The Communist Party of Australia is waging a very active campaign for the seat of Lee in the March 20 state elections. Candidate and CPA state secretary Bob Briton has featured several times in local media and support for the campaign has exceeded local branches' expectations.
"We've been knocked out by the response so far", Briton told Green Left Weekly. "We don't know what to expect on polling day but everything about the campaign so far has been bigger and better than we anticipated. The launch was attended by about 100 people, including the Liberal mayor of the local Port Adelaide Enfield Council!"
It's the first time since the 2001 federal election that the CPA has stood a candidate in the area. The redevelopment of the inner port has seen the riverside transformed into a ghetto for the rich, with luxury apartments and marinas standing on the site of the former CSR sugar refinery.
Briton was involved in a campaign with local Kaurna elder, the late Auntie Veronica Brodie, to have the site returned to the traditional owners for a cultural centre, but developers and the state's Land Management Corporation prevailed over the local people.
Alternatives to the military industries, being established at nearby Osborne, are also high on the policy platform. The CPA is proposing a manufacturing hub to produce trams, wind turbines and solar panels instead of the Air Warfare Destroyer, next generation submarines, missile guidance systems and other aggressive hardware designed to enhance "interoperability" with US forces.
"These weapons aren't being made to defend our country. They are being built to help shore up flagging global US strategy that isn't even in the interests of the people of the United States. We'd be much better off not tipping money down this bottomless pit for weapons manufacture", Briton said.
The CPA is also protesting plans to convert the local Le Fevre High school into a naval high school with "mentoring", scholarships and other inducements to encourage young people to take up careers in the weapons industry.
Eighteen Adelaide high schools are to have a special curriculum encouraging students into careers in the military industrial complex.
Briton's election campaign has also opposed the energy guzzling desalination plant being built in Adelaide and the massive expansion of uranium mining.
The other big focus of Briton's campaign is workers' rights. Sitting local member, Labor's Michael Wright, was minister for industrial relations when the Liberals backed the government to downgrade the state's Work Cover scheme and reduce workers' compensation entitlements.
The CPA proposes restoring and improving the scheme and tackling the issue of the cost of the scheme by making workplaces safer — more safety inspectors, tougher occupational health and safety legislation, prosecution for industrial manslaughter and encouraging unions to organise in the workplace.
The CPA also wants state government support for the dropping of charges against building worker Ark Tribe, who is facing court in June for refusing to attend an interrogation by the construction industry secret police, the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
The grilling was to be about a workplace meeting dealing with safety at a site at Adelaide's Flinders University.