HOWARD GOVERNMENT ON THE SLIDE

by Jeremy Lee
The latest and most reliable of the various polls - the Morgan Poll - had grave news for the Howard Government, published in The Bulletin (29/2/2000). The attending comment said: "Support for the federal government has sunk to its lowest level since it was re-elected in October 1998 with the prime minister forced onto the back foot over the GST and government payouts to retrenched textile workers…There is a growing feeling that the next election will be won or lost in the bush, and the latest Bulletin-Morgan Poll adds credence to this…Primary support for the Coalition falls to 36% (down 1.5 percentage points) with the Opposition also dropping to 46% (-1)...."

A breakdown of the figures showed the reaction against the Coalition higher outside the capital cities and biggest in the three smallest States, with only 29 percent supporting the Coalition in Tasmania.
An accompanying article in The Bulletin by Fred Benchley showed exactly how great the pressure is on the government as a dawning realisation of the dangers of the GST come home in the electorate:
"At the moment, Howard and Costello are suffering the death of a thousand cuts over the GST. From tampons to caravan park rates, the media is overwhelmed with 'shock' stories of the GST's implementation. On talkback radio, less than 6% of people have had anything positive to say about it.... With the Australian Taxation Office mounting a huge business education campaign and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission given the task of scaring business with $10 million fines for profiteering over the GST, the Government this Friday will start rolling out a $49 million education campaign. Initially it will focus on business registration for the new Australian Business Number and business assistance to cope with the new tax. Other TV and print campaigns will sell tax cuts and pension and rent allowance increases to the 'unters'.... The consumer side, orchestrated by the Ministerial Committee on Government Communications, will spend an estimated $20 million on media advertising and information booklets inserted in newspapers.... "

Herr Goebells couldn't put it better! The Government will spend millions upon millions to propagandise the people into believing that black is white, and that more controls, regulations and surveillance are good for them!

HOWARD'S RESPONSE TO PAUL KELLY

Kelly's article "National Disgrace" (parts of which we quoted in last week's On Target) has obviously got under Prime Minister Howard's skin. While Howard is immune to the feelings of the majority of Australians when it comes to such things as foreign ownership and free trade, it obviously hurts when a journalist who is a fellow globalist launches a few criticisms. John Howard had a quarter-page reply in the following Weekend Australian, under the heading GLOBAL VISION. With as much charity as possible, it was appalling stuff. He didn't quite parrot the old paternalistic cliché "this hurts me more than it hurts you" - but you could read it between every line.

Included in the Prime Minister's remarks were: ".... It is precisely because the Coalition Government understood the benefits for Australia of globalisation that it pursued a reformist economic agenda after March 1996. If we had not done so, then the forces of globalisation would have ensured that the Asian economic downturn would have severely damaged Australia and left its people poorer and having fewer jobs. For some time now I have urged proponents of globalisation to be aware of possible dislocating effects. For example, in my 'Australia Unlimited' speech in May last year (well before the Victorian election) I said: 'But governments, business groups and the wider community need to recognise that these processes of globalisation can be disconcerting and unsettling for individuals who are adversely affected by the changes they inevitably cause. Such Australians can feel left behind, resentful and even envious…Part of our task is to fully explain the practical benefits of globalisation for Australia....'"

What paternalistic - and inaccurate - claptrap! Those adversely affected by the Keating/Howard globalisation policies comprise more than half the nation, with poverty, bankruptcies and family breakdown increasing all the time. The latest 'globalisation requirement' - the GST - will eliminate another row of small Australian businesses, just as it did in Canada and New Zealand.

COSTELLO, THE GST AND THE 'BLACK' ECONOMY

The biggest job Prime Minister Howard and his indefatigable Treasurer Peter Costello now have is to hold together the jittery ranks of the Coalition. Backbenchers are certainly feeling the anti-GST heat from the electorate. The Australian Financial Review (8/3/2000) said:
"The Federal Treasurer, Mr. Peter Costello, yesterday rejected Coalition backbench lobbying for changes to the GST system, warning there would be no more concessions. "Addressing a joint parties meeting, Mr. Costello also ruled out an extension of time for registrations under the new tax regime. "He said 'rumours' sweeping business circles that the Government would extend the deadline for registration had no foundation. "The vast majority of businesses have so far not yet registered for the end of May deadline...."

It is not too much to say that it is the duty of every taxpayer who disagrees with the GST to increase the pressure on backbenchers. They must be made aware of their personal responsibility if they keep supporting an unwanted and hated new tax regime. Is their loyalty to their party whips? Or to their constituents? Such pressure is more than a mere gesture. At this stage, public opposition to the GST is more intense and better organised that was the case in either Canada or New Zealand. It is possible now to turn that opposition into a statement capable of showing the Government at complete odds with the governed.

The Editorial in The Weekend Australian (26-27/2/2000) commented: "The two most important positive aspects of the introduction of the goods and services tax, Peter Costello said yesterday, were income tax cuts and control of the black economy. Strange; we thought the main objective was to simplify a tax system bloated by structural complexity and creaking under the failure of previous reform measures, with the aim of producing stronger and sustainable growth, higher productivity, more jobs and rising living standards…There is NO evidence that the GST has reduced the 'black economy' in either Canada or New Zealand; the reverse is the case. The only real answer to the 'black' economy is a return to moderate levels of taxation.
Tax evasion, the cash economy and punitive over-taxing all go hand-in-hand.

IN FAVOUR OF ASIA

by Alfred King
The media and political elite have continued to insist for some time now that we are to be 'Asianised', without explaining clearly what this means. The brainwashing effect of the 'inevitability' argument should not be underestimated. A popular radio talkback host recently insisted that Australia's future, indeed its very existence was to be dependent on Asia. He cannot explain why, or even what constitutes this thing called 'Asia', but he is not prepared to entertain any arguments to the contrary.

In my schooldays, when the education system was a little less corrupt than it is now, we were taught the truth that the world comprises eight continents. These are North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Arctica, Australasia and Antarctica. Big brother has since decided that this knowledge must disappear down the memory hole to help recreate the world in their desired state. The world is now to be viewed as comprising only three continents in this, its transitional stage to the one 'global village'. That is a warm and fuzzy euphemism for World Government.
However you may choose to define this region called 'Asia', it must be heavily influenced, if not dominated, in every aspect by the huge and populous country of China.

Every post-war US president has lectured us, the ignorant masses, on how China is a most progressive nation with huge potential, and is imminently going to become the biggest player on the world stage. The inference being that we should therefore treat it with the highest regard. These predictions have never come to fruition. The reality of the state of this country is very different. Eric Butler has correctly described the present China as the most Judaised country on Earth. It is a society characterised by LEGALISM. The immensely wealthy, barbaric and corrupt elite lord it over an extremely poor and oppressed population with an ever-increasing number of laws intended to regulate every tiny aspect of life.

An insight into this kind of Asia that we can look forward to becoming Asianised into, was given in The Australian on 2/3/2000, which carried a report on the visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, to China. She expressed concern about the deteriorating human rights situation there. "Particularly in repression of freedom of expression, freedom of religion, severe sentences for activities related to political expression or religious expression."

Mrs. Robinson is expected to press the Chinese government to honour its commitment to ratify two UN conventions on human rights. Beijing signed the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights during Mrs. Robinson s last visit in August 1998 and the Covenant on Social Political and Cultural Rights a year earlier. Tight security has surrounded the latest annual meeting of the National Peoples' Congress (NPC) as the leadership fears embarrassing protests from any of the country's many disaffected citizens, repressed religions, or even a repeat attempt by unemployed workers to stage a suicide bomb-protest against the country's economic crisis.
About 70,000 police and security personnel have been mobilised to protect about 3000 delegates from across the country.

Newspapers report sincere statements affirming China's great progress under the stewardship of the Communist Party. Ordinary citizens feel marginalised by the perception that most leaders are unable to resist the temptation of profiting from power. That perception is based on evidence before their eyes. One study found that local government authorities had siphoned off capital and assets from state controlled enterprises in the early 1990's at a rate of up to 19.8 billion per year. A former vice-governor of Jianngxi province is under sentence of death for taking more than US$650,000 in bribes. More than 200 officials including bankers and police have been implicated in a US$40 billion smuggling racket in XIAMEN, on the east coast, in what is billed as the biggest corruption scandal in Communist China's 50 year history.

Ironically, while Communist dogma does not allow the Chinese Prime Minister, Mr. Zhu, to recognise the suffering of his subjects, he has called for 'unremitting' efforts to fight corruption and build a clean and honest government. How may times have we heard such calls? The Chinese culture is very different to our own. China has never had a democratic government, and because history always repeats itself, we have no reason to believe that it ever will.

Who could imagine that the Australian people would ever want to become entwined in such a system? Of course they do not! But the Australian press, just like their Chinese counterparts, who are controlled by the same people, would have you believe that black is white. These hypocrites love to criticise extremists such as Geobbels, the Nazi propaganda minister for repeating the big lie over and over until the people believed it, and then do exactly that themselves!

Perhaps the most frightening point is the great similarities the reader would have noted between the situation in China and our own dear Australia. Even the way that parliament is controlled is strikingly familiar. According to the Chinese Constitution, the Congress is the highest decision-making body. The Australian, 6/3/2000, reports that Congress delegates are supposedly selected from the village level up, but in practice the selection process is carefully controlled to ensure the Communist Party's dominance.
In Australia we have simply replaced the 'one party' with 'the gang of three main parties' all of which have the same left-wing policies.

Mr. Zhu has no chance whatsoever of reducing corruption by ordering his officials to desist. The fish rots from the head. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a fact of human nature, and all the hand wringing in the world won't change it. We cannot legislate to order another person to be good and expect to be successful. In Australia, as in China, increasing freedom and human satisfaction, as well as harmonious relations between individuals, can only be achieved by creating the right conditions of limited, decentralised government, which honestly represents the views of the electorate.

FOREIGN TAX

TYRANNY OF DISTANCE

This letter to editor by Ron Fischer of Talbot, Vic., was published in country paper:

"A recent report commissioned by the Municipal Association of Victoria revealed, not surprisingly, that country councils spent more on roads than metropolitan councils. The erroneous inference that will be drawn from that is that some shires are too small and another round of council amalgamations is needed. In fact, the comment by the President of the MAV (Brad Matheson) put that thought on the agenda, 'In ten years some of those small rural councils may not exist.'
The truth is that the amalgamations we have already had are not delivering the economies they were meant to. Going around again will not reduce the distance from one farm to the next. Furthermore, the get-big-or-get-out disaster in farming is contributing to an increase in that distance.
The MAV report showed that on average rural councils spent $943 per head of population on roads while metropolitan councils spent $505 and still our roads and bridges are crumbling. It also found that metropolitan council rates were lower than country. Melbourne households spent 2.3% of income on rates while in rural areas it was 3.9%.
Rural councils spend 43% of budget on roads while metropolitan spends only 20%. As well as that, because of our total reliance on road transport (cars and trucks) we contribute a higher proportion of our incomes in petroleum taxes.
The tyranny of distance is very real and becoming increasingly invasive. To use an oxymoron, unless we get a centralised commitment to decentralisation, the impoverishment of rural councils is unlikely to be reversed."

INTEREST RATES AND DEMAND

This letter to the editor, again by Ron Fischer of Talbot, Vic., was published in The Mail Times, 31/1/2000:

'We are being softened up again for an increase in interest rates. 'Inflationary pressures' have been observed!
The discussion is not about whether a rise is desirable, but as to how much - a quarter percent, half a percent or several steps aggregating, perhaps, a full percentage point or more.
The theory behind interest rate manipulation, according to Terry McCrann (economic commentator for the Murdoch media empire) 'is that higher interest rates reduce the ability of both consumers and businesses to pay.... higher prices and therefore work indirectly to limit the ability of businesses to raise their prices…'
Too bad that businesses go to the wall as a result. Too bad that businesses are unable to afford extra staff. Too bad that many other businesses dismiss staff in the name of efficiency (National Australia Bank, for example - omitted, R.F.). Too bad there are few vacancies at the entrance level for school leavers.
Mr. McCrann's theory assumes that the cause of inflation is demand. 'Control demand and you control inflation.' I doubt whether many pensioners, unemployed, or the homeless would agree that there is too much demand.
As interest rates were pushed up during the Keating years (Bankcard hit 25%) inflation was way up there with them. As rates came down inflation came down too.
Economic comment at the time conceded that the reduced home mortgage rates contributed to an easing of the pressure on the CPI. If I were a betting man I would take odds-on that an increase in interest rates would be followed by a rise in inflation."

MY FATHER WAS STOLEN