MR. FRASER'S BACKBENCH FERMENTING LIKE YEAST

"The intense activity over the Budget is just the tip of the iceberg. The backbench has still not fully settled down after the crisis following the Withers sacking. And the 'twicers' who survived the 1977 election are already looking anxiously to 1980." Michelle Grattan, in The Age (Melbourne) October 16th.

We have stressed the vulnerability of Mr. Fraser with respect to his very large backbench many times in these pages. We did so in Dec. 1975, when the Whitlam cabal was hurled from office by a frightened and outraged electorate. The time is approaching when Malcolm Fraser will need every friend (if politicians really do have friends) he can muster: Reginald Withers took some "friends" with him when sacked by Mr. Fraser. Their attitude will be: "Fraser will keep!"

The Werriwa by-election for Mr. Whitlam's old seat sent a chill through the Treasury benches in Canberra. Mr. Fraser was obviously far astray in his political judgment to have intruded into that campaign, and has suffered for it. The N.S.W. State election was a drubbing for the Liberals, with eyen Peter Coleman, the former State Parliamentary Liberal Leader, losing his seat. Another icy blast for Mr. Fraser.
All the Canberra watchers are agreed that the forthcoming Ballarat by-election for the Victorian Upper House (Legislative Council) will give a definite indication, firstly, whether the anti-Liberal, anti-Fraser ground swell is gaining momentum, and secondly, what is to be the likely fate of the Victorian Hamer Liberal Government.

There is no doubt that the Liberals are in trouble in Victoria, after 23 years of continuous government. The Victorian Parliamentary A.L.P. smells victory; its leader, Frank Wilkes is looking confident: and his team is pressing hard on the heels of the Liberals like a pack of hounds after the fox. Ballarat will be the barometer!

MORE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES AID TO TERRORISTS

The issue of Sept. 29th of South African Digest reports that the W.C.C. is to give its largest allocation this year - approx. $110,000 - to S.W.A.P.O. (South West Africa People's Organisation), a tool of the Marxist terrorists. The report continues that W.C.C. sources affirmed: "in a major way (S.W.A.P.O.) expresses and embodies the national unity of a people of the country in their struggle for independence and national unity."
This fresh W.C.C. grant follows on from the $74,000 approx. grant, which was given to the Patriotic Front just prior to the Air Rhodesia Viscount atrocity at Kariba, where survivors of the plane crash (the Viscount was shot down) were murdered by Nkomo's terrorists. Joshua Nkomo's faction, along with that of Robert Mugabe makes up the Patriotic Front in Rhodesia.

A British Methodist (Uniting Church in Australia) Minister, Miss Pauline Webb, said in London that it was part of the trust between the W.C.C. and terrorist movements that the money was given only for humanitarian purposes. We suppose that this type of person is sincere in such beliefs - we find it difficult to comprehend such naivety; really criminal naivety. The South African Digest comments that there is no way in which the WCC is able to check how the grant is spent. The fact that S.W.A.P.O. has murdered and maimed black people and set fire to buildings does not worry the political priests. Nor will they worry because the blood of South African soldiers is being spilled in defending the inhabitants of South West Africa against S.W.A.P.O.'s incursions.

FROM BRITISH ON TARGET (Oct. 7th)

Behind the Common Market Scenes by Hilaire du Berrier.

Conspiracy in Europe
"The European Common Market crowd is trying to hush up a leak so important that it surely would have to hit front pages in the American Press if our top newsmen were not so determined to withhold such information. On June 18th, former French Premier, Michel Debre, delivered a speech at Champcourt in which he made an issue of a map showing Europe under a supranational government. Drawn up by the European Assembly, the Parliament of the Common Market, the map depicted the regions into which Western European countries have been quietly divided without national boundaries. What Debre did not know was that the map which had just fallen into his hands was produced over a year ago and immediately withdrawn when important regional One Worlders in the Common Market decided that the European public was not ready to be told what is in store for them."

A Supranational Socialist State
"Month after month, year after year, the relentless drive to add nations to a Socialist core continues. The latest move is the founding of the 'European International' which of all the strategies of the Socialist International in recent years will most directly affect Americans. It operates within the 'European Movement' whose international President is a Frenchman named Georges Berthoin. This man, of whom the American people have never heard, is also European President of the Trilateral Commission. In late June a secret meeting took place between Georges Berthoin, President Jimmy Carter, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, and Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal. Their object was to discuss plans for the Common Market parliamentary elections to be held in June 1979. Mr. Berthoin is obviously a terribly important man if Carter, Vance and Blumenthal are meeting with him, so it is significant that the American Press has ignored the man. One of the successes Mr. Berthoin was able to report to the American President and his officials was that the Spanish Communist Party has agreed to sit on the Spanish Council of the European Movement, while the Rightist Phalange refuses to have anything to do with it."

THE MENACE OF OVER-GOVERNMENT

"Australians were vastly over governed and were paying dearly for that 'questionable privilege', South Australia's Opposition Leader, Mr. Tonkin, said last night..." The Sun (Melbourne) October 14th.

A Quarter of a century ago rank and file Liberals were giving a little more than lip service to such viewpoints as this. They were quoting from F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, and asserting the evils of political centralisation, Big Government, Socialism, and all the rest. C.H. Douglas once wrote words to the effect that, in a two party system of Government, when one party turned Socialist, elections thereon became a contest in progress to the Left. That is what has happened since the Menzies days of the early fifties: although bearing the name Liberal, and mouthing the occasional anti-Socialist sentiment, the modern Liberal Party Minister does preside over a Socialist, hence centralised bureaucracy.

Social Security now takes a major slice of the Federal Budget, and has an enormous army of officials to run it, and these do intrude into the private lives of citizens. Education should not be a Federal matter at all, but should be handled by the States. The situation now is that independent schools and universities are hooked on Commonwealth funds. Even the various State education departments like other State Government departments, exist by fact of the allocations which are dealt out to the State governments at the Premiers' Conference each year. This is mainly the result of the cession by the States, to Canberra, of their taxing powers early in the World War 2 years.
It is not well known that (then) Mr. Menzies did offer the return of full taxing power to the States in the early post war years; but they declined! The State politicians of the day didn't want the responsibility.

Health is the same story - Canberra rules the roost. The ordinary citizen is kept so impecunious, and in debt, by means of inflation, high taxation, that he/she can't withstand the buffets brought on the family by ill health. Readers might be interested to add up the volume of money, which has passed through their hands over the last, say twenty years. How much of that money is at hand now? What proportion of that fortune do your current assets represent? We could go on.

Mr. Tonkin observed that in South Australia, under the Socialist Dunstan Administration, no less than 34% of workforce was on the public payroll: nationally it is something like 30%. In South Australia, Mr. Tonkin stated that more than half of the State budget went on wages and salaries. Socialism is very expensive.

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