CHANGING THE PUBLIC RELATIONS MEN AT CANBERRA

When the Liberal-Country Party politicians took office at Canberra in 1949, displacing the Labor politicians led by the late Mr. Ben Chifley, the electors had high hopes that the major pre-election promises - lower taxation, less government, and a restoration of consumer subsidies - would be implemented in order that the shillings could be put back into the pound. But within six months it was clear that the permanent part of Government, the bureaucracy, led by men like Dr. H. C. Coombs, was going to continue to dictate policy as it had in the past. The result was what can only be described as twenty-three years of Liberal-Socialism.

Fabian Socialist Gough Whitlam now takes office with much of the groundwork established for further advances in policies of centralism. He and Dr. Coombs should have little difficulty in working together. The permanent Government should find the new set of politicians even more amenable to centralised planning than their predecessors. But this does not mean that there is no possibility of conflict. If the energetic Mr. Al Grassby becomes Minister for Primary Industries, it will be interesting to note what practical steps he will be permitted to take towards his declared policy of halting the drift from the rural communities.
Will those hundreds of millions of dollar credits at low interest rates be made available to the rural community? And what about present high interest rates, which contribute to inflation? Will the permanent Treasury officials keen advocates of foreign capital investments, be effectively curbed by the politicians? The amount of electoral pressure that can be maintained on these and similar issues will decide events.

As the January issue of the League's monthly, The Intelligence Survey will be making a comprehensive survey of the Federal elections, with a report on what was learned from the new type of electoral action generated by the League of Rights, we are confining ourselves at present to some general observations. As a preliminary we draw attention to the old saying that electors' do not vote Governments in; they vote them out.

Much has been said about the failure of Mr. McMahon as Prime Minister, but the Liberal-Country Party Coalition's basic problem was much more than one of leadership. The formidable R. G. Menzies was almost swept from office in 1961 by a Labor Opposition led by Mr. Arthur Calwell. The Menzies Government nearly paid the price of failing to solve the growing inflation problem by constructive policies. It had tried the same disastrous policies imposed by the Gorton and McMahon Governments. And when it dramatically switched from a restrictive credit policy to one of massive expansion, it intensified the problem of inflation, which was inherited by the Gorton and McMahon Governments.

With the current stress on personalities and the claim that the Coalition Government would have done better under Mr. John Gorton, it is essential to recall that Mr. Gorton led the Coalition to near-disaster at the 1969 Federal Elections. It should not be overlooked that Mr. Gorton and his supporters, men like Mr. D. J. Killen, all supported the disastrous financial policies imposed by the McMahon Government. The results of these policies were the basic cause of the massive electoral swing against the McMahon-Anthony Government on December 2.

One of the principal spokesmen for the McMahon Government, Federal Treasurer Mr. B. M. Snedden, and one of those seeking the leadership of the Liberal Party, was the man who kept on assuring the Australian electors that his financial "medicine" was working successfully. There is no reason to believe that if Mr. Snedden had been Prime Minister instead of Mr. McMahon, that the "medicine" would have been any more acceptable to the electors. It is only necessary to study the voting figures in Bruce, Mr. Snedden's electorate, to see that he was lucky even to survive.

We consistently warned the Liberal-Country Party Coalition that it was doomed if it persisted with finance economic policies which have taken the nation from one disaster to another. All the evidence indicated that the Government was defeated six months ago. Not even the deathbed repentance of the 1972 budget, with Mr. Snedden eating his own words, could change the deep-seated anger of the Australian electors. Our view that the election was more of an anti-Government vote than a positive vote for the Labor Party tends to be confirmed by the voting pattern in South Australia and West Australia. The Coalition was clearly assisted by the relative unpopularity of the Labor Governments in both these States.

The McMahon Government was assisted in Queensland by the Free Hospital issue and the fact that there is in Queensland a much deeper fear of the radical members of the ALP. We are not denying that the costly gimmickry of the Whitlam campaign made a considerable appeal to the younger voters. With the support of the media Mr. Whitlam had been able to whitewash the ALP situation in Victoria, claiming that the extreme Left wing had at last been curbed. And of course he gained an enormous bonus when the Nixon Administration's sell-out on Red China and the Soviet Union, with the winding down of the war in Vietnam, ensured that it would be almost impossible to make foreign policy and defence a major Australian election issue. This left the ALP free to concentrate upon domestic finance-economic issues.

If the Coalition Government could have been saved by more "dynamic leadership", by a "better image", what of the high hopes which Country Party Leader Mr. D. Anthony and his colleagues expressed? A realistic study of the overall rural vote can bring no joy to the Country Party no matter what their public relations men say. The sudden up-turn in wool prices and improved export prospects for wheat provided the Country Party with an unearned bonus.

But the future does not look bright with the inevitable threat of electoral re-distribution reflecting the big decline in the rural community over recent years. We warned that the policies supported by the Country Party were progressively eroding its own electoral base. It may be that in Opposition the Country Party will adopt that constructive, independent role which we urged it to adopt several years back when it might have done something to modify the policies, which eventually overtook it.

We consistently predicted that the major problem, which a new Government would have to face, irrespective of the label, would be increasing inflation. This problem is already expanding at an alarming rate. Crisis must follow crisis. Each crisis will be used to attempt to drive Australia further down the totalitarian road. Mr. Whitlam and his supporters will shortly be down to hard realities, with the fever of election victory but a memory.

In the developing situation we have not the slightest doubt that the Australian League of Rights is going to be called upon more and more to provide the type of leadership and advice necessary to avert the establishment of the total centrally planned State. Unless the drive towards centralisation can be slowed down and then eventually reversed, even the ALP Members of the Commonwealth Parliament are going to find that they are but another set of public relations men attempting to justify developments over which they have no real control. Unless Mr. Whitlam can provide some quick answers to inflation and associated finance economic problems, it is difficult to visualise him seeking a confrontation with the Senate with a view to forcing a double dissolution.
The importance of the Senate was never greater, with the next Senate Elections the most critical ever held.

MR. DAVID HARCOURT WRITES AGAIN

Mr. David Harcourt, author of the smear book, Everyone Wants To Be the Fuehrer, and contributor to Mr. Gordon Barton's porno-political weekly, Nation Review, writes (November 28th) to inform us that when Angus and Robertson accepted his book for publication early in November, 1971, "Gordon Barton's involvement in the firm was minimal. Richard Walsh had nothing to do with the firm at that stage. I became an employee in July or August this year." This comment concerns our item on Mr. Harcourt in our issue of November 24th. In his letter of November 28th, Mr. Harcourt also writes: "I am deeply gratified to learn that my letters provoke 'loud gusts of laughter' in your office. So touched, in fact, that I now direct your attention to an advertisement in this week's Sydney Jewish News in which reference is made to your organisation and my book. I look forward to reading a report of the paroxysms of mirth provoked by the advertisement."

Our Sydney study of the Sydney Jewish News has not brought our attention to the advertisement mentioned by Mr. Harcourt. But some of the items forwarded are positively hilarious. An advertisement in the issue of November 16th starts with the suggestion that the League of Rights of 1972 is comparable with the Nazi Party of 1932; Then states that our old friend, Mr. Edward St. John was to speak on "Australia's Extreme Right - Disturbing Trends."
The issue of November 23rd reported that Mr. St. John had urged that Mr. McMahon "should come out with a definite statement on his party's stand on the League of Rights before December 2..." Obviously warming to his subject, Mr. St. John had "charged that the League of Rights was more dangerous than either the Nazi Party or the Ustashi because it works under a facade of respectability." Mr. 'St. John urged that pressure be applied to Mr. McMahon to denounce the League.

We are not enthusiastic admirers of Mr. McMahon but apparently he had enough sense not to take Mr. St. John's advice. An advertisement in the Melbourne Zionist press suggested that the way to get rid of the League of Rights was to get rid of the Liberal Party. Another item in the Sydney Jewish News of November 23rd reported that even the Jewish women should be mobilised to fight the League of Rights. The dear ladies would not have a clue what the League of Rights was really about. But when Mr. Isi Leibler, leading Zionist spokesman, can be reported in the Zionist press as having expressed "serious concern about the future and safety of Australian Jewry", anything is possible.
Mr. Leibler claims that "anti-Semitism" is on the upsurge.

Zionists have consistently exploited the "anti-Semitic" threat to the serious detriment of the Jewish people. Eminent Jewish expert on the Middle East, Alfred Lilienthal, is labeled "anti-Semitic" because he has warned that uncritical support for the Zionist State of Israel plays into the hands of the Communists. Moshe Menuhin, father of the famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin, has also been labeled an "anti-Semite" because of his exposure of the Zionists. Australia's first native Governor General, Sir Isaac Isaacs was bitterly attacked by Zionists like Professor Julius Stone because he refused to endorse the policies of Political Zionism.
A Mr. Norman F. Dacey, thanked by President Nixon for helping to have him elected to the Presidency in 1968, took valuable space in The New York Times to write an open letter to President Nixon, dated June 5th. 1972, explaining why he had turned against Nixon because of his pro-Zionist stand in the Middle East, a stand, which put Zionist interests ahead of American interests.

As many Australian politicians have been used by the local Zionists concerning their campaign to bring Jews out of the Soviet Union, we quote the following extract from Mr. Davey's letter: "Our government, owing $450 billion and with a huge present and future deficit hanging like an albatross around its neck has just agreed to plunge itself into debt by spending an additional $85 million dollars it does not have to finance the emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. The bitter opposition of Zionists to Senate Bill 1872 which would grant 30,000 special visas to such émigrés to enter the United States unmasks the theatrical hand-wringing over the alleged persecution of Jews in Russia, revealing it as simply a political scheme to build the population of Israel. 'If the Soviet Jews won't go to Israel', say the Zionists, 'let them rot in Russia'. If we fall for this scheme, we don't need a President - what we need is a conservator."

Instead of wasting his time writing us letters, we would suggest to Mr. Harcourt that he might make a study of why Moscow and the Political Zionists are working so closely together, using Soviet Jews as merely the raw material of their plans. But we doubt if Mr. Gordon Barton and Mr. Richard Walsh would agree to Angus and Robertson publishing such a study!

ENOCH POWELL THE "TOPS"

"Mr. Enoch Powell, 60 has been named as Britain's most popular politician in a poll, and the Daily Express said the result will be a jolt to the Conservative and the Labor Parties. - The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, December 4th.

When asked which politician had the best understanding of the problems facing the United Kingdom, British electors had no difficulty in placing Mr. Enoch Powell well ahead of all others. Mr. Powell has insisted on placing genuine British interests ahead of all other interests. He has been called a "racist" but continues to draw massive support from the British workingman as well as other sections. It is rather difficult for the smearers to call Mr. Powell an "anti-intellectual" as he is beyond doubt one of the most brilliant scholars in the United Kingdom. Australia desperately needs an Enoch Powell at present! Those who wish to gain some understanding of the depth of Mr. Powell's thinking should read his book, Freedom and Reality, $1.18 from Box 1052J, G.P.O., Melbourne, 3001.
All election comment authorised by Eric D. Butler 273 Little Collins Street, Melbourne, 3000.