THE BRING-AND-BRIBE BUDGET

by Jeremy Lee
As a pensioner I suppose I should be rejoicing in the obvious bribes that have been sent my way in the latest Costello Budget. Along with those of my generation I am to receive a direct, non-taxable 'sweetener' of $300. I can now earn $20,000 before I am eligible to pay income tax. There is an increased limit to my Medicare benefits. But any benefits to older Australians can only be at the expense of the young - struggling farmers, young marrieds with a mortgage, the 400,000 homeless and Australia's small businesses.

I have to recognise that Howard and Costello are hoping that the handout coming my way will gloss over my objectivity, persuading me to put my personal interests over those of Australia in general. They want to buy my vote with a special handout from the tax kitty.

When the Coalition Government came to power in 1996, the total direct and indirect taxation taken by all levels of government in Australia totalled $147.8 billion. In the budget just introduced by Costello, Commonwealth taxation alone totals $146.7 billion. In other words, the Coalition has raised taxation levels to a point that would have brought outraged howls if attempted by a socialist government. Stephen Koukoulas, writing in the special Budget Review produced by The Australian Financial Review on May 23rd, spelled it out:

"Make no mistake. The sixth Howard-Costello Budget confirms that the Coalition is a big-spending, big taxing Government. The government sector in Australia has never been bigger than in 2000-01. Not only is the government sector spending money at a rate that would make Gough Whitlam blush, but its tax-take and other revenue has ballooned to levels never before seen in Australia. Since the Howard Government was elected in 1996, general government revenue has increased by a phenomenal 5.4 percentage points of GDP, to a record 37.7 percent. In 2000-01 dollars, that is an increase of more than $35 billion. In other words, if total general government revenue were to return to the level the Howard Government inherited, there would have to be tax cuts of about $35 billion a year. And that already takes account of the large income-tax cuts from July 1 last year ....."

Those who have bothered to read Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto would recall the 10 steps - all numbered and set out on one page - which Marx saw as essential to the introduction of the communist state. They included the abolition of inheritance, a state monopoly of credit and a heavy, graduated income-tax. The famous John Maynard Keynes said that once a government was taxing 25% of the community's income it was on the road to totalitarianism. By such standards, the Howard-Costello government is doing very well.

Their high-taxation policy flies in the face of everything the Liberals once stood for. Take the policy speech by former Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies in the 1953 election campaign. He said:
"Our principle, plainly stated in 1949, is that taxation and production are vitally related. This relationship takes two forms: The first is that as production increases, and the national income grows, rates of taxation can be reduced without reducing the total tax yield. I want to emphasise this vital point. In other words, as the volume and value of production go up, the burden of tax on each pound of income should be reduced.
The second is that in certain cases a reduction of tax may act as an incentive to increased production or greater business activity. We shall act upon both these principles to the limit of our capacity!"

Instead of which, Costello took advantage of recent growth figures to increase the government tax revenue and to accumulate a Budget Surplus estimated only a few short months ago as exceeding $13 billion (about $700 per head of population). But the recession has caught up with him, and he now has had to spend the Surplus in a desperate attempt to buy back votes.

Alan Kohler (The Australian Financial Review, 23/5/01) pointed out: "The Budget confirms that John Howard and Peter Costello are, in fact, just another pair of politicians, and their Government is much the same as any other. That is, when they got their hands on real money - more than $10 billion a year in surplus revenue - they spent the lot in trying to stay in office, and then some. In two years the Howard Government has gone from a surplus of $13.5 billion to a deficit next year of $800 million, growing to a deficit of $1.5 billion in 2002-03.... Of course that's not what the Treasurer reported in his Budget speech last night. The surplus of $1.5 billion for 2001-02 on the front pages of the newspapers today, courtesy of Mr. Costello, is the cash balance. Inconveniently for the Treasurer, the Government has been accounting entirely on an accrual basis for three years and the real position - in its own terms - is a deficit of $834 million ...."

So there will be a desperate splurge, between now and whenever the election is held, to buy back every possible vote. Howard and Costello are hoping outraged older Australians - pensioners and self-funded retirees - will flock back to the Coalition. In my view, it's a small chance. The next target must be small businesses. But - short of eliminating the GST - can they be wooed back to the fold? And remember, we have more than 30,000 fewer small businesses now than when the GST was introduced. The rest, as anticipated by the Government, have been bankrupted, as the soaring bankruptcy figures will attest. For them, any bribe is too late.

Each Australian, from one day old, will be up for just under $1,000 in foreign aid; a package worth $1.7 billion, of which a hundred million or so will go to Indonesia. The Government should be applying conditions; that, if any more refugee boats embark from Indonesia for Australia, a pro rata deduction will be made to the grant. Hanging over the whole Budget is the black shadow of some $78 billion in unfunded superannuation - the promises of future superannuation payments to politicians and public servants, including the now 19,000 officers at the Australian Taxation Office. The size of the ATO keeps expanding, even though the number of 'unpaid' tax collectors has multiplied enormously with the GST. The Government will raise $12.6 billion in taxes on petrol and oil; in the last financial year the figure was $12.4 billion. And you thought the Howard Government had cut fuel taxes? Yes, but it's indexed, you see! They'll collect about $660 in fuel taxes per person, or just under $4,000 per family of four.

Who's going to do well? Corporate Australia, where the tax-rate on profits has been reduced from 34% to 30% (a cut of $7.5 billion). They are all - the Business Council and the rest - praising Costello from on high. (Of course, the foreign-owned corporations who spirit their profits away overseas don't much care anyhow).

Beazley and Labor? They're screaming blue murder. But it's hard to make out what they would have done instead. However, whatever it is, they'd have done it better!

THATCHER SPEAKS OUT

Whatever else is said, Margaret Thatcher doesn't mince her words. She stole the show at the Conservative Party Conference in Plymouth (from whence Francis Drake once sailed to sack the Spanish Main). She outshone Party leader William Hague, who is trying to tip-toe, like Tiny Tim, through the tulips of contention: "Baroness Thatcher claimed Mr Blair's Labour Government was preparing to surrender British sovereignty to Europe and would raise taxes by stealth if returned at the June 7 general election ..... 'I would never be prepared to give up our own currency' she said, to thunderous applause from the party faithful. 'A country which gives up the power to issue its own currency is a country which has given up the power to govern itself'." (The Australian, May 24th, 2001)

Mrs. Thatcher had better take care. Someone, in this murky globalised world, is likely to accuse her of being a member of the League of Rights!

ANOTHER LADY BACKS AWAY

MIDDLE EAST VIOLENCE ESCALATES

FREE TRADE THEORY

by Antonia Feitz
The global bureaucrats running the world claim to know what they're doing, but it seems unlikely. For example, the IMF recently slashed its growth forecast for Australia from 3.25 percent to just 1.9 percent - in just one month! Perhaps the IMF should consider employing a woman to read tea-leaves - she might deliver more accurate forecasts. The globalists also brag about the increase in world trade - it's up to billyo apparently. Meanwhile the world's people collectively comment: "So what!

Who benefits apart from TNCs, shipping and oil companies? Local farmers get put out of business because multinational supermarkets want to source their apples/pork from wherever it's cheapest. But they don't pass on the savings according to free trade theory any more than the textiles and footwear importers do. Worldwide consumers are slugged to maximise profits.
Reality is where the free traders come a cropper. Free trade fails to deliver the golden promises because its theorists fail to understand that theory is best derived from a close analysis of best practice. For example, sensible grammarians analyse language to deduce rules for good expression. They don't just invent rules and expect people to conform to them. And throughout the ages, musical theorists have analysed the music of their time to deduce rules to guide composers. Of course genuine artists break the rules - but they have to know them before they break them.

In contrast to grammarians and musicians, economists and politicians are far too fond of putting the cart before the horse. They invent theories and design systems such as communism and free trade and expect people to conform to their theories. That their theories just don't work never deters them. As we Australians know only too well, faced with mounting criticism of current economic policies the ideological zealots blame governments for not sufficiently explaining the benefits to the people. Unfortunately for the zealots, people increasingly have noticed the free trade emperor has no clothes.

MEDIA RELEASE

The following media release was issued by the National Director of the League: Thursday, 24th May 2001

Betty Luks, National Director of the Australian League of Rights, has announced the invitation to Mr. Graham Campbell to speak on League platforms has been withdrawn. Mrs. Luks says the League will not play the despicable psycho-political petty-war-games of Senator Boswell and his backers and in the circumstances has taken the decision to withdraw the League's invitation. Mr. Campbell has been informed of the withdrawal of the invitation. Mrs. Luks went on to say she had too much respect for Graeme Campbell the man to place him in the invidious position where he, because of his integrity, would have kept his word at considerable personal cost. The field is now cleared for members of One Nation to determine who they consider the best man for the position of number one on their Senate ticket - and Senator Ron Boswell will have to find other strategies - preferably honourable ones - to hold on to his Senate seat at the next federal election. . . Betty Luks, Adelaide.

BASIC FUND

CANADIANS VOTE: GOODBYE AND GOOD RIDDANCE!

from Doug Collins in Canada
It isn't very likely that the world was holding its breath to learn whether British Columbia was going to rid itself of the worst government in the province's history, but it should have. Not for nothing were some people calling BC a socialist republic. But in the recent election our Sikh premier and his New Democratic Party bit the dust. One hopes for ever. The NDP was neither democratic nor new, and after 10 years of misgovernment the worm finally turned and gave Ujjal Dosanjh and Co. only three seats out of 79. He lost his own seat, and if two scheduled recounts change nothing, that party will not even have official status in the legislature. Gordon Campbell, the Liberal premier-in-waiting, could grant them such status but says he won't. Good. Even one NDP member would be one too many.

A full list of NDP idiocies and corruption would only send you to sleep. Suffice it to say that it included fudge-it (lying) budgets, cheating people in the infamous 'Bingogate' scandal that led to the conviction of a former finance minister, the desire to hand over much of the Province to the Indians, an attempt to please the unions by building enormously expensive "fast ferries" that didn't work, a disastrous pro-labor and anti-business programme, and Dosanjh's never-ceasing demands for "tougher federal hate laws". Worst of all was the party's own attack on freedom of speech, beginning with the amendment to the Human Rights Act of 1993, which removed the right to free expression. And there's the rub. Restrictions on free speech never figured during the election. They were mentioned neither by the media nor by Mr. Campbell. The misnamed rights law was clearly intended to silence dangerous rotters like Yours Truly, who challenged multicult, immigration, homosexuality, abortion on demand, and the holocaust industry. The politically correct had nothing to worry about, of course, but that doesn't mean the law could not be used against anyone on practically any grounds. As the Press Council stated, anyone telling a 'Newfie' joke could be hauled before a rights tribunal.

I can guess why Liberal leader Campbell was silent on the matter. He put forward 200 proposals for change, spoke nightly in TV ads about education, health, and other safe subjects, but uttered nary a word about the NDP-imposed limits on free discussion. My guess is that he didn't want Jewish groups on his neck before the vote was held. He had to be concerned about being denounced as a "racist", and about Can-West Global's (meaning Izzy Asper's) nearly blanket control of the print media in Vancouver and Victoria, plus a significant part of television.

Will he get around to doing something about the free speech issue? Knowing how weak politicians can be in the face of press power and political correctness, I am not sure that he will. But there is some hope. At this writing, the man most likely to become attorney general is Geoff Plant, who a few months ago denounced the Human Rights maniacs in BC (British Columbia) for their many "goofy decisions". He said the system needed to be reviewed. This did not go entirely unnoticed.

A month before the election took place the Western Jewish Bulletin ran a story headed, "Libs may repeal hate law', in which such a prospect was viewed with alarm and in which the name of the unmentionable Doug Collins figured. Mr. Plant was reported as saying his party might remove segments of the Rights Code that cover "hate propaganda". (What is hate propaganda? Anything the pressure groups say it is.) But the mainstream media either didn't notice his statement or didn't want to. The government's attorney general said that Plant was out of touch with ordinary people, which is a real laugh, seeing that the NDP never gave a damn for ordinary people when it conspired with the usual suspects to introduce the Code.

One might also be forgiven for thinking, in view of the NDP's stunning defeat, that ordinary people were not too favourably impressed with regard to what that party was doing for them. Needless to say, the Canadian Jewish Congress stated it would "want to have some input" if any such dangerous change were to be considered.

Despite his silence during the election, Liberal leader Campbell has promised on at least two occasions to get rid of the law. He said so in 1993 in a press survey of politicians' intentions, and again some years later at a BC and Yukon Community Newspapers convention. We shall see. Perhaps he will be too worried about Izzy's Media. But with such a massive majority in the legislature he could do as he pleases.

VICTORIAN 'RACE HATE' BILL

Victorians need to make every effort to voice their concerns to members of Parliament now that the Racial and Religious Tolerance Bill has been presented. The following analysis was made by a highly competent legal friend of the League's from Canada, on the basis of the original legislation. While the legislation has been modified we still think it worth passing on to On Target readers.

They warn us, "The Australian legislation is the latest and most severe intrusion into the freedom and privacy of the individual. The effects will be self-censorship, and the suppression of new ideas which may be valuable to society, in an atmosphere of fear and oppression." They write, "let's focus on the substance of this new invasion of privacy and freedom.
. Criminal proceedings are contemplated for vilification offences to be heard in magistrate's court.
. No jury will be possible - and the magistrates are appointed by Victoria.
. Incitement is "to encourage, stir up, or urge other people to do a certain act." This definition is vague and emotive; no evidence is really required, but likelihood is subjectively determined by the magistrate.
. Religious belief or activity is defined as: "holding or not holding a lawful religious belief or view." Notice that the State is claiming the right to define a "lawful religious belief or view." This would encompass anything the State wishes to include, and implies religion is subject to State-approval, much like the Soviet and Chinese system.
. "Racial vilification refers to (notice it doesn't say "means" so it can be an expanding definition) communications which "speak evil of, abuse or are derogatory of people on the basis of their race." (How will a magistrate decide who is "speaking evil?" And what about truth?)
. Religious vilification refers to communications which "speak evil of, abuse, or are derogatory of people on the basis of their religious beliefs."
. The explanation of what actions will constitute vilification does not require a public statement or even one which is likely to incite a breach of the peace. The proposal makes clear, "this would include ... a serious contempt for or severe ridicule of a person on the basis of race or religion." The catch words of hatred, contempt, or ridicule come from Canada's section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act. It is designed to be vague, and anyone who attempts defence under these words will soon find that out.
. The specific sections of the proposed law are also interesting. Section 6 makes motive irrelevant, even if the motive is to tell the truth or rectify an injustice.
. You can be summoned in section 11 to something called "a compulsory conference" (i.e. a meeting with the thought police).
. Section 11 also makes it an offence to say that anyone has made a complaint under the legislation or has even produced a document, or given evidence. This makes it impossible to identify someone in private or public conversation, who has a reputation for making complaints, as this would 'victimise' them.
. Under section 14, employers or principals are vicariously liable for what employees say. This enlists anyone who owns or manages a business to become 'thought police' as well.
. Under section 16 (4) representative bodies (i.e. special interest groups which are usually well-funded and State-sponsored) can make a complaint if it affects their group, actually or even merely potentially.
. Section 18 requires the state-funded commission to assist the complainant. The Canadian precedent deems that the accused however will be denied legal aid.
. Section 20 makes complaints against "unincorporated association" possible, so that any loose-knit group can make guilt-by-association possible. By simply having friends you adopt thereby their ideas!

BETTY LUKS' TOUR

SYDNEY CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB

Tuesday, June 26th. Guest Speaker will be announced later. We are sorry Mr. Graeme Campbell is not speaking, but do believe our supporters will understand why we withdrew the invitation for him to speak. The meeting will be held at the Estonian Club, 141 Campbell Street, Sydney - commencing at 7.30pm. The cost of attendance is $4 per person (a steal at that price!). Books from the Heritage Book Service will be on display. For enquiries phone: (02) 9759 4450.

Dates for your Diary
Tuesday, July 31st - Mr. Ian Murphy. Subject: "The Question of Australia's Defence" Tuesday, August 28th - Annual General Meeting. Guest Speaker: Mr. Welf Herfurth Subject: "The Threat to Freedom and Democracy in Germany Today".

STATE WEEKENDS

West Australia
August 11th-12th, to be held in Perth. Betty Luks and Jeremy Lee are two of the guest speakers.

South Australia
August 18th-19th, to be held in Adelaide. Speakers for the SA seminar include Mr. Jeremy Lee and Mrs Wendy Scurr, who will recall what she saw and experienced at the Port Arthur massacre. After having heard her and former policeman Andrew McGregor at the Inverell Forum we believe her story needs to be told. Keep these dates free. Wendy will be doing a series of meetings prior to the SA Weekend.

Victoria
At this stage meetings have been arranged for Melbourne, Horsham, Nhill and Apsley in Victoria. Further details as they come to hand.

NATIONAL WEEKEND

LEAGUE'S WEBSITE ADDRESS