EXPLOITING INDUSTRIAL UNREST FOR POLITICAL GAINS

The Marxists are not the only ones who seek to exploit political unrest for political gain. The Fraser Government is at present cynically considering the possibility of an early Federal Election in an attempt to capitalise on the widespread public resentment of an increasing number of strikes and associated industrial action. Support for this view was offered last week by the Government's call to Trade Union leaders to meet with them to discuss what might be done about the worsening industrial situation.
Unless Mr. Tony Street and his colleagues are even more unrealistic about industrial unrest than we think they are; what purpose - unless it is a political purpose - could possibly be achieved by the meeting with Mr. Bob Hawke of the ACTU last week?

It is not often that we find ourselves in agreement with Mr. Hawke, but he was right when he said that the conference last week was futile, that the Government "have ignored the facts of why the disputes have arisen and wanted us to please tell everyone to be good boys." Mr. Hawke was also right when he said that the Government has tried to use the Arbitration Commission to reduce the purchasing power of the wage earner by demanding that wages not be increased while the cost of living continues to rise.
Mr. Hawke said, "Inevitably, in a free society, that is going to produce a reaction and that is what is happening."

While we are aware of the Communist domination in many key industries, and have over many years exposed the subversive role of the Communists in fostering and exploiting strikes, inflation has provided the Marxists with the ideal situation in which they can unite large numbers of wage earners who are not Communists. Under present financial policies, which generate continuing high inflation, all attempts at "strong Government" to deal with the EFFECTS of inflation, only lead towards an open revolutionary situation which the Marxists anticipate and welcome. The future of what is left of stable, civilised nations now depends upon what is done about the inflation issue. Inflation was a major factor, which destroyed the Roman Civilisation.

It is now sixty years since the British genius C.H. Douglas demonstrated with the precision of an engineer and mathematician how debt finance makes inflation inevitable, and put forward a constructive policy for making it possible to operate the free-enterprise system without inflation - in fact with a falling price level reflecting that technology results in a lower real cost of production per unit of production. Part of Douglas's policy was adopted, without any reference to the author, in Australia and every other English-speaking nation during the Second World War. New financial credits, which had to be created to finance the war, were applied to stabilising or lowering the prices of basic items in the economy - primarily food - with the result that wages remained stable and there was no inflation.
In the 1949 Federal Elections the Liberal-Country Party Coalition promised to restore the system of consumer discounts as a major part of their policy of "putting the shillings back into the pound." Fabian Socialist, Dr.Coombs, top financial "expert" at the time, strongly resisted the implementation of the promised policy. For years the policy continued to be published in the Federal Country Party's objectives, but under the leadership of Anthony and Sinclair, the discount policy was quietly dropped. Premier J. Bjelke-Petersen rejuvenated the policy in his "Petersen Plan", only to have it rubbished by the Federal Coalition Party and the Treasury "experts".

Even if Mr. Fraser were to win an early election on the industrial situation - convincing the electors that he could in another term of office solve what he has failed to solve in his first two terms - his policies would only take Australia more quickly towards complete industrial anarchy. There is now no way out of the deepening crisis except by changing the basic policies, which have produced it.

BRIEF COMMENTS

On Thursday of last week, July 5th, the Victorian Annual Congress of the Returned Servicemen's' League unanimously carried a resolution asking the Federal Government to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. The attendance at the Congress was the biggest in years and the resolution on Zimbabwe-Rhodesia came from the floor. There was no mention whatever of this significant resolution, one which reflects the views of those Australians who have risked their lives to defend Australia.

Federal Treasurer John Howard continues like a cracked record to talk about "responsible economy" management in spite of the fact that his projections on the Federal deficit continue to be shown as completely unreliable. At the end of June the Howard deficit was $640 million in excess of predictions, taking the Federal deficit to $3,453. In a statement late last month, Mr. Howard and the Minister for Finance, Mr. Robinson, blamed tax avoidance as a contributing factor. But they had to concede that company tax was down $186 million on estimates (so much for that much published economic up trend!) and that expenditure was greater than anticipated. One significant item is an increase in interest on the public debt, by $64 million. In presenting the Federal Budget next month, Mr. Howard will again produce another set of figures, which will prove just as unreliable as those presented in the past. The first essential for an improvement in Australia's finance economic situation is a major reduction in total taxation.

Writing in "The Age", Melbourne of July 7th, Dr. Frank Knopfelmacher who is on record as expressing the opinion that Australia should be de-Anglicised, now expresses the view that the Anglo-Saxon character of Australia can be preserved while at the same time permitting the influx of large numbers of Indo-Chinese refugees. Dr. Knopfelmacher is concerned that public opinion polls on the refugee issue mean, "Benito Mussolini, the founder of Fascism, was a more enlightened man than most of us." Like many others who support a flood of Indo-Chinese refugees, Dr. Knopfelmacher talks of "honor". This term has rarely been applied in referring to the Rhodesians, who fought and died with Australians in Two World Wars. And white Rhodesians have the greatest difficulty in gaining entry to Australia. Anyone who knows Indonesia might well ask why a country with considerable scope for taking refugees, has shown a marked lack of enthusiasm about taking those from Vietnam. One of the major factors for resistance to a large-scale intake of these refugees is that, although fellow Asians, they are predominantly of Chinese background. And the Indonesians recall that, in their opinion, far too many of their local Chinese were Peking oriented in the abortive Communist coup of 1965. As Prime Minister Lee of Singapore, himself of Chinese background, has warned, the Communist Government of Hanoi is deliberately using refugees to wage a new type of warfare against their South East Asian neighbours. There are more realistic answers to the refugee question than bringing large numbers into Australia.

Mr. Al Grassby, the overpaid Community Relations Commissioner, showed his real colours at the weekend with his insulting attack upon the Anglo-Saxon people of Australia. Mr. Grassby was speaking at the National Conference of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia in Sydney last weekend. According to the Grassby thesis, the Anglo-Saxons are merely one of many ethnic groups in a multiracial and multicultural society. With a twisted form of dialectics Mr. Grassby charged that the "blue rinse ladies" of Toorak and similar suburbs are practising "a form of ethnic aggression" because they "are often passionately in touch with their own traditions and then assume that every Australian should have them."
One of the features of Anglo-Saxon culture has been good-natured tolerance and a sense of fair play. But unless the Anglo-Saxon majority in Australia unites in defence of what it has made of Australia, it will become, like the Anglo-Saxon majority in the United States, dispossessed of what it has built up. The Grassby's of this world have a vested interest in trying to force people of different backgrounds into a multicultural society. There is inevitable friction. This then provides the excuse to have well paid do gooders trying to mind other people's business instead of minding their own. Because one is properly proud of one's own traditions does not mean that one automatically dislikes others of a different background. The Japanese do not have the equivalent of Mr. Grassby because they have had the good sense to maintain a homogeneous people and a dominant culture.
(Essential reading at present is the great classic, "The Dispossessed Majority", $8 posted.)