ANTI-RACIST LEGISLATION A MAJOR THREAT TO FREEDOM

Mr. Terry Lane, who hosts a regular discussion programme on ABC Radio in Melbourne, in a submission to a Victorian Committee set up to advise the Victorian Attorney General on proposed "anti-racist" legislation, argued that such legislation would lead to the suppression of public debate, instancing his own experiences on the subject of the Middle East. Lane says, "I have publicly declared that I will never again discuss anything to do with Israel or Palestine on my programme because the resulting harassment and intimidation are unbearable. To add to the informal censorship which already applies to discussion of certain issues the threat of formal litigation would see whole areas of inquiry closed off."

Germany and France have legislation, which makes it a crime even to suggest that the alleged Jewish "holocaust" did not happen or has been exaggerated. British historian David Irving has been heavily fined by a German court for expressing the view of a public lecture that his researches have led him to conclude that there had been no mass gassings at Auschwitz or at any other centre in Poland. Irving bluntly states that within a few years the alleged Jewish "holocaust" will have been completely discredited.

A feature of any healthy society is freedom of discussion. As Terry Lane says, "If there is a serious case to be made that a publication will in all likelihood lead to the commission of a crime, then it can be dealt with under existing laws. Similarly there are laws against the destruction of property and trespass, which can be invoked against racist vandals who commit acts of desecration. There is certainly no reason to believe that if the present laws have failed to curb secret acts of vandalism, any new laws will be more successful. Disturbed people will paint swastikas on synagogue walls or anti-Asian slogans on station platforms regardless of the laws in force."
New "anti-racist" legislation was not necessary to have National Socialist Jack van Tongeren and his colleagues charged with violent behaviour and the destruction of property, and found guilty in a court of law.

Under the proposed legislation being introduced by Federal Attorney General Duffy, it will be a crime even to ridicule anyone because of race, colour, or national origin. The Sunday Age of July 26th quotes four well-known comedians who are worried that they could face criminal charges if they continue making jokes relating to race. Danny Katz says, "There goes my act. I'm a Jew, how can I be anti-Semitic?" Peter Moon makes the commonsense comment, "I don't think racial jokes should be banned. I think racial characteristics are funny and they do exist. People from different communities are different and comedy is a celebration of those differences."

This type of thinking is anathema to the totalitarians who are fanatics about a non-existent reality, which they term "equality". The Duffy legislation proposes that the Crimes Act 1914 will be amended to create a new crime of "racial vilification". The Racial Discrimination Act will also be changed to allow the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to handle complaints of racial vilification. Ms. Irene Moss, Race Relations Commissioner, says she believed that criminal charges would only be laid in the most serious of cases and that this would "rarely happen". Then why poison a society like Australia with such alien legislation?
We are not far removed from George Orwell's "thought police" who will attempt to ensure that, as Terry Lane has found out, certain subjects cannot be openly discussed.

There has been no public demand for the type of legislation now being introduced into Australia. Like the unwanted war crimes legislation, Zionist leaders have been the most prominent in urging "anti-racist" legislation, one of these openly stating in West Australia that it was necessary to deal with the League of Rights. In the coming debate concerning the Duffy legislation, it will be instructive to note carefully what Opposition Members of Parliament have to say. Any politician supporting any further erosion of freedom in Australia should be swept from office at the next Federal elections.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE 21st CENTURY

If the National Job Summit achieved nothing else, it did at least demonstrate that for the most part, no one has the answer to the unemployment 'problem'. Certainly not government or opposition, anyway. There are grandiose schemes for retraining, a special youth wage, job creation schemes, etc., but the central feature of the modern, technically advanced industrial economy is that human labour is progressively being made obsolete. Even amid the disastrous industrial carnage now taking place, of which unemployment is only one result, both Government and Opposition refuse to entertain a change of economic dogmas.
Senator Button, Minister for Industry, Technology & Commerce, refused to consider a "pause" in the proposed tariff reductions, although it is quite clear that the process is going to produce ever more jobless. He says, "not one new job would be created" by slowing tariff removals. But it is estimated that at least 50,000 jobs will be lost in the textile, clothing and footwear industry alone in the next two years. Button blames the job losses on industrial inefficiency, but manufacturers stress the difference in Asian and Australian wage rates, which they must face on a 'level playing field'. We effectively export our jobs by eliminating tariffs!
It may not be politically correct to do so, but no one at the Jobs Summit even mentioned immigration. It appears that of 250,000 migrants in the last three years, 170,000 remain unemployed. That is, 17% of the unemployed are new immigrants. We not only export our jobs, but import our unemployed!

GAPS IN THE RANKS
Intransigence on industrial protection at a senior political level is, however, being rapidly undermined. Last week's N.S.W. Farmers Association Conference was only narrowly dissuaded from passing a motion calling for more protection of some kind. In Queensland, the Leader of the National Party, Mr. Borbidge, told the Party's Annual Conference that the level playing field "can go to hell ... It does not exist, and it will not exist while international traders continue to shift the goal posts," he said. The Coalition is under strong pressure to oppose industrial suicide. Big gaps are appearing in the ranks, with grassroots members of both Liberal and National Parties revolting against the industrial sabotage-taking place. And the Australia First Campaign has not yet started to 'bite'.

THE FUTURE OF FULL EMPLOYMENT
While the Church was represented at the Job Summit, it is clear that it has yet to come to grips with the theological issues that underlay 'full employment' in the technological age. The bishops remain transfixed by the human agony of unemployment, with Archbishop Hollingworth saying that "work is the fundamental conveyor of dignity". But the Archbishop would surely concede that it is not 'dignity', which feeds and clothes children. In the political point-scoring game, the major players are not hearing what the unemployed are saying. Some are saying we want work", but all are saying, "we want money".
Archbishop Hollingworth is quite right when he says, "We have got to construct a vision of what this nation is going to be like in the next century." We must begin by recognising the realities before us. Human labour is almost obsolete in the production of a flood of sophisticated consumer goods. Full employment is a thing of the past, unless we insist on brutalising the human spirit by inventing pointless tasks so that he has income to partake of the fruit of the magnificent industrial machine. But does he have a right to an 'income' unless he has a 'job'? A theological question. And where will the 'income' come from, outside the employment system? A technical detail, which is easily solved.
The challenge of the next century is going to be to answer the theological question, and force the technical changes in financial policy. The Church is yet to understand the challenge.

THE ENGLISH RIOTS

BRIEF COMMENTS

While every civilised person must have deep sympathy for Mrs. Gillespie, whose two children were taken to Malaysia by their natural father, Prince Raja Bahrin Shah, this unfortunate human drama story highlights once again the problems of multiculturalism. Mrs. Gillespie was granted sole custody of the children by a Full Bench hearing of the Family Court of Australia in 1985 after she fled from Malaysia and divorced the Prince. The Prince argues that it is "God's will" that his children be brought up as Moslems and that he had every right to take them back to Malaysia. The lesson seems to be clear: major cultural and religious differences are a fact of life and should be carefully heeded.

Dr. John Hewson has displayed more evidence of a type of political immaturity with his claim that Australia's major problems started with the Whitlam Government. The election of the Whitlam Government was admittedly a major disaster for Australia, but Whitlam was followed by a Liberal-Country Party Coalition, which was in office for eight years. What Dr. Hewson does not point out is that the Whitlam Government opened the doors to internationalism, starting with a reduction in the protection of Australian industries, and much else. The Fraser Government continued with the same programme of internationalism, as have the Hawke and Keating Governments.

SPIES LIKE US

from The Sunday Age (Melbourne), July 26th
The following is a brief review of an excellent item on the proposed, quite infamous, Keating Government proposal to enact legislation to reward pimps who report suspected welfare cheats, and suspected taxation evaders. The item was written by Mr. Terry Lane, well-known Melbourne journalist in the print media, and on Melbourne radio. We are unable to reproduce the whole item: a pity - so we must be satisfied with quotations:

When a government sets citizens to spy on each other then the nation is in peril. Indeed the situation is so grave that we should not minimise it by using words such as 'dobbing' to describe it.
"The surveillance and betrayal of citizens by citizens is a characteristic of the worst tyrannies. In East Germany the dreaded Stasi could not have functioned without the assistance of sanctimonious citizens spying on their neighbours, no doubt motivated by the noble slogan: 'If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear'….
"When East German theologian, Heinz Eggert (now a politician in the United Germany) was able to examine his Stasi file he was appalled. "He found that the teachers of his children had spied on him, through them. His wife's workmates had informed on her. One of his closest friends was a Stasi informant. We have lost confidence in our politicians and businessmen. We feel betrayed by bankers and exploited by foreigners. But they are all beyond reach.
"The work shy dole cheat is an easy target. Or migrants. Or any identifiable sub-group that we can make suffer for our misery and fear.
"Let's imagine that by this method all welfare fraud is eliminated. All the cheats are in prison or the workhouse. What, exactly, will we have done for the economy? Not one job will have been created. Not one new factory will have been built nor one box of doodads manufactured and sold to the world. In the end, the nation would be divided against itself in an act of utter futility. That such a proposal should ever have been made is a sign of our desperation..."

Our Comment
We recall that C.H. Douglas observed some 70 years ago that the time would come in the lifetimes of many of the people he was addressing when the forces of Evil would appear to be in the ascendant ...Surely that time has come! Will the Opposition and Democrat Members of Parliament support this anti-Christian legislation? What about the Christian Church? Have you heard any prelates thundering from the pulpit against the Evils stemming from our Parliament? We haven't.