THE REAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE W.A. PARTY POLITICAL CONFLICT

Mr. Eric D. Butler reports from Perth at the conclusion of a two-week programme in West Australia
"Primarily, as a result of its own foolishness, and lack of any constructive policies, the National Country Party in West Australia lost electoral ground to the Liberal Party at the last State Elections. The weakness in leadership was also a factor in the decline of support.

The decline was further emphasised when at last year's Federal Elections, the Country Party lost its only two W.A. seats to the Liberal Party. It is true that re-distribution made it more difficult for the Country Party to hold Moore and Canning. But the Queensland State Elections showed that Mr. J. Bjelke-Petersen was able to win large numbers of votes in urban areas with his type of leadership and positive policies. Attempts to have the National Country Party in W.A. support the "Petersen Plan" were rebuffed by a number of prominent figures in the Party, some maintaining such a bitter anti-League of Rights attitude that they refused to consider any policy, which the League of Rights was supporting.

But the rapidly growing electoral support for the "Petersen Plan" has created a changed situation in which the National Country Party could use its break with Sir Charles Court and the Liberal Party to inject a completely new note in West Australian politics. I was asked at several public meetings about the Liberal-Country Party split, and my views were also sought by several National Country Party officials. I pointed out that I was not involved in party politics, and found most of the inter-parry controversies petty and often only involving power struggles and personality clashes. But I did observe that the National Country Party had only three options:
1. To return to the Coalition on the terms of Sir Charles Court, thus demonstrating to the electors their basic weakness and lack of credibility.
2. Decline to return to the Coalition while indulging in personal attacks on Sir Charles Court and the Liberal Party.
3. Decline to return to the Coalition, cease all personal attacks on Sir Charles Court, and announce that the National Country party would devote itself to working for the anti-Socialists cause by an independent programme containing constructive policies.
I said that if I were a member of the National Country Party I would be supporting option 3, stressing that unless this type of approach could be adopted, the Party had no future at all in W.A.

"Recent vicious attacks on the League of Rights in the West Australian Legislative Assembly provide further evidence that the Labor Socialists throughout Australia fear the growing influence of the League through its grass-roots educational activities. Speaking in the W.A. Parliament on April 10th, Mr. Bryce re-hashed all the old smears about the League, his real purpose clearly being to frighten Liberal and Country Party Members by claiming that large numbers of them were being influenced by the League. I only wish the influence was as great as Mr. Bryce claims!

Labor Member Burke also supported the Bryce anti-League attack. If the Liberal and Country parties are genuine in their claims to be opposed to the Whitlam Government's Socialist programme, then they must start attacking the financial policies, which are being used to advance this programme. If the Queensland Premier had waited until he obtained agreement with Liberal Party leader, Sir Gordon Chalk, on his anti-inflation policy, he would never have given Australia the only real lead a political leader has provided for a long time.

"If the National Country Party in W.A. uses its independent status constructively in the W.A. Parliament, while giving the type of lead given by Premier Bjelke-Petersen, its break with the Court Government could lead to its increased electoral support and also have a marked impact on many of the Members of the W.A. Liberal Party. It could help the overall anti-Socialists battle.

Never before have electors been so willing to listen to the League. But its leaders will require much more vision and courage than has been shown to date. West Australian League actionists should see the new situation in State politics as a challenge to intensify their rapidly growing activities with some healthy competition.

A REMINDER FOR ERIC BUTLER'S MELBOURNE ADDRESS

BRIEF COMMENTS

The "Weekly Review" (U.K.May 21st) turns the spotlight on Mozambique, Portuguese province in Southern Africa, to receive "independence" on June 25th. Mozambique will be as "independent" as Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania. To quote the "Weekly Review":- "A Soviet K.G.B. detachment has arrived in Laurenco Marques, Mozambique, to organise and train the new FRELIMO police, and also to assist FRELIMO leader, Samora Moises Machel, in establishing the 'United Movement for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia). Mozambique is to receive its complete independence from Portugal on June 25th, of this year, and all Portuguese army personnel will have to be withdrawn by this date. Machel has declared that Mozambique is the first Marxist People's Democracy in Africa, and reaffirmed his determination to 'liberate' Rhodesia.
With the assistance of both Moscow and Peking FRELIMO is currently training guerrilla units which will be infiltrated into Rhodesia and South Africa. Regarding the intention to 'liberate' Rhodesia and South Africa. President Samora Machel publicly stated: 'We are ready to accept sacrifices which our internationalist duty demands of us'.
Summarising the strategic outlook of the post - 25th June Marxist Mozambique Government, a FRELIMO spokesman has announced: 'The Mozambique people are strengthening unity with other African countries and making contributions to the cause of opposing imperialism, colonialism, hegemonism, racism and Zionism, and to the liberation of all Africa."

The Australian News of May 8th, published in London by the "Australian Information Bureau", quotes Australian Prime Minister Whitlam as saying that the United Kingdom should remain in the Common Market. Mr. Whitlam says that "his view that Britain should remain in the Community had not caused a ripple of criticism in Australia....Mr. Whitlam said it would be of no advantage to Australia for Britain to withdraw from the Common Market."
We learn from London that the Whitlam view has been widely publicised in the United Kingdom. Large numbers of informed Australians are most concerned about the future of the British Commonwealth and the institution of the Monarchy if the United Kingdom is to become a permanent part of a United States of Europe. This was one of Communist Trotsky's major objectives. It is logical that Socialist centralist and internationalist, Gough Whitlam, should also be supporting the same objective.
We suggest that as many Australians as possible write to the British press and British contacts making it clear that Whitlam does not speak for them. And that they are amazed to see British "Conservatives" supporting Socialist Whitlam's viewpoint....In a "live" T.V. interview in Perth during their recent visit, Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips both agreed that the biggest surprise on their visit was the large number of Australians who came up to them asking that the message be taken to the United Kingdom that they want to retain the British link. Both of the young couple said they were surprised because they had been led to believe by the media that Australians no longer cared about the British link. Needless to say, these significant comments, mixed up with a lot of trivia concerning Princess Anne's hats, were not publicised by the press....

We learn from the same issue of The Australian News quoted above that Australia is pledged to implement "reforms" in the Cocos Islands to help the people there towards "self-determination." But Australian delegate to the United Nations, Mr. Harry Hinchchiffe "warned that this would take time. Addressing the U.N. Decolonisation Committee Mr. Hinchchiffe said the Cocos Community was generally conservative and not receptive to change. They were also a happy and contented people. Economically the population of the island was dependent on the Clunies Ross family which circulates its own paper money on the island." The small community of 700 people in the Cocos Islands may be "happy and contented", but the international do-gooders are determined to impose upon these people the same type of "progress" they have imposed elsewhere. And of course they must do away with the money circulated by Mr. Clunies Ross, which has a very low depreciation rate, and use the type of money circulating in Australia, now depreciating at the rate of over 17 per cent a year.
The Cocos Islanders are about to be moved from the sanity of their small, happy world to the madness stemming from the policies of the international power groups.

A brutal act of barbarism is being set in motion. Mr. Whitlam only very recently has scorned the possibility of any blood bath in South Vietnam as a result of the Communist victory. Weekly Review (U.K. . .May 21st.) reports that the expected blood bath has already commenced. Catholic Church sources provide reports that at Phanrang the Bishop and five priests were executed in the market place; South Vietnamese army officers executed, and beheadings of members of the local police. At Ban Me Thout the Bishop was executed, two priests as well, bullets in the back of the head, and some 450 schoolteachers in the region suffered mass execution. Further reports of mass executions are coming in.

Senator Webster has recently said that he fears for the sanity of certain members of the Parliamentary Labor Party. He said that some of their views and policies had an air of the unreal about them. This is a thumping allegation. Nevertheless, we would have to go along with it. "Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first send mad". (Proverb of ancient Rome.)

At least one Liberal is not limp. Senator Ian Wood, Queensland, has said that his colleagues in Opposition at Canberra were weak and "jelly-backboned" with respect to their stand on the Racial Discrimination Bill. We agree. Senator Wood said that he was strongly opposed to the Bill, and that they should have thrown out this legislation. It is a pity that there are not a few more Senator Ian Wood(s) at Canberra. Then the Party Members could not be justly termed the "Limp Liberals."

Dr. Geoffrey Dobbs, in British On Target (May 24th,) comments upon a political ploy, now being engineered in Britain to influence a YES vote on the Common Market. Dr. Dobbs comments: "many....are suffering from an illusion when they suppose that an anti-Market vote on June 5th will lead to even more Left-wing policies being adopted in Britain, if not to a Left-extremist take-over. The reverse is more likely to be true, since an anti-Market vote will land this (Socialist) Government in such a fix that it may be possible to get rid of them; while a pro-Market vote will confirm it in power until it has broken the back of all resistance to the State Monopoly it calls Socialism. "The illusion is based upon the absurd idea that Messrs. Benn, Foot, Mrs. Castle etc....who have been selected as the hatchet-men of Socialism, and are therefore attracting the main burden of unpopularity, are a separate clique of 'extremists' who are acting in defiance of the will of their more moderate colleagues, and will not be allowed to continue doing so if this Government is confirmed in office. It is pitiful the way this transparent maneuver of identifying these Left-extremists with anti-Marketism, accompanied by outrageous Leftist threats (e.g. to pension funds, and to private patients) is succeeding in bouncing Tory and moderate votes into the pro-Brussels camp.

A strange Jewish voice has raised itself to warn Jews that they should not oppose the entry into Australia of members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Mr. Barry Cohen, M.H.R. for Robertson, N.S.W. is so hostile to the Australian League of Rights that his "democracy" has become twisted. He wants League officials hit with punitive fines, and even imprisoned. Perhaps he is one of those whom Senator Webster (above) has in mind. Mr. Barry Cohen (The Age, Melbourne, May 15th) says that Jews ran the risk of alienating many politically active and freethinking people. Such people (Mr. Cohen said) often supported the Israeli position, but believed the issue of free speech was at stake. Mr. Barry Cohen isn't interested in freedom of speech for the Australian League of Rights. That's "different". Mad? Hypocritical? Intellectually dishonest? Mr. Barry Cohen may be in for a shock.

Proper Functioning of a Financial System