KEATING'S SWAN SONG?

As we go to press we are only hours away from Socialist brother Keating's presentation of the Budget to out-budget all budgets. We shall make appropriate comments and predictions in the next issue of On Target. As we have stated earlier, we do not accept this sudden, cataclysmic, finance economic "crisis" (as serious as any in the last War! So says Mr. Hawke) would have overwhelmed any Australian government. We claim, along with many of the "orthodox" economists, that the Hawke-Keating Socialist Brothers are much to blame for the ills, which now beset us.

Mr. John Stone has said recently that they are not fit to govern Australia, and this is right. They aren't. The sooner they are turfed out the better for all of us. Some plain speaking political commentators say that it will be better for Australia if the Hawke-Keating Socialists stay there for a while so that their noses will be well and truly rubbed in the mess they have created; and so that Australians will have had more than enough of their Socialism. In our view the Hawke Government has very little chance of retrieving the situation: it is in rapid decline: the rotten "social experiments" which it has tried to foist on us - like the Bill of Rights, the I.D.Card - will add to its eclipse. With those words we await, like the writer of the letter quoted in our "Thought for the Week" our fate.

SELLING THE WORLD TO THE BANKERS

by Jeremy Lee
The real truth about what is happening to Australia and other countries occasionally peeps through the mystical nonsense preached by economic analysts. Ross Gittins, in the Sydney Morning Herald (August 6, 1986) said:
"... Australia has been caught up in a process of "globalisation" of financial markets, which has been gathering pace for at least two decades, and which is changing the rules for the managers of all the industrial economies ... The opening up of international financial markets has transformed the attitude of the world's bankers, pension fund managers and company treasurers. Where once their search for investment and profit making opportunities was limited to their country's borders, now the world is their oyster. They can invest in anything, anywhere. And they can move their money round as often as they see fit. In the jargon of the financial journalist, we live in the age of "hot money" - highly liquid funds which roam the world in search of the best profit. Over the past five years the world's foreign exchange market has doubled and by the end of last year turnover had reached more than $3,000 billion a day …"

One example is the Philippines. Unable to pay the foreign debt, Mrs. Aquino is seeking cooperation in offering the bankers the ownership of Philippine industries in exchange for debt relief. The Financial Review (Aug. 13) said: "... President Corazon Aquino plans during a visit to the US next month to seek the support of bankers for the scheme, which appears broader, in scope than debt-for-equity swaps already arranged by some Latin American debtors…" Needless to say, the bankers are more than interested!

They are also showing interest, as pointed out last week, in taking over Australia's farms. The Financial Review (August 8) reported:
"... According to the NSW real estate manager for Elders Pastoral, Mr. John Peden, there have been serious inquiries from offshore investors for rural property since the freeing of the FIRB (Foreign Investment Review Board) regulations. He said Japanese and South East Asian interests had been in touch with him enquiring after major rural land holdings ...". It is clear, however, that banks are no longer national. They're just one big international family.

The same issue of the Review reported: "Goldman, Sachs & Co. one of New York's Big Five investment banking houses and one of the last independent partnerships on Wall St., yesterday announced that it is negotiating to sell a 12% stake to the Simitomo Bank Ltd., the world's third largest bank, for $US500 million ... This is the first time that a Japanese company has bought directly into such a major Wall Street investment bank ... The 91-year-old Sumitomo Bank ... has more than $2,000 billion in assets ..."

What is not explained in these articles is the fact that Mr. John C. Whitehead, Chairman of the International Advisory Board of Goldman Sachs & Co. and Chusuke Takahashi, Deputy Board Chairman of the Sumitomo Bank Ltd. are both members of the Trilateral Commission, an organisation committed to the New International Economic Order and World Government, founded by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski in July 1972.

We can well understand the difficulties facing Mr. Ian McLachlan, as head of the National Farmers' Federation committed to fighting for Australia's primary producers. Although on the Board of Elders, headed by John Elliot who is also, we understand, in the running for a future leadership role in the Liberal Party, Mr. McLachlan has stressed he will not succumb to any conflict of interest in his position. We have no doubt of his sincerity in this regard. But if Elders becomes the vehicle for large-scale foreign investment aimed at replacing Australia's family farms, Mr. McLachlan's personal position will become invidious.

BRIEF COMMENTS

The Chairman of the Waltons-Bond Group, one of the largest retail marketing combines in Oz, has called on the Government for a "horrific" budget. This is yet another example of "The Three Bears", viz. Big Business-Big Government-Big Unionism. All live comfortably together.

The Australian Democrats are for the high jump, we believe. Senator Don Chipp has bowed out, having feathered his nest nicely. Even he has had a personal following, and this is unlikely to be "inherited" by Senator Janine Haines. In spite of what we have seen and heard her claim, the drift of support away from "Labor" is not heading her way. The latest Morgan Gallup Poll discloses that support for the Australian Democrats is not increasing. As we write these lines we hear of the possibility of a snap election called if certain Budget proposals are rejected in the Senate. We know that the Hawke-Keating Government is growing desperate, and should the predictions come true, and there be a snap Federal poll, our prediction is that it will be a "dirty" one. Brothers Hawke and Keating will show their real colours, as they are going down. We said at the time of the March, 1983 Federal election which swept Mr. Hawke into power, that Australians would have to experience him to learn the real Hawke.

Some of the "Labor" Party machine men are asserting that the Hawke Government will suffer a backlash over the scrapping of the Special Broadcasting Service (S.B.S.). We recall that Mr. Bruce Gyngell, who played the prominent part in its establishment, once referred to it, facetiously - no doubt, as "Wog T.V." Now we doubt, if S.B.S. is really scrapped (we'll know in a few hours) whether there will be such a backlash. Our view is that S.B.S. is watched (its ratings are abysmal) as much by Anglo-Saxon-Kelt intellectuals, as by ethnic groups. We think the ethnic people watch such programmes as "Sale of the Century", "The Young Doctors", "Dallas", and all the rest of the "soapies" as much as the "Anglos". We don't think the ethnic people are crazy about the S.B.S.

FROM 'EMPLOYERS REPORT'