The Communist Party of Australia has congratulated Dignity for Disability’s Kelly Vincent on her election to South Australia’s Legislative Council. CPA State Secretary and candidate for Lee at the recent poll, Bob Briton, says the result is a victory for all marginalised people in the community.

“We congratulate Kelly Vincent on her victory. Her election shows just how many people feel overlooked by the political setup as it stands,” Mr Briton said.

“People with disabilities are among the most marginalised and excluded in our community and your election to the Legislative Council is bound to encourage them; to let them know that they are not alone.”

“The fact that Kelly Vincent can’t even enter Parliament House through the front door says a lot about the politics of this state. Ms Vincent’s election should see to it that something is done about that shameful situation at least.

“I’m sure she’ll be a strong advocate for people with disabilities and I support her statements concerning current legislation punishing carers ‘harbouring’ people issued with a mental health order. The state’s Disability Act must be changed without delay to meet the requirements of the relevant UN convention. We should lose our rogue state status on these matters straight away.

“Parents shouldn’t have to live in fear that their children will be without proper care if they die. Funding per user of disability services has dropped 16 percent since 2008. This is shameful. Meanwhile $44 billion is being spent on contracts to make weapons in this state in the years ahead. Where are this government’s priorities?

“People with disabilities are among the most overlooked sections of the community but they are not the only ones. Very few people get the ear of this government – that can cost up to $2000 a plate at a fundraising dinner for starters,” he added.

The Communist candidate for the seat of Lee at last Saturday’s State Election has said he is happy with the results from the electorate. Bob Briton has so far received 3.1% of the vote, ahead of two independents and just short of Family First’s candidate.

“It’s a modest vote compared to the major parties and the Greens but this was our first election campaign in quite a while. It gives us something to build on for next time and for the Federal Election,” Mr Briton said.

“We raised the profile of the Party in the area and our policies were very well received. If nothing else, I think we managed to challenge the stereotypes that exist about Communists and what we represent.”

“I congratulate Michael Wright on his victory but I hope he takes note of the drift away to other parties. There’s no doubt part of this was as a result of his direct involvement in the downgrading of WorkCover entitlements. The strong vote for the Greens is pleasing, too.”

“The Communist Party will keep campaigning around issues affecting working people. That’s our role; we’re the only party with that as their primary concern. We will build the campaign to stop the militarisation of South Australia and I think we will get more and more support as people come to appreciate the full consequences of the changes taking place in our community.”

Communist Party candidate for Lee, Bob Briton, will be holding a street corner meeting on Saturday morning to talk to local residents about the Rann Government’s plans to convert the local Le Fevre High School into a Naval High School.

“Eighteen Adelaide high schools are going to have a special curriculum geared to the interests of weapons manufacturers if Rann gets his way. I challenge Isobel Redmond and the Liberal Party to come out strongly against this highly inappropriate proposal for our state’s schools,” Mr Briton said today.

“The worst affected in these plans appears to be our local Le Fevre High School which will become a recruiting ground for military industries based at the Osborne Techport. Mentors from industry will be guiding young students into careers making weapons. That’s a choice for an adult to make.”

“Voters need to have a closer look at the grand Rann plan for our future. Jobs in other industries are drying up and one of the very few alternatives being considered is to make hugely destructive weapons systems that have nothing to do with our defence needs. They are being built to enhance ‘interoperability’ with US forces pursuing their own global strategy.”

“We don’t want to pin our long-term hopes on these war plans and we don’t want our best and brightest students diverted into this wasteful exercise. We need them to work on alternative energy sources and other ways to build a sustainable future.”

Bob Briton's “street corner” meeting will be held on the lawn strip between the Foodland supermarket and the Semaphore Hotel on Semaphore Road at 10.30am, Saturday March 13.

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The Communist Party of Australia’s candidate for the seat of Lee, Bob Briton, has called Premier Rann’s latest announcement for increased spending on weapons manufacture and other defence-related projects a “twisted vision” for the future of the state.

“The Premier’s so-called defence policy released today is a shocking document. Le Fevre High School – the school my kids attended – is to become a Naval High School with boosters for weapons manufacturers guiding local students’ careers. Eighteen schools will eventually be funneling our best and brightest into these wasteful and ultimately destructive jobs,” Mr Briton said.

“There will be scholarships for weapons-related studies made available and a Ministry to push even more of this shameful spending in SA. We need industries to build a sustainable future – wind turbines, vehicles using alternative fuels, trams and solar arrays.”

“Why are these initiatives such poor cousins to the business of making the instruments of war? Surely we need scholarships to get promising students working on ways out of the current climate emergency.”

“What is in the Premier’s head when he boasts of vast additional tracts of land to be given over to weapons testing and military manoeuvers? He needs reminding that South Australians are also Australian citizens and that they are paying the billions upon billions of dollars for all these projects, the value of which have not been spelled out to the people of the state or the country.”

“Workers are not indifferent to how their labour is used. They would rather build useful things, things that create value for their communities and for export to other markets. We need peaceful industries to underpin the future of SA. This is a truly twisted vision for our state and we should reject it on election day.”

Communist Party candidate for Lee, Bob Briton, today criticised the Liberals’ policy announcement of further cuts to South Australia’s WorkCover scheme. Liberal leader Isobel Redmond has announced that a Liberal government would carve up the body, adopt measures to assist employers to self-insure, open the door to private competitors for claims management and reduce the employer levy.

“Ms Redmond is right in saying WorkCover is failing the workers and taxpayers of SA but she can’t duck her share of the responsibility. The Liberals voted with the government to reduce workers’ entitlements under the scheme and have not sought to toughen occupational health and safety standards that could deal with the problems at their source. They have resisted moves for legislation to deal with industrial manslaughter and have in every way put the employers’ interests first,” Mr Briton said.

“The Liberals are strong backers of the Australian Building and Construction Commission which makes the job of unions to ensure safe workplaces in the dangerous construction industry extremely difficult. They are also supporters of industry self-regulation and we have seen where this has led with the disastrous home insulation saga of late.”

“If the Liberals think having private companies compete in a supposed market for workers’ compensation is in the community’s interests, could they explain why the privatisation of utilities like electricity has reduced service and led to higher charges?”

“We don’t need here today, gone tomorrow private operators in this essential area of income support for sick and injured workers. Get tough on unsafe workplaces, not the victims of substandard practices,” Mr Briton added.

The CPA’s candidate for the seat of Lee, Bob Briton, has criticised the confrontational campaign being waged by “Save the Unborn” candidate Trevor Grace.

“Stobie pole posters featuring babies and a website with a minor promoting the sale of a ‘save the unborn’ T-shirt are in bad taste,” Mr Briton said.

“In my experience women do not choose to exercise their reproductive rights lightly as Mr Grace appears to be suggesting. If this candidate had his way, women who were unable, for whatever reason, to take their pregnancy to term would be forced to seek out dangerous backstreet practitioners."

"I can’t see our community ever wanting a return to those sad days. By all means let there be a public debate but I would urge Mr Grace not to try to cash in with a sensational campaign with the spurious justification of ‘raising public awareness’."

"People know what abortion is and that it is a woman’s right to choose,” he added.

Candidate for the seat of Lee, Bob Briton, today condemned the recent decision to develop a specialised curriculum to feed apprentices, cadets and interns into the state’s burgeoning weapons industry. Henley, Aberfoyle Park and Valley View High Schools will be the first schools targeted for the scheme with another five being identified at a later stage.

“I don’t know what has happened to the moral judgement of the Federal Defence Personnel Minister, Greg Combet, or SA Education Minister, Jane Lomax-Smith, but the idea of high school kids being groomed at a young age to produce aggressive weapons with horrifying destructive potential is totally out of line,” Mr. Briton said.

“A decision to be involved in the military or the production of weapons is one for an adult to make. Warships, submarines, missiles and other complex and hugely expensive weapons are not toys.

“These weapons are being produced to help the US maintain its influence in the Asia Pacific. They heighten tensions in the region for no good reason and siphon funds from services we really do need.”

“It is a good thing that more funding goes to maths and science for our schools. Who knows, an SA student might just be the one to make a medical breakthrough or energy saving invention.”

“However, it is appalling that funding for maths and science courses is being dangled before school communities with these dangerous strings attached.

“We mustn’t encourage large numbers of bright kids to waste their talents on making the instruments of war and suffering. Their skills would be better utilised finding ways to combat global warming or in the development of sustainable industry.”

Communist Party candidate for the seat of Lee, Bob Briton, has condemned the unseemly celebrations staged today for the opening of the Techport weapons building facility at Osborne. Mr. Briton says the sight of Premier Rann and the US Deputy Secretary for Defense crowing about how many taxpayer dollars are being sunk in this project was quite astounding.

"The Premier gloated about the project having cost more than $300 million already with another $8 billion to be sunk into in years to come. In the meantime, communities are doing without and the buck about who is responsible for the parlous state of our hospitals, for example, just keeps on being passed."

US defence heavyweight Bill Lynn praised our willingness to splash huge amounts of money on what he called "our security" and that the US was "just happy to be a part of it."

"This facility and the production of submarines and warships has nothing to do with our defence. We don't need these weapons to defend our country; they are about shoring up the faltering US global military strategy which doesn't even serve the interests of the American people," Bob Briton said.

"These huge sums of money should be spent on services for needy communities, appropriate measures to secure our water supply and a buy back of the public utilities stupidly sold off since the end of the 1990s," Mr. Briton added.

The CPA is advocating the establishment of public enterprises to create skilled jobs and to create the sustainable energy and transport infrastructure needed in South Australia.

Around 100 members and supporters of the Communist Party of Australia (SA) were at the Exeter Hotel on Semaphore Rd on Saturday afternoon to celebrate the launch of Bob Briton’s State Election campaign for the seat of Lee.

It’s the first time the Party has fielded a candidate in South Australia for a number of years, the most recent being Michael Perth, who ran in the seat of Port Adelaide at the 2000 Federal Election.

Referring to the Party’s election campaign slogan “Another SA is Possible”,  CPA State Secretary and poll contender Bob Briton outlined the Party’s policy platform for 2010. He told the enthusiastic crowd, many of whom were sporting the slogan on bright red t-shirts, that people don’t want a State Government that is wedded to big business and the development of military industries.

“We want to bring utilities back into public ownership and control, but more than that, we want new public enterprises to build the sustainable energy and transport infrastructure that we need. If there are social needs here we should do the building here. We don’t need to import trams from overseas, for example, when we have the manufacturing skills to do it here in South Australia,” he said.

In a speech that was highly critical of the Rann Government’s treatment of injured workers, Mr Briton took aim at current Member for Lee, Michael Wright.

“There was a report released just yesterday that says the government is going to revisit WorkCover and continue its attacks on it. Michael Wright was the Minister in charge of industrial relations when changes were made which had the effect of sending sick and injured workers back to work quicker and sicker,” said Mr Briton.

“We were told that we (South Australians) needed to rein in the cost of WorkCover in order to maintain our triple A credit rating. We now know that the agencies that distribute those ratings were complicit in the debacle now referred to as the Global Financial Crisis,” he said.

“In order to keep the main players in casino capitalism happy, workers compensation in South Australia was downgraded. This is a betrayal,” he added.

In referring to the incredible quantities of water used by mining companies, the CPA’s candidate for Lee said, “we say no to a future South Australia which is like a hole in the ground left by accident-prone uranium mining companies.”

Stressing that a strong campaign must soon be organised against the militarisation of South Australia, Mr Briton said the Party is against the production of aggressive and destructive weapons which, contrary to government spin, are not being purchased for “defence” purposes.

“Spending on submarines, warships and the acquisition of Aegis missiles and joint strike fighters is not in our interests, it is part of a global military strategy with the United States, which ultimately doesn’t serve the interests of the American people either.”

Mr Briton was also critical of the State Government’s acceptance of sponsorship money from weapons manufacturers.

“I think there’s something a little bit dysfunctional when a weapons manufacturer is investing money in science and maths programs in our local high schools,” he said, referring to a deal that saw US weapons manufacturer Raytheon supply laptop computers to Aberfoyle Park high school in Adelaide’s southern suburbs.

Mr Briton said he was confident the election campaign continue would continue to grow and that it would go some way to eliminating that often heard refrain “I didn’t know you people (communists) were around anymore.”

In closing, Mr Briton encouraged potential members to join its ever-increasing ranks with a call to action.

“We want to be an energetic campaigning organising all the time. I think we’ve made a good start,” he said.

The report from an inquiry into WorkCover released recently shows that the current government and its Liberal rivals have not finished wielding the axe to the state’s workers’ compensation scheme. Among the proposals is one to allow the entry of two or three private companies into the field to manage claims. The committee noted evidence that self-insured companies made savings with fewer claims and less lost time. The report’s recommendations would facilitate any move by companies to self-insure with hard-nosed private outfits and further undermine the WorkCover scheme. The Liberals are very keen on this one.

In 2008, the Rann Government ignored pleas from the trade union movement to protect WorkCover. Cuts to entitlements were made and the objective was made plain – get workers back to work quicker and sicker in order to preserve the state’s triple A finance rating. Since then, the agencies that hand down the ratings have been shown to be intimately involved in the global financial debacle of recent times. Suggestions that costs could be contained by making workplaces safer were brushed aside. Voters will remember this long shameful saga.

The Communist Party of Australia will officially launch its 2010 State Election campaign in the electorate of Lee on February 13. Local resident Bob Briton will contest the seat and is presenting a clear alternative to the major parties for voters in the western suburbs seat with his “ Another SA is Possible” campaign.

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A year on from the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria and those effected are doing their best to get on with their lives in the most difficult of circumstances.

The CPA would like to offer its solidarity with those who have lost loved ones, their homes and had their lives changed forever.

We also want to show our respect to all those who unselfishly helped the communities hit by those devastating fires and who continue to do so long after the event.  They have shown that humanity is not innately greedy, rather, we are programmed to help and support each other in times of need.

The Communist Party believes today’s announcement by South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson – that legislation banning anonymous political comment on the internet will be scrapped – reveals just how out of step the government is with public opinion in the state.

“The clamp on freedom of expression should never have been legislated. The government’s sensitivity to criticism about a whole range of issues and scandals was behind the move and it is disturbing that it had support from other parties,” CPA candidate for the seat of Lee, Bob Briton, said.

“It shouldn’t have taken a flood of protest from the community for the government to realise that this sort of attempt to stifle criticism is just not on,” Mr Briton said. “It shows Mr Atkinson and the government do not represent us on questions of democratic rights; that they have to be watched closely. The people of SA, particularly younger people who use the internet to express themselves, will remember this on election day. The legislation should be repealed now.”

The CPA will launch Bob Briton's campaign for the seat of Lee at the Exeter on Semaphore Rd in just under a fortnight. The bar will be open and nibbles will be on us. So that we don't over or under cater, we don't believe in wasting food, please RSVP here. See you on the 13th!

Last week, the people of Haiti were hit by a devastating, magnitude 7 earthquake. The enormity of this disaster is becoming clearer all the time, with scenes of destruction emerging from the capital Port-au-Prince and surroundi ng areas. It is likely that thousands have been killed and many thousands have been left homeless by this disaster. It should be remembered that the people of Haiti have had to endure a number of traumas in recent years, from political upheavals and interference to natural disasters, including the severe Hurricane season of 2008, when 4 Hurricanes hit killing over 800 and causing considerable destruction. The Communist Party of Australia (SA) expresses it's solidarity with the people of Haiti, and it's deep sympathy for the victims of this terrible earthquake. We would encourage people to consider donating to earthquake appeals and organisations such as Red Cross who are heavily involved in aiding the victims.