As campaigning for the March 18 election in South Australia gathers pace, state Labor treasurer Kevin Foley will be in for some unpleasant surprises.
Labor's campaign will make general promises to improve the dismal state of South Australia's public hospitals. But leaflets distributed by the Socialist Alliance throughout Foley's electorate of Port Adelaide will point to the real, underlying cause of the health debacle: Since being elected in 2002, the government of Labor Premier Mike Rann has cut state taxes on business by no less than $1 billion.
In Port Adelaide, the Socialist Alliance is running militant postal worker John McGill. "As a delegate to SA Unions", the Socialist Alliance election material explains, "McGill is one of the people leading the fight in South Australia against the Howard government's anti-union Work Choices legislation".
Rann's government has had the sense to see that giving in to pressures to put state employees on individual contracts is a guaranteed vote-loser. Rann also points out that his government is backing the High Court challenge to Howard's new industrial relations legislation. But the ALP's veneer of opposition to Work Choices hides what is effectively a do-nothing strategy.
How do Rann and Foley propose to fight Howard's attacks on workers? The answer is tacit but unmistakable: by getting Labor elected at the next federal election.
Contrast this with what McGill has to say: "Only militant, on-the-job organising and struggle can beat back Howard's attacks. We need people in parliament who'll stand with workers on the picket lines, not seat warmers who think they can fend off attacks by going to lunch with the Business Council.
"If elected, I'll use the state parliament as a forum for publicising and defending workers' struggles. And my office in Parliament House will be a base for organising the broad industrial campaigns needed to make the bosses back off."
The Labor government will also come under sharp criticism from the Socialist Alliance on the issue of this summer's scandalous energy blackouts. The ALP's stock answer here has been to blame the Liberal opposition, which while in office in 2001 leased the electricity infrastructure company ETSA to private interests.
Socialist Alliance campaign material makes the obvious demand: Revoke the lease! Return ETSA to public control! That way, services to the public — not profits for investors — can be made the priority.
Particularly discomfiting for big-party candidates will be McGill's pledge that if elected he will accept only the wage of an average worker. "Kevin Foley pulls in more than $200,000 a year as state treasurer", McGill points out.
"How can you stay in touch with the needs and concerns of ordinary people when you're on that kind of money? Living on a worker's income, I'll continue to feel the pressures on working people directly."
The Socialist Alliance campaign in Port Adelaide will be officially launched at a fundraising function in the electorate on February 25. Campaign supporters are urgently needed to help with tasks such as letterboxing and the distribution of how-to-vote cards.
Contact the Socialist Alliance in Adelaide on (08) 8212 6706 or <adelaide@socialist-alliance.org>, or drop in to the Activist Centre, 34a Hindley Street, city.
By Renfrey Clarke
From Green Left Weekly, February 22, 2006.
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