 

At the 2025 federal election we more than doubled our vote in Cooper, in the inner-north, where we polled 8.4%. We also improved our vote in Fraser (6.2%) and Scullin (6.5%). We recognise Sue Bolton’s impressive result in Wills at the same election (8%), and note that we supported her campaign, not just on paper but with a substantial mobilisation of volunteers to letterbox and staff polling booths in a campaign that our party spent $13,000 on.

And yet where we are at is, in our opinion, wildly insufficient. There was a time when it was fair enough for socialists to get excited about having a few thousand members and a vote that, while much improved, still falls well short of anything that can have a real impact on politics. That time has passed. We need to build a serious organisation that can insert socialist politics into the mainstream, and we need to do it right now. That doesn’t mean thousands of members. It means tens and hundreds of thousands of people across Victoria and across the country.

That’s why we expanded the Victorian Socialists project nationally. That’s why we have begun an ambitious campaign to run in every seat across Victoria in the state election in 2026. And that is why we want the organisation and experience of the Socialist Alliance to be involved with us in this fight.

What we have proposed so far

As you know, on May 19 we wrote to you saying:

“It has been our longstanding position that we are in favour of a single, united socialist electoral party here in Victoria, and we have the same view nationally.”

We also said that we were:

“disappointed with the characterisation of our proposal in the statement put out publicly yesterday, which said that we [Victorian Socialists] had “no immediate desire to seek greater unity for a national electoral project.” We very much do wish to seek greater unity and a single socialist party, but did not want to seem to be railroading the Alliance into agreeing to something quickly.”

We further elaborated that:

“In states where Socialist Alliance does not have state registration, we would very much welcome Socialist Alliance members joining the new socialist parties. [...]

We would also welcome the Socialist Alliance in NSW joining NSW Socialists if that is something you would consider. There are obvious complications, given that you have your own party registered there, but we are happy to discuss how those issues can best be resolved if you are willing to consider that path.

We didn’t make any immediate proposal for unity in NSW or regarding the federally registered parties on the assumption that the Socialist Alliance was not in favour of this in the short term, which is why we proposed a period of cooperation. If we were mistaken in this assumption then we would be happy to discuss how we can move in that direction quickly.”

In your letter of reply on May 29, you did not address any of the issues we raised to do with uniting into a single organisation, but simply said that your National Council had “voted in favour of further discussion with the Victorian Socialists/Socialist Party about electoral pacts in future federal and state elections and other forms of cooperation.”

From this point on we felt it necessary to be as clear as possible, both verbally and in writing, that we were in favour of uniting with the Socialist Alliance, and were proposing to you that we do so. 

We invited representatives of the Alliance to attend our conference, which they did. The following statement on the question of unity was adopted overwhelmingly by that conference:

“We are in favour of there being a single, united socialist party in the Australian electoral sphere, and we appeal to the Socialist Alliance to unite into a single party on a democratic basis.”

The conference also set out the method by which we would attempt to establish a national party, moved amendments titled “Constitutional changes to expand democratic structures in Victorian Socialists”, and affirmed the provisions in our constitution that outline the rights of internal groupings.

There was also vigorous discussion about the union and campaign work of the party at the conference, which would have demonstrated, to any observer aware of the reasons the Socialist Alliance gave for leaving the Victorian Socialists in 2020, that the arguments from that time had been relegated to history and Victorian Socialists was now fully committed to an approach to politics that went far beyond electoral efforts.

After our conference we received a letter from the Alliance that did not address any of the things that had been raised by the conference. Instead the only reference to unity was the statement: 

“It is still firmly our position that Socialist Alliance does not want to fold our election work under the banner of Victorian Socialists/Socialist Party, even if we do remain committed to future collaboration.”

It is disappointing therefore to read comments such as those published on the Labour Tribune website on November 10, that make it sound like we are the ones who do not favour unity.

When asked “What are your objections, if any, to the Socialist Alliance and the Socialists merging into a single socialist organisation?”, Socialist Alliance National co-convenors Jacob Andrewartha and Sue Bull replied:

Socialist Alternative advised us in May, and have told us again more recently, that they have no immediate desire to seek greater unity. Therefore we have not discussed your hypothetical. However, we remain open to further discussion with them about how to advance cooperation. Additionally we have been told that they don’t support left regroupment and were not interested in resuming unity talks (which ended in 2013).

On being made aware of this statement, and knowing that it fits with reports we have heard of comments from leading Socialist Alliance members around the country, Corey Oakley contacted Sue Bull to try and understand the seemingly huge gulf between what we were repeatedly saying, and what the Socialist Alliance was hearing.

Leaving aside the fact that (not for the first time) the response to a question about the Victorian Socialists/Socialist Party was responded to as if it were a question about Socialist Alternative (an obfuscation that is quite infuriating to the vast bulk of Socialist Party members who are not members of Socialist Alternative), the idea that the Socialist Party had not made clear its desire for unity with the Socialist Alliance seemed incomprehensible.

After talking to Sue, our understanding is that the Socialist Alliance feels we have not done enough to “provide a process” or outline a detailed proposal, and that our appeals for unity are just platitudes. We believe that the multiple statements we have made, and the information outlined in the motions passed at the Victorian Socialists conference, go a long way towards providing a view on what we are for. We also think that the responsibility for finding a path to socialist unity cannot fall on one organisation alone. But nonetheless we understand that that is not how the Socialist Alliance sees it, and will outline below what we would propose in the clearest terms we can, and with as much detail as possible.

How could unity happen?

We propose that the Socialist Alliance join the Socialist Party and its state branches as an internal grouping, and operate inside the party in much the same way as Socialist Alternative does. This would mean the Socialist Alliance leadership, or your conference in January 2026, notifying us of your intention to join and operate as a group within the party, and then encouraging your members to join as individuals, much as Socialist Alternative has done.

The Socialist Party - or more accurately (as we will come to) its state and territory branches - is a membership based organisation. That is to say, it is not made up of constituent organisations, but of individual members, and each one has an equal say over the areas of the party (branch, electoral district, union organisation, state organisation) that they are a part of. 

The vast bulk of members of the party are not affiliated to another organisation or members of an internal grouping. After the Socialist Alliance was set up in 2001, Green Left Weekly reported as a positive development that 25% of its then 900 members were not also members of one of the affiliated parties. We would estimate that for the Socialist Party’s financial membership nationally, the proportion of people unaffiliated to any internal group is around 80% of the total financial membership. 

This indicates the very different nature of the 2001 Socialist Alliance and the 2025 Socialist Party, and explains why the starting point for our conception of party democracy is the membership as a whole.

Over the past 6 months we have made extensive efforts to expand democracy and local control of the party in Victoria. For example, we have local coordinators who have been convening activities and preselection meetings in more than half of the 88 Victorian lower house districts over the past few months, something we are hoping to expand in the last part of this year and into the next. Local districts are also running their own campaigns around a wide variety of issues. Among the more notable have been the Cohealth campaign, run by our Melbourne and Richmond branches alongside members in the health unions, and the Bendigo branch’s activities around the controversy over the Bendigo Writers Festival. Our orientation, regarding both electoral campaigns and community protest movements our members are involved in, is to put control of decision making in the hands of members at a local level.

Central to our conception of this is the idea of “one member, one vote”. We know we will have internal groupings, tendencies, factions etc. But we do not give them any institutional role in the party. Member-based democracy should rule at every level of the organisation. 

Leadership at each level should be representative of the membership it covers. Leadership committees are elected via proportional representation, and should represent the cross section of opinion in the party rather than a factional carve up. If a grouping has the support of 20% or 30% or 40% of the members, that should be reflected in the composition of the leadership.

But while we are a membership based organisation, the decision of a group to join does not mean abandoning or downgrading the work of those organisations. Socialist Alternative maintains its full existing organisation, structures, constitution, publications, assets, infrastructure and so on, as well as its own distinctive political standpoint that it argues publicly, totally separate from Victorian Socialists and the other Socialist Party branches. Its members continue to pay dues to Socialist Alternative. It has its own contingents at many protest rallies and its own caucuses in various movements and industrial work. Other existing groupings such as the Revolutionary Communist Organisation do the same. 

The rights of organised groupings within Socialist Party branches are extensive. They were written (into the Victorian Socialists constitution initially, though now they are being adopted around the country) not as a “concession” to minorities, but to protect the rights of all internal groups to maintain their identity independent of the party. If we are to develop and grow as we hope, no single faction or grouping can realistically aspire to dominate the structures of the party, so it is in the interests of all groupings, even the biggest, to enshrine those rights as much as is constitutionally possible.

It is required that internal groupings are declared, and that they not act against the aims of the party. In exchange they have substantial rights, including

• To promote their views to the membership of the Party, using their own resources, plus the official avenues for debate and discussion in the Party such as the internal discussion section of the website and at conferences and leadership meetings, and members’ meetings.

• To promote their views outside of the Party.

• To use commonly-held Party resources, such as Party offices, to hold meetings of their grouping, and to distribute material advocating the views of their grouping. The holding of events in Party spaces by internal groupings such as meetings, reading groups, activist committees, working bees etc. are permitted.

• To enter into agreements with the Party regarding the sharing of any resources, insofar as this is in the interests of the Party as a whole.

There is no requirement for internal groupings to dissolve other than in circumstances where the Party considers the grouping to have put itself outside the Party by in either theory or practice rejecting the aims of the Party, or acting against the interests of the Party.

Party democracy and local organisation

One of the concerns that has been raised is that the Socialist Alliance felt that it did not get enough say over strategic decisions about campaigns in the early period of Victorian Socialists when it was involved. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of that, the situation of the party was very different then. We were a small organisation that was only capable of seriously campaigning in a few seats in the north of Melbourne. This inevitably meant much greater central control and decision making about what the party was doing. 

We are now in the complete opposite situation in Victoria. The decision to run a statewide campaign in the 2026 election, and the interconnected decision to make a serious push to establish local organisation across the state, has transformed the nature of the party’s organisation. Across the state, local campaign coordinators and activists, wherever they put their hand up, are being encouraged and empowered to take ownership over the party and drive their own campaigns. 

It has been raised as a concern by the Socialist Alliance that it was argued to them they should not run in Geelong at a previous election. Well, now we want to run in 88 seats across Victoria. If the Socialist Alliance comrades can take charge of Geelong and the half dozen seats in the area, and combine their infrastructure and knowledge and organisation with the many dozens of new Victorian Socialists members who live there, they will encounter nothing but encouragement. When the socialist left is concentrated in the so-called “left ghetto” in inner Melbourne, it is inevitable that different groups will butt heads to a certain extent. When we are trying to involve many hundreds of new members across Victoria in a statewide campaign, there is more than enough room for everyone to do their own thing.

The decentralisation of decision making power to enable this shift to build local organisation and democracy was a major feature of the June Vic Socialists conference. The amendments to the constitution enable local coordinators, and local groups of members, to go out and establish their own branches and basically do what they want with them. 

Preselections in the party are now in the hands of the members who live in the electorate we are preselecting for. There are obviously still a number of places where we don’t have enough active members to meaningfully hold a preselection process - in that instance local coordinators liaise with the party centre to work out whether we can find a viable candidate. But anywhere there are groups of members who want to drive their own campaign and select their own candidates, we have processes in place to facilitate that and then give them the resources they need to run an effective campaign. This has already happened in a considerable number of districts across Melbourne.

Union and campaign work

One point of debate inside Vic Socialists historically was the extent to which it is possible or desirable for activists under the VS banner to campaign in ways which are not directly electoral.

This has been decisively settled in favor of drastically extending the range of party activity beyond the electoral sphere. Open to all members of VS, the Palestine Action Group organised its own events as well as contingents to other demonstrations to highlight VS's solidarity, and a range of practical assets for activists such as a guide to help people working on motions for their local councils.

More recently the Socialist Workers' Caucus, an initiative by independents in Vic Socialists, was ratified by conference as an official VS group. It has launched socialist working groups in a number of unions now, hosting get-togethers of socialists in those unions and other political events. 

The experience of Socialist Alliance members in this would be a welcome addition. 

Party registration

It is completely acceptable for constituent organisations to continue their work independent of the party in whichever way they see fit. 

The only exception to this is maintaining or establishing rival registered parties. This is obviously an issue in NSW, and with the federally registered Socialist Alliance.

It would be untenable for us to guarantee that the Socialist Alliance could maintain its registration in its current form if it joined the Socialist Party, as the fact of that registration is a key factor in preventing the registration of NSW Socialists and the changing of the name federally.

This does not mean, however, that the Socialist Alliance necessarily needs to revoke its registration, either federally or in NSW. We would propose the following as conditions of the Socialist Alliance being admitted to the party

• If the name “Australian Socialist Party” is accepted by the AEC (with the abbreviation “Australian Socialists”) the Socialist Alliance can maintain its federal registration, but it must not stand candidates in the next federal election. Socialist Alliance members would run on the Australian Socialist Party ticket.

• If the name “Australian Socialist Party” is rejected by the AEC, the Socialist Alliance will change its federally registered name to “People before Profit” or some other name of its choosing, that will maintain the party registration without blocking the Socialist Party from using the word Socialist. Alternatively, It could register a long name that keeps the word “Socialist” but is sufficiently long and distinctive so as not to be confused with “Australian Socialist Party” in the eyes of the AEC. This would enable the Alliance, as the first registered socialist party, to continue to have the right to control use of the term “socialist” if they left the party at some point in the future.

• Socialist Alliance members would not be required to join the Socialist Party for the purposes of party registration.

A similar approach could be adopted in NSW, although it is a bit hard to define the exact parameters until the registration path there becomes a bit clearer.

The Socialist Alliance would also have to refrain from attempting to register new state parties in its own name.

structure of the Socialist Party

Understandably, comrades in the Socialist Alliance have asked questions about the structure of this new party, and how it has been constituted. Here is a brief attempt to outline that process.

The Socialist Party is currently organised at a state level in each state and territory - Vic Socialists, NSW Socialists, Tasmanian Socialists etc. The structures for a national party have not yet been determined, and will be established at a national conference in mid-2026. 

The motion adopted at the Victorian Socialists conference in June, outlining our conception of how a national party can be established, reads as follows:

This conference recognises that it cannot reasonably establish a fully-fledged federal party (in the organisational and democratic sense, rather than just the legal sense) when this conference includes only Victorian members. Therefore, as the body seeking to initiate the establishment of such a party, and as a body that is already registered as a federal party, we will only attempt to establish the foundations on which such a party can be formed. 

This conference resolves to:

i) Change the name of our federally registered party to the "Socialist Party".

ii) Seek to establish state-based parties with which we can unite in a federal party.

iii) Appoint, via our Executive, interim Secretaries of state and territory-based parties outside of Victoria, and assist them in attempting to establish registered parties in their state or territory.

iv) Establish a provisional national leadership of the new national party, consisting of the Executive of Victorian Socialists, and the interim Secretaries of non-Victorian parties.

v) Direct this provisional leadership to develop a constitution for our new federal party. This constitution should propose a democratic constitution that puts control of the party in the hands of members on the basis of the principle of one member, one vote.

vi) Direct the provisional leadership to establish an interim set of rules for the new federal party that will govern party operations until a national conference is able to meet and approve an ongoing constitution.

vii) Direct the provisional leadership to organise, call and set the rules for an inaugural national conference, where attendees should be delegated from state/territory branches on a basis set by the provisional leadership.

The following conditions apply to any state party that wishes to establish itself as a state branch of our new federal Party:

• It must adopt as its own aims in line with those of Victorian Socialists

• It must adopt a constitution that is in its general spirit in line with the constitution of Victorian Socialists

So for now we are operating as a series of state-based parties, with an interim leadership, established by the Victorian Socialists conference, which consists of the Victorian Socialists Executive plus secretaries of the new state branches. Initially, these secretaries were appointed by the VS Executive, and were charged with establishing state and territory branches. Now that process is substantially on the way to being completed, and soon each state branch will be represented on the interim National Executive by a secretary elected by their branches’ founding state conference.

A motion will be moved at the next interim National Executive to establish that, by consensus of the body, only Secretaries of each state and territory branch will be voting members of the interim National Executive, in order to prevent any actual or perceived domination of the national organisation by Victorian Socialists, now that viable state branches are being established across the country.

In any case, the remit of the interim national leadership is not to set up a national party, but to lay the basis for doing so at a founding national conference. In the meantime, the state branches will be the primary organisations of the party.

Of the new branches, the NSW Socialists and SA Socialists have just met and established a constitution, elected a leadership etc. In terms of the basic functioning of the party, the parties are modelled on the Victorian Socialists, with a number of changes in their constitutions to reflect local conditions and amendments made by members in the lead up to and at the founding conference.

Other state parties are having their founding conferences in the coming weeks and months. 

When we wrote to the Socialist Alliance in May, we hoped that you might play a part in shaping the founding state conferences of our new party. Sadly these are upon us now, or have already happened, and that is not possible. But if the Socialist Alliance determines it is for uniting into a single organisation, there is still plenty of time to help shape our first national conference. We have already established a working group that is developing a draft federal constitution and party rules, and plans for our founding national conference. We would be more than willing to co-opt Socialist Alliance members onto that committee, and also onto the Interim National Executive, if you decided you wanted to be a part of this process.

Concrete proposals

• That your conference seriously consider our fundamental proposal: “that the Socialist Alliance join the Socialist Party and its state branches as an internal grouping, and operate inside the party in much the same way as Socialist Alternative does. This would mean the Socialist Alliance leadership, or your conference in January 2026, notifying us of your intention to join and operate as a group within the party, and then encouraging your members to join as individuals.”

• That you provide any counter proposals or amendments to this basic proposal for discussion.

• That we organise a series of meetings between representatives of our organisations between now and your January conference, in which we discuss specific proposals and counter-proposals, and hopefully come to common positions

• That you circulate this document to your members. We are also willing to circulate any documents that you write to our membership if that is what you want us to do.

• That we engage in a serious practical discussion about the question of party registration

• That a delegation of our organisation be invited to attend your January conference

• That delegations of your organisation attend our state conferences in Canberra, Western Australia, Tasmania and Queensland, which are all to be held in the coming weeks or months.

• That a representative of our organisation be allowed to address your January conference on the question of unity.

• That a representative of your organisation be invited to address our state conferences on the question of unity.

• That meetings of members of both our organisations be held in all major cities to discuss the question of unity.

Thank you for your consideration of these proposals.

Regards

Socialist Party Interim National Executive