We have to vote out the Howard government, but that doesn't have to mean settling for Howard-Lite. Voting 1 Greens and 2 Labor on the Lower House ballot paper means we can help end 11 years of conservative rule and vote for something more than Labor's me-tooism.

Socialist Worker lists the top 10 reasons to get rid of John Howard at this month's federal election.

Peter Marshall, Victorian secretary of the United Firefighters, told Socialist Worker why his union is, for the first time, supporting the Greens-and why they support the Greens in the lower house seat of Melbourne as well as the Senate.

KEVIN RUDD is right when he says that people are sick of Howard's mantra, "Working families have never had it so good". But he has also made it clear that he agrees with his core economic argument-that the neo-liberal reforms begun 20 years ago under Labor and radically extended under Howard have fire-walled the Australian economy from external shocks and crises.

PAKISTAN'S DICTATOR Pervez Musharraf has launched a wave of repression by imposing martial law, banning public assemblies and shutting down independent TV stations. Musharraf cites the growing "chaos" in the country and the need to tackle terrorism as reasons for imposing the emergency.

THE DEATHS of two Australian soldiers, dozens of Afghanis in in suicide bombings and the crisis in Pakistan have suddenly focused attention on Afghanistan in the last few weeks. The Taliban is back, taking on the NATO forces there to support the Karzai government that replaced it after the US-led invasion in 2001.

RECENT POLLS suggest that the Afghanistan war is becoming as unpopular as the Iraq War. But one bizarre response on the left has been to argue that, while Australian troops should now pull out, some kind of foreign intervention was still necessary to quell the Taliban after 9/11.

Pre-election opinion polls suggest that the Green vote has either stagnated at around the 7 per cent gained in 2004, or has possibly declined a per cent or two. The exception is Tasmania, where the issue of the Gunns pulp mill has doubled the Greens vote in the past month.

MOST WOULD agree that the Greens have much better policies on global warming than the two major parties. But now it seems voters have another choice: The Climate Change Coalition (CCC).

Shaun Wilson, a lecturer in sociology at Sydney’s Macquarie University, helped organise the new Australian Survey of Social Attitudes. He spoke with Tom Barnes about public perceptions of trade unions, tax cuts and welfare policy and how these views square with the policies of the major parties.

ONE ISSUE that's hardly got a look in during this election campaign is foreign policy-in particular, Australia's relationship with the United States and involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It marks a sharp change from the lead-up to the 2004 election, when Labor leader Mark Latham outraged the political and media elite with his criticisms of the Iraq war, the US alliance and the proposed free trade agreement.

IT IS widely recognised that Kevin Rudd's campaign strategy is to minimise the differences between himself and John Howard. His response to the centerpiece of Howard's pitch for re-election, his $34 billion tax cuts, was a perfect example.

For all the talk of economic management, Howard's claims about interest rates have been exposed as a fraud. And WorkChoices has exposed him as arrogant, out of touch and power-hungry.

WHO SHOULD socialists vote for - and, just as importantly, on what basis should that decision be made? In most places the choice is between Green and Labor. But in a small number of lower house seats there are also candidates from the Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Equality Party and the Socialist Party, as well as some socialist senate tickets.

CHARGES LAID against 17 people in New Zealand, under the country's Terrorism  Suppression Act 2002, have been dropped. The 17 were arrested in October but all have now been released on bail and all charges under the Act dropped.

ACTIVISTS IN Sydney are campaigning to defend protesters arrested during the APEC summit in September. Solidarity protests are being held outside major court hearings for the demonstrators.

Paddy Gibson recently visited the Northern Territory and spoke with Mitch, an Aboriginal woman from Central Australia

A NEW movement organised by Indigenous activists and their supporters has sprung up to fight the Howard government's takeover of Northern Territory communities, despite media claims of Indigenous leaders welcoming Howard's proposal to hold a referendum on a "new statement of reconciliation".

THE LABOUR movement lost two of its leading historians last month-Robin (Bob) Gollan and Eric Fry. Gollan and Fry were both members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), radical nationalists who saw the struggle for socialism as a fight for a "fair go".

A review of Naomi Klein's, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Allen Lane, $32.95

THERE IS something about Gordon Bennett's painting that is unique and angrily refreshing. He says, "If I were to choose a single word to describe my art practice it would be the word 'question'.

CANBERRA SOCIALIST, Rick Kuhn, has won the 2007 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Prize for his book, Henryk Grossman and the recovery of Marxism. The prize is given for a book that exemplifies the best and most innovative new writing in or about the Marxist tradition.

Industrial action by Victorian nurses has defeated attempts by the State Labor government to impose an arbitrary cap on public sector pay. Nine days of work bans and mass meetings led to pay rises of between 3. 8 and 6 per cent-breaking Premier Brumby's 3.25 per cent limit-and victories that include the retention of nurse-patient ratios and a promise to fund 300 extras nurses.

Victorian public school teachers are set to strike on November 21, three days before the federal election, challenging John Brumby's 3.25 per cent pay limit.

JOHN BRUMBY'S attack on public sector workers is a portent of the policies we can expect from federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd should he win government. Brumby, like Rudd, has modelled himself as an economic conservative.