Engaging in a combination of grassroots activism and electoral politics, as of February 2024[update] Socialist Alliance has one elected officeholder in Australia, Sue Bolton in the City of Merri-bek.

[19] The aim of the merger was to create greater left unity in the aftermath of the S11 protests of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne on 11–13 September 2000.

Following this conference three of the leading members of a "Non-Aligned Caucus" and most of the active affiliate organisations gradually withdrew from the Socialist Alliance.

[36] Socialist Alliance's Tim Gooden, former Geelong Trades Hall Secretary and CFMEU organiser, led the ticket for the Western Victoria Region.

The Victorian Socialists ran candidates in the electorates of Calwell, Wills, and Cooper during the 2019 federal election, gaining 4.6%, 4.5%, and 4.2% of the vote respectively.

[38] In addition to having branches in major capital cities Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, and Hobart.

The Socialist Alliance also maintains branches in and around a number of minor cities and regional areas, including in the Blue Mountains, Cairns, Geelong, Illawarra, New England and Newcastle.

[41][42] The Socialist Alliance is a registered political party at a federal level,[43] and annually maintains[44] electoral registration in New South Wales[45] and in Victoria.

[52] The Brisbane local newspaper The Westender[53] has also run a column written by the Socialist Alliance, and its members have been published on sites such as ABC's The Drum and Online Opinion.

[citation needed] For around one year the Socialist Alliance published a quarterly journal, Seeing Red, the final issue of which came out in March 2006.

[54][55] Before Green Left's website became the dominant means by which Socialist Alliance published written material online, they maintained a variety of blogs.

[66][67] Socialist Alliance has been highly critical of the Australian Labor Party's industrial policy for not returning enough rights to workers and for retaining the ABCC, describing the Rudd government's Fair Work Australia as little more than "WorkChoices-lite".

Socialist Alliance also played a leading role in founding the Stop the War Coalition in a number of cities, and organising protests in the years that followed.

[72] Socialist Alliance opposes the "war on terror", claiming that it leads to increased racism against Arab and Muslim communities, and to government policies that threaten civil liberties.

[73][74] Socialist Alliance members were central to organising the protests in Sydney against APEC in 2007,[75][76] and the visit of Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, in the face of increased police powers that were heavily criticised for violating civil liberties.

Socialist Alliance has played a role in recent campaigns for justice for indigenous Australians, particularly around the inquiries into the deaths-in-custody of TJ Hickey in Redfern[91] and Mulrunji Doomadgee on Palm Island.

In the case of Mulrunji, leading indigenous activist, academic and Socialist Alliance member Sam Watson played a key role in organising the protests that led to the re-opening of the inquiry.

[92] Socialist Alliance also opposes the Federal Government's Northern Territory intervention, and helped to organise the 12 February 2008 protests outside Parliament House in Canberra.

Furthermore, the party calls for capitalist enterprises that have received taxpayer-subsidies to either repay their subsidies back to the taxpayers in full or be nationalised without compensation.

Socialist Alliance is involved in campaigns against privatisation like those planned by the New South Wales Government (for example electricity[103] and prisons[104]), alongside the Greens, unions, ALP members and community groups.

It is actively involved in supporting many left-wing movements around the world, such as those relating to Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution in Latin America,[61] Palestinian resistance, Kurdish self-determination in North Syria.

While the Socialist Alliance participates in elections, standing candidates at a range of levels, it does not see electoral politics as the most important vehicle for building socialism.

[130] Socialist Alliance candidates also pledge to take only an average wage if elected, donating the remainder into the social movements.

[144] Merri-bek Council (renamed from Moreland in 2022) gained a second Socialist Alliance councillor in March 2022 when Monica Harte was elected on a countback to replace disgraced Labor property developer Milad el-Halabi.