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THE LABOR-SOCIALIST STRATEGY FOR DESTROYING THE STATES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

"No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from self-government. No plan of centralisation has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction arid decline Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted it breaks down representative government, and overwhelms democracy. It is the one element in our institutions that sets up the pretence of having authority over everybody, and being responsible to nobody"

- - President Calvin Coolidge of the United States in 1926.  

"The Leader", Longreach,(Queensland) of July 6, 1973, carried the headline:

"REGIONAL COUNCILS WILL SUPERSEDE STATE GOVERNMENTS"

The report underneath quoted at length the comments of the Queensland Labor Party's shadow Minister for Local Government, Mr. Ted Baldwin, at the annual conference of the Western Queensland Local Government Association.

Mr. Baldwin said that the establishment of Regional Councils would result in the States being "phased out". He said that "State Governments are a luxury which Australia can no longer afford".Mr. Baldwin's statements were a frank outline of the Whitlam Government's strategy of by-passing the Federal Constitution and destroying the States by the creation of Regional Councils financially subservient to the Canberra bureaucracy. At the 1973 Premiers Conference, Prime Minister Whitlam used the Commonwealth's financial monopoly to deny the States the money they were entitled to receive, informing the Premiers quite frankly that he was withholding this money in order to use it to take over areas which were traditionally State responsibilities.

The essence of Socialism is centralisation of all power. The Communists proclaim Socialism as the first necessary step for the creation of the Communist State. As a Labor Party candidate for Parliament, Mr. Whitlam, like his colleagues, was required to sign the pledge to "support and advocate at all times the party's objective-the socialisation of industry, production, distribution and "exchange". "The Sydney Morning Herald" of July 26, 1972, quotes Mr. Whitlam as having said that "It would be intolerable if a Labor Government were to use the alibi of the Constitution to excuse failure to achieve its socialist objective- doubly intolerable because it is just not true that it need be."

Mr. Whitlam is a member of the Fabian Socialist Society, a movement which since the days of its pioneers, the Webbs, George Bernard Shaw and others, has preached that the Marxist objective of the Socialist State can best be reached along a road of gradualism. Mr. Whitlam and his fellow Fabian Socialists are well aware of how most direct assaults on the Federal Constitution-Dr. Evatt's 1944, 1946, and 1948 referenda, and Bank Nationalisation-were failures. A strategy had to be devised for by-passing the Constitution, of eventually making it appear irrelevant. "Regionalisation" is one of those concepts which has an attraction if only looked at superficially. It enables a programme of gradual centralism to be fostered under the guise of decentralisation. And it shrewdly seeks to exploit the desperate financial situation of Municipal Government, increasingly burdened with both debt and inflation. ".

It was following the defeat of Dr. Evatt's 1944 Powers Referendum that the Fabian-Socialists started to turn to regionalisation as a major strategy for by-passing the Federal Constitution and eroding the powers of the States. The great Lord Acton, famous for his axiom that all power tends to corrupt, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely, also observed that"Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigrec of ideas." The pedigree of the Whitlam Government's regionalisation strategy goes back to the days when Dr. H. C. Coombs, a long-time Fabian Socialist, a product of the notorious London School of Economics, was Director of the Commonwealth Department of Post-War Reconstruction.

In 1949, just prior to the change of Government at Canberra, when the Menzies-Fadden Government replaced the Labor Government, the Department of Post-War Reconstruction issued a publication, "Regional Planning in Australia-a history of Progress and Review of Regional Planning activities throughout the Commonwealth". These and similar publications, some never publicly circulated, provide the blue-print for current Labor-Socialist strategy, which aims at replacing Local Government with centrally-controlled Regional Governments-in reality, Departments of the Commonwealth Government - and then vesting such regional bodies with responsibilities currently belonging to the States.

One of the Whitlam Government's first steps towards implementing its regionalisation strategy, was to establish the Department of Urban and Regional Affairs. This rapidly expanding addition to the Canberra bureaucracy is staffed with over-paid bureaucrats directed by Socialist planners. Then came the first piece of major legislation to advance the, Whitlam strategy, the Commonwealth Grants Bill. Under its provisions financial grants cant be made direct to Local Government, by-passing the State Governments, whose traditional responsibility it is to act in this field. In order to qualify for such grants, Local Governments will have to combine into regional bodies, with Canberra-appointed nominees to insist that the regional bodies implement the policies laid down by the Department of Urban and Regional Affairs. These Regional Councils cannot be genuine representative bodies, but mere departmental outposts of Big Brother at Canberra.

These regional bodies have, of course, a seductive appeal about them. Central Regional Councils, for example, will be
spending agents for such large sums of money provided by Canberra, that it is inevitable that it will be argued that those on these Councils will have to be paid. This will undermine the present concept of Local Government representatives of the rate-payers giving service without the expectation of monetary reward.

Although The Australian League of Rights had warned before the 1972 Federal Elections about the Whitlam regionalisation strategy for exploiting the serious financial plight of Local Government, the Liberal-Country Party Coalition did nothing effective. Hard-pressed rate-payers, groaning under increasing rates, much of them going merely to service debt, and their Local Government representatives, were naturally attracted by what appeared to be a
genuine Labor Party policy for assisting Local Government. They saw the pleasant looking bait, but not the deadly hook it concealed. Back in 1970, when he opened the Annual Conference of the Local Government Association of New South Wales, Mr. Whitlam revealed the long-term Fabian-Socialist strategy, although masking it in classic double-talk.

He said: ". . . It is my firm conviction that the decentralisation of power will be effected in the country NOT BY SHORING UP INDEFINITELY THE EXISTING STATES, WITH THEIR IRRELEVANT AND INEFFECTUAL BOUNDARIES, but by providing local authorities with the means and incentives to freely associate one with another on the basis of shared urban and regional interests . . ." (Emphasis added.)

So far from being a supporter of decentralisation, Mr. Whitlam made it clear to his colleagues at the 1973 Labor Conference at Surfers Paradise that he had always been an "avowed centralist" and a unificationist. But for tactical reasons Mr. Whitlam blatantly claimed on September 6, 1973, at the Constitutional Convention in Sydney that he was not a centralist. He said: "Since the change of Government last December, there has been a tendency to depict the Australian Labor Party as centralist by doctrine and me personally as centralist by ambition. The truth is that the A.L.P. has moved away from centralism and I have been primarily responsible for that chang. in direction." Following this demonstration of how to call black white, Mr. Whitlam provided another example of the technique of
double-talk with his claim that his Government's policy on Local Government was not centralism, but regionalism. It is, I believe, constructive contemporary federalism. Genuine Federalism is impossible while Canberra uses its monopoly of financial policy, this being strengthened every day with increasing debt and inflation, to impose its will upon the States and Local Government.

The history of events which has provided the Whitlam Government to advance its centralist strategy is one of compromise on principles. With the loss of their taxing powers, the States were forced to depend almost exclusively on the Federal Government for most of their revenue. The use of Section 96, which allows the Federal Government to stipulate how such monies shall be spent, set a dangerous precedent never envisaged at the creation of Federation, under which the States could raise their own taxes. The Liberal-Country Party Coalition, elected in 1949 with one of its policies the strengthening of the Federal system, used Section 96 almost to triple the use of "tied grants". In this way the Commonwealth was able to intrude into a number of spheres where it had no constitutional right. And the
financial plight of Local Government progressively deteriorated.

While Commonwealth (debtedness has actually been reduced since the end of the Second World War, between
1946-47 and 1969-70 State Government debts were multiplied four and a half times, semi-government debts fourteen times and Local Government debts ten and a half times.

Continuing their long policy of compromise, the Liberal and Country Party Opposition refused to oppose the Fabian-Socialists' Commonwealth Grants Bill either in the House of Representatives or in the Senate. Members and Senators who warned of the strategy to destroy Local Government were pressured to vote for it. Some, like Mr. J. Corbett, Country Party Member from Queensland actually believes that the Socialists are promoting decentralisation! In a letter dated September 10, 1973, Mr. Corbett said that "the Opposition accepts the principle of regional development in conjunction with the States". Other Opposition Members felt that it would be "politically unpopular" to oppose the legislation.

The Socialist drive to create the centrally-planned State in Australia cannot be halted as long as there is no challenge to the clever Fabian tactic of bribing desperate taxpayers and ratepayers WITH THEIR OWN MONEY. The death bell is already tolling for Local Government and the States in Australia. The Monopoly State is in process of being
established.

No smooth double-talk can alter the realities of centralised power. The more centralized and further from the people Government becomes, the more difficult it is for electors to exercise any influence. Bureaucratic dictatorship and corruption are the inevitable result of highly centralized Government. These fundamental truths were understood by the creators of the Australian Federation, who insisted that so far from wishing to see the States destroyed, they should be added to with new States as development took place. Sir Henry Parkes, known as "The Father of Federation", was a strong supporter of Local Government, stressing that the cure for poor local administration and abuses was an enlargement of the duties and responsibilities of local authorities.

Australians who really appreciate the importance of freedom should note that Hitler's National Socialist dictatorship required the abolition of the German Monarchy, the destruction of the States, the Senate and the Constitution, and the use of centralised financial power to direct the German economy, even where its operations were left in private hands,
to serve the purposes of Hitler and his central planners. The National Socialists came to power in the wake of a disastrous inflation which ruined the German middle class, the smaller and medium-sized business organisations, generated destructive social tensions, with a desperate people convinced that only Big Government could save them from complete collapse.

There is a chilling parallel between the German road to National Socialism and the road at present being travelled by an Australia under the direction of Fabian Socialist Whitlam and his colleagues. The chief speaker at the Fabian International Bureau's Conference on March 15, 1942, made the revealing comment that ". . . there is not much difference between the basic economic techniques of Socialism and Nazism."

Australians who want to avoid the disaster of a National Socialist Australia must face the truth that they must become involved in a grass-roots movement directed against all policies to centralise any further power at Canberra, and to press for the implementation of policies which will start to decentralise power. The starting place is Municipal Government which, with all its faults, is still the healthiest tier of government, having been less polluted by party politics than its larger counterparts, and the general motive amongst Councillors and Aldermen being still one of service rather than power. Local Government must be encouraged by ratepayers to resist selling the soul of local control for a mess of economic pottage offered by Canberra.

Local Government representatives must be instructed by ratepayers to expose the real meaning of Regionalisation. If the members of Local Government really wish to preserve it, they should in turn be informing their local communities of the revolutionary significance of the Fabian-Socialist strategy. Electors must also urge their State Members of Parliament to take positive steps to resist the power-men at Canberra. The States can fight at constitutional level for Local Government autonomy.
State leaders taking the initiative to defeat the Fabian-Socialist strategy should be given every possible backing. The States are still in the position where, if they evolved a programme for ensuring that the States and Municipal Government had sufficient financial revenue, AS A RIGHT, they could spearhead a successful campaign against the centralisers. Where there is a will a way can be found.

And, finally, .the Senate, created originally as a State House of Review, a custodian of the Federal Constitution, must be restored to its original role. As Labor-Socialists are pledged to the destruction of the Senate, a feature of the drive towards the National Socialist State, electors must ensure that they and their philosophical brothers, the Communists, are put last at Senate Elections. Electors should vote only for candidates pledged to oppose all policies designed to weaken the Federal system.
It is highly desirable that the Senate be elevated to a higher plane by freeing it from the corrupting influence of party politics. The Senators should represent their States, not be rubber stamps for parties, as was demonstrated when the Senate passed the Grants Bill. A reformed Senate would be a major step towards
defeating the threat of National Socialism in Australia.

But electors must bear in mind that all this, and more, requires will and faith. Freedom is never free - it can only be preserved by vigilance and at times sacrifice. Are there enough Australians who care sufficiently to meet the challenge? If the Fabian-Socialist strategy for Australia is to be defeated, an affirmative answer must be given in the near future.

"Democracies will seek to establish a Federal system of Government. You (the Communists) must fight against this because only by complete concentration of power in a unitary system can you hope to achieve control of Germany."

- - Karl Marx addressing the German Communists, 1848

First published in The New Times March 1974....

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