For the first time, the Socialist Equality Group is standing a candidate in the New Zealand election—Tom Petterson in the Hutt South electorate—to advance a socialist and internationalist perspective, to fight against the program of war and austerity that every established party is putting forward.

We urge workers, young people and readers of the World Socialist Web Site to attend our public election meeting this Sunday:

WHEN: Sunday, November 1, at 1:30 p.m.
WHERE: Dowse Art Museum, 45 Laings Road, Lower Hutt.

Register here to attend in person or here to participate online via Zoom.

The meeting will discuss the urgent issues confronting the working class that are being buried by every other party: the expanding world war and the eruption of class struggles internationally.

The National Party-led government and the opposition Labour Party are committed to integrating New Zealand into US-led wars and warmongering, including in the Middle East, and against Russia and China.

Both major parties have called for the NZ military to be made “combat-ready” by doubling its budget and expanding recruitment. This will be paid for by gutting social programs and intensifying the assault on the working class.

Working people already face an immense crisis. Successive Labour and National governments have presided over levels of social inequality among the sharpest in the developed world. One in five children lives in poverty, 10 percent of people rely on foodbanks, and more than 112,000 are homeless. While real wages have plummeted, the number of billionaires has doubled in eight years.

These conditions have led to a collapse in support for the major parties and are driving workers into struggle. Last October, 100,000 educators and healthcare workers took part in NZ’s biggest strike in more than 40 years. The election campaign has unfolded amid strikes by thousands of university staff, firefighters and public servants.

These are part of an international resurgence of class struggle, including mass protests and strikes throughout Europe, against austerity and war. The objective conditions exist for a unified, international movement of the working class against the capitalist system.

The SEG is fighting to mobilise workers in New Zealand against all capitalist parties, including Labour and its supporters, and against the union bureaucracy, which has strangled workers’ struggles and enforced deep cuts to real wages.

We call for rank-and-file committees, controlled democratically by workers, to rebel against the union apparatus and to unite workers across industries and with workers internationally.

At Sunday’s meeting, the SEG’s candidate Tom Petterson and other speakers will explain why the election will not solve the deepening crisis facing workers. The next government, whichever party leads it, will pursue a right-wing, militarist agenda putting it on a collision course with the working class.

Sunday’s meeting will discuss how the working class must prepare for these struggles. The SEG is intervening in the election not to win a seat in parliament, but to build a socialist leadership of the working class. This means fighting for a workers’ government that will abolish the capitalist system and reorganise society on the basis of human need, not private profit.

We urge all workers and young people to attend our meeting, donate to our election fund, and participate in our campaign.

Authorised by Tom Petterson, sep.wellington@gmail.com