OUR DISAPPEARING DAIRY FARMERS

TAMIL ILLEGALS

AUSTRALIANS INCREASINGLY ANGRY

BANKER'S WARNING - A FATE WORSE THAN DEBT

In a major article (The Weekend Australian, 21-22/4/01), Robert Gottliebsen interviewed David Murray, CEO of the Commonwealth Bank. Murray's conclusions were bleak. The crisis is not over, and the dollar can be expected to fall as low as 40 cents:
" . . . Murray says there has been a long-term structural decline in the dollar because Australia has a big current account deficit and is no longer an attractive place for overseas business investment, and domestic savings are low . . ."

Murray's identification of the problem is getting close. A nation can't close much of its farming and manufacturing, driving its foreign debt into the stratosphere, without facing nemesis. But Murray's solutions are woeful - more productivity and higher immigration. It's the orthodox globalist mantra.

At the time of writing, another city is under siege of protests against globalism; this time Quebec City, where the leaders of 34 nations are assembled to try and expand NAFTA into "The Free Trade Area of the Americas", encompassing 800 million people in nations with a combined $US22 trillion in goods and services. The only trouble is, apparently, the people don't want it! However, as our beloved Treasurer in Australia keeps telling us with that portentious gravity of his, "there's no turning back from globalism". He'd have made a fitting leader for the Gadarene Swine!

CAN THE FABIAN TORTOISES REGATHER?

Brisbane City Councillor Terry Hampson is behind a move to re-constitute the Queensland Branch of the Fabian Society, according to an article by Tony Walker in The Australian Financial Review (20/4/01) ". . . It was at the Paddington Workers' Club in Brisbane on the evening of April 5, where a heterodox group of Labor Party activists and their fellow-travellers met to reconsitute the Queensland branch of the Fabian Society - after a 16 year break . . .There's only one problem, as the article ruefully recorded. The Fabian programme is now so mainstream that it raises a question over the need for a re-vamp of the Fabians. Perhaps it's merely kudos they want. ". . . They would be encouraged if they looked to Britain and saw the influence of the Fabians there . . ." Tony Blair is a long-standing Fabian, as is Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The Fabian Society is officially represented at the British Labour Party's National Conference. But here in Australia? With both major parties virtually the same on globalism and internationalism, and the Howard Government following a path that could have been honed on a Fabian anvil, what role can a revamped Society play? Perhaps they are simply positioning themselves for some perks should Beazley's Labor Party win the coming election?

THE STENCH OF CORPORATE POLITICAL FUNDING

We wrote last year of the ominous trend, descending from the international sphere to the local level, of multinational corporate funding of political conferences and party functions. We pointed out that 80 corporations had paid thousands of dollars to be "oberservers" at the Liberal National Conference. In a major two-page spread on April 20th, The Australian Financial Review had an in-depth look at the depth of the 'patronage' of political events by corporations. Many avenues for payment were hidden from the Australian Electoral Commission, which is to record and make public all political donations.

The article started: "Australia's leading companies are channelling millions of dollars to political parties in ways that ensure they do not have to disclose it to the Australian Electoral Commission as donations. An investigation by The Australian Financial Review has revealed that Australia's system for disclosing political donations is in disarray, with glaring discrepancies between the level of donations declared by political parties, the amounts that big corporates say they are donating and the level of donations reported by the Australian Electoral Commission. And a survey of Australia's top 50 public companies found significant gaps between the corporate political donations recorded by the AEC and the amounts of money that companies attest to donating . . ."

The article went on to point out that companies were making political donations by
. Paying large sums to intermediary companies and investment vehicles linked to political parties;
. Paying for unidentified services provided by political parties;
. Paying thousands of dollars to attend fundraising functions held by political parties;
. Hiding from shareholders the donations being made to political parties.

Payment for, say, meals at a fundraising function don't count as donations even though the AEC's handbook says "if the price charged is far beyond the value of the function ('value' includes gaining access to lobby government ministers, senior party officials etc.) then the payment is clearly a donation". One example given was Telstra's sponsorship, to the tune of $40,000, of the Prime Minister's breakfast at the Liberal Party's National Convention last year. Telstra swore it was not a donation, just a sponsorship for a "high-profile event". 500 delegates attended. At $40,000, that's $80 per head for breakfast - an awful lot of bacon and eggs!

Many companies admitted to those who had written the article that they had made considerable donations that had not been recorded by the Australian Electoral Commission. Only five out of 50 of those contacted had listed such donations in their annual reports. The government of 'squeaky-clean' John Howard is now emerging as one of the most corrupt. But all major 'establishment' parties - including the Democrats - have accepted funds through the same process. There's not much chance of change, until the people themselves have had enough.

The most innovative, and one of the smelliest schemes to avoid official disclosure is to run auctions, where "bidders" are able to bid "absurdly high" prices for mundane items: ". . . Markson Sparks, which will work for any political party, has used auctions that avoid formal disclosure requirements. Even when the amount paid to a political party for an item is absurdly high, organisers argue that the money is not a donation. The federal director of the Liberal Party, Lynton Crosby, said he knew 'from discussions with people who attend functions organised by Markson Sparks that they are invited to make donations which are masked by the nature of the function'. . ."

EU BUREAUCRAZIES

by Antonia Feitz
Glorying in their ignorance not only of the realities of farming life but also of the natural world itself, EU bureaucrats have decreed that farmers must not operate their tractors / harvesters / quad bikes for more than two hours a day. Why? Backache. This is not a joke. EU employment and social affairs officials have drafted a document called the Physical Agents Directive which will make operating certain machinery for more than a few hours illegal because of the health risk of "whole body vibration".

Lord Inglewood, a Conservative Member of the European Parliament and himself a farmer was outraged, "Brussels bureaucrats sitting in air-conditioned offices have no idea that farming in Britain is a game of hide and seek with the weather. Arbitrary rules of this kind simply sound the death knell for farming. The sun can't be made to shine according to an EC initiative." (Paul Stokes, EU move puts brake on tractor time, ISSUE 2114, Friday, March 9th, 2001)

Unfortunately bureaucratic parasites who've never done a decent day's work in their lives tend to think they are all powerful. Perhaps English and other European farmers affected by this idiotic directive should sue the EU for the ruination of their crops. The Directive doesn't just apply to farmers but to all industry. Well, mandating a two hour maximum for working with certain machinery would be a quick way to ruin farmers and export all manufacturing to the third world I suppose.

BASIC FUND

ADEN RIDGEWAY

by Antonia Feitz
After a promising start, Democrat Senator Aden Ridgeway is fast becoming wearisome with his bagging of Australia. In an address to the UN he claimed Australians were only willing to embrace the "rhetoric of reconciliation". He's right there. For too many people, reconciliation is an exercise in moral vanity which involves nothing more taxing than strolling across bridges. It will be interesting to see how they react to Senator Ridgeway's criticism that they won't "take effective action to share the country's abundant resources and political power" (Australian, 27/3/01).

If their brains aren't completely mushed by political correctness, they will strongly reject this criticism knowing that Aborigines already control huge areas of Australia, that parts of Australia are off-limit to whites, and that Aborigines are not denied political power. Senator Ridgeway proves it, as did Neville Bonner. There's nothing to stop the Dodsons, Noel Pearson, Lowitja O'Donoghue or any other Aboriginal from standing for preselection, or as an Independent.

Senator Ridgeway claimed that while the Mabo decision "recognised the existence of cohesive indigenous societies and cultures and their relationships to land and territory ... it refused to recognise the legal status of the associated political institutions that provided for effective, fully-informed decision-making processes."
Now pull the other one, Senator. The Mabo decision related purely to the Murray Islanders who had a totally different cultural tradition of gardening, and it was mischievous of the Court and the Government to extend its findings to the mainland's myriad Aboriginal tribes who traditionally were nomadic hunter gatherers. The prevailing myth today is that there was a pan-Aboriginal culture. Not so. There was physical variation in the tribes themselves as well as differences in their languages, customs, musical instruments and weapons. Given that, with whom should Captain Arthur Phillip have realistically signed a treaty?

It's understandable that people of Aboriginal descent desire to cherish their ancestry the same as other people do. Promoting an Aboriginal identity, even using a mythical pan-Aboriginality, is unobjectionable. But it should not come at the expense of the truth or of the broader social cohesion. We're all Australians and a small minority shouldn't be legally privileged over the majority, especially on racial grounds!

Commenting on the inevitability of European dominance after contact the Berndts wrote, "Groups with differing languages and emphases, with no sense of common nationality or political machinery to help them in this respect, were not in a position to combine as a war-making unit to drive out the invader. Even if this had been possible, they had none of the material goods, the weapons, the political organization without which they could not hope to succeed." (RM & CH Berndt, The World of the First Australians, 2nd ed. Ure Smith, 1977, p.24)

Recently Senator Ridgeway tabled a private members bill that is based on the recommendations of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (Australian, 6/4/01). The bill includes the process of negotiating a treaty with Aborigines, even though the majority of Australians are strongly opposed to any such treaty. This is a most provocative and divisive bill.

OLGA SCULLY'S PRELIMINARY HEARING IN FEDERAL COURT

by Betty Luks
The preliminary Federal Court hearing was between: "Jeremy Jones for himself and for the members for the time being of the Committee of Management of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and Olga Scully". The complaint was that Mrs. Scully had "engaged in conduct unlawful by Part llA of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (C'th) by having distributed anti-Semitic literature" by letter-boxing and sale at a local market in Launceston, Tasmania. Mr. Jones wanted Olga to be "restrained from repeating or continuing such unlawful conduct" and deliver a written apology to the "Hobart Hebrew Congregation".
The judge rejected the application of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to represent material formerly presented as evidence to the initial HREOC hearing.

Readers will remember, Mrs. Scully walked out of the initial HREOC hearing protesting that "truth was not a defence". This means the Committee of Management of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry will have to re-litigate the whole matter. The next scheduled hearing for Olga Scully is June 14th, 2001.

THIS IS CIVIL WAR

WHATEVER THE ISRAELIS AND AMERICANS MAY SAY, THIS IS CIVIL WAR

by Robert Fisk, The Independent - Ramallah, April 11th, 2001
It's strange how a war creeps up on you. First you have the warnings of an "explosion", then the first shootings. Then the first mortars, the first tank fire, the first rocket attacks. That's how it was in Lebanon. And now in 'Palestine'. No one calls it war, of course. The Americans ignore it, the Israelis just call it "terrorist violence" - they are talking about Arab violence, needless to say, not their own - while the US TV boys still rabbit on about the chances of 'peace' negotiations. But what is going on now between Israelis and Palestinians is a civil war, a growing and major conflict between semitic peoples in a tiny land whose cull of human lives looks ever more like the early casualty lists in Lebanon.

Driving from Jerusalem to Ramallah is like driving 25 years ago from Sidon to Beirut; the checkpoints, the detours, the cartridge cases lying on the road, the gutted buildings around the City Inn. The Palestinian barrages are as scruffy as they were in Lebanon; the Israeli jeeps as ramshackle as those of the Phalange militiamen who were once Israel's allies in Lebanon. Travel round Ramallah and the Palestinian security man reels off the local militia groups. "This old building belongs to the Tanzim," he says. Stop off to look at the wreckage of Force 17's ammunition headquarters - rocketed by Israeli helicopters two weeks ago - and a voice floats from a mosque's loudspeakers. "Palestiiiiiine, Palestiiiiiine, Palestiiiiiine," it yodels. "That's Hamas," the young man tells me. And we all know that Islamic Jihad's 'martyrs' are presented on those posters near Al-Bireh. And that's not counting the 'Al-Shuhad' Party and the 'Al-Quds' party militants.

And look at the nearest Jewish settlements and you see armed Israeli civilians, soldiers, border guards, tank crews. If Arafat is lectured by George W. Bush on the need to "control violence", who is controlling Israeli violence? It was the same in Lebanon. First they blamed each other for the war. Then they dehumanised each other. Through a spokesman in Amman, Saddam Hussein calls for God to "destroy the Jews". Then Rabbi Ovadia calls on God to "annihilate the Arabs".

In the centre of Ramallah stands the police station in which two Israeli soldiers were murdered last year. But the windows from which they were defenestrated were blasted away by Israeli missiles. Then came the Force 17 attack. Then came Monday's gun battle between Force 17 and the Israelis in which Israeli bullets smacked into a girls' school. First the police station, then the ammunition depot, then the school. The promiscuity of both Palestinian mortars in Gaza and Israeli tank-fire across the West Bank and Gaza is going soon to lead to another of Lebanon's grisly phenomena: the massacre.

In one rubbled building, a Palestinian gunman emerges to tell me that "it's getting like Hollywood around here". But he won't give his name. Another Palestinian tells me why. "Here's my Palestinian Authority ID card," he says, handing me a laminated paper with his photo, and the signature of Jamil Tarifi, the PA's minister of interior affairs. "These cards are co-ordinated with the Israelis. See the first computer number? It's a '4'. That means I came into Palestine with the PLO. If I was born in Ramallah, it would say '9'. But if you look at the back, there's a serial number. "If it's in large figures, it means I've been in an Israeli prison. So if the Israelis know my computer identity or number, they can work out at once if I'm what they call a 'terrorist'. And they can murder me."

Yes, Israel's death squads are a reflection of the Lebanon war. Killers. Killers of settler children. Killers of Palestinian boys. But there are differences. In Lebanon, death moved impartially through its people. Here death is administered by Israel on a far greater scale than by Palestine. Because Israel (and its settlers) are occupying Arab land. Palestine is not occupying Israel. But the rare 'security' talks between both sides are truly Lebanese. In Beirut, we used to call them cease fires. And they were always broken. Website: https://www.MiddleEast.Org

SYDNEY CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB

CANBERRA CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB

QUEENSLAND STATE WEEKEND

STATE WEEKENDS

SOUTH AUSTRALIA: August 18th-19th, 2001, to be held in Adelaide

BOOK