THE REALITIES OF THE WOOL CRISIS

by Eric D. Butler
The worst drought in recorded history has, along with a major slump in wool prices, produced a human disaster of horrendous proportions for a big section of rural Australia. The size of the disaster is so great that it strikes at the very soul of Australia. It is a far greater disaster than Cyclone Tracy, the Newcastle earthquake, or any other similar natural disaster. These disasters rightfully resulted in immediate action programmes backed by Governments. Tens of millions of dollars were readily made available.
To a great extent, the abstraction known as finance was subordinated to human needs and physical realities. The wool crisis requires the same approach, one that would have the support of the whole nation.

Rural Australia, particularly the wool industry, is even in today's urbanised Australia, deeply embedded in the Australian ethos. The first and most important question to be asked about the Australian wool industry is: Is it in the national interest, including defence, that the wool industry be preserved? That question was posed dramatically with the outbreak of the Second World War. That strange breed known as "the economic rationalists" could argue that all forms of economic activities should be determined by "market forces", and that as the overseas markets for wool had almost completely collapsed, the wool industry should go out of existence.
But, fortunately, the Australian and British Governments did not take this view. Their view was that the wool industry must be preserved and treated as a most valuable national investment for the future. Legislation was quickly passed bringing the Joint Organisation (JO) for the purchasing and storing of the Australian wool clip. Australian woolgrowers were paid what was estimated to be a reasonable profitable price for the wool, eventually building a stockpile much greater than the current one.

Today's big stockpile is described sometimes as some type of a national disaster, with some suggesting that the stock be destroyed. The attitude during the Second World War was that the stockpile was a national asset, as, of course, it was. It was sold progressively after the war. The first step necessary for the preservation of the wool industry and the infrastructure, which supports it, is emergency relief for all those suffering. Magnificent efforts are being made to provide private charity, the generous support for which indicates that large numbers of Australians believe in helping their fellow Australians when they are engulfed in the type of tragedy now destroying much of rural Australia. But much more than this is required: the Federal Government should decide that adequate national credit should be made to ensure that a national asset, and a national heritage, is not lost.

The virtues of wool need so extolling. But what an incredible situation when large numbers of Australians, living in the biggest wool producing country in the world, cannot afford to buy all the woollen products they would if it were not for financial considerations. Large numbers of Australian women say that it is no longer worthwhile attempting to knit woollen garments. A National Government genuinely concerned about the future of the wool industry could take steps to ensure that woollen products reached the consumer at lower prices. Those who ask how could such a policy be implemented are ignorant of their own national history. During the Second World War a programme of consumer discounts, applying to clothing was introduced, as a type of national investment designed to prevent inflation. The policy was so successful that the Fabian Socialists pressed for its removal after the war.

Under the pressure "gingered" by the Bank Watch movement and similar organisations, those operating the banking system have found that it is possible to write off tens of millions of debts without loss to anyone. Only a few years ago anyone suggesting that tens of millions of dollars of debt could be written off would have been regarded as financial heretics. The wool crisis provides the opportunity for an extension of the programme of writing off debts.

If the leaders of the Australian wool industry would demonstrate a little of the initiative and resourcefulness they have shown in developing the wool industry, they would come out boldly in favour of a financial policy which would not only save their industry, their homes, their families and their local communities, but they would be striking a major blow for the defence of the whole of Australia.

COCKY REPUBLICANS RIDING FOR A FALL?

by David Thompson
Although the more gung-ho republicans congratulate themselves on a type of opinion-poll driven republican walkover, it becomes daily more clear that some of the chickens they are gleefully counting may yet be hatched as loyalists. Writers like Phillip Adams crow that it is really all over but the shouting, and all that remains to be decided is just how the republic will work. Adams writes: "What has to be decided is what model or marque we want. Do we want to use the opportunity to re-jig the system? To go for a unicameral federal parliament and, eliminating State governments, boost the power of municipalities? Or will we opt for the minimal model, wherein we simply take the Union Jack from the flag and start calling the Governor General the President? If we take this approach, the constitutional changes can be achieved with a bit of white-out."

However, this is precisely where the wheels begin to fall off the great republican wagon. Just what do they propose? Flippant comments by those such as Adams provide great comfort for the Royalists. Any suggestion that major constitutional change should take place, like the elimination of the States, and the abolition of the Senate, is ideal for frightening the pants off sensible Australians. The only way that Constitutional change can take place is by a majority of people in a majority of States agreeing at referendum. In 42 attempts only eight referendums have passed. As Dr. Hewson found out with the GST at the last election, when we are in doubt, fearful, or just plain distrustful, we always vote no!

The republicans are setting themselves up for an almighty fall - if the loyalists 'get their act together'. Any suggestion that the flag should be changed by ripping out the Union Jack is also a major republican strategic blunder. This simply introduces a further divisive factor. And, of course, there is the "fear factor". Some republicans argue for the "minimalist approach". That is, simply scratch out "Queen" and "Governor General" and pencil in "President" in the constitution. But as Sir James Killen points out in his long letter to The Weekend Australian (3/4/93), this actually requires changing 21 sections of the Constitution in which 36 references to the monarch appear, and a further 36 sections with references to the Governor General. That is, the minimalist approach requires 90 changes!

As the last election proved, political gurus and opinion polls can, and often are, radically wrong. Monarchists should not lose heart at what the figures "prove"; all they prove is that the loyalists do not have access to unlimited media adulation, and are slow to get into top gear. The decisive factor will be that the loyalists really do get into top gear. Nothing is inevitable. This is a Marxist tenet, and look what happened to them.

DOES BRAZIL HAVE A ROYAL FUTURE?

While Australians embrace a kind of constitutional masochism with the republican debate, it is ironic that in some countries the debate is running the other way. This week Brazil will have a referendum on whether to restore the monarchy. It was abolished in 1889 after a military coup, with monarchist activity banned for a century. But the idea did not go away.

To the chagrin of Brazil's political elite, it appears that monarchist support is growing strongly. According to the inevitable 'polls', support for the Crown is strongest among the 16-25 year age group. Why the moves back to monarchy? A social anthropologist Roberto Da Matta, says the massive corruption and incompetence that dogs Brazilian government drives the people to look to a king for the stability that they desperately want. Say the monarchists: "Look what the republic has to celebrate: two presidential resignations, one presidential suicide, three presidents deposed, three blocked from taking office, seven different constitutions, two long dictatorial periods…." Just as well it can't happen here!

LINKS WITH A EUROPEAN HERITAGE CAN WOO JAPAN

from The Weekend Australian, April l0th/llth
Congratulations on your publication of the article by our ambassador to Japan, John Rawdon Dalrymple, on Japan's perception of Australia (6/4). "The debate about our approach to Asia often proceeds on the fallacious premise that we need to abandon our European cultural traditions in order to merge into the background of the region. "In doing so we lose sight of the fact that Asian cultures have long and sophisticated traditions, with impressive artifacts in literature, philosophy and art, and may well respect us more if they identify us not for our sand, koalas, and the derelict gold rush mining towns, but because of the roots in classical, Mediterranean civilisation of the greater part of Australian multiculturalism.
"There are more Japanese tourists in Rome than in Cairns, and it was a Japanese television company that paid for the refurbishment of Michelangelo's frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and their photographic reproductions.

"When our Japanese friends sit down to negotiate trade or treaty, they will clearly have more respect for us if they perceive in us the representatives of a European culture and civilisation with a similar depth and historical consciousness to their own, than if we project the fun-loving primitiveness of a frontier mentality. "We shall clearly lose more than face with our Asian neighbours if we fail to project the origins of our multiculturalism in a classical, Christian and medieval civilisation that united us, before the divisions caused by contemporary bankrupt political ideologies, including that of the nation State.
"Well done, Your Excellency, for speaking for the real Australia." (Associate Professor Allen Brent, James Cook University, Townsville, Qld.)

HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN

from The Australian, April 12th
This century has seen the fall, one by one, of the great Royal Houses of Europe. First to go was the House of Braganza in Portugal. King Manuel was lucky to escape from the revolutionaries in 1910; by 1928 a professor of economics called Salazar was in charge. One of the great oppressive dictatorships began.
"Next to go were the Romanoffs in Russia in 1917. The communist empire took their place, and it has taken the Russians 70 years to see through its falsehood and bring it down. Now another chaos has replaced it.

"The House of Hohenzollern in the person of Kaiser Wilhelm 2 did a convenient self destruct after World War I. Hitler's path to power was smoothed.
The Habsburgs of Austria, having over stretched their power and brought about a war, have also departed the scene in 1918, leaving Austria open to Hitler's embrace.

"The House of Bourbon, embroiled in the post war power struggles in Spain, was dismissed in 1931. Five troubled years later civil war started, and by its end Franco was supremo. Another dictatorship began.
"In Italy, the House of Savoy lasted through World War II. Victor Emmanuel, however, was unwise enough to accept honours from the Fascists, and after the war his presence was not required. Fifty administrations and scores of scandals later, who can say that republicanism has been a happy experience for Italy?

"Some northern European countries still have monarchies. But of the great houses, only the House of Windsor has survived. It has remained effective precisely because, for 300 years, the British monarch has had no real power and is not involved in political strife. "It has formed a unifying, symbolic and moral rallying point for all but the most extreme in their disaffection. (The very outrage expressed against the moral defection of the younger members of the royal family testifies to the standards expected of it.) It is also one of the barriers against the emergence of a military dictatorship.

"Two nations are now democracies because, within the past dozen years, their kings saved them from coups - Spain and Thailand. Spain recovered its monarch in 1975 when Franco died, and its soul in 1981 when the last of his fanatics staged a coup, which the king aborted. "Only last year, King Bhumipol intervened similarly in Thailand to enforce the people's will.

"We may speculate whether two nations in our own region have been well served by kinglessness. Would Burma now be a democracy as its people desire, if its armed forces were headed by a constitutional monarchy instead of an old tyrant? "And would Fiji be one, if fellow monarchies in the region, Australia and New Zealand, had had the guts to support the Queen's representative against rebels in September 1987, instead of making distant tut-tut noises?

"It may be that the House of Windsor, too, will self-destruct. It may also be that it will recover, as monarchies have in the past. But before we decide to dismiss it and help it on its way to historical oblivion, we should think very hard about what we will set up to replace it. Otherwise a worse thing may befall us. We might even get a professor of economics. (Alasdair Livingston, Mitcham, S.A.)

BRIEF COMMENTS

Mr. Doug Aiton, well-known journalist and ABC commentator, devotes an article in The Sunday Age, Melbourne, of April 18th, to an interview with Zionist leader Mr. Isi Leibler, whom we are told not only admired Prime Minister Bob Hawke, but also Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser "for his attitudes towards the Jews, and his humanity".

The most interesting aspects of the Aiton interview concern British historian David Irving. Leibler "is pleased that David Irving was prevented from coming to Australia and believes the issue was misrepresented by the media and the Government" in that the perception was 'the powerful Jewish lobby" wanted to suppress free speech. Leibler's point is that everyone can get hold of Irving's thoughts, but that his actions, his record of stirring up trouble, are the grounds on which he should be denied entry.

The reality is that the Irving affair has forced Leibler and his fellow Zionist Jews to change their tactics concerning Irving. No one but a simpleton believes that the Government took the unprecedented step of banning a man of Irving's standard without being subjected to a carefully orchestrated campaign against Irving.

Originally the Zionist propagandists claimed that Irving's view on the "Holocaust" would upset Australian Jews - who are not compelled to attend any of Irving's lectures. But it was then claimed that Irving is some type of "neo-Nazi" rabble-rouser, the "evidence" for this claim being provided to the Government by the Zionist propaganda machine. It has even been claimed that Irving has attended pro-Nazi rallies and given the Nazi salute. As will become clearer as the Irving story unfolds, these allegations are completely false. When the truth is revealed, there will be some red faces.