MR. JEREMY LEE REPORTS

Mr. Jeremy Lee the National Secretary of the Institute of Economic Democracy, a Division of the Australian League of Rights, is presently lecturing in Tasmania. He sends this material for publication in On Target!

Pressure for a World Finance System
As the world's money and productive systems begin to collapse under an ever-increasing load of debt, urgent new initiatives are being developed to bring into being a new international economic order as part of the move to World Government. Typical of the growing chaos is the position of the US dollar that has fallen to its lowest point in its history. Mr. Arthur Burns's successor as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Mr. G. W. Millar, was reported in The Australian (17/3/78) as predicting a new recession. He was merely echoing what numbers of economists and central bankers have predicted through the first three months of 1978.

The United Nations Sixth Special Session on Raw Materials and Development, in April, I974, produced by consensus a "Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order". At the UN Seventh Special Session in September 1975, a broadly agreed agenda for such reform was adopted. This agenda covered five main areas - firstly, regulation of world trade in primary products through international commodity boards; secondly regulation over the transfer of technology; thirdly reform of international finance; fourthly co-operation between developing countries, leading to the fifth point, the expansion of trade and links between developing countries and what the UN is pleased to call "the socialist countries of Eastern Europe" - in reality the Soviet Communist bloc.

The Australian (16/3/78) reported the British Prime Minister Mr. Callaghan warning of a worldwide economic malaise. Among symptoms of the malaise described by Mr. Callaghan inflation and the growth of debt in all countries of the world except the OPEC countries. The Australian went on: "Mr. Callaghan then outlined his five-point plan for international action to boost confidence. Higher growth measures to produce greater stability in currencies; long-term capital flows, including aid for less developed countries; conservation policies for energy; more trade to avoid the spread of world protectionism."
Callaghan's proposals are directly in line with the UN 1974 Declaration on a New International Economic Order!

Coincidental with the above, the Australian press (Bulletin 21/3/78) contained an advertisement seeking submissions to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, on "The implications for Australia's foreign policy and national security of proposals for a new international economic order". Obviously Australian politicians are being prepared or at least solicited, for the handing over of Australia's financial sovereignty to the architects of the World economic and political system.

Included in the agenda for such a move is the setting up of international commodity boards. Where did this proposal come from? Many will be interested to learn that J. M. Keynes, one of the initiators of the International Monetary Fund, wrote a UK Treasury memorandum in 1942 entitled "The International Control of Raw Materials". This was never published until 1974, when it appeared in the Journal of International Economics Vol. 4 (1974) (pp. 299-315). Keynes' proposals covered international control of eight commodities - wheat, maize, sugar, coffee, cotton, wool, rubber and tin.
The long-term planning which ensured the publication of proposals by Keynes 32 years after writing, to coincide with the declaration for a new international economic order is too obvious to be ignored.

ZULU LEADER ANSWERS MR. DONALD WOODS

Since leaving South Africa former newspaper editor Donald Woods has been campaigning internationally in favour of the rest of the world completely isolating South Africa. He spoke at the United Nations, and was one of the stars at the recent press assembly in Australia. He has been widely featured by all sections of the media.

Those same media, which talk so loudly about the threat to freedom of the media, have not publicised the reply to Donald Woods by prominent blacks in South Africa. Chief Gatsha Buthelezi. well-known Zulu leader says that calling for sanctions against South Africa would be self-destruction on the part of the blacks in South Africa. Addressing an audience of 15,000 in Soweto Chief Buthelezi said he was speaking "as a Black man who knows the sufferings and limitations of my people".
The Chief said that Mr. Woods was "arrogant" in claiming to speak for Black leaders who were quite capable of speaking for themselves. The Chief asked, "What right has he got to call for sanctions when he is no longer in the country and will not have to suffer their consequences?"

Chief Buthelezi then made a deadly thrust by observing that it was clear that Woods would make a lot of money out of his book on Biko, the African activist who died while in police custody, but he wanted to know if any of the money would go to the Biko family or be used for promoting Black development.

As a result of their association with the European, Blacks in South Africa enjoy a material standard of living far higher than those in any "liberated" African State. And these States rely upon Europeans to advise and to provide technical know how. The call by Donald Woods for a complete boycott of South Africa is that of a man serving the cause of revolution. The Marxists talk about the "oppressed" Africans in the same way that they talk about the "oppressed workers" in Western nations. But the so-called oppressed are seen only as essential for exploitation in the interest of Marxist revolution.

BRIEF COMMENTS

The demise of the Democratic Labor Party came as no surprise to us. The majority of those who broke with the ALP on the Communist issue were men and women of principle. While the DLP held the balance of power in the Senate it acted with general restraint and responsibility. The tragic betrayal by Mr. Vince Gair was typical of what must be expected in all political parties. The limited electoral appeal of the DLP was the result of a failure to come to grips with the realities of finance. Many DLP supporters could only offer a type of "moderate" Socialism as an attempted answer to the militant Socialists of the ALP. N S.W. Senator Jack Kane alienated large numbers of League of Rights supporters of the DLP with his smearing attacks on the League. The major lesson to be learned from the history of the DLP is that the salvation of Australia is not going to come through orthodox party politics. We have considerable respect for ex-Senator Frank McManus, but suggest that he could give much more realistic advice than the suggestion that another political party be organised.

The debate on the "New Education" continues. In Britain the results of an Institute of Mathematics examination supports a contention that British schools are producing a generation of illiterate teenage dunces. Two out of every three 15 and 16 year-olds who were given a simple sums test failed. A sample from the examination paper: 14 plus 35, 77 minus 53. The test was given to 8,000 students in six education centres.
Queensland Premier Bjelke-Petersen should be commended for his determination to have a Queensland education system, which ensures that children master the fundamental "tools" for learning. The three Rs are still the basics.

Like a breath of fresh air in an oppressive atmosphere, the Right Reverend John Reid, Anglican Bishop of Sydney, has defended the right to discriminate. In a submission to the N.S.W. Anti-Discrimination Board, Bishop Reid insisted on the right of the Christian Church to choose "convinced Christians" for employment. Outlining the Church's reasons for discriminating he pointed out that the Church employed a wide range of personnel other than Ministers including clerks, secretaries, teachers and welfare workers. "Church organisations appoint staff with fairly specific objectives in view", he said. "Like other employers, they are exercising the right to appoint people who are in basic accord with their aims, objectives and mode of operation".
Some teachers are challenging the right of the Churches to discriminate in favour of committed Christians. But why should not the Christian Church have the right to specify that it is not seeking atheists to teach in a Christian-oriented education programme?

Upon receiving an invitation to make a submission to the N.S.W. Anti-Discrimination Board, the League of Rights said that as it saw discrimination a natural law and a natural right, it did not propose to make a submission. But that it would be interested to learn how that natural law was going to be overcome. Even in a complete totalitarian State the law of discrimination cannot be destroyed. In the meantime large numbers of immature do-gooders, manipulated by planners, are encouraged to mind other people's business instead of minding their own. And of course, the parasitic bureaucracy can be expanded still further.

Western diplomats went to the 35-nation East-West Security Conference in Belgrade to discuss the implementation of the "Final Act" agreed to at the Helsinki Agreement, which allegedly advanced detente. The five-month conference finished recently with the "human rights" and "fundamental freedoms" mentioned at Helsinki as far away as ever. The Belgrade Conference was yet one more example of the futility of trying to reach meaningful agreements with the Communists.

A further example of the metric madness is provided with the announcement from Canberra two weeks ago that the import of non-metric measuring devices is to be "controlled", this being necessary "to stop overseas manufacturers dumping unwanted stocks in Australia". The only reason that overseas manufacturers are sending imperial measuring devices to Australia is obvious: because many Australians persist in buying and using them. The Canberra bureaucrats state that the controls "are to protect the consumer from buying equipment which will shortly be of no use . . ." We find our imperial measuring devices, such as rules, just as useful as ever. Visiting British scientist Dr. Wood predicts that by 2000 AD the English-speaking people will have thrown the metric fad out and wonder why they were so silly to accept it.

The Essential Value of the Constitution

The framers of the Australian Constitution created a means whereby the varied needs of the different parts of Australia could be looked after by the men on the spot; everything that the States could do was left to them, and the Commonwealth Government was given the necessary powers to organise those things requiring some uniformity and co-ordination over large areas, such as defence, customs, coinage and posts and telegraphs.
The Australian Constitution was an admirable piece of work and contained among other things the means for its own change and alteration, when and where necessary....
The value of the Australian Constitution is that it has given protection to the people against arbitrary acts of temporary governments lusting after more power. The fact that any change has to be placed in front of the people and openly discussed has been a valuable protection against back-door methods; the people too, have felt that the Constitution was devised as a protection for themselves, and have consistently refused to give more power to the central bureaucracy.
However, unification of taxation has well nigh destroyed the Constitution because it effectively prevents the State Governments collecting the means for their own existence. Unless unification of taxation, as at present used (1946!) can be resisted by the States, political democracy in Australia is likely to be a thing unknown....
(from "Our Sham Democracy", by James Guthrie).

James Guthrie was able to see with great foresight and clarity the pressures that would come on to the States as a result of the surrender of their taxing powers. Ever since then they have had to go cap in hand to Canberra for the yearly hand-out, and the Whitlam "Labor" Government (Dec. '72-Dec. '75) intensified the pressures on the States in order to advance their Socialist ideology. That is not to say that the States have not been squeezed by successive "Liberal" Governments.
The full story of the States' surrender of their taxing powers, and their rejection of the proffered return of the same taxing powers by (then) Mr. R.G. Menzies in the early post-war years has not yet been fully recorded. The States, themselves, at that time declined to accept their fiscal responsibilities, abdicating such to Big Brother in Canberra. They have suffered for it; and will suffer still more; this means us; all of us, of course.