Alleged “sex pest socialist” Stephen Jolly set to receive over $90,000 in taxpayer funds.
Veteran Marxist activist, Yarra Councillor, Trotskyist extremist and accused sex pest Stephen Jolly has announced that the newly formed “Victorian Socialists” party he led to ignominious defeat in the recent Victorian state election expects to receive over $90,000 dollars in taxpayers funds from the VEC.
The Victorian Socialists while completely failing in their goal of electing Cllr Jolly to the Victorian upper house did gain enough votes to qualify for the electoral funding. Under Victorian electoral law Independent candidates and registered political parties who receive over 4% of first preference votes are eligible to receive public funding. For the 2018 State election this taxpayer funding was based at a rate of $1.75 for each first preference vote.
Stephen Jolly standing as the Vic Socialist candidate in the Northern metropolitan region scored 4.04% per cent of the first preference vote, JUST getting him across the line for funding.
So who’s getting our money?
The Victorian Socialists party was formed by Cllr Jolly in conjunction with Socialist Alternative, (currently the largest Trotskyist extremist group in Australia) and also the Socialist Alliance (formerly the largest Trotskyist extremist group in Australia). Socialist Alliance was formed in 2001 in the wake of the S11 riots of September the previous year as an alliance between the Trotskyist International Socialist Organisation (ISO) and the Trotskyist Democratic Socialist Party (DSP). Socialist Alternative were themselves founded in 1995 as a split from the ISO.
During the campaign Jolly and VicSoc received endorsements from several unions including the ETU (Electrical Trades Union) VAHPA (Victorian Allied Health Professionals Association), the UFU (United Firefighters Union) the CFMMEU (the result of the recent merger of the CFMEU and the MUA), the AMIEU (Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union) and the NUW (National Union of Workers).
Not only did the ETU give an endorsement but they also donated significant financial support to the tune of $50,000. It is unknown if the members of the ETU were consulted before their dues were squandered supporting the electoral ambitions of a man who has spent the entirety of his adult life in two different countries advocating and agitating for a revolution to implement his particular vision of totalitarian communism.
One also wonders if the often poorly paid members of the VAHPA which donated at least $3500 of members money to VicSoc and which has run numerous commendable campaigns against domestic violence and sexual harassment were aware of the internal VicSoc investigations into Stephen Jolly’s alleged decades of sexual harassment and penchant for sending dick pics to female activists.
One hopes not.
Jolly recently appeared as a keynote speaker at the Socialist Alternative “Class Struggle and Socialism” conference earlier this month where he publicly thanked the Guardian Australia Newspaper and the Age Newspaper for their favourable coverage and support in his campaign. Also at the “Class struggle and Socialism conference” were workshops and speeches detailing how Stalinism wasn’t the “true Communism”, how a violent revolution for Communism is not only inevitable but a good thing, and instructions on how attendees can get started building Marxist cells in their workplace. One suspects that attendees who work at the Guardian or the Age might find they already have a few.
Jolly also received the wholehearted endorsement of the Australian branch of the Lebanese Communist Party a group that for most of its existence was funded by the Soviet Union and whose parent group in Lebanon once maintained a 5,000 strong Soviet funded armed military wing during the decades long Lebanese Civil war. Despite posting a picture on social media of himself accepting this endorsement while making a closed first communist salute posing in front of the LCP flag complete with hammer and sickle not a single media outlet bothered to mention any of this. I guess that’s what happens when you have friendly fellow travellers in Melbourne newsrooms.
With the $90,000+ from the VEC for Jolly’s showing in the Northern Metro region and probably more from the unusually firm showing received by Socialist Alternative industrial relations organiser Jerome Small (who stood in the Broadmeadows electorate under the VicSoc banner) Jolly and the extremist groups who back him will have the resources to continue their march to greater influence.
And the media will continue to ignore the fact that their negligence has allowed the most radical violent political extremists active in our country today to normalise themselves 30 years after the fall of the Berlin wall should have buried their vile ideology for good.