AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER'S REALISM ON VIETNAM

"Australia and South Korea today said jointly all allies in the war against Hanoi must have a say in any future peace negotiations. In a firmly worded communiqué the Prime Ministers Mr. Holt and Mr. Chung Il-kwon, laid down these four principles for a search for an end of the war: SOUTH VIETNAM'S Government should be a full participant in any peace talks. ALL ALLIED nations with troops in Vietnam should participate in any future settlement. PEACE must guarantee the cessation of acts of aggression by the communists and uphold and respect South Vietnam's independence and any settlement must respect the wishes and aspirations of the South Vietnamese Government and people." The Australian April 10.

We welcome the above communiqué as an act of faith by the Australian Government and a stiffening of policy towards the Communists. The past record of the Americans in negotiating settlements over the heads of the indigenous peoples no doubt has caused the South Koreans and South Vietnamese to ensure that on this occasion their voices should be heard.
Mr. Holt is to be congratulated on supporting them.

Mr. Ellsworth Bunker will no doubt find this sort of talk inhibits his approach to making "peace" with the Communists. We await the castigation of Mr. Holt as a "hawk" in the face of this policy and also his sceptism regarding granting the Viet Cong another truce in the bombing of their supply lines and bases in North Vietnam.
Mr. Holt was quoted in the same report as above.
"I have no confidence that any suspension of the bombing of North Vietnam would produce an atmosphere of peaceful settlement of hostility. "

THE DEBT WE OWE TO OUR SERVICEMEN

"An Australian adviser Major Peter Badcoe, was hit and killed in a rice paddy on Friday as he advanced into Viet Cong fire to set an example to wavering South Vietnamese troops. Three Viet Cong bullets hit the 33-year-old major, a veteran of the guerilla war in Malaya, in the head, chest and stomach as he stood up to urge a reinforced company of Government soldiers to attack the Viet Cong." The Age, April 10.

It is to men like Major Badcoe that Christian civilization, if it survives the onslaughts of atheistic communism, owes an irredeemable debt of gratitude. In the final, analysis the political forces opposing communism will only be successful if we have the Major Badcoe's who are willing to sacrifice their lives in our defence.

The luxury of pacifism, as T. S. Eliot so rightly points out in our "Thought for the Week", can only be held by those who shelter behind the sacrifices of men like Major Badcoe. The policy of Communism is to exploit such sentiment to promote its own evil ends. Such is the tragedy of the Bill White's who in company with the army of intellectuals and misguided students form the spearhead of the enemy operating on Communism's second front.

Our men in Vietnam are asked to fight with an enemy at his rear, at home, as well as the enemy at the front.
The problem of those of us left at home is simply that we have the responsibility of dealing with the enemy at home. Or the sacrifice of Major Badcoe and his comrades will he in vain.

INDONESIAN CONUNDRUM

"The Soviet Consul-General in Medan, North Sumatra, has said the Soviet Union is now launching a credit deal to Indonesia totaling $US1200 million ($A1070 million) Radio Djakarta reported." The Age April 4.

Taken at its face value it is clear from this report, something is to be learnt from the lessons of previous Indonesian policies. The Americans are now stepping up aid to the Indonesians and the Australian Government is being urged to do the same. With large sums coming from the U.S.S.R. also any real policy of anti-Communism by the Indonesians can be discounted. In fact unless the Australian and American governments face up to the reality of such loans from the Soviet it will be only a short time before the Communists re-consolidate their position in Indonesia.

MALAYSIA AGREES TO RUSSIA LINK

"Malaysia today agreed to set up diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, its first ties with any communist country. The decision, marking a major foreign policy shift..." The Age April 4.

Taken in conjunction with the Indonesian item we have an example of the objectiveness of the Communist conspiracy. We are sold the confidence trick of co-existence and the termites burrow into start the work of gaining a footing in the structure preparatory to pulling it down around our ears.

OUR REPORT FROM ERIC D. BUTLER IN CANADA : VIETNAM BEING LOST ON SECOND FRONT?

"The Communists are now intensifying their activities on the second front in the Vietnam war. The Second front is in the U.S.A., and the Communists are hopeful that they can so shatter and confuse this civilian front that they can obtain a successful compromise truce in Vietnam, one similar to that which they obtained in Korea.

I was recently present at a luncheon meeting with a U.S.A. Democrat Congressman, who clearly stated that the American Administration was hoping to obtain on Vietnam the same type of result obtained in Korea. The Congressman specifically stated that U.S.A. policy was not to defeat North Vietnam.

"It is clear that one of the major reasons for the American no-win policy is the fear that any direct conflict with the Soviet Union in Vietnam, such as the effective blockading of the Port of Haiphong would produce, would jeopardise the American Administration's policy of growing trade with the Soviet Union. It was this same fear, which prevented the American Administration from taking advantage of the defection of Stalin's daughter from the Soviet.

There has been some very severe criticism of the Administration's weak attitude by a number of American press, radio and TV commentators. Some Congressmen have also spoken out strongly on the manner in which Miss Stalin was discouraged from seeking entry to the U.S.A. in case this should upset the Soviet Union. We can well imagine how the Soviet would exploit the defection to the Soviet of, say, one of President Johnson's daughters.

"There are dangerous signs that the campaign for a compromise truce in Vietnam is making some progress in the U. S. A. The recent BBC statements by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Michael Ramsay, condemning the American military action in Vietnam, and criticising Cardinal Spellman for demanding military victory, have been well-featured in the U.S.A. and Canada, much to the delight of the Communists and their dupes.

In the BBC programme, Dr. Ramsay echoed Communist propaganda. He maintained, for example, that the National Liberation Front in Vietnam is not purely a Communist Movement. The truth is that this movement is controlled by top Vietnamese Communists. The same Dr. Ramsay that deplores the use of force in Vietnam openly advocates the use of force against Rhodesia.

"Prime Minister Pearson of Canada has also made a further contribution towards weakening the American civilian front with an address to the University of California, in which he said it was 'unrealistic to think of the world in rigid terms of Communist and non-Communist blocs.'
Mr. Pearson also said that 'Communism no longer was a solid and united force bent on world domination even at the risk of world conquest.'
He made an indirect comment on the Vietnam war when he said that Communists only give "indirect" support to aggression by supporting one side or another in a civil war."
The Communists have persistently preached that there is only a civil war in Vietnam.

"U Thant and his Communist advisers in the U.N. are now making an all-out effort to get the Americans to make a unilateral move to stop the conflict in Vietnam so that truce talks might be started. One American expert on the Far East has drawn by attention to the fact that the Americans suffered more casualties in Korea after truce talks started than in all the fighting up to the time of the first talks. The truce in Korea still continues to be violated by the Communists. However, the Communists hope that this past history is forgotten, and that a confused American public will clutch at any straw offered in an endeavour to end the Vietnam struggle."

FULL EMPLOYMENT AND SHIPPING CONTAINERS

"Waterfront tally clerks placed a black ban on all container cargoes…when they were refused permission to check their contents on arrival at the wharf on Wednesday. Shipping companies say that such a move would destroy the whole purpose of containers. Yesterday the Federal Secretary of the Clerks Union said, 'the introduction of containers means work, presently performed by the wharf clerks, must be carried out somewhere else, and possibly under a different employer. The spread of container cargoes into Australian ports will affect the tally clerks in the same way as it will the waterside workers - in time most of them will lose their jobs." The Age April 1.

The issue between the employer and the employed under our current set of economic rules has seldom been put with such engaging frankness. The employer wishes to increase his profits by increasing the efficiency of his operation. To achieve this he seeks to minimize his greatest cost - labour. The employee, on the other hand, seeks to remain employed in order that he and his family may continue to eat. Accordingly the prime objective of all unions is to keep their members employed. The attempt to improve their working conditions remains secondary as more and more of the world's works is taken over by automation, more problems of this nature must appear.

Up to the present, the employer's solution has been to reassure the unions and the mass of wage earners that those displaced by automation will readily find jobs of a different nature called into existence by the "automation business itself." The unions however remain unconvinced (and who can blame them?).
Their solution is what the Americans call "featherbedding." Under this system, the machines do the work while the displaced workers are paid as usual for not doing it. (In the U.S.A., electric trains still carry engineers and stokers).

Both solutions are equally ridiculous. If automation is not going to mean less work for all, as it should, then what is the purpose of automating the economic process?
In a different way, featherbedding too negates one important purpose of automation i.e. greater efficiency. This apart from its degrading morality.

Sometime soon, both parties must face the bald fact that if automation does what it is designed to do there will have to be a readjustment in the process of distributing purchasing power to compensate the decline in that distributed through the wage system. Or must we end up paying machines wages?

VIET CONG TERROR AT VILLAGE ELECTIONS

"Elections for village officers were held in South Vietnam yesterday despite assassinations, abductions and terrorism in the Viet Cong." The Australian April 4.

We confidently await the outburst of protest by those paragons of peace concerned to extol to us the bestiality of the war being waged on the Vietnamese by the Allies.

ON TARGET BULLETIN
SUBJECT FOR DISCUSSION : LOCAL GOVERNMENT. THE SEAT OF POWER

We return to this important subject, as it is obvious from correspondence and discussion that the importance of the exercise outlined in last weeks Bulletin is not fully understood.
The purpose behind the questions put to candidates in the Victorian State elections was to generate both a policy and a viewpoint. The policy is decentralised control over the nations parliament. The viewpoint, which we hope state parliamentarians, councilors and all those concerned with the health of not only local government but also national government, will grasp; is that if they only realized it they have the potential to be the dominant political force in the country.
If they grasp the importance of the third question asked last week they could challenge the stranglehold of the centralisers at Canberra, with the result that power exercised in Canberra would be much closer to individual ratepayers and electors.
The dual principles of control and responsibility would be greatly strengthened.

Many become confused between the need for central authority, and decentralised authority. Basically there should be no conflict, but the central authority should "grow out of" the decentralised form of authority, and as an extenuation of it, be subject to it. All those functions, which are best performed by local government such as roads, public hygiene, planning of building density, engineering to do with public works, etc. should never be encroached upon by a higher authority.
But bereft of adequate financial resources local government cannot do the job.

How often does one see either State or Commonwealth instrumentalities come into the arena of local government supplied with expensive and voluminous equipment, engineers and technicians laid on, the finance for which is supplied from a remote central authority nor open to public scrutiny so searchingly applied to local government.
On the other hand most local government councils and shires operate with one engineer and as assistant on a relatively tightly controlled budget.

The huge sums available to central authorities enable the socialist to impose his policy on the community. Inevitably as the power of the central government grows we see more and more encroachments on individual choice.

In the circular sent to the Victorian political aspirants the following statement preceded the three questions. "The basis of individual freedom is the decentralisation of political and economic power resulting in the individual having a wider choice in all fields of cultural and economic activity."

Questions. Do you believe the modern society we live in is too complex to allow local government increased authority over the central government? Do you believe that local government is outdated and should be replaced by a central authority?