MR. FRASER EMBRACES SOCIALIST ECONOMICS

Only economic illiterates or brainwashed party devotees can now deny that the desperate Mr. Fraser and his colleagues have now openly embraced the Socialist policies of John Maynard Keynes. We are reminded of another "conservative" President Richard Nixon, who in bringing down an increased deficit budget commented "We are all Keynesians now".

As documented by Mr. Eric Butler in his book. "The Fabian Socialist Contribution To The Communist Advance" ($1.00 from all League addresses" the better informed Marxists, as distinct from the rabble which flood the streets, grasped from the beginning how the financial policies of John Maynard Keynes would progressively undermine the free enterprise system by making continuing inflation inevitable. There are some simple souls who believe that Keynes was actually concerned with supporting free enterprise. They are the same type of people who shut their eyes to the fact that Keynes was a moral degenerate only because he had married.

Mr. Kenneth Davidson is the well-known columnist on economics for "The Age" Melbourne, and frequently appears on national television. Mr. Davidson is an open advocate of Keynesian economics and has been advocating their application to overcoming the present recession. Writing in "The Age" of February 10th, commented that up until August last year there had been a contrast between the policies advocated by the Fraser Government - "monetarist, deflationary" - but that "with the deficit ballooning to something between $4,000 million and $5,000 million in 1982-83 and to between $6,000 million and $7,000 million in 1983-84, on the basis on preliminary forecasts of receipts and expenditure - due in part to a number of new expenditure initiatives such as the dams programme as well as deteriorating revenue and increasing welfare expenditure as a result of the recession. Mr. Fraser has at last adopted the Keynesian fiscal policies which were used by Mr. Whitlam and advocated by Mr. Hayden and now by Mr. Hawke."
Asked on ABC TV "Nation Wide" for his reaction to the policy speeches of Mr. Fraser and Mr. Hawke, Mr. Davidson said that the Fraser Government had now adopted the type of policies he had been advocating for some time. Mr. Fraser and Treasurer John Howard engage in Orwellian double talk when they deny that Mr. Hawke's "recovery" programme is but an extension of their own programme.

Just as we correctly predicted early in the life of the first Fraser Government that it was on the road to disaster, so we predict that a Hawke Government would continue down that same road. In a relatively short time Mr. Hawke would be charged, as he now charges Mr. Fraser, with breaking his pre-election promises. Mr. Bob Hawke's "democratic socialism" does not extend to attacking the debt system, or to offering any constructive policy for reducing financial costs and interest rates. The "radical" Mr. Hawke is so wedded to financial orthodoxy that he believes overseas financial investment in Australia is essential and that for this reason it will be difficult to reduce interest rates. This is what Mr. Howard also says.

In one of his candid moments the then Mr. Robert Menzies described himself as a "practical socialist", and that Australians would accept from his Government what they would not accept from the Labor Party. In more recent times, Mr. Andrew Peacock, preparing himself to reach for the Liberal Party leadership if Malcolm Fraser goes down on March 5th, has said much the same thing.
Australians generally are still a conservative people, as witnessed by the relatively short total period Labor Governments have held office in the Federal Parliament, although the Labor Government of Andrew Fisher would be regarded as "rightwing extremist" with today's non-Labor governments.

The initial stages of any revolution are the most difficult, and if so-called conservative governments can be used for this purpose, then the momentum can be progressively increased with the threat of a more radical Labor Government. So if you don't like Mr. Fraser's contribution to the revolutionary movement then you are threatened with a return to another Gough Whitlam government. But if the desperate electorate is persuaded that perhaps Mr. Bob Hawke could possibly improve the situation, then after a dose of more "democratic socialism", the electorate might be convinced that perhaps Mr. Peacock offers the possibility of getting Australia back to that "stability" which allegedly non-Labor governments produce.
However, by this time sufficient electors should have seen through the dialectical party game and started to practise different type of politics.

A start can be made at the coming elections by recording the biggest possible vote for all Senate candidates who pledge that they refuse to permit the Senate to be used as a rubber stamp for any government.

REALISM REQUIRED FOR NATURAL DISASTER

It was most appropriate that the phony election debate cease, as a combination of long drought, searing winds, the stupidity and the acts of either sick or subversive arsonists resulted in one of the greatest natural disasters in Australian history. The stupendous financial figures give some indication of the vast destruction of national wealth - houses, furniture, personal belongings including clothing, pastures and stock. But such is the enormous credit of Australia, its productive capacity, that a realistic financial policy by the Federal Government would enable much of the destruction to be overcome in relatively short time.

Given the badly depressed state of the building industry, if adequate finance were made available builders could build over a thousand homes in a very short time. We applaud the views expressed by spokesmen for the Senate Integrity teams, who challenge both Mr. Fraser and Mr. Hawke to treat Australian refugees from the bush fires as generously as Vietnamese coming into the country are treated. There is growing resentment as Australians see Vietnamese driving around in late model cars, well dressed, and obtaining homes on terms denied to Australians.

Integrity spokesmen are calling for a complete moratorium on all rural debt until the drought breaks and fire losses are overcome. They point out that while the Federal Government is donating $600,000, the same government has made hundreds of thousands of dollars available in the form of foreign aid to Communist and pro-Communist governments. "What we need is some of this foreign aid right here in Australia for our own desperate people. A mere $10 million would enable all fire victims to be reasonably re-housed," they are stressing. Some $4 to $6 million has been since promised by Mr. Fraser, but this is to go to State Governments.

If the fire disaster has done nothing else, it has provided encouraging evidence that the great majority of those Anglo-Saxon-Celtic people whom the Grassby's have smeared, are basically decent, prepared to make every effort to help their fellows in a disaster. Young men, many of them married with families, who lost their lives as volunteers in the unique Australian fire fighting services have demonstrated that type of service to their fellows, which should put most politicians to shame.
Television has at least shown all Australians that those who have fought, suffered and in many cases, lost all their material possessions, are capable of great courage and quiet dignity.

While it is right and proper that individual Australians should have the opportunity to demonstrate their deep compassion for their fellows with a flood of every kind of assistance, a financial policy by the government would make the task of adequate reconstruction quickly possible. If the drought and fires do direct attention to some realities, then out of destruction may come a much quicker regeneration process for Australia.

BRIEF COMMENTS

The former Rhodesia continues to slide more rapidly into chaos. Wholesale killings are now commonplace. And what is the reaction of Prime Minister Fraser? In his election policy speech he recorded as one of his achievements the "independence" of Zimbabwe, but not one word of criticism from the Prime Minister about the brutal attitude of Nigeria towards other Africans. Not even Mr. Bob Hawke could be more sickeningly hypocritical on African affairs.

The Accord, the name given to Labor's new Prices/Incomes pact with the unions has been leaked to and by the Prime Minister. It seems that in the few remaining days of campaigning the Liberals will wham the electorate with the "horror" of it all. Can Malcolm Fraser pull the Hawke lead back in time? Not much chance, if the Western Australian Liberal loss is any guide. Hawke has now emerged as the "Union Man" (he always was); and this is what he should NOT be seen to be, but it's late days now; probably too late to cause Mr. Hawke much worry. We predict now that Mr. Hawke's "Accord" will be a flop!

Mr. Des Keegan, in The Australian (Feb. 21) says - "Emigration to Queensland looks like the only escape from the dead hand of socialism". David Potts, The Australian's Economic editor (Feb 21) says - "Now that the unions have so firmly identified themselves with Labor in general and Mr. Hawke in particular, the thought of a Prime Minister Hawke being run over by a bus, or the coalition being returned, is quite sobering."

The National Times (Feb 20-26) carries a featured article on Senator Gareth Evans by Craig McGregor. Senator Evans will be Federal Attorney General in the event of the election of a Hawke Labor Government on March 5th. He is a protégé of ex-Senator Lionel Murphy (now a High Court Judge) and we can and must expect the same type of legislative thrusts from him. Senator Evans has his visions and is determined to impose them on Australia, come hell or high water. In this sense his intentions are totalitarian, and dangerous. Some of his intended legislation could spark a Constitutional crisis in the implementation thereof. He thinks he is the saviour to raise the Australian political machinery way above political and constitutional breakdowns. We can foresee the opposite. Now is the time to prepare the electorate for the Constitutional shocks and shudders, which almost certainly lie ahead.

State Aid Nonsense
The following -letter appeared in "The Australian", (Feb 21st) over the name of an "Arthur T. Scurr", of Mt. Gravatt, Qld.
"My four children have used the State school system entirely; the older ones, right through to university or C.A.E. level. My wife and I are generally happy with the instruction received and the outcomes for the children. "We therefore owe a debt of gratitude to the taxpayers who have paid for every hour, month and year of the massive instruction our children have had. "My brother and his wife took a more independent course. Two of their children attend a private school and on top of their normal taxes to the Federal Government they pay an additional $2,400 a year for the schooling. "This does not include uniforms and does not include capital contributions, like the $600,000 (six hundred thousand dollars) the school has raised from private and company donations. "We would be churlish if we did not also thank my brother and all other parents who pay to send their children to private schools, for subsidising the education of our children at State schools. "It is annoying to read nonsense about government subsidies to private schools when the exact opposite is true. "If there is any subsidy, it is that the parents of children at private schools subsidise all the other parents in Australia and continue to pay, their normal taxes. They receive no more deduction for education expense than State school parents do. "The critics cannot be so dense that they believe their own argument. There must be another reason for all the nonsense.
"I believe it is simply part of a campaign to ensure that education in Australia is, by degrees, broken away from its roots and socialised into one uniform State system. "This would cost 76 percent (76%) more of taxpayers, would remove the stimulus of alternative ideas and initiatives and set up the preconditions for the future dissemination of a uniform, dull, and probably leftist ideology."