A WARNING TO SIR JOH

On page two of this week's On Target we publish a photocopied article by Katharine West, in last weekend's Australian. As Katharine West has been a consistent supporter of Sir Joh for some time, this article is of special significance at present. We share Katharine West's fears about the Queensland Premier becoming unduly influenced by those providing large sums of money. Sir Joh's potential to shift Australia off the disaster course on which it is now travelling, has been carefully assessed in the higher echelons of power and, as has happened time and time again throughout history, those exercising this type of power are always prepared to attempt to hi-jack a popular movement and to then subvert it.

Already there are ominous signs of powerful groups preparing to try to jump on the Sir Joh bandwagon, which is now obviously rolling across Australia with growing momentum. For example, Tim Duncan writing in The Bulletin of February 24th provides a list of prominent, wealthy Melbourne Zionist supporters who are preparing to meet with Sir Joh when he is in Melbourne in April. Many of these have been closely linked with Hawke through the Jewish community. But there has been an obvious cooling of Zionist enthusiasm about Prime Minister Hawke since his recent trip to the Middle East, where he met with representatives of the Palestinians and subsequently recommended to Israeli Prime Minister Shamir that Israel should meet with Palestinian representatives. Shamir was extremely cool to the Hawke proposal and has subsequently attacked any suggestion of peace negotiations.

Tim Duncan confirms our own information that many of the Melbourne business empires are not over enthusiastic about the Liberal Party, although this attitude may change if Andrew Peacock is restored as Liberal leader. League campaigners "in the field" report that the "Joh factor" is progressively increasing and there appears to be little doubt now that the Coalition is doomed and that Sir Joh has scored a major success by forcing the National Party Members to start backing away from support for Mr. John Howard's consumption tax, even though the National Party had originally supported the concept of a consumption tax. This in turn is clearly having its effect inside the Liberal Party.

There is no doubt that the Queensland Premier has in a very short time had a most devastating impact on Australian politics, jolting the complacency of many of the professional party hacks of all parties. But much more than this is required to ensure that the Sir Joh factor is not skillfully exploited and a most promising grassroots movement destroyed. This is why it is urgently essential for the ordinary Australians mentioned by Katharine West to join together to support the type of survival programme which the League has found meets with the warm approval of a wide cross section of the Australian people.

The proposal, which gains the biggest support, is that of an insertion in the Constitution of the right of the people to petition for a referendum to veto any legislation they do not like. With the right to veto unwanted legislation, the Australian people could stop the present disastrous immigration policy and check excessive taxation imposts. We have not the slightest doubt that if Sir Joh put himself at the head of the type of survival programme we have outlined, he would sweep the country and go down in history as one of the greatest statesmen Australia has ever produced. Katharine West is right: "The ball is now in Joh's court."

The Ball is now in Joh's Court

comment by Katherine West
(copied from Weekend Australian)

THE power in non-Labor politics this week did not lie with any of the party politicians in Canberra. Nor did it directly lie with Sir Job BjelkePetersen.
The shots that mattered were fired by grass-roots community activists in a crucial number of National Party seats.
They made it clear they would stand their own candidates against sitting members who backed Ian Sinclair against Sir Joh.
This kind of community veto power is a vital new factor in Coalition politics. It can make federal non-Labor leaders, as it is helping to make Sir Joh, but it could also break him.
The ball is now in Sir Job's court. He can hit it with winning strength by fighting hard for the views and needs of the growing number of ordinary families and small businesses which are putting their trust in him to secure a better economic and social future for those who are now struggling to be both productive and self reliant.
Or Sir Joh can betray that trust by focusing on the special interests of his wealthy donors. He needs these donors to fund his proposed nationwide campaign, but many of their attitudes have little relevance to the needs of the bulk of his voting supporters.
These supporters are likely to include many blue-collar workers in marginal seats who would normally vote Labor. They relate positively to Sir Joh in a way they would never respond to John Howard or Andrew Peacock.
Sir Joh has the potential to pick up substantial support from two key categories in Labor held seats; from blue-collar traditional Labor supporters, and from voters disillusioned with the major parties and ready to back something new in federal politics.
Instability
There is a widespread feeling that things are so bad there is nothing to lose and possibly something to gain by supporting a dramatically different approach to our economic and social problems.
In such a climate of social instability and economic insecurity, many voters seek to endow new leaders with special qualities and capacities they may not have.
We need to remember James Thurber's fable about the owl. Because the owl could see in the dark, he convinced the other creatures he was God. But as things turned out, he could not see in the day, and led his trusting followers straight into the path of an oncoming truck. They were still crying "He's God!" when the truck ran them down. Most of them were killed.
Before people follow an owl, or any new national political leader, they should be careful to analyse where he wants to lead them, and whether he has the required capacity as well as the will to do so.
We all know that Sir Joh wants to eliminate the high rates of national taxation in this country and to expand the pool of taxable dollars by increasing the rewards and incentives for greater productivity and investment. But what else does he want to do, and on whose advice?
Many potential supporters are understandably concerned that they know too little about Sir Joh's attitudes on issues other than tax.
They also want to be reassured about the integrity and calibre of those who would advise a Bjelke-Petersen administration, and represent it in the Federal Parliament.
An overwhelming majority of Australians would certainly not approve of an administration run by, or exclusively for, developers or any other kind of minority interest group feathering their own nests.
We have seen enough of the economic and social havoc wreaked by self-interested minority rule under the Hawke corporate State. Instead, most Australians are seeking a government that will act in the majority interest by slashing government waste and the government taxes that pay for it.
Regardless of the assertions of the Treasurer, Mr Keating, to the contrary, this will do more than anything else to help put Australia back on the international economic map.
Certainly, it would help to reverse the worsening national economic rot.

Sir Joh's low tax theme is gaining enormous support from the genuinely productive in our community as well as from a minority who see low tax as helping them make more easy money. But Sir Joh should not complacently assume this assures him of the prime ministership.
While the divided Coalition now looks a real mess, there are circumstances in which, later, the Liberal Party might poll ahead of a Joh team.
What if a recycled Andrew Peacock were to adopt Sir Joh's low tax and argue that a vote for the Liberals is really the same as a vote for Sir Joh? This would not be true, but enough voters might believe it to enable the Liberals to wreck Sir Joh's poll strategy.

BRIEF COMMENTS

A group of League supporters recently met with Prime Minister Hawke on the Ray Martin TV programme. They made little or no impact on the public discussion on finance and economics. But in the private discussion they had afterwards they experienced the full force of the Prime Minister's stream of foul language. He made it clear that there would be no reduction in interest rates. Answering a question in Parliament on February 17th, Mr. Hawke gave the standard answer about high interest rates: They could not come down until Australia's balance of trade situation improved. He did not explain why Australians have to pay murderous interest rates on homes, which are built out of, in the main, Australian materials, by Australian builders who eat Australian grown food.

We are not surprised to read that Mr. John Demjanjuk, the Ukrainian born American citizen being 'tried' in Israel for having allegedly gassed thousands of Jews while in charge of a German concentration camp, sat 'open mouthed', apparently "spellbound", as he listened to the Israeli prosecutor outline how "Ivan the Terrible" had, with the use of carbon monoxide created by running diesel motors, murdered up to 15,000 Jews a day. At the end of 30 minutes a check was made to see that no one was alive, and then a Jewish work gang was sent in to remove the bodies and bury than. Anyone who can believe that 15,000 people can be killed in the manner described, and then be buried, is capable of believing anything. Mr. John Demjanjuk, who was known as an excellent American citizen and a practising Christian, was never in the Treblinka camp, as alleged. But it was stated in the Israeli Parliament, according to a report circulated internationally by Ukrainians, that Demjanjuk had to be found guilty. The Holocaust mythology must be maintained. We will be reporting more on this "trial" later, a most ominous event with frightening implications. Essential reading: The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, by Dr. Butz. Price: $20.00 posted.

The Plant Varieties Rights legislation will probably be passed into law by the time supporters read these lines. The Opposition supports the legislation; the Aussie Democrats are opposed to it, but can't stop it. Mr. Kerin, the Minister for Primary Industry, was originally opposed to Plant Variety Rights, but has "come around". We have always been wary of Plant Variety Rights, and expect centralisation of the seed industry.

The Victorian Central Highlands by-election for the vacant Legislative Council (Upper House) seat is of first importance. Why? Control of the (Vic.) Upper House. If the Cain Government gets control of the Upper House it can steamroller at least some hard line Socialist legislation into law. All relevant supporters should support Mrs. Tehan (Lib.) and keep power divided!

FINANCE ESSENTIAL TO KEEP CAMPAIGN ROLLING

SOME AMERICANS UNDERSTAND SOUTH AFRICA SITUATION : "U.C.A. NEWS

(United Christian Action) P.O.Box 35 737,0102 Menlo Park, South Africa, republishes the October 1986 Open Letter to the South African State President, P.W.Botha by U.S. policy analyst, Donald McAlvany. This, in turn, was re-published in "The Review", quarterly journal of the Anglo-Saxon-Keltic Society, P.O.Box 187, Sandy Bay, Tasmania, 7005. The whole Open Letter is well worth re-publishing, but limitations of space prevent this: we select only excerpts:

"By now you must have concluded, as many of your conservative friends in America have been warning your Government for years, that the Government of the United States (but not its people) is your deadly enemy. The intent of the recently passed sanctions Bill, and indeed the efforts of the U.S. State Department, is to overthrow your Government and replace it with a pro-Soviet/African National Congress Government. No amount of racial reform of movement towards a multiracial government will satisfy your enemies in the U.S.Congress, State Department, media, the academia, and America's liberal eastern establishment, anymore than a black moderate government freely elected in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia in 1979 satisfied them. The sanctions against that beleaguered government were not lifted until a communist government under Robert Mugabe was installed.
In like manner the liberal/left in America would not be satisfied even if a black government under Buthelezi were installed tomorrow - it would simply be called an Uncle Tom/puppet of the 'white apartheid regime'.

South Africa's Friends & Enemies in America "The great majority of Americans are ignorant of the true nature of developments in South Africa and Southern Africa; deliberately kept in the dark by their liberal U.S. media and the U.S.Government. The majority of Americans not only know next to nothing about Africa or South Africa; they know virtually nothing about foreign policy or global geopolitics. They know nothing about their Government's own role in overthrowing Chiang Kai Shek in the late 40s and establishing Mao Tse Tung in power; of its role in overthrowing Batista in the late 1950s and establishing Fidel Castro in power; of its role in the late '70s of overthrowing the Shah, Somoza, Ian Smith (and then Bishop Muzowera and establishing Khomeini, the Sandinistas, and Mugabe in power in Iran, Nicaragua, and Zimbabwe respectively.
Nor do they understand what you understand - that South Africa is not the ultimate target of Soviet global conquest - it is only an important stepping stone (like Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, etc.) towards the eventual domination of the U.S.A.

The great majority of Black Americans have been manipulated into hatred (albeit, emotional and sincerely misguided) of the existing order in South Africa, through over a decade of brainwashing and propaganda that has erroneously equated the racial situation in South Africa with their own civil rights struggle in the U.S. in the late 1960s. The American left, via the media, the Black churches, and Black liberal/left leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Ron Dellums, Walter Fountroy, Coretta King, etc., have attempted to take American Blacks' eyes off their own problems (i.e. high unemployment, massive Black illegitimate births - over half of all U.S. Black births; massive Black drug and crime problems in the ghettos of America, etc.) These Black liberal/ left leaders such as Jesse Jackson have had to have an emotional issue around which they could rally their black constituents and build a national power base. The 'plight of the South African Blacks' has become that issue. Indeed, since they have been able to do little or nothing about U.S. Black problems over the past decade or two, the South African 'struggle for equal rights' has become a useful diversion for America's Black liberal/left leaders..."