COUNTRY PARTY LEADER ATTACKS THE LEAGUE AND ELECTORS ASSOCIATION

"The Committee of Murray Electors had been constituted for the sole purpose of defeating the CP candidate for Murray. This was asserted by State CP Parliamentary Leader, Mr. Peter Ross-Edwards MLA when officially opening the Country Party conference in Shepparton yesterday". - The Shepparton News.
Mr. Ross-Edwards went on to say the Electors' Association concerned had been sponsored by "an Australian wide semi political organisation". He said the Electors' Association had been unsuccessful because of the "astuteness of Country Party Members and their loyalty to the Party". In conversation with League supporters after the opening of the conference Mr. Ross-Edwards made it clear that the "semi political organisation" he was referring to was the Australian League of Rights.

To deliberately misrepresent the objectives of the League of Rights and also the published intentions and findings of the Murray Electors' Association indicates the concern of Mr. Ross-Edwards about the future of such political activity should it develop and threaten the present party stranglehold. We trust the Murray Electors' Association will not be intimidated by such threats and empty posturing but will continue to work for the restoration of responsible parliamentary representation in their electorate. This objective was made clear in their publications issued during the by-election campaign and did not single out any individual party for attack. The objective was obviously to stick to a policy of re-establishing principles. Mr. Ross-Edwards found this difficult to understand and felt there must be some underhand motive.

When the Murray Electors' Association failed to put the Country Patty candidate at the top of its suggested voting list of preferences he felt he had unearthed the deadly and dark secret of the purpose of the Electors' Association. It was solely to destroy the chances of the County Party candidate!
To the less biased observer it would be obvious what the M.E.A. was trying to do. In the leaflet issued with its preference list is to be found "… the crucial problem facing electors in Murray is not so much which one of the…candidates represent them at Canberra but what he does when he gets there".

We would suggest Mr. Ross-Edwards ponder the meaning of those words and try to elevate his mind above an obsession with maintaining the Country Party - irrespective of how much it departs from stated principles in its platform - in office.

ERIC BUTLER'S MASSIVE PROGRAMME

As we go to press this week we have reports to hand of the National Director of the Australian League of Rights, Mr. Eric D. Butler addressing most enthusiastic British meetings in opposition to the United Kingdom joining the European Economic Community. Mr. Butler opened the British campaign after a most exhausting and successful campaign in Canada under the auspices of the Canadian League of Rights. His British Campaign is under the auspices of The British League of Rights, now directed by Mr. Don Martin, formerly of Queensland.
Mr. Butler is telling British audiences that the continuing expansion of International Communism demands a regenerated strong British Commonwealth.

After a short programme in Rhodesia and South Africa Mr. Butler will speak in Perth, Western Australia, on Thursday, May 20, and in Adelaide on Friday, May 21. Those attending these meetings will have the opportunity of hearing Mr. Butler give first hand reports on the expanding world-wide crisis - the current American situation as the retreat from Vietnam gathers momentum, what is happening in Pierre Elliott Trudeau's Canada, still living in the shadow of the Quebec terror, and the coming decisive battle in the United Kingdom on the Common Market issue.

Mr. Butler will be bringing an on-the-spot assessment of the Northern Ireland crisis. He speaks in Belfast next week. No one should miss an opportunity of hearing the man recently described in North America as "the most dedicated and able campaigner for freedom in the Free World ".

Mr. Butler and Mrs. Butler will be the guests of honour at the Queensland State Dinner in Toowoomba on May 28. On Saturday, May 29, he will present a Paper, 'From The Ground Up' at the Queensland Northern N.S.W. Annual Seminar. He will then conduct an intensive Queensland campaign.

A CABINET MINISTER PLEADS FOR LOWER INTEREST RATES

"if the board obtained lower interest rates by guarantee, the cost of building would be lower and a greater benefit to woolgrowers". Minister for Primary Industry, Ian Sinclair speaking in Parliament. The Sun, April 29.

If it were not for the words "cost of building" it would almost appear that Mr. Sinclair was appealing for a general lower interest rate for woolgrowers. But not so. Mr. Sinclair was referring to another burden of expense to be imposed upon the taxpayer by the incursion of the Government into activities in which it should not interfere; the erection of wool selling centres. In effect another dose of socialism from the Government, supposedly to help the woolgrowers, but which will not go to the root of their problem at all.

The Government is feverishly running around in circles dreaming up gimmicks while the industry sinks lower and lower due to the inflationary financial policies of the Federal Treasury. However, an important point is raised by Mr. Sinclair's argument in favour of lower interest rates on the money loaned to build the wool-growing centers. Why cannot the same argument be applied to existing debts of rural industry, and the community generally?

Prefacing the above remarks, Mr. Sinclair said, "In this regard an important component of costs is the interest which would have to be paid on borrowing". This statement is in direct contradiction to a recent statement of the Prime Minister who said, "The Reserve Bank would shudder at the thought of reducing the interest rate".

An ABC news broadcast last weekend that we cannot find reported in any of the press quoted Mr. Remington. Chairman of the Bank Officers' Association as saying high interest rates were having a crippling effect on the community. He estimated that 20 percent of the income of many people went in payment of interest on a variety of outlay. To put it mildly, this is extortion of a kind, which any stand-over gangster would reckon as a wonderful return for his thuggery. What do you call it when your own elected Government initiates financial policies through its own treasury and Reserve Bank, which leads to the same result?
No wonder the suicide rate is climbing steeply while elsewhere revolutionaries cry for revolt and anarchy.

Mr. Sinclair's demand for lower interest rates in this one matter is a clear indication that the same policy can bring down costs in all other sectors of the community. The fact that it has been done indicates the Government can also do it. Restructuring of the whole mountainous debt structure of the Australian community would go a long way towards resorting some confidence, relief from inflation, and sanity back into the community.

RESCUE AGED, POOR, : ARCHBISHOP'S PLEA

"The plight of Australia's poor - many of them aged - should lie heavily on the nation's conscience, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney (Dr. M. L. Loaner) said yesterday. The Age, April 27
The Archbishop was quoted as saying. "If Australia is to be classed as one of the more advanced nations in the world, some very serious thought should be given to the comfort and security of the aged".

We can assure the Archbishop "some very serious thought" has been given to this matter and is receiving increasing attention from a most responsible section of the community with very little assistance from moral and Church leaders in the community.

When it is realised that the final solution to the problem engages a challenge to the most powerful and entrenched forces amongst those controlling power policies, reluctance to pursue the alternatives becomes evident. However, to examine the problem once more. The problem of poverty amongst the aged and the poor is completely unnecessary. It is a manifestation of unreality. The erection of what is false, in place of what is true.

The basis of poverty exists in the breakdown between means and ends. The means - production of sufficient goods and services, and their distribution to feed, clothe, and house the populace. The most efficient system devised to this end is the free enterprise system as distinct from monopoly capitalism or State capitalism. It allows freedom of choice and an increasing standard of service where genuine choice prevails. Distribution of the production of goods and services is facilitated through financial policy.

The end - to ensure the security and freedom from fear of the populace, thus leading to a fuller life. "I came that ye may have life, and have it in greater abundance".

The physical reality is that both objectives - sufficient production, the resultant security and freedom - are obtainable. The breakdown is in the distributory mechanism - financial policy. The producers of Australia are crying aloud for markets and customers. The customers are thwarted by unrealistic and false financial policies. It is suggested in all sincerity that the Archbishop - concerned with the welfare of his flock should reflect upon Christ's attitude towards the moneychangers of his day, and the controllers of financial policy today.
In Christ's day controllers of the changing of money obtained great power from falsifying the relation between financial returns for goods supplied. Our modern financial experts and their apologists, the politicians, do exactly the same.

A fifty-cent rise in the pension becomes a magnanimous gift. The destruction of a lifetime of work to maintain a property or business, through the growth of debt-finance, inflation, eroded savings, extortionate interest rates, finalised by confiscation through probate is presented as "sound finance'.

The poor may always be with us, but under present policies Archbishop Loaner can be assured their numbers will increase dramatically. If there is any real desire to seek a genuine alternative, no better start can be made than reading the publication by the Church of Scotland, The Christian Doctrine of Wealth.

THE ARMED SERVICES AND CIVILIAN CONTROL

"May I add to Major Young's very sound summary of the difficulties which beset the Army at the hands of the civilian-controlled Defence Department?" - Letter from Maj. Gen. (ret.) R.N.L. Hopkins to The Bulletin, April 17.

Major General Hopkins wrote of his concern about plans by the Defence Department to unify the three services, Army, Navy and Airforce. He pointed to a dangerous development envisaged. "Partly to further these theories it is planned to combine the tertiary education of all Service colleges in a three-year degree course at one central establishment". General Hopkins then pointed to the results, which it is only too easy to envisage as a result of such education. "And the difficulties will be increased after a three-year exposure to University-style living with the accent on learning and a neglect of character-building'.

The bureaucratic mind has a mania for centralism. Ostensibly in the name of efficiency, but more realistically in the cause of dominant control and an antagonism for diversification. Recent history records the destructive effect of the policies initiated by the ineffectual Robert McNamara, when Secretary of Defence in the U.S.A. The subsequent weakening of the American armed forces both from the point of view of weaponry and morale is now reaping a harvest where it is confidently predicted that the USSR is America's superior in many branches of the services.

Recent history in Australia records the conflict caused over so-called bastardisation at Duntroon, which was initiated by a civilian lecturer recruited from the University under a new arrangement where civilian lecturers are used for some subjects at Duntroon.

Last year there was an ABC documentary, which examined the breakdown in morale and discipline amongst Naval Cadets who went from Jervis Bay to Sydney University for some of their education. Exposure to the easy life and permissive behaviour was causing havoc with discipline and morale and caused subsequent trouble at Jervis Bay.

The services are the last bastion of defence in moments of national crisis. If white-anted from within their effectiveness will be weakened or destroyed. We have no doubt there are those both within the Defence bureaucracy and the Universities who understand this only too well and would like to cultivate such decline. Patriots should resist such a move with the greatest vigor.