The inability to find stable housing reduces a homeless person’s living conditions to an absolute minimum. The inhumane treatment of the most disadvantaged people of society should be something that a government concerns itself with and as the right to adequate housing, which is violated by the existence of homelessness, continues domestically and abroad.

Is it a realistic prospect to break the connection between trade unions and the Labor Party in Australia? Is it possible to defeat the hold of social democratic “fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” thinking on the clear majority of workers in this country? From the foundation of the Communist Party in 1920, Communists have always answered these questions in the affirmative. They have organised with varying degrees of success at different times and in different industries in pursuit of these goals. In today’s circumstances, where it is difficult to describe the ALP as a reforming social democratic party, it is worth dealing with those questions again to test the priorities of the newly-founded Australian Communist Party. It is also important to question the role Communists have played at different times in the history of the trade unions to see if there are lessons for us today.

It may come as a surprise to the passive observer but Newstart is demonstrably insufficient. The Henderson Poverty Line seems to be the waterline in a bizarre economic underwater swim. Newstart recipients are unable to break the surface to come up for air. In the March of 2016, the poverty line sat at $1049.78 with recipients receiving $658 a fortnight. Newstart recipients were $391.78 per fortnight away from breaking the surface and escaping poverty. This doesn’t take into account other factors such as actual living costs. Have things gotten better? The distance between those on Newstart and poverty in the more recent June 2018 quarter was $347.98. $33 isn’t a whole lot of difference. You could treat yourself to some nice takeout before returning to a dark life of poverty.

Capitalist ideology makes a point of emphasising the inevitability of poverty, the necessity of inequality, the inevitability of suffering. It portrays the world as chaotic and beyond any measure of control, regulation or understanding; we working class, can only struggle in vain against our own conditioned nature. Only a select few are virtuous enough to be charitable.