THE SERVILE STATE

Many years ago the distinguished English writer, Hilaire Belloc, wrote a prophetic book with a most descriptive title, "The Servile State". Belloc feared that step-by-step the individual would be persuaded to sacrifice his freedom in exchange for a minimum of material security. The Welfare State was promoted by those who, like the British planner, Lord Beveridge, insisted that the individual must be prepared to go halfway to Moscow in order to avoid the complete totalitarian State.
The Welfare State has cushioned the impact of the present Depression by ensuring that no one actually starves to death. It has had a subtly degrading impact on many people.

Those who have attended Mr. Eric D. Butler's Basic Anti-Subversion School will recall his example of how while a frog thrown into boiling water will try to jump to safety, the same frog placed in cold water can be boiled alive if the temperature is not increased too suddenly. Many can be slowly conditioned to eventually accept what once would have produced violent reaction. The scars of the Depression of the thirties were so deep that for a long period after the Second World War, the provision of "full employment" was generally regarded as a major test for governments.

As a result of a credit squeeze - allegedly designed to fight the same inflation Mr. John Howard is still battling and a minor recession compared with what is taking place now - the Menzies-Fadden Government was nearly swept from office at the 1961 Federal Election. Unemployment was only a fraction of what it is today, but it was the major issue in the election campaign. Twenty-two years later unemployment is now approaching the level of the thirties, but there is no evidence that it is producing the type of electoral backlash of the past.

There is, of course, a degree of truth in the widely held view that the Labor Party has no constructive alternative to offer. Mr. Hayden insists that Labor must offer only "responsible" economic policies, which means that Labor proposes no challenge to the policies, which have produced the present disaster. But we fear that many people, particularly amongst the young, have been conditioned to believe that the present Depression is something inevitable, the result of international factors beyond Australia's direct control, and that the Welfare State does at least make possible minimum physical requirements.

While the Marxists are having some success in recruiting young people, they are also admitting that the present crisis is different from that of the thirties. Growing numbers of young people are either turning to violent non-political crime, or to drugs and other forms of escapism. There is a widespread air of resignation. Much of this attitude reflects the success of the false theme that Australia has "been living beyond its means" and that a "wage freeze" makes some kind of sense. The truth is, of course, that Australia is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, and there is no physical reason why all Australians cannot be guaranteed both security and freedom.

Mr. W. Aberhart, Premier of the Albertan Social Credit Government in the thirties, the only government which has in this century attempted to challenge the Money Power and its agents of revolution, is credited with having told his audience that if they had not suffered enough to make them react, then it was their God given right to suffer some more.
Like the depression of the thirties, the present worldwide depression has been deliberately produced to further a long-term strategy, the ultimate objective being to drive a desperate and morally defeated people into the World State. The promoters of this strategy have already inflicted tremendous physical and moral damage on the peoples of the world. However, there is a limit beyond which even the most conditioned cannot be driven without reaction. We do not predict what that limit is, but there is a growing ferment, which, given direction and correct information, could express itself in effective action.

The battle for the world is now entering a final and decisive stage, one that will shape the future of mankind for centuries to come. The lead against the descent into slavery can only come from those who have grasped that genuine freedom is a spiritual necessity, and who are prepared to fight to ensure that it is unnecessary to surrender freedom in order to gain security.

BIG, BIGGER, BUST

By Neil G. McDonald
"Get bigger or get out", was the official advice offered to farmers only a few years ago. The pressure to grow, amalgamate, and incur debt in order to survive is now changing ecstasy into agony. Dazed with drought and lesser yields, the way of escape without financial loss seems blocked. Bigness was never more efficient than smallness. Bigness needs more control with supervisors to keep the wheel spinning. When properly organised, bigness can deliver mass products to a time decreasing schedule. Radios, shirts, cars are born in almost limitless abundance. But, a setback - strikes or sabotage - can strangle the big show with results that make Gulliver appear a quick release artist.

Bigness of government needs bureaucrats galore. They put costs and not production into the system. They prod, probe, and gradually destroy what was meant to be an efficient organisation. Now, in industry the big firms are collapsing. Private companies - efficiently run now, with stockpiles of cars, tractors, books and biscuits. Internationals, once thought impregnable, have joined the casualties (Daimler, Leyland, and DeLorian). Qantas and British Airways fly with almost unliftable debts, while Laker and Braniff are receiver held memories.

But, productive efficiency has little to do with the failure (impending or actual) of many crash-dive firms. Established with immense loans, they survive temporarily, only because the day of reckoning is advanced into the future. The killer is a phantom, more skilled than Sherlock Holmes, and more tenacious than the Saint. A mere will-o'-the-wisp; a set of financial symbols having no reflection of reality - is the enemy which slays industry with more stealth than a group of commandos.

American President Abraham Lincoln said; "I have two great enemies; the Southern Army in front of me, and the financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is my greatest foe."
With financial symbols alone, unable to fully distribute the abundance and release the untapped potential, survivors will need to be in the mould of army commandos. Revival of close family units, with debts under easy personal control, is required.

Fifty years ago, the (then) Prince of Wales (later the Duke of Windsor) said, "The depression of economic disturbance has been largely caused by a maladjustment of distribution. The potential output is far greater than ever before." Small, skilled units - the self-employed builder, electrician, or plumber, are more cost efficient than when employed by a larger organisation. Overheads and disruptions then begin to erode the personal pride in a job well done.
The boot repairer, hairdresser, service station owner, are a vital part of daily living - each able to give better personal service than any larger group. Therein lies a threat to world planners and agents of amalgamation: Nothing is so dangerous as individual initiative.

There is no threat to banks or budgets from either large firms or unions. All receive their licence to live from the financial veil they dare not lift. Individuals and small, informed groups are the only challenge to a faulty system which restricts production and penalises every citizen because of millions, or billions, or unrepayable debt. The apples are on the ground rotting. Everywhere, gates are locked and workers idle.

Urgently needed are not large majorities, but small groups of concerned even angry producers - determined to remove the obstacles, which stand between production and consumption. Voter's policy Associations, armed with information and energy, appear to be the best way to slay the Deficit dragon.

BRIEF COMMENTS

Prime Minister Fraser has sunk to a new low in treacherous hypocrisy with his threat that West Indian cricketers playing in South Africa will be banned permanently from entering Australia, and that even English cricketers playing in South Africa might be banned from coming to Australia. Much as we may deplore the professionalism of cricket along with other sporting activities, the fact is that the West Indian cricketers have gone to South Africa as paid performers. Mr. Fraser expresses concern about the Third World, but when professional cricketers from a Third World country seek to obtain financial security for their families, the Australian Prime Minister seeks to interfere with a basic right. Playing sport in Communist countries is, of course, all right. And exporting to the Communists on credit is highly laudable. Mr. Hayden's instant agreement with Mr. Fraser about the West Indian cricketers merely confirms that the major political parties are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Hopefully the humbug of Prime Minister Fraser and Mr. Hayden will be challenged at the next elections.

Britain's inflation rate has been reduced to 5.4 percent, the lowest for 12 years, while the American inflation rate is the lowest for a decade, 3.9 percent. Both inflation rates have been achieved by savage credit restrictions, which have forced hundreds of thousands of businesses into bankruptcy and pushed unemployed figures to new record levels. The low inflation rates are described as a "glimmer of light". If and when credit restrictions are eased, we can predict with complete certainty that inflation will start to rise again. There is no way out of the growing crisis under present financial policies.

From Hansard
Retrospectivity: Senate (November 19th, 1982) Senator Crichton-Browne (W.A.):
"….My first fundamental objection to this legislation (retrospective taxation) is that which I have to any legislation which retrospectively imposes a penalty. My second objection is that the legislation in imposing this new and retrospective taxation, does not seek to distinguish between those vendor-shareholders who received a benefit as a result of evading taxation and in so doing committed an offence under a number of present laws and those vendor/shareholders who acted strictly within the law and committed no offence.
"It has been said by Lon Fuller that King Rex's bungling career as a legislator and a judge illustrates that the attempt to create and maintain a system of legal rules may miscarry in at least eight ways. There are eight distinct routes to disaster and one of those eight ways is the abuse of retrospective legislation which not only cannot itself guide action but also undercuts the integrity of rules prospective in effect since it puts them under threat of a retrospective change in the future. It has been reasonably argued that a total failure in any one of these eight directions does not simply result in bad law. It results in something that is not properly called a legal system at all. Certainly there can be no rational grounds for asserting that a man can have a moral obligation to obey a legal rule that does not exist, or that come into existence after he has acted.
The United States Constitution provides that no bill of attainment or ex post facto law (after the event) shall be passed by Congress. Part 5 of Section 23 of the New Hampshire Constitution of 1784 states:
"Retrospective laws are highly injurious, oppressive and unjust. No such laws therefore should be made, either for the decision of civil causes, or the punishment of offences."
"Retrospectivity is outlawed also by the French code, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has been ratified by Australia. So strong was the principle against retrospectivity that when the American Constitution was being drafted, two framers of that Constitution who later became judges of the Supreme Court of the United States urged that prohibition against ex post facto laws was unnecessary. One of those gentlemen was observed to move, during one constitutional debate, that there was 'no lawyer, no civilian who would not say that ex post facto laws were void of themselves'.
The courts have over very many years expressed grave concern at retrospective legislation and have consistently ruled that only when legislation specifically and categorically states the intention of retrospectivity can it be read as retrospective. This concern has been expressed particularly when it relates to taxation and commercial transactions. If the law is not certain commercial transactions cannot be carried out in an atmosphere of certainty, and men will not be able to arrange their affairs to achieve the legal result which they intend.
Lord Simmons in Russell v. Scott had this to say: "'My Lords there is a maximum of income tax law which, though it may sometimes be overstressed, yet ought not be forgotten. It is that the subject is not to be taxed unless the words of the taxing statute unambiguously impose a tax upon him. It is necessary that this maxim should on occasion be reasserted, and this is such an occasion."
"That statement of the legal position has also been reinforced in a number of cases and the rule which, according to those authorities, is to be applied in this statute is clearly defined in Maxwell's On Statutes. He states:
'It is a fundamental rule of English Law that no statute shall be construed so as to have a retrospective operation, unless such a construction appears very clearly in the terms of the Act or arises by necessary and distinct implication.'
As I say, the reason why the courts have taken such a position is their strong opposition to retrospectivity, particularly where it imposes an additional and new burden or penalty. As the courts concede, where the Act specifically states its intention to have a retrospective character there is nothing that the courts can do, but to interpret it accordingly. But their opposition to retrospectivity is manifest in their comments and the strict interpretation that they impose upon it…."