Blatantly Partisan Party Review XXV (federal 2025): Socialist Equality Party
Running where: two grouped independent tickets for the Senate, Group B in NSW (Max Boddy and Warwick Dove) and Group G in Victoria (Keo Vongvixay and Taylor Hernan), plus independents for three seats in the House: Robert Creech in Newcastle (NSW), Mike Head in Oxley (QLD), and Morgan Peach in Calwell (VIC)
Prior reviews: federal 2013, federal 2016, federal 2019, federal 2022, NSW 2023
What I said before: “SEP are the cranks of the Australian socialist space … still ranting that all other left-wing parties and trade unions, including other socialist parties, are on the ‘pseudo-left’. It’s tedious and childish. Just because you have minor ideological disagreements does not mean everyone else is some stooge of global capital. The SEP also love to rant against identity politics … They wouldn’t know solidarity if it bit them on the bum and they are sure as shit not intersectional.” (federal 2022)
What I think this year: If you want a form of socialist internationalism that proclaims global solidarity yet cannot even play nice with other local socialists, then the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is the party for you! Since 2022, they have had to run independent campaigns because they cannot meet requirements for party registration. They did not even make a serious attempt before the last federal election to meet the increased membership threshold of 1,500, submitting a list of just 700 party members. What does this say about their organisational abilities or the extent of their appeal? In this era of the Internet and global hyperconnection, if you cannot find 1,500 people around Australia to join your party and affirm their membership when the AEC rings for confirmation, take a hint.
The SEP are nothing if not stubborn, so they have continued to contest elections. Their candidates are listed on the ballot without any label, be it a party name or “independent” (candidates without endorsement by a registered party can choose whether to have that). They keep throwing away thousands of dollars on candidate deposits despite their belief that “this election will resolve absolutely nothing for working people. The official campaign is a fraud”.
This party believes they are being persecuted and prevented from spreading "the truth" to voters. They contend that Labor and the Coalition are engaging in a “pantomime debate” and that no matter who wins the election, they will impose “massive” austerity and that “their own agenda parallels what [Trump] is imposing” (if you really want to see an agenda paralleling Trump, turn to my reviews of the Libertarians or Trumpet of Patriots). For this, the SEP “have been effectively banned from having our party name on the ballot. The Australian Electoral Commission, enforcing anti-democratic measures imposed by Labor and the Coalition, rejected our application for formal party registration”. This, they assert, “was aimed not just at keeping the name of the SEP off the ballot, but keeping the truth out of the election”.
I don’t see how not printing three words below a few candidates' names keeps the truth out of an election, but go off. They are always free to bellow this “truth” as independents—or as a party with actual grassroots support of at least 1,500 members, which they can’t seem to find. They do claim to have “met the onerous requirement of submitting a membership list of more than 1,500”, but this is untrue. As the AEC’s notice of decision explains, the SEP only submitted a list of 700 members, this was not updated at any point in the deliberation or appeals process, and a review affirmed SEP’s de-registration on 23 January 2023. There has been no subsequent application for re-registration.
You can see why the SEP can’t scrabble their way to re-registration when you look at the rantings that purport to be a platform. No wonder they have few friends. They have a tremendously simplistic foreign policy agenda that is not just reflexively anti-American, but which also grants unthinking support to rivals of the US, particularly Russia. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is the most inane kind of foreign policy. I’m not even sure the SEP realises that the Cold War is over, the USSR does not exist, and Putin is a corrupt authoritarian nationalist rather than a socialist, a dictator with an imperialist rather than internationalist outlook. This means the SEP advance ludicrous claims about the war in Ukraine being a “US-NATO proxy war against Russia”. Yes, a war against Russia. They think the country that violated another’s sovereignty and which could end the war this second if they simply pulled back to their own borders is somehow the victim here. It’s fatuous, contemptible nonsense.
The SEP seem to actively try to alienate anyone left-wing who might be amenable to any of the principles they espouse. They depict the Greens as having “no fundamental differences” with Labor or the Coalition and they dismiss everybody else purporting to be left of the Greens as “the pseudo-left”. This disagreeable attitude is one the SEP has had for years. They believe that they and they alone are genuine socialists and that Socialist Alliance and Victorian Socialists “have nothing to do with socialism or the working class”. These two groups instead “speak for an affluent layer of the upper middle class”.
Now, you might think that even if this were true, a socialist party would welcome affluent people coming over to the cause. Not so! SEP describes both parties as operating “within the framework of capitalism”. What might that include? Oh, uh, “identity politics based on race, gender and sexuality, as opposed to class”. Yup, we’re back with a classic SEP line: racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are to them a distraction. They simply cannot hold multiple thoughts in their head or weave priorities into an inclusive and comprehensive platform. They are obsessed with class to the exclusion of everything else.
Even if other parts of the SEP’s rhetoric touches on issues of genuine interest to socialists, they are neither a serious nor safe option.
Recommendation: Give candidates endorsed by the Socialist Equality Party a weak or no preference in the Senate. In Calwell, Newcastle, and Oxley, I would suggest preferencing the SEP-endorsed candidates below other left-wing or centrist candidates but above right-wing ones.
Website: https://www.wsws.org/en/special/pages/sep/australia/home.html
