Introduction
The Progress 2026 conference was hosted by Australian Progress on March 24-25 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in Narrm/Melbourne. As Australia’s largest gathering of progressive thinkers, activists, and community organisers, the conference brought together people from across the country and beyond to reflect, connect and strengthen collective strategies for change.
The plenaries sat at the centre of the program, featuring both Australian and international speakers who offered insights grounded in diverse political and organising contexts. Throughout the plenaries, several powerful themes emerged: the urgent need to build broad coalitions across our differences, an honest reckoning with where the progressive movement stands today, and the importance of resistance, hope, love and care.
The Commons Library sent a team of reporters to gather resources from the conference: stay tuned for many more!
We Need The People United
So please be bold, courageous, speak out, never back down when you see injustice occurring not only to my mob, but for the rest of you, and remember, people, that we are not the enemy. None of us in this room is the enemy to each other. So we’ve got to look at the way that we connect, work with each other and to stop the very destructive lateral violence – I will name it – that we have in our communities that affects us so badly. – Professor Jackie Huggins
What we need to be is the opposite of division. We need to be solidarity, and diversity. We need to build inclusive movements across race, faith. gender, class, abilities, geographies, and build movements where people feel powerful and are able to affect the policies that shape their lives… – Kirsty Albion
Whether your cause leads to healthier Country or healthier community, or giving voice to the otherwise voiceless, your fight is linked with ours [First Nations]. These are shared causes and we should look to rely on each other when it comes to a better future. – Ngarra Murray
Let’s not be the Judean People’s Front fighting the People’s Front of Judea – let’s fight the white supremacists, the polluters, the misogynists, the fascists, the billionaires. – Jamila Rizvi
We win by building a big tent that can bring very different people together. – Will Stracke
We’re here for socialism, and the means by which we do that is building working-class power across race, across religion, across gender, across geography, across educational status, and that doesn’t mean that we abandon antiracism, Indigenous rights, disabled people’s struggles, et cetera, et cetera. It means that we frame those struggles in material rather than subjective terms. – Ash Sarkar
It is about coalition building, instead of focusing on the issues that make us different, focus on the issues that bring all humans together. – Mohamed Alharbi
Our strugglers are not separate, the fight for human rights globally and the fights we are part of locally are interlinked. The same systems that allow bombs to fall elsewhere are connected to the systems of violence against trans people, First Nations people, People of Colour… It is our shared struggle. – Noorulain Masood
Real Talk
Our communities are standing on the frontline… Our communities know what it means to make significant structural change and what it takes. It is not just that you can stand in solidarity with us, but that you have a lot to learn from us. – Larissa Baldwin-Roberts
So, let’s be honest, what we’ve done is we’ve nurtured a culture that’s deeply individualistic, where to be seen as a victim, to be able to claim that marginalized identity position gives you social capital… So, instead of fighting to liberate ourselves from harm, we ended up attached to the social status that being a victim brings. – Ash Sarkar
I want to leave you with these thoughts. What is the point of us, right? What’s the point of the left? Why are we bothering to create political movements, to participate in political conversations and to commit our precious and limited time on this Earth to trying to change it? Is it just to be heard, to feel seen and to be validated as an individual? Sure, those things are important, but it’s not the point of the movement. – Ash Sarkar
Extreme wealth itself has become a bomb that is connected to all these other crises. We need to abolish billionaires, we need a wealth cap. It is deranged, our elite class really don’t think they have to live in the same world as the rest of us. We need to bring them back down to earth. – Naomi Klein
Really the end goal of people like Donald Trump is to eliminate the UN entirely and I think that’s hard for a lot of people on the left – it’s hard for us to rally around these institutions that have failed for so long and that’s because, you know, they were never real to begin with. The universal values that they claim to stand for were never real, but that doesn’t mean we throw it all out. – Naomi Klein
In a democracy, there’s nothing more valuable than people’s opinion. The far right understood that a long time ago. It’s more than time that we understood that too. – Ricardo Borges Martins
Progressive movements are losing the public narrative. Battle for trans inclusion and sport and health care are the two biggest canaries in the coal mine. Anti trans voices dominate the platforms and mastheads that much of the world consumes, giving them the power to shape how the public, as well as decision makers, think, feel and behave. – Sam Lewis
What should be a serious fight against anti-semitism, has become distorted into a tool for repression…This is why I think that we as a progressive movement cannot afford to tap out of the anti-semitism debate and treat it as someone else’s issue or dismiss it as a bad faith topic to be avoided. – Sarah Schwartz
The Pacific has always been a people of great voyages. True to this spirit, our region undertook another great voyage, beginning in 2019 to the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice. Why did we do this? Because we were tired of seeing climate change take our homes, our villages and communities, our cultures and ways of life, the very thread of Pacifica existence was unraveling before our eyes. And on the other side of the world, it seemed that no one was bothered in its response to the climate crisis. We were tired of seeing the world do nothing as sea levels rose and cyclones battered our communities, one after another. – Vishal Prasad
Resistance
It is about committing not just to reform, but to transformation, for a better future for all of us. Because the next decade will shape whether this country continues to deny its history or finally have the courage to change its future. – Tamika Sadler
The more you oppress us, the harder we will resist (Semakin ditekan, demakin melawan) – Efraim Leonard
Gaza as a microcosm, encapsulates the essence of the Palestinian struggle, an anti colonial and anti racist struggle for justice, liberation and equality. Despite over a century unrelenting attempts to eliminate the Palestinian people from Gaza, from Bethlehem, from Jerusalem, Al Quds and from Akka, despite the ongoing attempts to discredit and vilify their legitimate cause for justice, freedom and equality, support for the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause continues to grow. – Noura Mansour
Hope, Love & Care
Elevating hope is about shifting the focus to where it needs to be, and that is what communities need in order to thrive and this usually means putting the spotlight on political leadership and policy decisions. – Siobhán O’Donogue
So it’s a bit hard to summarise over 20 years of campaigning. There were moments when it looked impossible, but I would say that leaders are the key. Focusing on building leaders was the key. Persistence and hope was the key. – Jo Schofield
We bring more people, disabled people and otherwise, into our base by practicing care, by taking care of them, not by being transactional. We talk to them about issues, and we do political education, and we ask them to mobilise, but we do that after we try to help them get their basic needs met. How can we expect people to take direct action if they are about to be evicted from their home or if they can’t put food on their table? – Dom Kelly
A few weeks ago, I was at a climate justice event, and this woman, Jessica Palmares, was talking about hope. She said that hope isn’t a word that she favours, because although we need hope, the thing that keeps her going is love… No one sets out to be a hero, but all of us, every single person in this room knows what it feels like to fight for love… Love is the stomping ground for progress. – Sisonke Msimang
Let the rage sustain you, let the solidarity of the collective be what stops you from getting lost in it, and let hope be what lets you sleep at night. – Will Stracke
Plenary Speakers
- Jamila Rizvi (Progress 2026 emcee)
- Ngarra Murray (First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria)
- Tamika Sadler (Common Threads)
- Wil Stracke (Victorian Trades Hall Council)
- Mohamed Alharbi (Zohran For NYC)
- Kirsty Albion (Australian Progress)
- Hugh de Krester (Australian Human Rights Commission)
- Sarah Schwartz (Jewish Council of Australia)
- Siobhan O’Donoghue (Uplift — Ireland)
- Eloise Brook (Australian Professional Association for Trans Health)
- Efraim Leonard (Bijak Memantau — Indonesia)
- Professor Jackie Huggins AM FAHA (Common Threads)
- Noura Mansour (Democracy in Colour)
- Ash Sarkar (Author and Journalist — UK)
- Naomi Klein (Canada)
- Jo Schofield (United Workers Union)
- Ricardo Borges Martins (Quid — Brazil)
- Maxine Beneba Clarke (Poet)
- Baker Boy, Lauren Blundell and Renee Philips (National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition)
- Dom Kelly (New Disabled South — USA)
- Sam Lewis (The Flying Bats Football Club)
- Michael Wright (Electrical Trades Union)
- Vishal Prasad (Pacific Islands Students fighting Climate Change — Fiji)
- Noorulain Masood (Centre for Social Innovation in Developing Countries — Pakistan)
- Larissa Baldwin-Roberts (Common Threads)
- Sisonke Msimang (storyteller)
- Adam Knobel (Australian Progress)
