THE GULLIBLE AUSTRALIANS

A modern Lewis Carrol is required to present an up dated version of the famous Mad Hatter's tea party from "Alice in Wonderland". Prime Minister Fraser and Federal Treasurer Howard would be very much at their ease! Their current attitude towards Australian electors indicates that they either believe the majority of the people are mentally defective, or they have become victims of their own nonsense. As the Mad Hatter said, words mean whatever we want them to mean.

Mr. Fraser's verbal assault on the European Economic Community obtained the Prime Minister headlines in Australia, but had as much effect on the power men operating the E.E.C. as thistledown. Mr. Fraser has apparently just discovered that past Australian Governments had not done sufficient to ensure that Australian primary production continued to enter the Common Market.

There was a Mr. Malcolm Fraser in the Federal Parliament through the years when the really vital battles concerning the Common Market were being fought. As part of its contribution towards the campaign to prevent Britain surrendering to the international campaign to force her to sacrifice the old Commonwealth trading links for the E.E.C., The Australian League of Rights sponsored the visit to the United Kingdom of Mr. Fraser's Minister for Defence, Mr. D.J. Killen. That was back in 1962. We do not recall the Member of Wannon, Mr. Malcolm Fraser, raising his voice in protest, or warning, about the E.E.C. What comments he did make suggested that he thought the E.E.C. was a worthwhile idea.

One of the major purposes of the E.E.C. was to create an economic unity, which would exclude outside producers. Under present financial policies it is inevitable that every nation, or a combination of nations, must attempt to solve their internal problems by increasing exports while at the same time erecting tariff and other barriers to keep imports out.

Instead of wasting his time, making a fool of himself, and incurring unnecessary expense in attempting to force himself upon the E.E.C., Mr. Fraser should direct his attention to solving his own domestic problems. He has plenty of them, and he is about to face another major credibility test as he approaches the Budget. Treasurer John Howard has insisted, with that bland look which suggests he might even believe what he is saying, that the reason for the big increase in the deficit is that wages have not increased as fast as anticipated. But the Fraser Government has done its best to persuade the Arbitration Commission to keep wage increases down. Mr. Howard attacked the Commission for the last wage increase. If the Government had been successful in persuading the Commission to grant even less wage increases than it has, then clearly the deficit would have been even greater!

What Mr. Howard has not mentioned is that the Government did not expect unemployment to continue at the current high level. This has been one of the major factors in producing the high deficit. Events have now forced the Fraser Government into the situation where it could be faced with presenting a Budget deficit of nearly $4,000 million. That would exceed Labor's record, which Mr. Fraser told the Australian people was wicked madness. And the alternative? A further cut in Government spending, coupled with substantial increases in taxation, the inevitable result being a further depressing of the economy.

All of Mr. Fraser's last pre-election promises, including a 2% reduction in interest rates, are evaporating like mists in hot sunshine. Presumably Mr. Fraser and his colleagues believe that the Australian people are so gullible that they have forgotten what was promised late in 1977, and that by August 1978, they can be told that black is actually white and have this accepted. The first essential for reversing the Fraser disaster strategy, is for a lowering of prices, which will increase consumer purchasing power without stimulating inflation. The abolition of the Sales Tax would achieve this objective.

BRIEF COMMENTS

Congratulations to Mr. B.A. Santamaria of the National Civic Council. Writing on the weak attitude of the Carter Administration towards Communist penetration of Africa in The Australian, Mr. Santamaria states: "But, the U.S. can compel the U.S. banks and their subsidiaries while enforcing parallel action on the banks of its Western allies - to refuse financial, economic and technological cooperation to the Soviet Union unless it practises restraint both in Africa and in the arms race. After all, Western economic aid to the Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries amounts to $40,000 million. If the U.S. cannot do that, it cannot do anything."
This is the type of constructive anti-Communist policy, which the League of Rights has been advocating for years. It is outlined in the Crown Commonwealth League of Rights' Report to the World Anti-Communist League on how to halt the financing of economic blood transfusions to the Communists. Price $1.00.

A new aspect of growing race friction in the United Kingdom has emerged with the proposal that coloured citizens from Bangladesh be provided with segregated housing for their protection. This proposal was put forward when a coloured from Bangladesh was murdered. Strangely, although it is maintained that these coloureds are "fully British", the family of the murdered coloured had his body flown back to Bangladesh. "True Britons" are never flown thousands of miles to be buried in Asia. But it is a mad, mad, world in which words in many cases no longer bear any relationship to reality.

N.S.W. National-Country Party spokesman Punch says that Mr. Al Grassby should be called to give evidence before the N.S.W. Drug Inquiry. As Mr. Punch observes, it was Mr. Grassby who, as Minister for Immigration in the Whitlam Government, permitted entry into Australia of Italians mentioned in relationship to the drug racket.

In the Shaba province alone of Zaire, even more important than the10% of all world copper production is the 65% of the world's output of cobalt, indispensable for steel production in peace and war. The Soviet strike against Zaire, through puppet Castro, has been devastatingly successful. It has resulted in a collapse of Zaire mineral production. If the Europeans were forced out of Rhodesia, agriculture would collapse with mass starvation. A tired and ageing Ian Smith said on TV last week that Rhodesians, mostly black, were still being murdered even though he had been promised by Western spokesmen that all would change if he agreed to "majority rule". The Communists are determined to revolutionalise the whole of Africa. The first essential is to force the European out.

U.S. Secretary for Commerce, Mrs. Juanti Kreps, has revealed that America will nearly double its "trade" with Communist China this year. National Security adviser Mr. Z. Brzezinski told Peking leaders last month that the Carter Administration is determined to "normalise" relations with Communist China. Press reports state that Mr. Carter and his aides have been outlining to the Trilateral Commission, quaintly described by one commentator as an "elite group", the conditions on which the U.S. will insist before replacing the historic U.S.-Taiwan tie with full ties with Peking. David Rockefeller and his fellow Tri-lateralists have always pressed for full, complete diplomatic relations with Peking. This will enable, for example, international financial groups to more easily pour credits into Communist China.

The Mad Hatter approach to the beef industry is now in full cry. As we explained last week, the higher prices (temporarily) being received by beef producers are the result of obvious factors. So are the high prices to consumers. But rather than admit that it is the Government' s inflationary financial policies which make higher meat prices inevitable for the consumer, Primary Minister Sinclair joins with the Socialists in supporting a costly investigation of the beef industry.