SHAPING UP FOR THE BASIC BATTLE

We have said it before, and repeat it: the liberal Party is in a process of disintegration as a party effectively representing traditional Australia. Anyone who believes that the Howard-Peacock leadership of the Federal Liberal party can resolve the basic problems of internal disunity is a victim of delusion. Modern party politics are a sickening affair with not even much real personal affection between members all primarily concerned with maintaining their positions in the never-ending power struggle.

The Hawke Government's electoral victory has not been able to obscure outbreaks of factional fighting. Hours before the Liberal leadership battle, Mrs. John Howard was publicly reflecting her husband's view of Mr. Andrew Peacock: he was disloyal and untrustworthy; while Mr. Peacock had, in his famous phone conversation with Victorian Liberal leader, Jeff Kennett revealed his personal loathing for John Howard. The deep personal antipathies between John Howard and Andrew Peacock are of little importance in themselves. But they do reflect the deep, mortal divisions inside a party, which lacks a coherent philosophical base. Public perception of this division, not the "Joh factor", was the decisive element, which permitted the Hawke Government to scrape back into office.

Either when led by Andrew Peacock or by John Howard, the Liberal party failed throughout the first two Hawke governments to offer any effective opposition to the Fabian type revolution being imposed upon the Australian people. There is no evidence to suggest that a Howard government would have reversed the revolution. For that reason we do not regard the Hawke victory as a major disaster spelling the end of the battle for traditional Australia. But it would have been a worse disaster if a Howard Government, badly divided internally, had come to office, as did Malcolm Fraser in 1975, with yet another period of complacency amongst large numbers of anti-Labor faithful, blindly believing that by merely changing party politicians, they have changed basically disastrous policies.

Our own view is that the best possible result, from the long term point of view, would have been the return of the Hawke Government with a minority of one and a non-Labor dominated Senate. But even now the Hawke government's position is vulnerable. Yes, it can hold a joint sitting of the Senate and the House of Representatives, and use a temporary small majority to pass its Australia Card legislation. But a genuine anti-totalitarian Liberal Opposition would boldly proclaim that it would immediately dismantle this Orwellian proposal along with similar legislation.

In the absence of strong Liberal leadership, the next stage of the Liberal Party saga will be the entry of multi-nationalist, John Elliott. There are still some basically decent Liberal and National party Members, but they are a minority. The future of Australia depends upon building up a grassroots movement led by men and women motivated by the spirit of service to their fellows and the traditional values upon which Australia was built. We are proud to say that over many long years the League of Rights has been in the forefront of every movement challenging the policies of totalitarianism. The revolutionary Aboriginal land claim movement and the Bill of Rights, to mention only two major issues, were defeated by public opinion. The next major battle is going to be on that front which we have consistently warned about: the constitutional front.

Generally overlooked in the welter of post election comment was the report that the Hawke Government has engaged an American public relations firm at $500,000 to persuade Australians that during their bi-centennial year they should change their present constitution. Presumably Phillip Adams and other local P.R. gurus could not be trusted for this latest attempt to brainwash the Australian people into surrendering their constitutional heritage. The activities of the Constitutional Commission can be seen as a major feature of an ongoing strategy. Just as the Liberals in the past have failed to give real leadership on major issues, we do not anticipate that a Howard-Peacock Liberal party will be leading the type of national campaign essential to meet the situation.

With the national distribution of one million copies of Wake Up, and similar literature, prior to the elections, highlighting the necessity for the establishment in Australia of the Swiss Electors' Veto, and groundwork has already been established for this constitutional campaign. So far from Australia being doomed to defeat, we are confident that the nation is entering a period when the growing conservative grassroots movements will explode into an outpouring of public opinion, which all Federal politicians will have to heed.

ANOTHER HAWKE 'MASTER MIND'

Mr. David Block, the master mind who produced the Efficiency Scrutiny Unit's Report, the basis of Mr. Hawke's restructuring of the Federal Public Service and the government, is a former merchant banker who describes himself as a "social democrat". The son of a Lithuanian Jew, David Block is quoted as saying that he has an insecurity, which drives him. He calls it "this mad Jewish thing to be the public person." Mr. Block was mentioned by Mr. Hawke during the election campaign, eulogising him for his work.

Mr. Block has a close association with Canberra businessman, Mr. Richard Farmer, credited by many as having been the principal architect of Mr. Hawke's election strategy. Mr. Block has a long list of merger programmes to his credit, including that of the Bank of NSW and the Commercial Bank of Australia. Mr. Block says that most of the work for his report on restructuring the Public Service and the government had been done by Dr. H.C.Coombs who had been commissioned by the Fraser government to do a similar report. Dr. Coombs was a product of the London School of Economics and greatly influenced by the late Dr. Harold Laski, one of the most influential Marxist theoreticians of this century.

Old time Labor supporters would be astonished to see the growing close links between a Labor government and representatives of Big Business. The reality is, of course, that there are no basic differences between the philosophy underlying Big Government and Big Business.

FROM THE INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY

(The July '87 Newsletter) We take most of Jeremy's Lees July '87 Newsletter because it reinforces and adds to the comments given in the lead articles in this issue of On Target: Those who wish to subscribe to the Institute of Economic Democracy's monthly Newsletter, and receive regular additional material of a political-economic nature, should send $10.00 to the Institute of Economic Democracy, RAVENSBOURNE, Qld. 4352.

My own view is that the result (of the July 11th, election) was quite predictable, and is a clear indication that the present political party scene is in the process of breaking down. The result does not mean that Australians are enthusiastic about Mr. Hawke and his colleagues - far from it. "But it does mean that Australians neither believed the Opposition parties or trusted them. It was an election full of cynicism; the vote for the A.L.P. being, in the main, a 'fear' vote. "As the Good Book tells us, the opposite of fear is faith. It was virtually impossible to vote with any measure of faith in this election. People were virtually forced to vote on the lesser of two evils, if there is any reliable way to measure such things.

"Those who subscribe to the League's weekly Newsletter, On Target, would have had the benefit of the most accurate and reliable election appraisal available - far ahead of the shallow forecasting which appeared in so many newspapers. "There is nothing so certain as the fact that things will never improve as far as ordinary voters are concerned until we have a team of candidates standing whose integrity and preparedness to make sacrifices themselves are obvious to all. I believe the existing Opposition parties will continue to disintegrate.

There will be a lot of recriminations against the Queensland State Premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. While some of his actions were ill timed, and his campaign organisation abysmal, all Sir Joh did was to put his finger on a deep rot which started much earlier. To have any chance at all, political parties must have amongst their members a deep commitment to principles, a passionate vision towards which they are striving, and a preoccupation with integrity and truth. Whatever else is said about the Labor Party, they have the first two ingredients. Wrong though they are, they believe in what they are doing. This makes them formidable. The Opposition parties have no real beliefs. They therefore have little future. "All the evidence points to the fact that Australia now faces a torrid time ahead. The brief 'honeymoon' the A.L.P. may enjoy won't last long.

"Never was there such a golden opportunity for the movement which can develop an alternative vision. My feeling is that the future will offer a 'make or break' opportunity for the Christian Church. It must break through into real maturity, working to bind the nation back to the eternal truths, and moving out into a bewildered and frightened community with an inspiring vision. On this, the future of Australia may well depend.

"Enclosed with the Newsletter is a copy of "Wake Up Australia" newspaper. About one million copies of this were printed and distributed throughout Australia. As a voluntary effort, this was quite remarkable, showing the potential of what could really be done if the conservative side of Australian politics really got its act together. Although standing aside from the party bun-fight, the long-term results of this work, will, I believe, be incalculable. As the Government blunders on over the rest of this year, and in 1988, the issues it will be trying to force will create a huge bow-wave, and the mechanism of the Swiss Voters' Veto will demand wide attention.
Election comment authorised by Mr. Eric D. Butler, 145 Russell Street, Melbourne.

WHAT THE DEVIL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?

With this telling question, the journalist, Des Colquhoun, opens his regular column in The Advertiser (Adelaide) - July 13th; the first working day after the recent Federal Election. Des Colquhoun's article is pretty "spot on", and we reproduce it for the benefit of, particularly, our supporters in the other five States of Australia:

"For weeks we've been buffeted by promises and expectations, as though we were being tumbled in Santa Claus's washing machine. We could hardly breathe for the rich glittering soap bubbles of hope for a brave new day. This weekend they turned off the machine and we've woken, battered, to find everything as grimy as it was before. "Despite the electoral holocaust, nothing has changed. Was it all just a very bad dream? "The Hawke Government is still in power with, it appears, about the same amount of power and with the same policies. "Mr. Hawke himself, judging by weekend television, has passed through the stages of charismatic larrikin that seemed to win him his first election and the visionary messiah that won him his second. "He seems now to be wearing the outrageous humble mantle of an elder statesman. But in reality it's not much of a change; he is still the Bob Hawke who promised to let his Government run full term but couldn't resist the raw opportunism of calling an early election to cash in on the farcical disarray in the conservative camps. "There's statesmanship for you.

"Mr. Hawke used as his excuse the blockage of the I.D. card legislation, but in all the megalomaniac hoo-ha of the campaigning, this ostensibly crucial issue never got a look in. "The conservatives disarray remains farcical. John Howard has picked up much hard-earned stature in fighting a dogged fight but his party leadership remains as unconvincing as it has since the astonishing day he won it virtually by accident. "Andrew Peacock and his banished wets' still hover between his shoulder blades, knives drawn. "And still the Liberals so called coalition partners, the Nationals, are their worst enemies. While Ian Sinclair stalks the coalition path with the charm of a wolf, the catalyst of, this whole electoral non event, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, still maintains that he was the only one who was right and still is - and to hell with his partners, colleagues, opponents, the Australian people and the whole democratic process.

"Despite everything, our democratic process has survived unchanged and we can be thankful for that. The. Australian electorate has spoken, and that, quite rightly is the last word until the next election. But, for the addled life of me, I can't see what it was all about. After months of exhausting work by candidates, after long weeks of worry and confusion for the voters and after the expenditure of a wasted fortune, everything political is virtually as it was. I feel sorry for those who have made so much apparently pointless effort. But I feel sorrier for us. We appear to have had so little rational choice that we have had to leave everything as unsatisfactory as it was before."

FROM THE AUSTRALIAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION NEWSLETTER