BUDGET BRIBERY

"In reply to some Labor jeers, Mr. McMahon replied: "Wait a moment and you will find all your propaganda for the next elections is ruined." - The Advertiser, (Adelaide) August 13.

The Federal Treasurer's comment was one of the most revealing statements he made during his budget speech. It provided further confirmation of the truth that elections are increasingly becoming cynical contests in attempting to bribe the electors with their own money. But a price must be paid for every new step towards more welfare under the Welfare State - continuing inflation is inevitable. It is hard to believe that the Federal Treasurer who, presenting the "good-time" budget last week, is the same man who only last month was speaking on the dangers of inflation. His White Paper on the state of the economy was precise in warning on the "elements of danger". But in Mr. McMahon's budget speech these dangers became nothing more than "clear possibilities."

Under present financial policies the only alternative to inflation is deflation by slowing down the rate of new credit creation. Prime Minister Gorton is well aware that the last time the credit screw was turned down, serious unemployment started to develop. The political result of this was that at the 1961 Federal elections the Menzies Government was nearly swept from office, which it retained with a majority of one. Prime Minister Menzies had during the election campaign scathingly denounced the Labor Party's proposal to inject £100 million new credit through a deficit budget, but lost no time after the elections to introduce a deficit budget of £118 million. This overcame the unemployment problem but set inflation in motion once again.

Prime Minister Gorton is determined to win the elections with a programme, which inevitably must increase inflation. But having captured the power prize, he can then turn down the credit screw. What the electors feel about this will not matter. So long as the Liberal-Country Party coalition attempts to operate the credit mechanism within the framework of a financial policy which has the full endorsement of the Fabian Socialists, it must continue to move Australia as a nation progressively towards the Centralist State which it once said it opposed. There is now little to distinguish between the centralist welfare programmes of Fabian Socialist Whitlam or Liberal Socialist Gorton.

Mr. Whitlam can perhaps offer a little more electoral bribery than Mr. McMahon has offered. But basically all that he can claim is that he and his party can administer much better the programme, which he and the Government are agreed about.

There are, of course, large numbers of Liberal and Country Party supporters, and a number of MPs. from these parties, who still reject centralism irrespective of the label. These anti-centralists have little time left in which to take effective action to prevent the original character of their parties from being destroyed. Electors should lose no opportunity before the coming Federal elections to ask these people to stand up and be counted.

AUSTRALIA MEEKLY ACCEPTS THE SOVIET ADVANCE

"Australia and the Soviet Union have begun talks on Asian security, the Minister for External Affairs (Mr. Freeth) announced last night in Parliament. " - The Age, August 15.

The thinking, which has brought the cut in our defence budget, was evident in the above announcement by Mr. Freeth. Either this Government is so gullible that it is incapable of understanding simple reality, or it is deliberately appeasing the Communists in the hope of surviving in the absence of any real allies. Whatever the thinking, it is a policy of defeat bordering upon treachery.

Mr. Freeth in explanation shows that he has completely swallowed the Soviet propaganda on China as the main threat. It was less than twelve months ago that a unanimous resolution was passed in Parliament condemning the Soviet for the rape of Czechoslovakia where the Soviet has since consolidated its grip on the country. Now we are to meekly accept the same intrusion of Soviet power into our own front garden, and discuss "security" pacts when no indication whatsoever has been given by the Soviet that it has ever altered its fundamental objective of world conquest.
The designs of the Communist criminals in the Kremlin have never changed, nor will they change until replaced with a superior philosophy and uncompromising diplomacy. The Government should be asked to give just one example of good faith, retreat or compromise by the Soviet.

On what basis is any pact to be signed on agreed upon. When one party says "Treaties are like pie crusts, made to be broken, " and has a record of cynically breaking every pact she has made when it suits her designs and has never given up one inch of territory gained by similar "diplomatic aggression", it should be clear to even the most dimwitted that the Soviet will use any "pact" to advance to the Marx-Lenin objective of the world communist state.

We may well ask Mr. Freeth, and all the members of the Government parties responsible for what could be if persisted in, a shameful betrayal of not only the Asian peoples, but our own; to heed the warning of former Czechoslovak Olympic champion, Emil Zatopek, reported in The Age, August 18, that the Soviet will never give the Czechs their freedom, and the threat from China would make no difference. This is the excuse Mr. Freeth advances for negotiating a collective security pact in S.E, Asia with the Soviet.
Perhaps Mr. Zatopek has no illusions that the Marxian Leninists of both Peking and Moscow are united on the fundamental objective of establishing a Communist world state, and that the present disagreements and skirmishes reported for western consumption from Communist sources only, are for the consumption of gullible western politicians.

THE INTERNATIONAL CHESS BOARD

Eric Butler comments:

Opponents of the Nixon Administration's Anti-Ballistic Missile programme have gloatingly described the Senate's acceptance of the programme by such a small majority as "what looks like a pyrrhic victory." These opponents may be proved right. The ABM programme may never even be implemented. Studying the opposition campaign against the ABM while in Washington in May, I was struck by the masterly manner in which those masterminding the campaign had established a type of united-front between widely divergent groups. And I learned that the Communist apparatus in the U.S.A. had significantly made the ABM issue a top priority.
Had a vote been taken in May, there is little doubt the Senate would have rejected the proposal decisively. Even supporters of the ABM policy admitted this in private discussion.

They were at that time feverishly attempting to mobilise American public opinion to get the maximum grassroots pressure on to Senators. It was something that the grass-roots movement averted - but only just, by 51 votes to 49 - threaten defeat. But the harsh truth remains that in face of the continuing global strategy by the Soviet Union, nearly 50 per cent, of the American Senate voted to deprive the U.S.A. of a most moderate defence programme designed to protect the U.S.A. from a major "firststrike" by the Soviet union.
If, as the gloating critics are saying, the 49 Senate votes of opposition are a symbol of the growing rebellion by a coalition of dissent groups in the U.S.A. then it is clear that the internal situation is still deteriorating in favour of the revolutionaries.

It is this deterioration, which has contributed to the American retreat in Vietnam. The American collapse in Vietnam will have far reaching implications for Australia. Speaking in Canberra last week after his return from a briefing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian High Commissioner Dato D. Stephens, said that his Government felt that Australia was only "half-hearted" about its commitment to Malaysia and Singapore. This is the type of news the Communists like to hear.
Prime Minister Gorton has to take most of the blame for the fact that Australia is now starting to be regarded as an unreliable ally. However, it is clear that the Gorton Government is going to attempt to make defence a major issue in the general elections this year.

Early last month Minister for Defence Fairhall made a significant address to a conference of Liberal Party candidates in N.S.W. in which he stressed the very points which the Australian League of Rights has been stressing for so long. Mr. Fairhall warned of the dangers of growing Soviet influence in South-East Asia and the thrust into the Indian Ocean. He stressed that with the withdrawal of Australia's traditional allies, the United Kingdom and the U.S.A., Australian defence policy was much more important than ever.

I have no doubt that Rhodesians and South Africans will be interested in the fact that at long last Australia is beginning to realise the importance of the Indian Ocean. The Indian situation continues to worsen from the West's point of view. The Indian Prime Minister, Mrs. Gandhi has made it clear to her political opponents inside the Congress Party that she will brook no interference with her policy of increasing socialism. She has called on the Indian people for further sacrifices "if needed in the cause of achieving a socialistic pattern of society. " This has a familiar, and chilling ring to the student of totalitarianism. The Soviet must be pleased with the work of its agents in India.

There has also been good news for the Soviet strategists from the Middle East. What is described in the press as "the new policy proposals of Israel's ruling Labor Party" - that Israel should keep permanently large areas of Arab lands captured in the 1967 war - has caused wishful thinkers to express the hope that the Labor Party statement might be more of an election gimmick than a definite policy. The views expressed by the Labor Party are not new; they are merely a reflection of the long-term programme, which can be studied in the statements over the years by leading Political Zionists.
It is this expansionist policy, unchallenged by the Western Powers, which has played right into the hands of the Soviet, which continues to consolidate its influence in the whole of the Middle East.

With every day that passes the predictions of anti-Political Zionist Jews like Alfred Lilienthal in the United States, unfortunately become more obvious. Alfred Lilienthal predicted that to the extent the West took a biased attitude towards the aggressive policies of political Zionism and ignored the rights of the Arabs, it would be actively assisting the Soviet to take control of the Middle East. General political and press comment on the recent visit of President Nixon to Rumania, and the Rumanian tenth Communist Party Congress, provides further frightening evidence of the wishful and deluded thinking about Rumania.

Rumania's blooded-handed Communist dictator, President Nicolai Ceausesca, is described as "independently- minded". He is a "moderate" Communist with whom the West can do business. But the Rumanian Communist leader made it clear that he would, if necessary, fulfill all his obligations under the Warsaw Pact. He also remains on friendly terms with the Red Chinese. He is also delighted to receive economic assistance from wishful Western political leaders. And all the while he remains a hard-line dedicated Communist.

At last week's Anzus meeting in Canberra, U.S.A. Secretary of State Rogers (privately he has always been "soft" on the Vietnam stand) made clear some of the facts of life concerning coming American foreign policy in Vietnam. But I have seen no reference to the U.S.A's shifting policy on Red China.

Only a massive grass-roots opposition inside the U.S.A. can now prevent this shift continuing. Australians who doubt that a shift is seriously contemplated are ill informed. But there is now no excuse for this since Mr. Rogers on the eve of leaving Hong Kong for the Anzus meeting said that his two day visit to Hong Kong had been "extremely useful in helping the Administration's re-evaluation of its China policy.

WHAT'S BEHIND THE STUDENT RIOTS?