THE LEAGUE OF RIGHTS ROLE IN AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

by Eric D. Butler
In an effort to bolster the image of Dr. H.V. Evatt as a great libertarian, Humphrey McQueen wrote in The Weekend Australian of October 1st and 2nd, that "Scholars have shown the Menzies Government was preparing to put tens of thousands of Australians into concentration camps once the Menzies Government's legislation concerning the proposed banning of the Communist Party had been implemented.... Fortunately most Australians followed Evatt's lead and voted against the proposal to alter the Constitution". This statement is absurd nonsense.

It was Dr. Evatt who, during the Second World War, was responsible for the internment without trial of a misguided, but loyal group of Australians of what was known as The Australia First Movement. One of the most prominent of this group, the well-known literary figure P.R. Stephenson, was a man I knew reasonably well.

Evatt, close friend of the notorious Marxist Dr. Harold Laski of the London School of Economics, tried to threaten prominent Australian Social Crediters like myself that he would have them in prison if they continued to campaign against his proposal to drastically change the Federal Constitution. Labor Senator Richard Darcy of Tasmania told Evatt that he would need much bigger prisons than those available if he were going to imprison all Social Credit leaders.
The upshot was that Evatt sought permission to address a meeting of Social Crediters in Sydney. His central theme was that while he was basically sympathetic to Social Credit financial proposals, a change in the Federal Constitution was necessary to implement them. The reaction of Social Crediters was to intensify their campaigning against Evatt's proposed constitutional changes.

No objective student of Australian history disputes that Communist influence in Australia was enormous in the immediate post war years. But Communist creation and exploitation of industrial unrest was aided by the failure of the first Menzies Government to implement its famous 1949 election promise "to put the shillings back into the pound". A major step was going to be the restoration of the consumer subsidy scheme, which had resulted in complete price stability for five years.

Dr. H.C. Coombs, claimed by Dr. Laski to have been one of his brightest students at the London School of Economics, and his fellow Fabians in the Federal bureaucracy made it clear that they were not prepared to implement the Menzies Fadden election policy. Large sections of the business community started to lose faith in the Menzies-Fadden Government, so much so that they were reluctant to support the Government's proposal to enlarge the powers of the Commonwealth to enable them to ban the Communist Party. Prominent among Australian supporters of the Federal Constitution and opposed to the Menzies proposals was the late Arthur Chresby.

There was considerable disquiet among many Liberal Party supporters who were concerned about the long-term implications of granting the Commonwealth the vast increase in powers sought. I had heated controversies with anti-Communist friends who were upset because the League of Rights opposed the Menzies proposal, stressing that the Commonwealth Government had adequate powers to deal with a Communist problem, which Menzies did not fully understand.

Menzies was basically an honest man with a most limited grasp of finance economic realities. As a result of the failure to implement his 1949 election promise, inflation escalated. Following the advice of his "experts", the credit squeeze of the early sixties resulted in a massive electoral backlash at the 1961 Federal elections.
Labor leader Arthur Calwell had campaigned on a moderate deficit budget to re-stimulate the economy. Menzies was re-elected with a slender majority of one. James Killen was the last Liberal to be elected. League supporters in the Brisbane area conducted a special phone campaign in support of Killen, which certainly played a part in his narrow victory. At the first Cabinet meeting following the election, Menzies astonished his colleagues by recommending a credit expansion policy exceeding the Calwell proposal, which he had denounced during the election. The economy started to improve. And as the League predicted, inflation continued on.

OUTFLANKING THE OPPOSITION ON RACIAL HATRED

by David Thompson
Any proposal from some sections of the Liberal Party to oppose the new racial vilification legislation has been closely scrutinised by the A.L.P. strategists. The Attorney General, Mr. Lavarch, is determined to out-manouvre the Liberals on this issue, as he successfully did on the issue of the Tasmanian homosexual legislation. Instead of blatantly and bluntly framing Commonwealth legislation to strike down the Tasmanian homosexual legislation, the A.L.P. framed sexual privacy legislation, and presented it as a "motherhood" issue. How could the Liberals publicly justify opposing "sexual privacy" especially when many senior Liberals, including Mr. Downer, were against the Tasmanian law.

It is quite clear that the new racial vilification legislation will be very carefully framed. Lessons will be learned from the previous attempt to present such legislation in 1992, which was strongly criticised, and eventually lapsed when the 1993 election was called. This was a godsend for the A.L.P., as it provided a second chance to introduce the same legislation in a different way, without it having been previously defeated.

The new bill will not be referred to as racial vilification legislation. Few know what this means, and it provides a few opportunities for the professional P.R. people to place their own propaganda "spin" on it. It is much more likely to be called "anti-hatred" legislation, as it has been in Canada, where the racial vilification legislation has been in place for some years.

Mr. Lavarch will set the agenda for the debate, in which he will attempt to place the Coalition in an impossible position. Will the Liberals be comfortable when accused of defending racial hatred if they attempt to oppose the bill? How will Mr. Downer respond in the Parliamentary bear-pit, at the mercy of a Prime Minister snidely accusing him of "protecting his mates in the League of Rights"? Every underhanded propaganda weapon will be deployed, from verbal laceration to outright dishonesty to force the unpopular racial vilification legislation through.

HEWSON'S TRUE COLOURS

Already there is deep uncertainty in the Liberal Party over the "anti-hatred" legislation. Dr. John Hewson has dropped his own verbal bombshell, by announcing that the Coalition should support the bill, even before he has seen it. Hewson's position should not come as a surprise. It was Hewson who played a key part in delivering the Opposition support to Mr. Lavarch on the Tasmanian homosexual issue, conceding that the Coalition could not oppose "sexual privacy".

This was not only moral cowardice, but intellectual cowardice; little attempt was made to break out of the A.L.P's. debate agenda, and find alternative arguments which were always available. As a result, the Liberal Party may well lose Mr. Chris Miles' seat in Tasmania, as Tasmanian Liberals are disgusted with Miles' capitulation in order to protect his Shadow Cabinet position.

It is fascinating to speculate on what course political events might have taken if John Hewson had won the 1993 election. The League was frequently criticised for a lack of confidence in Hewson, but, in retrospect, it is clear that a Hewson Government would have been a complete disaster.

EVANS PROPOSES GLOBAL TAXATION

The relentless pursuit of international power, and the establishment of an embryonic global government has not proceeded without the occasional hitch. The United Nations - prototype of global government - has long been exposed as grossly inefficient. The administration of the U.N. is so universally bad, that many western governments simply fail to pay their membership fees at all.

With the debts mounting, and the gross inefficiencies blatantly continuing, United Nations budgets are increasingly impossible to observe. But Senator Gareth Evans, with an eye to Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali's job, has proposed a solution to the U.N. members, which he addressed last week: an international tax. Evans suggested that as well as demanding that member nations pay their financial contributions; the United Nations could place a tax on air travel, or foreign exchange currency transactions.

It is calculated that a $US 10 surcharge on each international air ticket would raise $13 billion per year. If combined with new global regulations taxing currency transactions, such new taxes would provide such massive revenues that the United Nations could quickly become independent from financial constraints of member nations, and stringent budgetary restrictions. The potential for interfering in the affairs of sovereign nations would escalate enormously.

A gradual extension of U.N. taxing powers, in the same ways that Commonwealth taxation powers have been extended in Australia, can produce a new global state, upon which no nation could impose restrictions. The potential for tyranny and evil is demonic.

DAME JOAN RUFFLES FEATHERS

Dame Joan Sutherland's comments to a gathering of monarchists have drawn the predictable condemnation from the politically correct. The main issues, which appear to have infuriated her critics, are her alleged "racist" attitudes, and a regret that Australians have been denied the opportunity to describe themselves as "British". The dishonest suggestion that it is "racism" that motivates those who wish to retain the Crown simply illustrates the corrupting influence of the policy of multiculturalism.

The Australian cultural heritage is not identified with China or India - it is identified primarily with Britain, and the clear majority of Australians still identify with our British kinfolk. The truth is that the vast majority of Australians over the age of 45 were accustomed to being described as "British". The reason for this is that they were British.

The concept of Australian citizenship was not formalised until 1949, and as such is still a relatively recent change. Thus, the legal and constitutional reality was that until 1949 Australians were British subjects. This quite fundamental matter of identity cannot be shrugged off like an old shirt and to pillory Dame Joan because she does not enjoy being deprived of her identity is the height of intolerance.
In fact, even today there is something in the vicinity of one million British subjects who have never applied for Australian citizenship, who are registered on the electoral roll, and fully entitled to vote. Many are not even aware that they are not Australian citizens, because at one time, being Australian was synonymous with being a British subject, under the Crown.

Dame Joan simply typifies the best type of Australian, in touch with her heritage, and anxious to preserve it, and artlessly prepared to speak her mind on the matter of a multicultural dogma that insists that Chinese or Indian aliens are more readily accorded "Australian" status than our British kin. She should be congratulated rather than condemned.

CAN'T BAN HATRED BY PASSING A LAW

from The Australian, 4/10
Like Colin Yoong (Letters, 28/9) I belong to an ethnic minority and I even speak English with a noticeable foreign accent. I am also an easy target for racial vilification and have felt the barbs of vicious tongues in the past. Yet I am an implacable opponent of the proposed Racial Vilification laws. "I know that the proponents of these laws are not stupid and it makes their pretended ignorance of the real issues even more repugnant to me.

This debate has nothing whatever to do with the Holocaust, with Nazi Germany, with burning synagogues, with attacks on Chinese restaurants, with racist assaults, with discrimination against Aborigines, with Bosnia, with human rights. "Dredging up these subjects and chanting them like a mantra at the first sign of opposition is a silly, emotional response that demeans the whole debate.

"This is an issue of free speech and nothing else. We are dealing here with the right of a citizen to say unpopular and perhaps unpleasant things in public. Things, which may offend some and which others, may find hurtful (and I have been offended and hurt many times). "But what use is free speech, and how free is it anyway, if it applies only to that which we find pleasant and acceptable? To be truly free it must apply equally to all views, however eccentric, offensive, nasty and spiteful they may be. This is the price of real free speech. It's a price I'm well prepared to pay.

"The proposed laws, based on the preposterous idea that we can ban hatred with the simple stroke of a pen, are stupid, dangerous and un-Australian. Those in the ethnic communities (mine included) who support them should recognise the damage they are about to cause this country and rethink their position before it's too late.

"Finally, what I find most offensive in all of this is the implication that the average Australian does not have enough integrity and common sense to reject the poisonous nonsense peddled by the hate mongers against us and that the law must intervene to stop our society disintegrating into racist chaos. I have much greater faith than this in the basic decency of my fellow citizens." (Joe Moldovan, Bondi Junction, N.S.W.)

LOCAL DEMOCRACY UNDER SEIGE

from The Age (Melbourne), 10/10
One can only feel sympathy for Councillor Tony Cox (Letters, 6/10) and the people of Mansfield because the frustration he is currently feeling about the processes of the Local Government Board will be greatly magnified when Government appointed commissioners are put in place to control the new mega-council in his area.

"Councillor Cox and others may be familiar with the Liberal Party's policy and local government reform which said it ought to be community driven. Clearly the ordinary people of Mansfield, and even a very large majority of them, are not seen as relevant. Presumably, 'community' means something to this Government (of Victoria - O. T) and may relate more to the hidden powers behind the executive.

We in South Melbourne faced a similar process. Forty-six percent of South Melbourne voters (about 52% of voters turn out for compulsory council elections) turned out for a voluntary poll on amalgamation and 94% said 'No!'. This community made its views clear but was ignored by the Government, or 'officially' by the Local Government Board chaired by a Liberal Party candidate for pre-selection for the seat of Kooyong (she was unsuccessful - O. T).

"But the people of Mansfield are yet to feel the powerlessness of being denied a meaningful say in their future. Let me assure them that Government appointed commissioners will, if the City of Port Phillip is anything to go by, take away all vestiges of community participation. "But they won't be on their own. Practically every community throughout Victoria will be without democratically elected local government before the year is out. "Is this lack of participatory democracy the new culture in Victoria that Mr. Kennett is so proud of achieving in his first two years?" (Frank O'Connor, Albert Park)

BEING OVER PROTECTIVE OF INDONESIA

from The Australian, 10/10
We will not quibble about the numbers killed in 'the appalling blood-letting of the mid 60s in Indonesia' as suggested by foreign editor Greg Sheridan (Progress Weighs Against Abuse In Balanced View of Indonesia, The Australian, 5/10). "We won't quibble about the numbers killed in East Timor either. However many died, let us agree that it was far too many. "Let us not concern ourselves with demographics either. Let us consider that in Portuguese Timor there was only one small orphanage in Dili in 1975. Today there are many thousands of orphans being cared for in hundreds of orphanages throughout East Timor. "In order to produce one orphan in Timorean society the entire kinship chain must be eliminated. Where have all these children's relatives gone?

"The Amnesty International Report does not object to Australia's 'quiet diplomacy' as long as it is effective. What is happening in East Timor today is unforgivable. Without exception, every Timorese bears the brunt of intimidation and repression. "Poverty, malnutrition, malaria and tuberculosis are widespread, all of which are so preventable. A new hospital funded and run by Catholic sisters, with state-of-the-art equipment donated by the Australian Embassy, hardly functions because permission has not been granted for doctors, nurses, and a surgeon to work there. Meanwhile, many people die for lack of access to proper care.
"The need for medicines at the polyclinics run by the nuns is great. They lack stethoscopes, bandages, ear torches, equipment for sutures, medicines for malaria, tuberculosis and other fevers. "Anyone going to East Timor could help greatly by taking medical supplies and donating them to the nuns at the polyclinics.

"Mr. Sheridan appears to want to be a good friend to Indonesia. Quite right too, but he is going about it in a very strange way. Indonesians are intelligent, frank and brave, they will not thank anyone for criticising Amnesty International when it stands up to the regime that denies their basic human rights. They know that progress means nothing without freedom; they fought the Dutch for theirs. "Criticising anyone and everyone who finds fault with Indonesia suggests a defence of Indonesia's present record which is inappropriate, when so many good people's lives are at risk." (Shirley Shackleton, Melbourne)