THE BUDGET AND THE CONSTITUTION

Those who have taken the trouble to read the Australian Constitution know that the Commonwealth Parliament consists of the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Crown. The powers of the Senate are clearly outlined. It has the power to seek to veto or to modify any legislation passed by the House of Representatives. But judging by the wild accusations being made by Prime Minister Keating and his associates, the Senate is acting, if not unconstitutionally, then "irresponsibly", to quote Senator Gareth Evans.

The Government has made it clear that its proposed increases in taxation are designed primarily to reduce the deficit over a four-year period. Senators opposing the Government's proposals are being subjected to dire warnings about what will happen to Australia's "international credit rating". One commentator has said that unless the Senate does as demanded by Prime Minister Keating international investors might not lend Australia any more money!
In our opinion, this would be a good thing; it might even force the Federal politicians to consider using their constitutional powers to provide adequate new money for required Australian activities.

As the controversy rages about what the Senators are doing, it is instructive to note that both the Government and the Coalition are quoting what has happened in the past to justify their current stance. What emerges is that all governments, including the Menzies Government, chaffed under the restraints imposed upon them by a Senate they did not control. Back in 1981 Senator Gareth Evans and Finance Minister Willis opposed the Fraser Government's Sales Tax measures, claiming they were "regressive" and lacked electoral mandate. Faced with these statements, and others, the best that Prime Minister Keating and his colleagues could weakly say was that "the circumstances were different".

Instead of using colourful language like "economic vandalism", the Keating Government should face the reality that the Senate is a part of the constitutional government of Australia, and that it has as much claim to represent the Australian people, as does the Government. We hasten to say that the Senators blocking some of the Keating Government's tax proposals have offered little constructive material concerning alternative financial policies. But Australians should be grateful that they have a Constitution, which ensures that there is some division of power. This Constitution must be protected at all costs.

RHODESIA, SOUTH AFRICA ... AUSTRALIA

by David Thompson
It is ironic to reflect that Mr. Keating's acute political pain over his serious mishandling of the Mabo/Aboriginal issue has been intensified by the existence of 'international obligations' entered into by the Commonwealth, reflected in such legislation as the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. It is this Act that prevents him from modifying some of the worst aspects of the High Court's Mabo decision; even Mr. Goss is demanding that the Racial Discrimination Act be temporarily suspended to deal with the issue of Native Title. It has been extremely embarrassing to Keating, and a source of enormous tension within the A.L.P., that the Prime Minister finds himself in such a dilemma, where he is forced to concede Premier Richard Court's point that as much as 80 percent of W.A. might be open to claims.

The most astute, articulate and determined Aboriginal leader yet to emerge, Mr. Noel Pearson of the Cape York Land Council, has seized upon Keating's dilemma, and is effectively using the Racial Discrimination Act as a stick with which to beat Keating, the Government, and European Australia. Pearson made a highly sophisticated appeal to the A.L.P. to honour "international obligations", citing former Attorney General and former Justice of the High Court, Lionel Murphy, who originated the anti-discrimination law in support of Aborigines.

A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE

Many within the A.L.P. feel wounded that the "Aborigines" seem ungrateful for all that Keating and Labor have tried to do on their behalf. Even Keating himself seems genuinely puzzled at the inflexibility of the "Aboriginal" demands. It appears that nothing has been learned from the lessons of Rhodesia and South Africa, where each European concession to extreme demands was met with further demands, until Rhodesia was destroyed. South Africa is on the brink of a similar condition, with civil war beginning to seem inevitable.

The truth is that the do-gooders and liberals involved in the whole negotiating process have not yet realised that they are not really dealing with "the Aborigines" but with a dedicated revolutionary force, which does not appear to have the genuine interests of the Aboriginal people at heart. Rather, this force seeks to isolate the Aboriginal people, and set them apart as a separate, distinct entity, with whom Australia must negotiate for reconciliation.

Comments last week by Mr. Galarrwuy Yunupingu, of the Northern Land Council, are very significant. He said Aborigines were politically superior to white people because they were owners of the land. He believes that the 1967 referendum formalising Aboriginal citizenship had been a great mistake, and had been forced upon the "Aboriginal nation". "Aboriginal people would have been much better off today, in the light of the Mabo decision, if that referendum had not happened," he said (The Australian, 7/10/93).
"Aboriginal people have never wanted to be equal with the white people of Australia." Yunupingu claimed that Aborigines were really a separate nation, living under a temporary and foreign common law. He sees the Mabo decision as confirming that Aborigines are the "landlords and the sovereign power of Australia".

RECONCILIATION IMPOSSIBLE

Mr. Paul Keating has found, to his cost, that the conditions placed upon 'reconciliation' by the "Aboriginal" leaders are continually expanded. What is the 'bottom line'? It is nothing less than separate sovereign national status for Aborigines. The whole Aboriginal issue has changed subtly but dramatically, with the emergence of such leaders as Mr. Noel Pearson. It is no longer an attempt to provide assistance to disadvantaged Australians, but has developed into what Mr. Graeme Campbell calls an "Aboriginal industry".

The truth is that those with whom Keating has been negotiating are a genuine revolutionary force, and as one Aboriginal lawyer has claimed, do not represent the wider "Aboriginal community". Ms. Lorraine Liddle asks of the Aboriginal "leaders", "who says they talk on behalf of anybody?" Even Aboriginal rights activist Rosalie Kunoth-Monks says the majority of Aborigines "would prefer to have three square meals a day and have their traditional land handed back to them, not so much treaties, separate governments and sovereignty…"

" Perhaps even within the Aboriginal industry the determination of the radicals to use the Aboriginal people as cannon fodder for a revolutionary coup is having an unsettling effect. If "leaders" such as Yunupingu prevail, the Aborigines will be kept out of mainstream Australia, and used as a political weapon to destroy the whole nation. Apartheid is the Africaaner word for "separate development". Noel Pearson clarifies the programme, when he says Aboriginal people would use "whatever means are available to them at the time to assert their basic human rights, including Olympic protests, if the Racial Discrimination Act is infringed.

ABORIGINAL HERITAGE

It has become politically correct to emphasise any aspect of Aboriginal heritage as an article of faith. Evonne Goolagong Cawley, who enchanted millions around the world with her tennis skills, has now embarked upon a search of her Aboriginal heritage. Mrs. Cawley has been an excellent ambassador for Australia, and is entitled to a full appreciation of her heritage, but it is reliably reported that three quarters of her own heritage is European.

While Aboriginal heritage is being emphasised, the European heritage, which provided previously undreamed of opportunities for Aboriginal people and part Aboriginal people like Mrs. Cawley, is rapidly being dismantled. If heritage is important, then all heritage is important, including that of the vast majority of Australians; a heritage of security, stability and opportunity that is the legacy of common law and the Westminster system. "Aboriginal" activists should be reminded about this, as they campaign to destroy the basis for social and political stability in a once free Australia. The lessons of Africa loom larger every day.

COLLEEN McCULLOUGH DERIDES AUSTRALIAN REPUBLICANISM

In The Australian (October 11th), Australian best selling writer, Colleen McCullough, is reported as stating that the Westminster system of government has served Australia well, and the high cost of republicanism not justified. She added that there is widespread ignorance of the nature of republics and most certainly Paul Keating shares this ignorance. Colleen McCullough has published three Roman novels, and she expresses a view which has more than once crossed our own minds; viz...
"One would have to say, as a cynical political onlooker, the whole object of the (republican) exercise is that Mr. Keating wants to be the first president"... Would Paul Keating like to go down in (Australian) history as the "father of the Australian republic"… What do you think?

Colleen McCullough deplores (and rightly so) the divisive quality the "debate" is taking: the revival of Irish against English/Catholics v. Protestants. This should be dying.

MILLIONS ON STREETSCAPE WHILE CHILDREN SUFFER

from The Australian, October 11th
We see ourselves as a civilised society and we look down on those countries less civilised than ourselves. But how do we measure 'civilised'? "Thirty years ago when I was fourteen the only people living on the street were called tramps. They were usually eccentric individuals who had taken to the streets and there were so few of them that children had names for them. The suggestion that 13 and 14-year-old children could live on the streets was simply Dickensian. In fact, Charles Dickens is often given credit for drawing 19th century society's attention to those 'street urchins' and society was so shocked a flurry of government legislation effectively swept those children into care.

"Now in 1993 I am struck dumb. While we spend millions converting Swanston Street into a 'walk' the State (Vic.) Government plans to cut $3 million from child welfare! I'm sure the street kids really appreciate it. "Do we really need another Charles Dickens? How many times must we turn away from the obvious? Do we really care more about tax cuts, saving trees, export earnings, winning gold medals than saving young children? I wonder how many of those kids will be winning medals in 2000." (Vaughan Patrick, Sale, Vic.)

MOSCOW TO YARRALUMLA

CRISIS IS A REFLECTION OF THE WORLD ECONOMIC SYSTEM

The Social Crediter, November-December, 1992: originally published in The Scotsman

In the turmoil of the current economic climate, the search for 'scapegoats' continues apace. Opposition parties scent the prospect of political advantage and move from the luckless Norman Lamont to identify John Major as the 'Prime target for blame'. The Government, meanwhile, accuses the 'rotter' of the Bundesbank for ungentlemanly conduct. "In fact this crisis, like that of the 1930s and the ones to come, is actually the inevitable reflection of the international economic system. Three major characteristics will be sufficient to demonstrate this:

"1) The international system has been developed to ensure that the creation of credit (i.e. the bulk of today's money) is a private monopoly of bankers. This credit is created by the stroke of a banker's pen out of nothing and all of us are charged interest for its use before it eventually returns to the banks for cancellation. Since credit is the lifeblood of the modern economy it is international bankers - not politicians - who control the economic system and it is they who should be held to account for its manifest failure.

"2) The system requires that all costs go into prices so that prices to consumers can never be below cost. The economist and costing engineer, C.H. Douglas, has shown how this, in combination with the circumstances noted above, make it impossible to eradicate inflation, and all the difficulties that flow from it, from the system.

"3) Purchasing power is overwhelmingly distributed via wages and salaries for work done, but wages, salaries, and dividends cannot in the current system, ever be enough to purchase the product of the economy in a given time period. The result is gathering surpluses that can be eliminated only by mortgaging the future via the expansion of current debt and in due course by the inevitable process of 'deflation', leading to bankruptcies, forced sales below cost, waste or war.

"This condition is exacerbated greatly by unemployment and, since unemployment is set to continue to rise inexorably as the communications and robot revolutions accelerate, future crises will recur with increased frequency and severity. "To begin to resolve the problems of the economic system, therefore, we must first reform the money system by returning control of credit creation to the community through government. Subsequent attention can then be paid to a resolution of the other problems touched on above. (Alan Armstrong)

BANKING MYTH

The Social Crediter, November-December, 1992: originally published in The Scotsman

You are to be congratulated on publishing Alan Armstrong's letter (Points of View, September 26th, '92). It will help to dispel the popular myth that banks can only lend out their depositors' money. "One of the worst absurdities of the present system is that governments themselves are dependent on bank created credit. On that, the Economic Research Council, in its research report of 1981, had this to say:

"It is right that the banks should be fully recompensed for the valuable services they perform, but if we examine these more closely we would see that this is essentially book-keeping. It is misleading to describe the banks' services in financing Government expenditure out of newly created credit as 'lending'. "The word should not have been used in this connection as it creates a false picture of what really happens. As a result we have allowed private institutions to usurp the right to issue our money and to make very handsome profits thereby.

"As the banking system, in creating this money, is merely using the nation's credit by liquefying it, the right of the banks to treat such created credits as a loan and to receive payment of interest thereon is unjustifiable…. they are not entitled to anything more than an agreed fee based on extra work…"

"Interest on the national debt resulting from the present system costs taxpayers each year nearly as much as defence or the N.H.S. If that were largely eliminated, as it could be, what a boost to the flagging economy that would be!

"We had better get the money system reformed before it is consolidated in to Jaques Delor's proposed European central bank, which threatens to be both all powerful and wholly unaccountable. Or else we will be trapped forever in irredeemable debt." (Donald Neale)