News / State Election
Socialists dare to dream big in Brunswick
Party seeks to take votes off Greens in November
Mark Phillips
Monday, May 18, 2026
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As they launch into campaigning in the third state election since their formation eight years ago, Victorian Socialists are hoping to have a big impact in their Brunswick heartland this November.
The party, which is headquartered in Sydney Road, has chosen disability support worker Naomi Farmer as its candidate for Brunswick in 2026.
Farmer was involved in the founding of the Victorian Socialists in 2018 and has been been active in left-wing politics for several decades.
Up until now, she has been happy to be a rank-and-file activist, but she says the rise of far right politics in Australia and overseas had convinced her it was her duty to run for public office on a socialist platform.
“I always resisted doing it because it’s not generally my kind of habit to be the one standing in front of the crowds talking about the things or whatever,” she said.
“But the thing that kind of convinced me to do it this time is that the world is polarising politically, and I think that the somebody who can make a good argument publicly for socialist politics, politics of human decency and ordinary people having what they need and less war and destruction – I think that we need people who can convincingly do that.
“And I think we need people who can do that to step outside their comfort zone and put themselves out there to try and make the world better.
“So some of the things are challenging, but you can learn to do anything.
“If you’d asked me 20 years ago to speak in front of a crowd I would have shaken so much I fell over but now with practice, you can do it.”
The Victorian Socialists were founded less than 12 months before the 2018 state election and only fielded candidates in a small number of seats that year.
They ran a candidate in Brunswick for the first time in 2022 when Nahui Jiminez secured 8.1% of primary votes to come a clear fourth in the seat.
In neighbouring Pascoe Vale, the party’s candidate Madaleine Hah also finished fourth with 5.5% of first preferences, a significant improvement on 2018.
Farmer said that this year Victorian Socialists intended to have a candidate in every lower house seat in the state and to establish itself as a strong alternative for progressive voters.
They have already announced 32 candidates, including Yasemin Shamsli in Pascoe Vale, which covers Coburg and Brunswick West.
The party’s ticket for the upper house region of Northern Metropolitan consists of Omar Hassan and Louisa Bassini, who ran in the Bulleke-bek ward at the 2024 Merri-bek Council elections.
Despite being formed less than a decade ago, Farmer said Victorian Socialists aspired to be mainstay of state politics.
Success will be measured not just by how many votes the party gets but the impact it has on the public discourse, she said.
“[The party’s goal] is to get more people involved in the fight for social justice and feel confident that they’re not alone in thinking something should be better in the world, and feel confident that they themselves can do something to, if not stop an injustice, at least stand up and register your objection to it.
“So I hope that out of the elections, we have dozens more people who are confidently arguing socialist politics.”
As an example, she cites policies on housing that Victorian Socialists had been advocating for several years before Labor and the Greens adopted them.
“We want to push them [major parties] to the left.
“One of the things that we often argue is we’re not about to take government, nor would we want to … I think we need a Socialist in Parliament to be somebody in the belly of the beast, railing against the machine, not sitting at the table, making nice.
“But also, one of the ways that we do that is to force the Greens and, to a lesser extent, Labor, to demonstrate that there is a bunch of people who vote to their left and that however many per cent of the population thinks that what they’re offering is not enough.
“There should be more healthcare, education, etc., etc., and so them adopting our policies is part of that pressure we want to put on them. That’s not frustrating, it’s a victory.”
Farmer’s own political awakening began in the Latrobe Valley, where her father worked as a coal miner and was a union member.
She moved to Melbourne to study for a teaching degree at La Trobe University and has lived in the inner north ever since while being actively engaged in activism about refugee rights, the environment, marriage equality, economic inequality and other issues.
Years later, Farmer returned to her home town when the Hazelwood coal mine caught on fire in 2014, choking the area in pollution for weeks, an experience she later wrote about.
She says that at its core, the socialist agenda is a very simple argument that “that the world doesn’t have to be the way it is”.
“Socialist politics are hopeful, we are hopeful the world can be better.
“I’ve been a social justice activist for 20 years, I’ve seen us win things … I know that when hopeful people get together and fight together, we do win things. And actually, when I say we want to popularise socialist politics, that’s one of the key things I think we need to bring back into politics.
“We could spend money on healthcare and education and disability services if we stop spending so much money on the military and fossil fuels and tax cuts for the billionaires.
“Neoliberalism and that kind of ‘there is no alternative’ politics has convinced a lot of people that the world is the way it is and there’s nothing they can do about it.
“And that’s just not true.”
“We’re a political home for people who want the world to be better and we do all sorts of things outside the electoral cycle.”
— Naomi Farmer
In Brunswick, Victorian Socialists see their natural rivals as not Labor, but the Greens, who have held the seat since Tim Read’s historic victory in 2018.
Farmer, who lives near Anstey Station, says Brunswick is a priority seat for the party as it is viewed as its natural home and for the past few years its headquarters has been in Sydney Road.
The party’s membership has grown significantly over the past two years as the Sydney Road building became a hub for pro-Palestine activity during the war waged on Gaza by Israel.
While most observers would say Brunswick is a two-horse race, Farmer is hopeful of attracting enough votes that at the very least preferences from the Victorian Socialists will determine which of the two larger parties wins the seat.
Farmer says the Victorian Socialists have more than 120 active members in Brunswick who will be a highly visible presence in the electorate as November approaches, and she pulls no punches in declaring the party will be targeting voters who are disillusioned by the Greens.
She argues that as the Greens have become more of a fixture of Australian politics, they have moved more to the centre, leaving a void the Socialists want to fill.
“[Brunswick] was kind of their heartland, but I think they threw that away … If you look on paper, you might say that some of the Greens policies and the Victorian Socialist policies are similar, but I think the thing that makes us different is that we don’t want to just contest elections.
“We want to organise people into community and union groups, to organise other people, to actually mobilise a social force that can make those things happen.
“We’re a political home for people who want the world to be better and we do all sorts of things outside the electoral cycle.”
In neighbouring Pascoe Vale, Victorian Socialists candidate Yasemin Shamsili is a primary school administration worker who was involved in the campaign to prevent Merri-bek Council from axing its social worker program in council libraries.
Both Farmer and Shamsili will be attending a Meet the Candidates event at the Victorian Socialists centre, 83 Sydney Road, at 3pm on Saturday, May 30.ed the funding during a visit to the hockey club’s current playing venue at Brunswick Secondary College last Thursday night.
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