THE QUEENSLAND STATE ELECTION

At the time of going to press we do not know whether or not the Queensland Premier will be able to govern without a coalition with what is left of the Queensland Liberals. We do not intend to make long comment on the matter here and now, as we expect the Queensland State Director, as the man on the spot, to file a comprehensive report with us shortly. We are encouraged to believe that Premier Bjelke-Petersen fully understands the importance of the whole Constitutional question, and is not talking idly when he is reported as saying: "(Hawke) has nailed the lid on his own political coffin".... "Queensland is going to be the launching pad to unseat Mr. Hawke and his associates in Canberra just as we annihilated the Labor Party here". (The Sun, Melbourne, October 24th).

Quite significantly, The Age (Melbourne), known in Victoria as "the Spencer Street Soviet", because of its consistently Left-wing political promotions, had this to say: "Mr. Bjelke-Petersen lost no time in using his success at the polls as pretext to make extravagant comments about its national implications. He described the result as the first nail in Mr. Hawke's coffin. Mr. Bjelke-Petersen was understandably excited about his success at the weekend, but to suggest that the result is a setback for Mr. Hawke is nonsense. The Queensland election was just that, a State poll. In no way could it be regarded as a test of standing of Mr. Hawke and his Government...."

The Age (Melbourne) is writing piffle yet again. We know that the "Constitutional" message is being received by Queenslanders loud and clear.

WARNING FROM OUTSTANDING AUSTRALIAN

The former Victorian Supreme Court judge and Australian diplomatic representative Sir Reginald Sholl, in a letter to The Australian (19/10/83) issued a most significant warning that should be noted by all Australians;
"The letter from Mr. B. Ruxton, State President of the RSL in Victoria, pointing out the new "respectability" of communism brought back to my recollection what I was told by Cecil Sharpley whose defection from the Communist Party and whose disclosures in the Melbourne Herald led to the Royal Commission on Communism in Victoria, conducted by the late Sir Charles Lowe.
When I was counsel assisting Sir Charles in 1949 I interviewed Sharpley, who stated that the aims of the Communist Party in Australia were to take over the country through control. of the trade unions in the fields, primarily, of transport and power, as well as by obtaining control of education and undermining defence forces, police and intelligence organisations. This aim, he said, was expected to be achieved within 30 years, but his defection would set it back by 10 to 20 years. Australians, he said, would wake up one morning to find themselves without the sources of transport and power, and so of food, and would have to submit to a communist takeover in order to live.
In order to understand how right he was (except as to time) 34 years ago and what has taken place in Australia since that date, one has only to refer to the Communist Manifesto, which is still the fundamental bible of Marxism throughout the world. The socialism now so beloved of many Australians it condemns as "bourgeois socialism" which would be destroyed as merely "desirous of redressing social grievance in order to ensure the continued existence of bourgeois society".
When one observes the growing power of the now so-called "Socialist Left" in the trade unions, its keen support of any movement calculated to weaken the defence, the resources and the institutions of what they despise as a capitalist society in a capitalist country, and when one observes the unwillingness of governments to face up to the Left's great weapon, the strike in essential industries, one can only say of our so-called right-wing socialist politicians in power, the academics and media operators who support their "bourgeois socialism" and of all the young Australians who naively think governments have unlimited money to keep them, in the words of Marlene Dietrich's song.- "When will they ever learn?"

Perhaps Sir Reginald could have added that the socialist left revolutionaries are not only in the trade unions and universities they are now in government itself, and are busily tipping over the whole constitutional system, with its traditional freedoms, in Australia.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT TAKING A STAND

One of the first preoccupations of incumbent socialist governments in Australia is to emasculate Local Councils. Between the end of the war and 1949, the two Fabian planners, Dr. 'Nugget! Coombs and Dr. Herbert Evatt, produced the first blueprints on "Regional Government" - following ideas originally devised by the British Fabian G.D.H. Cole. Quite often, non-socialist governments have fallen for the same "three card trick". Tom Uren, with his Department of Urban and Regional Development in the Whitlam era; continued where Coombs and Evatt left off.

In New South Wales, the ball was set in motion by Country Party leader Sir Charles Cutler, and continued by the Wran Government. The Boundaries Commission, an arrogant departmental bully in New South Wales, became widely known and feared by Councils throughout the State, as it told them they would amalgamate "whether they liked it or not". However, as the pressure increased under the Wran Labor Government, so did the resistance. It has now produced a backlash that has set Mr. Wran back on his heels.

The Australian (19/10/83) reported: "Councils warned the NSW Government yesterday to take them seriously or face the consequences at the polls. A special joint conference of the NSW Local Government and Shires Associations was told "the political party that does the right thing gets our support at the next State election".

Sydney's Lord Mayor, Alderman Doug Sutherland, said relations between councils and the State Government had reached a "Mexican stand-off"... The authorities have asked Parliament to restore a separate rate department of Local Government, to declare Crown land and industrial enterprises rateable ... and to restore proper constitutional recognition ... A Sydney city councillor, Alderman Jeremy Bingham, said: "As long as the State Government has local power to override us and political power to ignore us, it will. Traditionally, in this State, the Government has found it an electoral advantage to kick the council. We have to show the State Government that its treatment of local government has electoral consequences..."

The Cain Government in Victoria, as soon it gained office, began the pressure for council amalgamations, and increased government control. In addition, the explosive issue of Aboriginal land rights and the security of titles has been raised. The result is that Local Government in Victoria is beginning to stand up.

The Age (13/10/83), under the heading "Councils to Fight Central Loans Body" gave a hint of a new mood of determination amongst Councillors. It said: "Victoria's 211 local councils are likely to oppose a State Government move to set up a central agency to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of councils, water and sewerage authorities and some other semi-government authorities. Cabinet approved the plan on Monday, although full details have not been worked out... The agency is likely to be set up under the auspices of the Department of Management and budget and will report to Mr. Jolly ...

The move has already been criticised by local councils through their representative body, the Municipal Association of Victoria, which wants to control the borrowing service. The Association had proposed that a borrowing service for councils and non-metropolitan sewerage and water authorities should be set up under the Association's existing investment service, which has been running successfully for six months ... The move, which has not been officially announced, was criticised at the Municipal Association's annual session yesterday, which passed a motion noting the success of the Association's existing investment service and the necessity for local government to retain its own borrowing powers.

The Association's financial adviser ... believed there was "more than a whiff of danger" that if the State Government controlled borrowing for Local Government, some way would be found for it to tax those borrowings to increase revenue... It seems there is still a lingering memory amongst Victoria's Councillors of the famous "Yarra Glen Report" - one of the best Reports on Local Government Finance ever produced in Australia, in the fifties.

Local Government survival depends on getting long-term, low-interest finance without central strings. Victorian Councils could, with advantage, turn their attention to the latent powers of the State Bank of Victoria, which could, constitutionally, provide them with very low interest finance. So far, the State Bank has been misused, although it has grown remarkably in the last few years, since obtaining full trading bank powers. One of its poorest investments was in the ill-fated Queensland Graingrowers Association, now in the hands of receivers.
(The recently published "CASE FOR A QUEENSLAND STATE BANK" - by Jeremy Lee, has some useful information for Victorians as well - $3 posted).

THE 'PEACE LOVING' U.S.S.R.