NATIONAL MP THROWS POLITICAL TIMEBOMB

by Eric D. Butler
North Queensland Federal National MP Bob Katter has thrown a political time bomb, which must have devastating effects on an increasingly volatile Australian political situation. The timing of the Katter bombshell has been such that it is appropriate to ask a number of important questions. Even allowing for the fact that there is such a thing as invincible political stupidity, it is difficult to believe that Prime Minister John Howard, Tim Fischer and their colleagues really believe that they can win the coming Federal elections with a GST, the central feature of a "tax reform" proposal.

Federal Treasurer Peter Costello holds a relatively safe Liberal seat in Melbourne, and can confidently anticipate that he would emerge as the new leader of a defeated Liberal Party. But as Katter says, reflecting the views of a growing number of National Party Members, National Party leader Tim Fischer is a man on a suicide course. It is, therefore, a legitimate question to ask if Fischer has been assured of a position in a new Liberal Government following the next elections.

Bob Katter is not the only National Party member who believes that the National Party will be decimated at the coming Federal Elections. The attempt to sell the GST to a sceptical electorate is but the latest example of disastrous policies pursued by the Howard Government. Bob Katter is in the position where he can say that he was attempting to warn the Liberals before the last elections that they were already on a disaster course, even before the elections were held.
Although branded as a "racist" and an "extremist", Katter received massive support from North Queensland electors. Katter has been a consistent opponent of "globalism" and "economic rationalism", along with the current immigration policy.

John Howard and his advisers tried to play down the mutterings of discontent by Nationals like Katter. They failed to read the signs of the times, the major mistake being to repudiate their Ipswich, Queensland, candidate, Pauline Hanson, setting in train a series of events, which continue to haunt the Coalition Government. Belatedly the more realistic Members of the Coalition have come to realise that the Hanson factor is not the basic cause of the threatened defeat of the Howard Government, but a reflection of that cause.

A number of factors propelled Pauline Hanson to the centre of the national political stage. A close examination of Pauline Hanson's famous maiden speech, which the League of Rights played a significant role in ensuring was distributed nationally, reveals that nothing was said that had not already been dealt with by the League over many years.

The League was primarily responsible for providing ex-communist leader Geoff McDonald with a national audience for his prophetic best seller, Red Over Black, which alerted Australians to how Australians of Aboriginal background were being manipulated to further a revolutionary programme designed to undermine Australian sovereignty. Events have confirmed McDonald's warnings.
Pauline Hanson was only a teenage girl when League of Rights speakers were packing halls nationwide exposing the dangers of the "land rights" movement.

At a time when it was fashionable to endorse the United Nations and its numerous activities, the League of Rights was warning about the threatened emergence of a "New World Order". The League was responsible for the development of a climate of opinion, which saw increasing distrust of all manifestations of internationalism. The current political explosion is the end result of a steady build up of concern as events have affected a growing number of Australians.

A rural crisis, which has resulted in the destruction of much of rural Australia, was foreshadowed by the League in its explosive booklet, They Want Your Lands, which sold in tens of thousands throughout Australia. A number of rural leaders who grasped the significance of the League's warnings, and attempted to act on them, were ruthlessly destroyed. There have been gasps of dismay as even high school children have been mobilised to march on the streets against "Hansonism" and "racism". But over many years the League of Rights warned of how traditional education was being undermined. The League made available large numbers of important works on the undermining of the traditional value system by "progressive" education.

The League of Rights, holding fast to the philosophical foundations of the nation, has consistently opposed all manifestations of centralised power. One of the biggest battles of all, that concerning Australia's Federal Constitution, of which the Constitutional Monarchy is the central feature, has yet to be fought, but it can be predicted with certainty that this battle will further act as a catalyst on the regrouping of political forces in Australia, with a number of Coalition members revealing themselves as victims of a revolutionary disease.

No study of that disease is complete without considering the role of Political Zionism, which continues its long campaign of attempting to denigrate the League of Rights. Currently the Zionist press is making every endeavour to claim that the Pauline Hanson movement is a "front" for the League. Assuming that the Zionists genuinely fear that One Nation is a threat to their own programme, the Zionists are correctly admitting that the League's influence has reached into every section of the Australian community.

Every movement, which opposes the centralisation of power, which supports the concept of genuine representative government, and opposes multiculturalism, automatically finds itself labeled as a "front" for the League of Rights. Long before she had heard of the League of Rights, the current Victorian Senate candidate for One Nation, Mrs. Robyn Spencer, was active in opposing multiculturalism and the current immigration programme.

As a service movement, not concerned with power, the League of Rights invited Robyn Spencer to address a number of League Dinners on a subject of national importance, and one in which she could claim to have some expertise. The League found Robyn Spencer to be an effective presenter of her subject. The League has over the years had a variety of speakers on a variety of subjects, speak at League Seminars. The present Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Alexander Downer, was once invited to speak in defence of the present Federal Constitution at a League Seminar in Adelaide. It was an excellent speech.

But subsequently, when he emerged as a leader of the Liberal Party, he was smeared because he appeared on a League platform. The man who is expected to stand up for Australia's interests in the world of international diplomacy was quickly reduced to a quivering jelly. When subjected to the Zionist treatment because he had also appeared on a League platform, West Australian Federal MP for Kalgoorlie, Graeme Campbell, bluntly said that as an elected Member of the Federal Parliament, he would speak to any law-abiding group interested in his views. He believed in freedom of speech. The Zionists do not. They are totalitarians.

One does not have to agree with all of Pauline Hanson's views, and how she expresses them, to support her right to speak freely to any who may wish to hear her. Robyn Spencer has every right to present herself as a Senate candidate for Victorians without being falsely charged as a "front" of the League of Rights. Robyn Spencer has never been a member of the League of Rights. But the League's view is that the election of any Senator, irrespective of label, whose election would break up the domination of the major political parties, would be a step towards averting any further disasters for Australia.

The most encouraging prospects at the coming Federal Elections is that, as indicated by Bob Katter, who now challenges the National Party to sack him if they do not like his outspoken views, the whole political scene in Australia is about to experience a major shake-up. The League has, indirectly, over many years, made a major contribution towards that shake-up. It hopes to make a distinctive contribution to what will emerge after the shake-up.

We look forward to representatives of the calibre of Graeme Campbell, Bob Katter and almost certainly, a few members of One Nation, injecting a refreshingly new note into Australian politics. Thank you, Bob Katter for speaking out in the best traditions of traditional Australia.

THERE MUST BE SOMETHING IN THE WATER

by David Thompson
As the Australian economic condition continued to slip over the last decade, some wits took to describing the nation as the only Third World country where it was safe to drink the water. No one is making such jokes in Sydney just at present, while about three million people have been warned by Sydney Water to boil it before they drink it. This is the city that hopes to cement its reputation as the international gateway to Australia. The city that preens itself before the international press in preparation for the mounting of the 2000 Olympics.

The bug in Sydney's water has been traced back to the Prospect water filtration plant, and is said to have originated in the corpses of half a dozen dead dogs. How can half a dozen dead dogs destroy the international reputation of one of the most beautiful cities in the world? The largest city in New Zealand, Auckland, suffered major power shortages for a month earlier this year because someone ran a bulldozer through the main electricity cable; a high-tech link with the power generation system. This was a disaster for Auckland, and highlighted the problems with high concentrations of people depending upon heavily monopolised services, be they government-owned, or "privatised".

Perhaps the giardia bug has highlighted something that the urban "planners" have ignored for a century. that the more services are centralised, the bigger the fall-out when the inevitable breakdown comes.

It is common knowledge that it is actually against local government by-laws to have rainwater tanks collecting domestic water off the roof of the house in cities like Sydney. To country people, accustomed to having to take personal responsibility for much more than just their own water supply, this had always seemed a peculiar lunacy. The giardia bug has underlined the lunacy. It may or may not be relevant that the water treatment plant at Prospect is a private company, Australian Water Services. But what is relevant is that as the privatisation programme continues, it is unlikely to lead to genuine private enterprise providing better or safer services so long as the utilities upon which we depend are so big, and so highly centralised.

VOTING SYSTEM CHANGED TO PREVENT FREEDOM OF CHOICE

Perhaps few will remember Victorian protest activist Albert Langer, from the political left, being imprisoned just prior to the last Federal election for contempt of court. What was Langer's crime? He ignored a court ruling that he was not free to advise Australians that the Electoral Act actually did permit the casting of a vote without distributing preferences. That is, although the Electoral Act makes it unlawful to advise others of the fact, voters can refuse to distribute their preferences and still fulfill the Act's requirement that all boxes on the ballot paper be numbered, by voting 1,2,2,2, etc., to cast a valid vote.

Langer promptly re-offended outside the court, and was arrested for doing so. A subscriber has sent us his correspondence with the Electoral Commission (although without the letterhead) that confirms that the Commonwealth Electoral Act has now been changed.

A Bill has recently passed through the Parliament making the change to the Act, and the Commission advises the following: "The amended Act now states that voters are required to number their House of Representatives ballot papers with consecutive numbers, without repetition of any number. (i.e. votes numbered 1,2,2,2 or 1,2,3,3,3 etc will now be informal) This amendment to the Act reinforces the intention that voting be full preferential." (Emphasis added).

THE ELITES FINALLY GET THE HANSON MESSAGE

Evidence is finally beginning to appear that the political and social elites who have been so scathing about Pauline Hanson and One Nation are finally beginning to see the reason for this startling political phenomenon. It is easy for lazy journalists to pronounce that Hanson's "racism" is unacceptable and odious, and every decent Australian must reject it. It is this attitude that has given One Nation hundreds of thousands of votes among those who have been alienated by the political process in the last 20 years.

As we reported, Phillip Adams wrote in his Weekend Australian column a fortnight ago that if only Members of Parliament were responsive to their electorates, instead of toeing the rigid party line, this political alienation would not have become a problem. Now the former National Party Senator, John Stone, has re-enforced this perception, with the suggestion that none of the main parties are fit to survive in government, and that the best that could happen would be 148 by-elections, in which One Nation preferences could clean out the incompetent MPs.

Dennis Shanahan, The Australian's political commentator, now takes the line that, if One Nation's political success makes politicians more accountable, Pauline Hanson will have done voters a favour. He writes: "Local MPs will have to address the concerns of their electorates; those out of touch will suffer, as will those who don't adequately address voters' concerns."

This is a thing called representative government. It is a pity that Mr. Howard does not seem to know how it works. Did we ask for nation-wide firearms legislation? Did we ask for a GST? His blind insistence that he knows what is best for us is positioning Mr. Howard for an electoral savaging. It now appears to be impossible to protect Mr. Howard from himself.

TOLERANT GENERATION COMING UP?

The extraordinary spectacle of truant schoolchildren demonstrating against Pauline Hanson and One Nation raises more than the obvious questions. It is clear that there is an organisational hand behind this operation; it was not simply a spontaneous expression of righteous revulsion on the part of our politically astute children.

Those watching the television coverage of these demonstrations closely will have noted the "Resistance" name on the placards. This is a hard-line left-wing politically militant group that has traditionally targeted students. It is interesting that the school children claimed to be demonstrating for a more "tolerant" society. Freedom to gather is presumably important; freedom to skip school is apparently a part of freedom of association. Is freedom of speech so important to these children? Have they even thought about it?

What about the Brisbane student who was demonstrating outside the Queensland Parliament on the first day of sitting last week, with the spine-chilling message "slay the bitch" scrawled across his bare chest? We assume he will be a leading member of the "tolerant society" in a few years?

IN PASSING