ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL REALITIES

The famous Chinese sage Confucius said it was no use running harder if you are already on the wrong road. The present plight of the world, which is now deteriorating at an escalating rate, is the result of policies rooted in a philosophy of gross materialism and humanism. In his striking address last week at the Melbourne Conservative Speakers' Club, Mr. Eric Butler said that it was essential for those calling themselves Christians to face the reality that they were now living in the post Christian era. Christian influence, Mr. Butler said, had reached the high watermark of its influence on the Western world prior to the First World War. Since then its influence had progressively waned.

A striking manifestation of this declining influence was the surrender to a type of black magic concerning money, generally regarded by party politicians and their faceless "experts" as some special type of commodity. Because there is allegedly a domestic shortage of this commodity, it is claimed that some of it must be imported.
Mr. Rupert Murdoch's national daily, "The Australian", in its issue of December 3rd, devotes considerable space to a "Special Report" on foreign banking and the Campbell Report. The essence of the articles, and the advertisements from international banks like David Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan, is to show Australians that they need international banks to help finance their own resources.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Campbell Report is to be used to attempt to fit Australian into the New International Economic Order. The mounting campaign to create a New International Economic Order is an attempt by international power groups to exploit a reality which can no longer be disputed: that under present financial rules, no industrialised nation can distribute sufficient purchasing power to meet the total prices of its own-production. "Export drives" to obtain a "favourable balance of trade" become increasingly essential. The result is mounting friction between all exporting nations, with the Japanese being severely criticised by both the European Common Market nations and the U.S.A.

While Western and Japanese politicians continue with their anti-Communist rhetoric, they welcome massive exports, on credit, to both the Soviet bloc and Communist China. One of the advantages of exporting to the Communists is that because Communist production systems are so inefficient, or are devoted to military programmes, the Communists generally do not embarrass the non-Communist nations with the export of consumer goods. Although, as Mr. Eric Butler said in his Melbourne Conservative Club address, there was the incredible spectacle of Polish sausages being sold abroad while the desperate Poles were queuing for hours in an attempt to obtain even one sausage. This is part of the price Poles must pay to try to meet the interest bills on their big international debt, and to obtain still more foreign loans.

A few years back there was tremendous enthusiasm about the possibility of using post Mao China's "modernisation" programme as an outlet for the surplus productive capacity of the non-Communist nations. This programme was also presented as a "balance" against the Soviet Union. But even the Japanese are conceding that the "Modernisation" programme in China is almost impossible to achieve under Communism.
However, in spite of the colossal economic sabotage and waste in both the Soviet bloc and Communist China, the international planners now present the "Third World" nations, particularly those of Africa, as an outlet for surplus production. It is not put like this, of course.
First there is the conditioning with the highly emotional message about the widespread starvation and poverty. Prime Minister Fraser is very strong on this, even telling Australians that they will be cursed by their children unless they back the New International Economic Order and help to eliminate this widespread suffering.
And then comes the punch line: such a programme will also be good for Western economies.

The truth is, of course, that over the 22 years of the retreat by the European colonial powers in Africa, massive economic aid has been provided to no avail. Increased aid of the type already provided would be like pouring water down a bottomless sink. The only beneficiaries to date have been very crooked dictators and their associates, who concern themselves more about the state of their Swiss bank accounts than about their own people.

The grandiose global planning by the internationalists, and the financial policies being used to advance this planning, is as certain to fail, as the sun will continue to rise. As we have consistently pointed out, financial policies which multiply debt at an escalating rate, make inflation a mathematical certainty. There has been a shift in emphasis concerning inflation. By inference it is now conceded that high inflation is going to continue indefinitely. There are no more promises from Treasurer Howard or Prime Minister Fraser on how they are going to reduce inflation. They now offer only ''restraint'' and ''control'' at a level, which must continue to move upward.

In an interview with Prime Minister Fraser, published in "The Age", Melbourne, on December 4th, political correspondent Michelle Grattan asked the question, "You sound quite pessimistic about the course of inflation in the next few months?" to which Mr. Fraser replied, "No, I believe Australia will still do quite well by world standards. The December quarter is likely to be upwards because of some Budget decisions that were inevitable. Longer term we will be bearing down and our policy setting has borne down on inflation."

Having delivered himself of this piece of dialectics, of how he is increasing inflation by his own Budget decisions, which allegedly he couldn't help, so that he can then "bear down" on it, Mr. Fraser went on to say how this, however, was not his "greatest cause for concern." It was the general increase in costs in the country. These increased costs are in fact the result of the financial policies the Fraser Government has been imposing.

There is no way out of the rapidly deepening international crisis under policies, which generate ever-increasing financial debt and high inflation. Attempts to centralise political and financial power globally are certain to hasten the process of social disorder now so obvious everywhere. What is essential right now is for one nation to start reversing what is claimed to be inevitable. If Australians could unite sufficiently to defeat Mr. Howard's iniquitous Sales Tax, they would be heeding the advice of Confucius that it is much better to light even one small candle than to go on cursing the dark.

BRIEF COMMENTS

Australia's Minister for Trade and Resources, Mr. Anthony, has been in Europe criticising the European Economic Community's rising food exports. Mr. Anthony claimed that the EEC was subsidising food exports to the detriment of Australian exporters. Unfortunately for Mr. Anthony, the Europeans operate under the same financial rules as Australians, and those rules force them to produce, not only for domestic consumption, but also for exports. Prime Minister Fraser has also criticised the Japanese for reducing the quota for Australian beef. At the same time quotas are used to protect Australian industries against foreign imports. In a sane world, production would be geared to consumption, and international trade an exchange of genuine surpluses to the mutual advantage of all. We predict that 1982 is going to see an intensification of international trade warfare.

As we predicted, the situation in the U.S.A. is deteriorating rapidly under the Reagan Administration's financial policies. A new surge of retrenchments last month pushed the U.S. unemployment rate to a new high level of 8.4 percent. At the same time inflation has remained high. Financial orthodoxy is the Achilles Heel of the Reagan Administration. And the deepening American recession will have serious effects internationally.

The Thatcher Government is like the alcoholic, who will do everything to cure his complaint except give up drinking! New taxes are being imposed, allegedly to hold down the deficit, now likely to increase because of increased government spending in a belated attempt to stimulate the depressed economy. Mrs. Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Geoffrey Howe, was greeted with derisive laughter in the Commons when he predicted that the British economy would experience a "gradual recovery next year despite the new taxes. The emergence of the new "centre" party, the Social Democrats, is a reflection of the desperate state of British politics. The tragedy is that the new party offers no clear policy to even start to solve the British crisis. Failure by one more party would mean either "curtains" for the British - or a general realisation that orthodox party politics offer no solutions.

When a group of 20 government backbenchers sent a congratulatory telegram to the Chief Minister, Sir Lennox Sebe, of the new black Bantustan of Ciskei, they openly defied the anti-South Africa policy of Prime Minister Fraser. There is encouraging evidence of mounting pressure inside the government parties to curb the Prime Minister's fanatical anti-South African attitudes. We predict that Mr. Fraser is going to have increasing difficulty maintaining his pro-Third World African and anti-South African campaign.

The growing debate concerning protection and free trade is like the party game; it divides people on effects and diverts attention from causes. All countries, including developing nations in Asia, use tariffs, quotas or some other device to protect local industries against foreign imports. Reducing the number of car manufacturing organisations in Australia will solve nothing.

World Government
The following quotes highlight the thrust for World Government in the various centres of political power around the world: "Some types of decisions - those with global consequences - must be taken by international for a representing the world's population. The international order must be organised accordingly. This implies a voluntary surrender of national sovereignty as conceived today.. . Many of the R.I.O. group believe this equitable social order could best be described as 'humanistic socialism' since it would aim at equalising opportunities within and among nations and be founded on universal values.. ."
Club of Rome Report

"Reshaping the International Order" (R.I.O.) coordinated by Jan Tinbergen, former chairman of the United Nations Planning Committee, 1977. "Policies, agreements, and institutions in the field of international, economic, financial and monetary co-operation should be guided by the principle of universality...."
"North-South-The Brandt Commission Report"

"…the question of restructuring international economic relations on a just and equitable basis was originally put on the agenda of international affairs by the first socialist state in the world... Equally obvious is the transitional nature of such a mechanism (i.e. the N.I.E.O.) which can, nonetheless, in Lenin's words, make up an 'entire epoch' in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism."
Ernest Obminsky, "Co-operation" Novosti Publishing House, Moscow, 1978.

"The pursuit of these ends (i.e. The New International Economic Order) will require an immense extension of the use of coercive powers of governments over individuals, for nothing else would be capable of bringing about any substantial homogenisation naturally as well as internationally, of highly diverse nations, societies, groups and individuals. It will provoke acute political and social tensions. It will divert people's energies and resources from economic to political activity. A new international economic order may indeed emerge, but it will not be one either of freedom or of prosperity."
Professor Peter Bauer, London School of Economics, "Against the New Economic Order."