Australia hasn’t had an explicitly socialist member of parliament since the communist MP Fred Patterson was gerrymandered out in 1949. Since the collapse of his Communist Party following 1989, socialist groups have found themselves confined to the margins of political life.

This is beginning to change.

On Friday, August 24, close to five hundred people filled the seats and standing area in the Town Hall of Brunswick, an inner city suburb of Melbourne, to hear the candidates for the new Victorian Socialist party launch their election manifesto.