"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"
Edmund Burke
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September 22 1978. Thought for the Week: "The
more I see of Governments, the lower is my opinion of them and I am
confident that what the world wants at the present time is a great deal
less government, and not a great deal more... I want to get a ....perfectly
simple idea into your minds. And that is that Governments are your property,
and you are not the property of Governments. There is no more pernicious
and blasphemous nonsense existent in the world today that the statement,
which has been incorporated in the constitution of the modern dictatorships,
which claims that the State, by which is, indicated the Government,
is everything and the individual nothing. On the contrary, the individual
is everything and the State is a mere convenience to enable him to co-operate
for his own advantage. It is this idea of the supreme State in its various
forms which has made the State the tool of the international financier
who has mortgaged all States to himself."
C.H. Douglas in Security - Institutional and Personal (1937) |
MR. TONY STREET CONTRADICTS PRIME MINISTER FRASERBefore the last Federal Elections, Prime Minister
Fraser dogmatically stated that after the "summer hump", from February
onwards, unemployment would fall as a result of the "sound" policies
of his Government. Events have proven Mr. Fraser wrong, as we predicted.
Unemployment has not come down, but has in fact edged upwards. The Howard
Budget was an admission that unemployment was to increase still further.
We have expressed the view that it could reach 500,000 early next year. One of Mr. Fraser's problems is not only philosophical, but is also a type of invincible stupidity which has manifest itself with Mr. Fraser's personal entry into the Werriwa by-election in N.S.W. Mr. Fraser is so far removed from reality that he believes he can "sell" his Budget to the Australian people. The Werriwa electors will provide Mr. Fraser with his answer tomorrow, September 23rd. They will note that Fraser has in fact been flatly
contradicted by his own Minister for Employment and Industrial Affairs,
Mr. Tony Street, in his speech on the Budget on September 14th. Mr.
Street said that there were no signs of any improvement in the unemployment
rate. The evidence suggested that it would increase. He said, "by the
early 1980s the situation could be one where, in addition to the problem
of the 15 to 19 year olds being unemployed there is a growing proportion
of people in their early 20s who have little work experience or prospects
of employment. If this situation develops, as it has in a number of
other countries, there will be real dangers to the fabric of society." Poor Mr. Street, a relatively honest if not brilliant politician, talks of a "difficult" solution, stating, "All of us will have to share the cost of the remedies." What remedies? Those, which the Fraser Government has persistently attempted, have, on Mr. Street's own admission, failed. Talk of "sharing the costs" is a reflection of the philosophy of the Fraser Government. The constant suggestion is that there must be sacrifice - although not for the politicians! Australia is an enormously wealthy nation. There is a vast reservoir of unused productive capacity, which could be used in a number of beneficial ways. Adequate houses could be built. The public transport systems could be modernised. And much more important, an adequate defence programme could be undertaken. All that is required is the provision of the necessary financial credit in such a way that, so far from there being more inflation, there would be no inflation at all. Australia would move off the disaster course now being followed. We have constantly maintained that Mr. Fraser's big backbench majority, resulting primarily because of the fear of the return of Gough Whitlam at the last Federal Elections, would prove eventually to be the Prime Minister's Achilles heel. It is ironic that a by-election made necessary by the resignation of Gough Whitlam, Mr. Fraser's greatest asset in the last two Federal Elections, may well mark the beginning of the end for Mr. Fraser. As Mr. Fraser has put his policies and his leadership on the line in Werriwa, a major electoral defeat must shake a growing number of uneasy backbenchers who are beginning to realise where Mr. Fraser is taking them. If a change of policy can only be effected by removing Mr. Fraser, and several of his closest colleagues, then the sooner this takes place the better. The nation is much more important than Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers. |
BRIEF COMMENTSWe feel that Mrs. Mary Whitehouse, a most remarkable woman who has demonstrated yet once again that the individual is not a mere piece of flotsam on the sea of history, is right when she says that the young are starting to turn against the permissive society, which they now see as the establishment set up by the middle aged. There is also evidence that the young are beginning to look critically at an establishment in which they see Big Finance openly cooperating with International Communism. But the future of the young requires more than mere opposition. They must be introduced to constructive policies, which will ensure that their reaction leads to something more realistic than past reactions. A new slavery is developing, but the Left wing propagandists of this world turn a blind eye. As does, of course, the World Council of Churches. Young blacks from Angola are being forced to go to Castro's Cuba to work in the plantations. This new slavery is taking place under the guise of "education". The continuing international Marxist campaign against Chile must be seen in the context of the global power struggle. If the mineral resources of Southern Africa are lost to the West, or the supply of them became more difficult, then the minerals of Latin America become much more important for the West. Our Canadian contemporary, "On Target", in its
issue of September 11th quotes the following revealing report from "The
New York Herald Tribune" of August 24th: When President Jimmy Carter said that he would "firmly punish countries that violated human rights", he was inferring that his wrath would be directed against Latin American countries like Chile. The Carter Administration is now openly preparing for closer relationships with Castro's Cuba, the flood of economic transfusions to the Soviet continue while preliminary approval has been given for Communist China to purchase American technology that has military applications. President Carter and his "advisers" clearly only insist upon punishing anti-Communist nations who are allegedly violating human rights. Communist nations can violate human rights without being punished. The babble of comment on the "computer holocaust"
reminds us of the Mad Hatter's Tea party in "Alice in Wonderland". A
child can see that if a machine is made which enables an individual
to do the same amount of work in a fraction of the time previously required,
it has saved a lot of human labour. It has made free time available
to the individual to do something else. If the individual has genuine
freedom of choice, he may well decide to use his free time to take up
painting. Or he may go fishing. Or he may devote some of the time to
helping the Boy Scouts. He would still be active - but doing what he
genuinely felt like doing. He would be a much freer man than he was
before he had a machine to do the bulk of his work. But to claim that
he must be kept "fully employed" merely to enable a financial income
to be distributed, is to accept the basic Marxist viewpoint. Any conference
on the "computer holocaust" is useless unless first there is an answer
to a basic question: "What is the true purpose of production?" The future
of Civilisation depends upon how that question is answered. "Tis a mad world, my masters", said Shakespeare's character. We were reminded of this the press headline proclaimed, "Beef price rises worry cattlemen." It is just as we said it would be; after four years of decimation of beef herds - and beef producers - prices rose, consumers had to pay more, buyer resistance developed, and cattle producers who survived are worried about what to do about consumer backlash. What is required is a consumer price discount system without any interference with the free market system. |