THE BUDGET

"The Federal Budget may claim to be a political document; it is certainly not an economic one. It falls dangerously short of providing the stimulus and security the nation needs." - The Herald, (Melbourne) September 18th.

"The Herald" editorial summed up the Budget very well when it was stated therein "The Whitlam Government has not only ignored the forces of inflation and unemployment that pound on the national economy's door. It has now proudly harnessed inflation itself. The Budget is therefore not a calculation of our economic course in the coming fiscal year carrying with it a reasoned program based on that calculation. Rather it is a statement of political Socialist action. We would be hard put to state the matter more clearly than that!"

We do not wish to take up valuable space in this issue of On Target to re-hash the commentaries on the Budget which have appeared in the various organs of the mass media; readers have read them. The Herald is quite right; the tax cuts are a fraud. A few crumbs are thrown to the small earners whilst adding 46% to net pay-as-you-earn collections. Overall taxes and charges are up by at least 30%; Government spending is up 32%. And so on.

In our opinion we shall see the steady growth of stagflation from now on. The increased Government spending will guarantee a rising inflation rate, and the increased overall taxation, and especially the Capital Gains tax will knock out small and medium sized businesses by the hundreds, thus throwing tens of thousands of employees on to the labour market. This combines with the already "biting" factors, which are depressing the economy, such as the credit squeeze, and higher interest rates.

By February next year there will be tens of thousands of school leavers combing through the employment notices, and storming the various employment agencies. We are in full agreement with The Herald's assertion that there is a strong possibility (we would go further - strong probability) that the Budget is an unworkable, dangerous gamble. The fall of the Whitlam Government is likely next year. This will probably come about because of the Senate refusal of Supply to the Government. It looks as though Senator Townley, of Tasmania will rejoin the Liberal Party, and this would make such action by the Senate still easier.

Now that there is an emerging back-lash against the Whitlam Government, as evidenced by the heavy Labor reverse in the Local Government elections in New South Wales on Saturday the 22nd. September the Opposition will be out after the downfall of the Government. It seems an odds-on certainty now that a Liberal-Country Party coalition Government would regain office, and that's when the political and economic climate could develop violent overtones. We shall have more to say on the situation as it progresses.

The Communists have their strategy planned to exploit what they believe will be a revolutionary situation. The Australian League of Rights has also its strategy planned to advance, in this approaching, confused situation the only policies that will restore political and economic stability to a disintegrating society. The fight will be bitter.

FROM BRITISH ON TARGET

(14th September) Twenty-five Years of Dishonesty. by Bernard Smith.
"In August of last year the World Council of Churches celebrated its 25th anniversary. It had much to congratulate itself on and many articles appeared surveying with pride the W.C.C.'s past achievements. Yet none of them quite did justice to the W.C.C.'s record; all of them omitted one very important fact. No doubt this was an oversight since our church papers never fail to report the smallest activity of the W.C.C. Perhaps the explanation is that here it is not an activity but lack of any activity that constitutes the "important fact". And so, for future historians and for those readers who abhor lacunae (omissions, gaps, intentional or otherwise...Ed.) I present what others left out.
The W.C.C. in its first 25 years has never, publicly and unequivocally denounced the Government of Soviet Russia for the campaign of terror waged against its own people and those peoples subject to its yoke. Although the W.C.C. has, throughout those 25 years kept up a constant barrage of criticism of South Africa, it has never publicly and unequivocally denounced Soviet Russia for its persistent defiance of human rights. There; that is the "one very important fact".

And when the Earl of March and the Bishop of Bristol and David Edwards and Dr. Ernest Payne and Clifford Longley gave us this excuse of that excuse to account for the W.C.C.'s silence, let us remind them of the W.C.C.'s brave beginning 25 years ago. This is what the W.C.C. said then:
"It is part of the mission of the Church to raise its voice of protest wherever men axe the victims of terror, wherever they are denied such fundamental human rights as the right to be secure against arbitrary arrest, and wherever governments use torture and cruel punishments to intimidate the consciences of men." I quote that from the report of the 1948 Amsterdam Assembly of the W.C.C. (pp. 79-80 'The First Assembly of the W.C.C. '---S.C.M. Pines '49).

That is the standard, which the W.C.C. set itself. By what other standard would it wish to be judged? In defence of its silence the W.C.C. pleads that if it spoke out the Russian Orthodox Church would withdraw from membership. Very likely. But did the Russian Orthodox Church join the W.C.C. in 1961 on the understanding that Russia would be exempt from criticism? If so, why was the Russian Orthodox Church given a privilege that was not given to the churches of South Africa?

And there is a further question; before 1961, when the W.C.C. was unhampered by the presence of the Russian Orthodox Church, did she then raise a "voice of protest" on behalf of Russian "victims of terror?" The answer -as you may have guessed - is NO. Then, as now, the W.C.C., rather than heed the cries of the victims, cultivates instead the interests of those Russian church leaders who have made their pact with tyranny - such pampered and precocious creatures of the Soviet Government as Metropolitan Nikodim. It was he who in 1961 assured the Western press that the Church in Russia "is completely free from State interference" (Church Tunes - 24/11/61)

Readers are reminded that we have copies of the penetrating article by Bernard Smith, 'The Crooked Conscience" (Are the Churches Politically Bent?) price: 32 cents post free from all League offices.

FROM CANADIAN ON TARGET

Inflation - The Road To Socialism

(August 19th) "For many years prior to the present inflation spiral, the orthodox finance-economic policy of the so-called Capitalist world has been one of controlled" inflation - limiting the annual rate of confiscation of savings, pensions etc., and the debasement of money to about 3%-4%. People wouldn't notice this degree of controlled" pilferage too much, and would continually adjust. The brilliant British Marxist theoretician of the Labour Party, John Strachey, understood precisely the implications of even "controlled" inflation, if persisted in.

Welcoming the theories of John Maynard Keynes as a contribution to the Marxist revolution. Mr. Strachey wrote in his Programme For Progress that inflationary credit expansion policies were "an indispensable step in the right direction" because "the loss of objectivity, and the intrinsic value of the currency which is involved (i.e. inflation) will sooner or later make necessary, on pain of ever-increasing dislocation, a growing degree of social control... for the partial character of the policy will itself lead on to further measures. The very fact no stability, no permanently workable solution can be found within the limits of this policy will ensure that once a community has been driven by events to tackle its problems in this way, it cannot halt at the first stage, but must of necessity push on to more thorough going measures of reorganization."

Observe closely the policy of the socialist, under any label. He is always advocating more government programmes, which mean more government spending and taxation, which result in more inflation - which as Marxist Strachey points out, leads right on to more Socialism. And why is it that no governments seem to genuinely combat inflation? Perhaps it is because government, believe it or not, is the one party, which actually benefits from inflation. Because not only does inflation bring them in more tax dollars (debased as they are), but because of the "progressive" feature of income tax rates. Higher wages or profits not only mean paying more dollars in taxes but also mean paying over a larger percentage of earnings to government.
So that with continuing inflation, even though the worker's real income or purchasing power may not increase, he is forced to turn over to the State an ever-increasing proportion of it.

Yes, inflation actually enables government to grab a larger and ever larger part of our earnings. So why look to government to cure inflation? Sooner or later the taxpayers are going to have to go on strike and just refuse to hand over their earnings to the greedy bureaucrats and politicians until they restore some measure of integrity and responsibility to government."

DR. KISSINGER AND THE INTERNATIONALISTS

"The United States Secretary of State, Dr, Kissinger, said today world economic strains threaten to engulf us all in a general depression". - The Sun (Melbourne) September 24th.

As we have stated in these pages over the past few years we are convinced in our own minds that a collapse of the West's finance-economic system is certain. And soon. This conviction is not based on "crystal balling", but on an intimate understanding of the nature of Finance, the finance-economic system, and on the policies of those Internationalists who are in the position to exert the major pressures on world financial and political policy. The two are synchronised.

That a One World Order is fervently sought by the Internationalists is becoming increasingly obvious to even former doubters and scoffers; especially those who have taken the trouble to read Gary Allen's "None Dare Call It Conspiracy," and Cleon Skousen's "The Naked Capitalist" ($1.11, and $2.30 respectively from all League offices).

One executive from the higher business world told us last week that, as a former scoffer, the pattern outlined in "'The Naked Capitalist" is now emerging in international events so strongly, that it isn't funny any more. This is quite typical of the thousands of intelligent Australians who are being jolted into awareness of the acute dangers confronting us all. It is significant in our view, that one political arm of the Conspiracy; the Communist Party is ignoring both these books. So are the Fabian Socialists; another political arm of the Conspiracy. Both these "arms" know that an attack on these "exposes" will give (in their eyes) a most disastrous publicity to the highly-charged currents running deep beneath these subversive movements, of which the rank and file know nothing. They are but mesmerised sheep; poor creatures.

Dr. Kissinger is "preparing the ground' for the cataclysm to come. He says: - "Nations could no longer afford to pursue their national regional self-interest except in a global context. He told this to the U.N. General Assembly in other words; World Government. Guess who will be controlling the World Government? Right! All the tricky semantics, of which Henry Kissinger is a clever exponent, were trotted out in his U.N. address.

We now must recognise that "'the common interest was the only valid test of the national interest". And who is to say what "the common interest" is? In other words, again, nations are no longer to act under national sovereignty; furthering their own national interests, but must give up control over their own affairs to adopt policies which are advanced by some shadowy influences on high, which, we will be assured, are in the "common interest". Smooth and tricky? Yes, indeed; just like Henry.

BRIEF COMMENTS

The Creation of Money

The purely technical explanation of how coins and bank notes come into existence is, of course, that they are manufactured at the Mint, and at the Note lssue Department of the Reserve Bank. Notes and coins, however, are but a very small part of the money supply (approx. 7% in Australia).

By far the larger part of our money never takes the form of notes and coins, but exists only in the form of bank credit. This credit-currency comes into existence when a bank grants an advance or an overdraft to a client, and it is circulated mainly in the form of cheques. F. T. Nankervis in "Descriptive Economics', writes: "Bank Credit is simply purchasing power; money, provided by a bank. When the bank provides a loan or overdraft for one of its clients it is providing him with purchasing power which he did not posse before...The bank is able, by virtue of its position and prestige to provide purchasing power that will be acceptable throughout the community. A cheque is an order to the bank to pay; the bank has authorised the overdraft, and because of confidence of the public in the banking system, such payments are everywhere acceptable."