THE MISLEADING G.S.T. DEBATE

by Eric D. Butler
A desperate Federal Opposition concerned, as well it should be, by public opinion polls which indicate that the Australian electors may well vote to return Paul Keating to office, is attempting to make a major issue out of a Treasury report which it is claimed says the G.S.T. "has been universally accepted in New Zealand". The Opposition is claiming that the Government has suppressed vital parts of the report, as well it may have done. But before electors get too excited about the Treasury report, they should bear mind that, like Treasury "experts" around the world, the Canberra Treasury closely follows the advice of the International Monetary Fund, which has been the major driving force behind the implementation of the G.S.T.

The G.S.T. has nothing to do with overcoming depressed economic conditions, but is designed primarily to try to ensure that no one escapes the tax net. When Australian Treasury officials went to New Zealand to investigate the G.S.T., they talked to their opposite Treasury officials, and members of the Reserve Bank, who were responsible for implementing the G.S.T. The truth is that the G.S.T. was imposed in New Zealand without consulting the New Zealand people. The G.S.T. has found favour with the bigger organisations and the speculators.

An independent assessment of the G.S.T. in New Zealand has been undertaken by the internationally renowned academic Professor Cedric Sandford and Mr. John Hasseldine of the University of Canterbury, with the support of the New Zealand Government. The report states that the G.S.T. penalises smaller business organisations. The survey conducted by Professor Sandford covered 2,200 small New Zealand businesses. And, as presumably Dr. Hewson and his colleagues know, the New Zealand economy remains in a most depressed state.

There is plenty of scope for improving the Australian taxation system. But to create the impression that the G.S.T. is a major issue merely directs attention away from the more fundamental question of what a Hewson Government would do to regenerate the Australian economy. Anyone who has taken the trouble to study the Coalition Fightback programme is struck by the information that if Labor stays in office, the Liberals estimate that the foreign debt will have further escalated to $396 billion. But if the Liberals are elected and Fightback is applied, the foreign debt will escalate to $364 billion. In other words, Australians are being told that the Coalition has no real answer to a foreign debt which places a growing strain on the Australian people to service approximately $40 billion a year.

The subject of debt finance is the major issue which should be concerning Australians, not the G.S.T. Unless the Opposition advances some realistic strategy for dealing with this question, what is the point in electing them to office? This is obviously the conclusion, which many electors have reached, feeling that it may be best to stay with the devil they know rather than elect a devil they don't know. They do know, of course, what Dr. Hewson's friend Premier Jeff Kennett is doing in Victoria and have indicated they are not over enthusiastic. The polls show that the Kennett Government has already slumped nine percent in the polls! Comment is unnecessary.

PROMINENT JOURNALIST CAPITULATES TO ZIONISTS

The following amazing, and revealing, item appeared in the Australian Jewish News of December. While we are not enthusiastic supporters of Mr. Terry Lane, well known ABC interviewer, we must point out that it is a matter of the greatest national importance when an interviewer and also well known journalist publicly says what he has. And why did the Jewish News publish Lane's statement, under the heading I SURRENDER? Was this to boast that Zionist power is as great as Terry Lane states, and to indicate to all journalists they should not mention the Zionist issue?

The Lane statement reads as follows:
"I have said publicly that I will never write or speak on the subject of Israel or Palestine ever again. Here is why. "The Zionist lobby in this country is malicious, implacable, mendacious and dangerous. They have caused me a great deal of lost sleep - and in the end my insomnia has not contributed anything to the resolution of the conflict over Palestine. I might as well keep my mouth shut and get some sleep.
"What's more, once the expression 'antisemite' hits the airs' or, heaven forefend, the sacred formula 'six million' is uttered, then I know from bitter experience that there is not one manager or editor in the country who will defend an underling. We are thrown to the jackals.
"In the end the truly tolerant have no defence against intolerance. I surrender. To the Zionists I say: 'you win'. To the Palestinians: 'forgive my cowardice'.

ZIONISTS CAMPAIGN TO BAR DAVID IRVING

Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke has joined the Zionist clamour to have British historian David Irving barred from visiting Australia next year. Informed by his local publishing representatives, Irving has hit back with the following statement from the U.S.A. It has, we understand, been sent to all the major media and to all Federal Members of Parliament:

"I am furious at childish allegations that I am likely to break anti-racist laws. These pressure groups are well aware that during none of my previous lecture tours did I break any of Australia's laws. My books are published by the world's most respected firms, including Macmillan, Hutchinson, and Penguin. I am a frequent radio and T.V. broadcaster worldwide, seen Down Under most recently in discussion with Jana Wendt in July; my works are probably in every university and public library.
"As recently as July The Australian serialised the sensational extracts from the long lost Joseph Goebbels diaries which I personally retrieved from the Moscow secret State Archives where they have been hidden for nearly fifty years. I appreciate that I have aroused much envy and that many colleagues challenge my revisionist views on history; but the proper procedure in a free society is to encourage open debate and not to seek spiteful, backdoor methods to stifle it.
"I approached a number of Jewish historians in Australia's leading universities, proposing a forum discussion during a five week tour. Instead of replying, some of these professors have tried to have my visit banned. What are they afraid of? You cannot handcuff history."

Veritas Publishing confirms that Mr. Irving is coming to Australia to introduce his two most recent works, the famous biography of Herman Goering (Macmillan Ltd. and Harper Collins), which earned him accolades from newspapers around the world, and the revised and lavishly illustrated Focal Point edition of Hitler's War, the flagship of Mr. Irving's thirty-year writing career.
Mr. Irving dismisses allegations that he said, "the Holocaust never occurred" as a lie; equally untrue are stories that he was convicted in Germany for inciting racial hatred, or was banned from entering Austria and Italy. "Smear tactics and childish name-calling are not good enough," says Irving. "If these bullying pressure groups want to ban free historical discussion in Australia, that is because they are cowards - they fear free debate. They shall risk forfeiting their case by default."

THE U.N. INVASION FORCES IN AFRICA

from David Thompson
Any lingering doubt that the United Nations could develop into an international "police" force must surely have been erased by the decision to deploy U.N. forces into Somalia. This is of the greatest significance, because for the first time, U.N. forces have been sent to a sovereign country without being invited. This is quite outside any powers ever before used under the United Nations Charter. In the case of Somalia, where all order seems to have collapsed with the fall of President Siad Barre nearly two years ago, the plight of the starving people obviously demanded some Western response. But the same could be argued for Yugoslavia, where reports of "death camps" and the brutal programme of "ethnic cleansing" rivaled Somali conditions for sheer horror.

It is now proposed that if the Somali exercise is successful, it offers the precedent for other such intervention in other countries, particularly in Africa. Similar "invasion" forces could become a part of a "relief doctrine" for handling societies deemed to have totally collapsed into anarchy. But who is to judge when this stage is reached? The United Nations Security Council?

With the highly selective morality that now equips the "international community", no free country should have confidence that its internal conflicts will remain domestic matters. If the killings in the black townships in South Africa were to escalate, and heavy loss of life result from the intervention of the South African army, could the Security Council justify U.N. military intervention? This may seem far-fetched today, but the use of United Nations 'peacekeeping' forces as a kind of international police force is not a new idea. As a new world order develops, it must have the military sanctions to enforce world peace.

ISLAM TAKES NOTE

The Security Council decision to intervene in Somalia was the result of a unanimous vote, which means that the Communist Chinese fully approved. The Chinese have a long record of military endeavours in African countries, and would approve of a new kind of international imperialism. But if the Western powers - and particularly the United States - are quite prepared to intervene in Somalia without an invitation to do so, why are they not prepared to take action in Yugoslavia, where minority groups like the Moslems in Bosnia have been begging for help?

Could it be that the Western powers do not wish to risk the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic state almost in the centre of Europe? We can be quite sure that the Islamic nations around the world are taking careful note of the fate of their co-religionists in Yugoslavia. Indonesia, in particular, has been critical of the Western nations who have effectively stood by for the whole year while Serbian forces have virtually done as they pleased. Islam has a long memory, and militarily, is now in the process of developing a long arm.

AUSTRALIAN WOMEN IN COMBAT

The expected decision to "permit" women in the armed forces to take combat roles is obviously another serious step backwards. The brutal effect of wartime experiences on men is bad enough without deliberately brutalising women as well. It is interesting that the proponents of women's "right" to military equality maintain that only our narrow cultural sensitivities prevent women taking a full role in the military. That is, a civilised, "cultured" society would not consider submitting its women to the brutality of military combat. But neither would a civilised, "cultured" society systematically murder a quarter of their children before birth.

Our Comment
It is our belief that both the Soviet Union Red Army and the Israeli Army "experimented" with women as combat soldiers, but abandoned the experiment. The results were disastrous.

FOREVER UNEMPLOYED

from Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), 27/11/92
An absolutely tragic prediction reported on the news this morning (Nov. 23) that there is an entire generation of school leavers today who will never have a job. I shudder at the thought of my grandchildren who are now, and will be over the next decade, leaving school. If the economists can't do better than that they should move over.

"How is the economy going to cope in a further generation on as we approach total automation? It has been claimed that the manual workers being replaced by robots can be retrained as technicians to service the robots. But robots are being built to do their own servicing. Robots are also being built to repair other robots, so the number of technicians required is much less than the number of people being replaced. The nearer we approach total automation, the more urgent is the need to change our thinking on employment. Job creation as a goal is futile.

"Sooner or later economists and politicians must realise that having a job can no longer be regarded as the sole means of a living. Because the number of people needed in the workforce to stock our markets, etc., is diminishing, other methods must be introduced to allow people access to those stocks. "Every invention, including the wheel, has had the result, intentionally or otherwise, of reducing the amount of manual work necessary to provide a living. The 'science' of economics must recognise this fact and make available some form of dividend commensurate with the cumulative effect of centuries of inventions.

"Due to the extra spending on consumer goods generated by such a policy, jobs would follow. Such a dividend would allow many mothers to opt out of the workforce. It would allow older people to retire earlier, provided some insane politician didn't make a law raising the retiring age, as has been mooted. Thus, there could be a three-pronged attack on youth unemployment:
1. greater sales and turnover of stock
2. mothers returning to traditional roles
3. earlier retirement.

"Since it has taken decades for economists and politicians to reduce the world to its present state, we would be super-optimists if we expect to arrive at El Dorado on a magic carpet. We can only hope that sanity prevails in Canberra and the other capitals of the world in the ultimate. The pretender to the Lodge in Canberra inspires no confidence that his policies will deliver in that direction." R.G. Fischer (Capella, Qld.)

THE TRUE MEANING OF TERRANULLIUS

from The Age (Melbourne), 4/12/92
Both Margaret Easterbrook and Margo Kingston seriously misrepresent the concept of 'terra nullius' in The Age (1/12). The former identifies it as 'that Australia was uninhabited at the time of white settlement' (page 5); while the latter states that 'for 200 years, Australian courts have held that Australia was unoccupied at settlement' (page 17). "Those who advised the Pitt administration knew perfectly well that there were people in New Holland/New South Wales. Sir Joseph Banks told a parliamentary committee in 1785 that 'There are very few Inhabitants... we never saw more than 30 or 40 together'. "Consequently, he supposed that the interior might be 'totally uninhabited'. Captain Arthur Phillip, however, announced before sailing in 1787 that he was 'not of the general opinion that there are very few Inhabitants in this Country'.

"Rather than sense offered by your reporters, what 'terra nullius' meant is 'land belonging to no people/no one'. According to European notions then, people possessed the basic property of the labor of their bodies, and might use this property to acquire more - i.e. by gathering fruit, which grew wild; by cultivating grains; by keeping herds and flocks; by building. "According to Cook's and Banks' reports, the Aborigines seemed to wander 'like the Arabs from place to place, set (their shelters) up whenever they met with (an area) where sufficient supplies of food are to be met with, and as soon as these are exhausted remove to another leaving the houses behind, which are framed with less art or rather less industry than any habitations of human beings probably that the world can shew'. "Moreover, the explorers were unable to discern any social or religious structures among the Aborigines. Banks could give no idea 'of the nature of the Government under which they lived'.

"Since the Aborigines had not established a right to possess it by mixing their labor with the land, and since they exhibited no policy with which another might negotiate, New South Wales was terra nullius, to be occupied on the basis of first discovery, rather than on that of either cession or purchase. "The Eurocentricity of these concepts is obvious; and 220 years more have given us very different understandings of Aboriginal cultures. Still, it is in the best interest of all of us to get history right." (Professor A. Frost, Professor of History, LaTrobe University, Melbourne)