CANBERRA CHALLENGED ON IMMIGRATION

"The Victorian President of the R.S.L., Mr. Bruce Ruxton, has called on the Federal Government to fight an election on its immigration policies. - Sunday Press (Melbourne) July 12th.

As might have been expected the media have been having a series of field days, particularly in Victoria, on the Immigration question. In the Sunday Press (12/7) Mr. Ruxton is quoted: "He (Mr. Ian MacPhee, Federal Minister of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs) has been telling British and European applicants they can come here only if they have the skills we require...That yardstick is not being applied to Asian migrants - and if it was it would be a shame as those countries need their own skilled people.
"If Mr. MacPhee is confident about his stand, let him write it into Liberal Party policy and fight the next election on it. "Of course, he could suggest that his Government hold a referendum to let the Australian people decide who they want to live here."

Mr. Al. Grassby, naturally, has been carping on the Racial Discrimination Act (of which we'll say more below) - "the Law of the Land", as he is fond of saying. Apparently Mr. Ruxton can expect "a letter" from Mr. Al. Grassby, and no doubt Mr. Ruxton will know what to do with this. Mr. Ruxton commented: "He (Mr. Grassby) has caused more ill feeling among ethnic groups and Homegrown people than anyone else. "He's a flashy little extrovert who should take his Mao type shirts and go and live in Vietnam."

As could well be expected, the United Nations Association of Australia has bought into the affair, with the President of its Victorian division deploring immigration by skin coloration - a highly emotive, highly simplistic approach, typical of United Nations do gooders. Mr. MacPhee has been strongly criticising Mr. Ruxton, and elements within the R.S.L., which share the latter's views on Immigration. Incidentally, the R.S.L. resolution criticising the Government's Immigration policy was carried unanimously: it was moved by the Waverley (Victoria) Sub-Branch of the R.S.L.

Mr. MacPhee, and other politicians, and those also in Britain (Mrs. Thatcher and others) are insisting that the current British violence is not racial. Said Mr. MacPhee: "The genuine reason is unemployment and the lack of hope for the future of the individual". This is the main politicians' "line". At all costs, keep off the racial question; anything but that. This is the ugly scenario they have manufactured for themselves. As one letter writer to the Melbourne press commented, this reasoning is an insult to the traditional British worker who has never rioted in this fashion. There seems little doubt that there is conscious organisation of the rioting in Britain, but all this means is that the enemies of Britain are exploiting a situation, which has been most foolishly allowed to develop.

If one inspects the photographs of the riots which are appearing in the press, there will be noticed very few white faces. If Mr. MacPhee, and other politicians are correct about unemployment being the principle cause of rioting, then why didn't this happen during the Great Depression when the unemployment rate was more than double the present unemployment rate in Britain of 11% (eleven percent)?

Meanwhile, the State bureaucrats are getting jumpy. The head of the State (Victoria) Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Mr. Rob Downey, has written to Mr. Ruxton along the lines that his Department was on a "collision course" with the R.S.L. Again, Mr. Grassby has fears that the R.S.L. has been infiltrated by that dreadful Australian League of Rights, along with the Ku Klux Klan, the National Alliance (which no longer exists), and the National Front (all 4 or 5 of them!).
We welcome this sort of publicity from Mr. Grassby: the more he berates the League of Rights, the more decent Australians will join our ranks. This has always been the case - attacks from our opponents bring us new supporters.

Mr. Ruxton, in typical fashion, told Mr. Downey that if "he wanted to go to war" then so be it. He'll retract nothing. That's the line to take with petty bureaucrats with their tiny axes to grind. The Victorian State Minister of Housing, Mr. Geoff Kennett, is having his sixpenth, too, waffling on about "prejudice" and "intolerance" etc. Mr. Ruxton' s rejoinder to Mr. Kennett was that: "Mr. Kennett showed his immaturity at the demise of Mr. Hamer", and that Mr. Kennett should grow up. Mr. Kennett is an able young parliamentarian, but he is very ambitious (no doubt, like most young parliamentarians) and perhaps sees himself as a future Premier of Victoria. He is mad keen to keep "on side" with the media, and other influences of even greater power.

The Age (Melbourne) July 11th Editorial, by the way, calls for the resignation of Mr. Ruxton. We quote: "If he (Mr. Ruxton) is seriously interested in helping to improve the nation's health, and in repairing some of the damage he has done to the reputation of the R.S.L., the best thing he could do now is to resign."
Well, far from concurring with all this waffle, our opinion is that Mr. Ruxton, by highlighting our quite subversive Immigration programme, has done a great service to Australia, as any genuine referendum of the Immigration issue would show. This, of course, will be denied by all politicians as long as is possible: one of the very last things they want is to hear the voice of the people of Australia on Immigration, as this would certainly cut the ideological ground from underneath them.
Incidentally, The Age (Melbourne) is known in the journalistic and advertising world as - "The Spencer Street Soviet": it is situated in Spencer Street, one of the main streets in the city of Melbourne.

We mentioned (above) the Racial Discrimination. Act, under which Mr. Al Grassby operates his Commission for Community Relations. The Racial Discrimination Bill was introduced by the Whitlam Labor Government during its three years in office; originally it contained definitely punitive provisions for breaches of the Act, when law. $5000 per breach and this back in the seventies. Also the onus would have been on the accused to prove innocence, as the "interpretations" were wide.
There is little doubt that the original Racial Discrimination Bill was aimed, especially, at bodies like the Australian League of Rights. We recall that ex-Senator John Wheldon stated in a T.V. interview at the time that a "full investigation" into "racist" organisations would be held after the Racial Discrimination Bill was enacted into law. As it happened, the Senate of the day removed the criminal provisions of the Bill. We well recall that ex-Senator James McClelland remarked in the Senate, after the Bill was decriminalised - "You've gutted it!" He was highly displeased. Ex-Senator McClelland is now a judge in N.S.W.

With all this in mind, we only recently came across a letter written to one of the League executives by the late Senator Ivor Greenwood, a former Attorney General of Australia. It was written on April 30th, 1975; when Senator Greenwood was Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate: I share your thought that the Government is using the power to make laws with respect to 'external affairs' in a way that is not warranted. I am confident, in my own opinion, that the Human Rights Bill and, the Racial Discrimination Bill are beyond the power of the Commonwealth Parliament to enact; and that if they should be passed and challenged in the High Court, they would be declared invalid.
"The Opposition (1975, April) does not regard the Racial Discrimination Bill as a Bill it should oppose, but will endeavour, and it is hoped successfully, to amend its more oppressive provisions.
"I doubt very much if the Parliament could restrain a future Government from exercising powers, which it claims to possess as a result of international conventions or treaties which thereby evoke the 'external affairs' power. I think that, ultimately, it will be for the High Court in some appropriate case to lay down the limits of such power, and this will be a guide to the future.
"I sense that what you say about the Whitlam Government's inability to control inflation, and the likelihood that it will be destroyed because of this inability, is likely to prove correct. However, the danger to our stability is very real and I trust that we shall have the determination to meet the problems, which are about to arise. I do not think many Australians appreciate the difficulties, which the nation will have to overcome in the near future.
"Thank you for writing, Yours sincerely, Ivor J. Greenwood.

The Human Rights Bill was another that was introduced into Parliament under the "external affairs" power of the Australian Constitution, and of which the late Senator Greenwood wrote. It was introduced by ex-Senator Lionel Murphy, when Labor Attorney General, but did never pass into law: the events of December 1975 ruled that out.

To round off this lengthier On Target item we quote from an article in The Herald (Melbourne) July 13th - "What Rubbish We're Hearing About This Shameful Battle of Britain - by Lynda Lee-Potter, of the London Daily Mail...."An entire army of community leaders, obtaining, lucrative, unique capital out of the disorders, are brought to the cameras to say, "if men are without jobs, violence is inevitable". What Lynda Lee-Potter, of the London Daily Mail didn't mention was racial hatred, that politician's no-no. We have no doubt that racial hatred is at the bottom of the present rioting, and furthermore, we agree with Enoch Powell, who said we haven't seen anything yet.