THE ANTI-WHITLAM ELECTION

By Eric D. Butler
The 1977 Federal Election result leaves unsolved Australia's basic problems, which, in the absence of a change of finance economic policies, must progressively deepen. While there is no doubt that electors regard unemployment their major concern, the Fraser strategy was successful in playing on the deep fears of an electorate still strongly anti-Whitlam.
The 1960 credit squeeze by the Menzies Government produced only a fraction of the current unemployment, but that Government was rocked by an electoral backlash leaving it with only a majority of one. The electors were prepared to trust an ALP led by the late Arthur Calwell. But clearly today's electors were not prepared to trust another Whitlam Labor Government. The anti-Whitlam feeling even extends to Mr. Tony Whitlam, who experienced an unexpected reverse in St. George, N.S.W.

Having been re-elected primarily on a fear campaign, Mr. Fraser has deprived himself of any excuses for what is to come. He has been specific in his claims that Australia is now "over the hump", that unemployment will progressively go down, along with inflation, in the first half of next year. Interest rates will also fall, it has been claimed. The massive propaganda campaign run by the Fraser strategists, the estimated cost being at least $3 million, undoubtedly convinced many electors that the Fraser Government was in fact "doing the job."

Former Liberal Member, W.C. Wentworth, who resigned from the Liberal Party because of the Government's finance economic policies, in commenting on the elections, correctly observes that the electors had been "very well misled by the government's economic campaign....The Government succeeded in keeping all their economic policies out of the election."

Some of the Government's propaganda was blatant lying.
Even if the current rate of inflation, as quoted by Mr. Fraser, is 9% per annum, it is a sobering thought that this figure can be quoted as evidence that the "back of inflation has been broken." A continuing inflation rate of even 5% must continue to further the disintegration of a stable society. But to get the inflation rate down any further will, under present financial policies, create still greater unemployment and drive more producers and retailers bankrupt.

As Dr. D. Ironmonger of the Melbourne University Institute of Applied Economic and Social research observed, the Labor Party policy of abolishing Pay Roll Tax was a constructive one which must have some immediate impact on both unemployment and inflation. Although Dr. Ironmonger and his colleagues have a better than average track record in the field of predictions, the Prime Minister was highly indignant with the prediction that there could be no real improvements in 1978 under the Fraser Government's policies.

He also charged the Institute with engaging in politics by commenting favorably on the proposal to abolish Pay Roll Tax. The Fraser Government's propaganda countered the anti-Pay Roll Tax policy by hitting the weak point in the Labor campaign: the proposal that taxpayers forego the tax reductions scheduled to start operating in the New Year. Although the great majority of taxpayers will find that these promised tax reductions will be of little permanent benefit, the Labor Party made a fatal mistake in asking electors to forego tax reductions in order to help finance the abolition of Pay Roll Tax.

The debate on Pay Roll Tax produced the incredible situation where Mr. Fraser was charging that the Labor Party was attempting to assist the multinationals! Presumably Mr. Fraser will now be able to tell businessmen pressing for the abolition, or modification, of Pay Roll Tax, that electors have given him a mandate not to abolish it.

Comments by Mr. Fraser during the election campaign revealed an ignorance of finance-economic realities matching that of Mr. Gough Whitlam. Mr. Fraser warned on several occasions about "printing press" money. The vast quantities of new money injected into the economy during the Whitlam era was not the result of running printing presses, but of the usual method of creating financial credit - with the inevitable inflationary results. The Fraser Government cut back on the rate of credit creation as part of its anti-inflationary strategy. The results worried the electors, but not as much as the thought of another Whitlam Government. Mr. Whitlam was Prime Minister Fraser's greatest asset.

It is no secret that Mr. Fraser feared that if he waited until next year to hold the election, Mr. Hayden would have replaced Mr. Whitlam as Labor leader and presented a much more acceptable image to the Australian electors. Nothing so demonstrates the superficialities of modern party politics than the fact that a Hayden led Labor Party would have certainly been much more successful than the Whitlam led Labor Party.

It can be predicted with complete certainty that a Hayden Labor Government would be even more disastrous than the Whitlam Governments. Hayden is a dedicated Socialist planner who never ceases to stress that he is a man of considerable economic expertise. Even some of the press critics of Mr. Whitlam have claimed that he will be remembered for his "significant" contributions in the field of foreign policy.

Almost unnoticed in the election was the fact that Mr. Malcolm Fraser, falsely described as some type of a conservative, took over the whole of the Whitlam Foreign policy, and intensified the attack on Rhodesia and South Africa. The Southern African question was avoided by Mr. Fraser during the election campaign, so there will be no justification for claiming that any type of a mandate has been given to push on with the proposal to close the Rhodesian Information Centre.

While most non-party electors would have preferred to have seen the big Fraser Parliamentary majority reduced, it may prove that the large number of backbenchers, some of whom thought they were doomed to be "oncers", will prove to be the Achilles heel of the second Fraser Government which, deprived of the Whitlam fear, and, like the Whitlam Government in 1974, given a second chance by the electors, must now start to satisfy the electors.
Mr. Fraser is now left without any excuses. He must change course, or he will go the way of Whitlam.

The League of Rights will be intensifying its work to force the changes, which must be made to avoid the defeat of Australia as a free nation. And it will be assisted by the unpleasant events, which it has correctly predicted. The phony party elections come and go, but the Truth is not altered one iota by all the lies, half-truths and gimmicks associated with those elections.

'AN UNARMED INVASION OF AUSTRALIA'

In the December issue of The Queensland Immigration Control Association, Dr. J.C. Dique describes the large number of illegal migrants entering Australia as an "unarmed invasion" He says that this "invasion" was "timed to be set in motion at the time when it would have been difficult for the government to take a firm stand because of the likelihood of loss of votes in the election due to charges of lack of humanity, consideration or of racism which could have been easily levelled by many well-meaning and humanitarian people in important or influential positions."

There are aspects of the growing number of Vietnamese illegally entering Australia, which require some realistic questioning. Genuine refugees from Communism are one thing. But is there a deliberate policy to use the refugee question to intensify the fragmenting still further of Australia as a homogeneous, European nation?

The Communist view on this question is known. But what, for example, of The Royal Australian Planning Institute, which has published a research document advocating that Australia launch a massive new immigration programme to take in an extra three million people over the next four years. The author of the document, a Mr. William Twitchett, is described as a specialist on Third World countries. He says the proposed scheme should be seen as a forerunner of even larger immigration programmes.
He says "Following careful appraisal after the four year period of deliberate shock action it is envisaged that later programmes should be enlarged gradually to include immigrants from India, Japan, South East Asia and China, in that order."

Mr. Twitchett wants migrants first from Bangladesh, Egypt and Mexico. It is planned to establish them in new centres. He agrees, "The programme would mean that Australia would never be the same again." International organisations, including the World Health Organisation, could be involved. No doubt!

All the evidence indicates that a situation is being developed so that, at the appropriate time, the United Nations can step in to tell Australians of their "international obligations". And if Australians support the UN interfering in the domestic affairs of Rhodesia, they cannot complain when the UN turns its attention to their affairs.

We would suggest that before Australia suffers any more from the "unarmed invasion" from the North, it should call on all those members of the United Nations who contributed towards the Communist victory in Vietnam, to take their share of Vietnamese refugees. Those who are supporting the policy of a growing flood of illegal immigrants are supporting the murder of Australia as a nation.