Australian National


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Saturday 22nd August 1998


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Today's Headlines
an Aussie's viewpoint on Australia's first daily Internet newspaper.
Since October 1995

Between the One Nation lines

Last night I attended a fund raiser for One Nation Federal Candidate Neil Jorgensen.

Good to see Pauline Hanson again.

Comment from Pauline Hanson's speech last night on One Nation's yet to be announced tax policy, "We will cut Capital Gains Tax out after two years on a business because if you put the hard work in you should reap the benefits."

For full report on the evening follow this link.

I had a meeting with Pauline and Vanessa Stewart (President of Young Nation Development Committee). Vanessa will now be available on a new YOUNG NATION discussion forum for supporters under the age of 30.

Follow information here on how to register.

Court finds no evidence of One Nation fraud

Yesterday the Supreme Court advised that it had found no evidence of fraud by One Nation. The case brought against the party by two disendorsed candidates - one who has since pulled out - is turning into an expensive farce. And it looks like ex-One Nation candidate and complainant Terry Sharples could be facing a very large bill for his exercise in holding up payment of nearly Au$500,000 to candidates.

Supreme Court Justice Brian Ambrose said yesterday, "I will have to read carefully all the material before me but at this stage nothing has been drawn to my attention to indicate any fraud."

The complaint was originally handled for Sharples by a lawyer who is closely associated with the Liberal Party - he has since fallen out with the man is now representing himself.

Last night on television Sharples appealed to "anyone who supported his cause to help him cover the court costs"... dream on buddy boy.

Meantime One Nation candidates are still hanging out for their money.

MD

The porkies start flying

No sooner have the Labor party taken up station as a minority government in the Queensland Parliament than the tried and true gambit of re-writing promises begins.

Before the election - no ifs or buts - unemployment under Labor WOULD be reduced to just 5%. We had now Premier Peter Beattie on the television talking about jobs, jobs and jobs...

Now Treasurer David Hamill, seen right, is warning that the Asian economic slump would affect JOBS!

"While the major impact of the regional development slump is expected to be felt this financial year, there is still uncertainty regarding the timing and strength of the expected recovery."

Now wait a minute, the Asia crisis started last year.. if the porkie pies weren't flying so thick and fast surely the Labor Party had thought about its impact on JOBS?

But senior Labor ministers are only now saying that it will be difficult to attain the target "of 5% unemployment" promised by them. Why should we be surprised?

Opposition Treasurer David Watson summed it up when he said, "Well before the election the signs were clearly evident that the forecast might have to be revised downward. Yet the Labor Party went ahead with their immoral promise of jobs, jobs, jobs to vulnerable Queenslanders."

What is interesting is that the One Nation factor somehow got left out of Hamill's impact statement on unemployment in Queensland... but then perhaps he was leaving that porky pie territory to the master of deceit the "JOBS-man" himself, Premier Peter Beattie who is currently in Japan.

One Nation state leader Bill Feldman offered to accompany Peter Beattie on his next trip to Asia - not a bad move because that way he can "keep the bastard honest" but Beattie is not having a bar of it saying "It is thanks but no thanks." A comment more and more Queenslanders are feeling towards Beattie's performance (or lack of it) in this state.

Beattie yesterday apologised to the Japanese media for the perception that Australia is "racist" because of One Nation. Now talk about shooting yourself in the foot. But not that the unethical pro-Labor News Limited media would puncture his bubble.

Japan is one of the most racist nations in the world - look no further than their immigration policy. (It's rather like B'Nai B'rith and their so-called "RaceWatch" - why don't they get serious and watch Israel?) What about the comments by a Japanese television man last year at a One Nation meeting on the Gold Coast?

Quote:

Scott Balson: Is there racism in Japan?

Mr Hajime Kitamura (seen right with crew): We don't call it racism - we call it discrimination. In Japan there are minority groups who are discriminated against. There is discrimination against people on the island of Okinawa by mainland Japanese for example.

SB: Isn't it somewhat ironic you came to cover racism in Australia yet you have it in Japan?

HK: Yes. Okinawa is a good example of this discrimination.

So here we have a man who is supposed to represent the interests of Queenslanders making damaging and misleading comments about One Nation and racism just for a headline back in Australia - while he leaves behind a problem in Japan that was not there before his visit.

He has focussed interest on a fact which does not exist and, in the process, made it harder for his government to reach the 5% unemployment target - the ultimate twist when he blames One Nation for turning Asian investors away.

Good one Beattie get back under your rock you horrible little man.

Welcome to Echelon

Here is an extract:

Suppose, this past weekend, you sent an email to a friend overseas. There's a reasonable possibility your communication was intercepted by a global surveillance system--especially if you happened to discuss last week's bombings in East Africa.

Or suppose you're stuck in traffic and in your road rage you whip out a cell phone and angrily call your congressman's office in Washington. There's a chance the government is listening in on that conversation, too (but only for the purposes of "training" new eavesdroppers).

Turning Were inside out

MALCOLM MAIDEN, CHRISTOPHER WEBB and JUDITH HEYWOOD review the case that has humiliated establishment broker J.B. Were - and spotlighted a profession where the "inside edge" rules.

AT 2.36pm on Monday, November 20, 1995, Gregory Doyle rose from his seat in the middle of the dealing room of stockbroker J.B. Were and called for quiet.

Doyle, one of Were's senior brokers, had explosive news: Mining Project Investors, a private company with connections to the firm, had found a stunningly rich nickel deposit at Silver Swan near Kalgoorlie, and Were and its clients were poised to make a killing.

The fact that Mount Kersey Mining, a company associated with Melbourne businessman Joe Gutnick, had operations next to unlisted MPI's discovery was a key part of the "story" that Were began to sell that Monday afternoon.

According to transcripts of dealing-room conversations, tendered this week in a landmark insider-trading case, Doyle was assured by MPI's Alan Evans that the fabulous nickel find had been "public information for a while now". That was at 2.32pm, four minutes before Doyle stood to make his announcement.

In the next half hour, Were dealers worked their phones hard, telling managers of the big share funds about MPI and the Kersey connection. "Hang on a tick, Greg's gonna tell a story!" Were broker David Permezel told a colleague in Tokyo, Hugh Donaldson.

At 2.36pm, Doyle was on the line to Sam Brougham at Structured Asset Management. "Yeah, but where's it been announced? Brougham asked. "F...ing, I don't know, Kalgoorlie, f...ing Kalgoorlie thymes (sic) or something," Doyle replied.

Dealer Newton Chan spoke to Neil Boyd Clark at the Norwich funds management operation to tell him about MPI and the potential Kersey play. "Nobody knows this stuff, OK? ... definitely the first of this," Chan told Clark, later adding: "I think they're going to make this announcement at 3.30, actually."

"Jesus. Shit. So there he goes again. F...ing Jesus. It's too good to be true isn't it?" Clark exclaimed.

"Yeah, there's going to be some big money made out of this one, I think," Chan replied.

Another big client told Were's Patrick Crabb: "I think, ah, the Jewish mafia is right into this one." To which Crabb replied: "I'm sure they'll be thick as thieves around this little puppy."

What was said and done on that day led directly to revelations this month that have shaken the foundations of Were, an impeccably credentialed organisation that boasts more than 150 years of service to the Melbourne and Australian establishment.

After a lengthy probe by authorities, insider-trading charges were launched in April this year against Doyle and Evans, a Were client who is also an executive of MPI.

The pair are fighting the allegations, which will test, and could stretch, the boundaries of laws prohibiting insider trading.

But documents filed with Melbourne Magistrates' Court, notably lengthy transcripts of telephone conversations between Were brokers and clients, reveal much more about how broking works than any court decision will ever do.

It is a world where, regardless of the legal definition of insider trading, the inside edge is paramount. A world where "stories" - hot tips and new intelligence - are traded as quickly as the shares.

And in this case, it is a world where brokers and clients exchanged what Were has called "regrettable and offensive" remarks about the Jewish community in general and a leading member of Melbourne's Jewish community, Joe Gutnick, in particular, who was described as "a little curly bearded little c...".

After seeing the unexpurgated transcripts last weekend, Gutnick on Monday accused Were of presiding over "repugnant and abhorrent" conversations that were "a damning indictment on the culture, propriety, ethics and professional standards" of the firm.

The next day, Were's executive chairman, Terry Campbell, went to Gutnick's office in South Melbourne to apologise on behalf of himself and the firm.

Gutnick says he has accepted the apology regarding the conversations, which were recorded by Were in case a dispute arose with its clients, and which were later subpoenaed by the authorities during their investigation of the alleged insider share deals.

But he also says the apology does not totally redress the wrong. More meetings are planned for next week. Were says it is keen to resolve his concerns.

The deal that went wrong for J.B. Were had its gestation in May 1995, when the owners of MPI assembled for their annual meeting.

Almost two dozen shareholders turned up, including MPI founders Ken Fletcher and Evans, who had earlier run mining companies that counted Were as their house broker; Melbourne solicitor John Dahlsen; J.B. Were director and resources stock expert Dr Peter Woodford; and businessman-investor John Gerahty and his son, Richard.

THEY were told that drilling of MPI's Silver Swan prospect to the north-west of Kalgoorlie had turned up nickel values that geologists dreamt about. It was small, but it was also, in Woodford's words a few months later, "the highest-grade discovery ever made in the world".

By November, MPI was ready to go public, and a plan had been hatched to cash in on the news by buying into Kersey in the expectation that the stock would hitch a ride on the Silver Swan.

Greg Doyle's immediate superior at the time was John Goodall. He says in a statement that Doyle contacted him on Friday, November 17, to tell him he and Woodford had been briefed about Silver Swan, and MPI's intention to announce it on Monday.

Doyle told Goodall that MPI staff would be placing orders with Were on Monday to buy Kersey shares, but added that "the MPI people were trying to do everything correctly and by the book and they had legal advice". Woodford would normally be handling the trades, but he was going to be overseas on Monday, and the task went to Doyle, Goodall was told.

The fact that MPI is a private company greatly complicates the insider-trading case that is now underway.

Insider-trading laws were changed at the beginning of this decade to end the need to establish a link between the person trading the shares and the shares that are traded. The new law states that illegal insider trading is the purchase or sale of securities on the basis of information that is not public and which, if public, would be likely to affect a share's price.

The authorities failed to secure a single conviction under the old rules, but this decade have had several successes. But none of those cases has attempted to push the boundaries as far as the Kersey case.

That is because listed Kersey has no links at all with MPI other than the geographical accident of being a neighbour to MPI's leases outside Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. MPI in turn, as a private company, is not part of the universe of listed companies that are subject to strict rules requiring them to immediately disclose information that is market sensitive.

MPI's shareholders had been debating their disclosure obligations since early 1995, when the magnitude of the Silver Swan find started to become apparent. By November the company had taken advice from Neil Young, QC, that anyone who knew about MPI's find was an "insider" under the law, but that this would cease to be so when the information became generally available.

But what is generally available, and how does a private company make it so it does not have access to the stock exchange's announcement system?

It is not clear that MPI knew the answer. On Monday, November 20, it filed a mining plan and a press release covering Silver Swan at the Western Australian Department of Mines, faxed a few people about the find and briefed The Age's Barry FitzGerald.

Whether MPI announced its discovery when it thought it did is one of the things that will be tested in court if the magistrate decides that the case should be tried. This week the prosecution, led by Brind Woinarski, QC, told the magistrate that trading started too early, when the news of MPI's find was not "generally available".

But in any event the telephone transcripts tendered at the committal hearing make it clear that an MPI "announcement" was intended to be the trigger for trading at a time when Were and its clients, including MPI, would have a valuable, but legal, inside edge over the rest of the market - and in particular over Joseph Gutnick and his investor supporters who dominate the share registers of the Gutnick group members, including Kersey. Were was going to "beat them at their own game", Woodford said later.

The Were director also told the hearing that Were's strategy for Kersey assumed that buying support from the Gutnick camp would propel the stock higher once the MPI find was revealed.

Publication of his comments in The Age was the catalyst for Gutnick's successful court attempt on Friday, August 14, to gain access to the telephone transcripts, and his attack on Were on Monday, August 17, over the remarks about him and the Jewish community contained in them.

His law firm, Clayton Utz, said in the letter sent to Were's Terry Campbell on Monday that Woodford's claims were "false, unjustified and have no basis in fact whatsoever. They are grievously defamatory of Mr Gutnick".

In his affidavit, Goodall recalls that when Doyle told his colleagues about MPI in November 1995 he also "said he had had a call telling him that releases had been made, and the information was public ... he suggested that we call clients with the story".

Were's strategy to capitalise quickly on MPI's spectacular find was based on MPI's having made public its spectacular find. As soon as Doyle told them of the find and the fact that it was public information, Were's brokers started making calls.

But where was the announcement? Bob Frost of Structured Asset Management wanted to know. Doyle told him at 2.39pm that the news was "released ... it's publicly available information", but Frost replied: "Yeah. Well you got a copy there?" Frost persisted. Doyle did not have a copy, but he urged Frost to buy.

"Yeah, no we will, relax right?" Frost replied. "It's just a matter of not being in jail, that's all ... How do you know it's actually out?

"Well you have to remember I'm buying, I'm in the market and I'm not going to go to jail that's all," Doyle replied. "I'm telling you ... I'm allowed to tell you because I've heard about it now."

By 3.09pm the buying order placed by Evans on behalf of MPI staff had been filled. "We can have some fun tomorrow now," Evans told Doyle, adding: "You haven't seen the press release, but I'd be surprised if it ... this is the richest nickel I've ever found in the world ... I'll be surprised if it doesn't get some sort of reaction tomorrow."

Woodford rang in from Auckland at 3.20pm, and Doyle told him MPI's order was booked, and that Were had also begun buying Kersey shares on its own account. "And it's all announced, so there you are." Shares in another Gutnick company, Centaur, had not moved, although Centaur had indirect exposure to Silver Swan through a big Kersey shareholding, but Woodford said: "Well, people don't realise."

Doyle: "They don't, they don't know, and the thing is the selling is coming from the Jewish people."

Woodford: "Ah. That's good." (Laughs).

Doyle: "All right. So they don't know."

Woodford: "Oh well, beat them at their own game."

The feedback inside Were that afternoon was mixed. Just after 3.30pm, Frost was on the line, wanting to make sure, he said, that Doyle understood that "we're not buying any of these Mount Kersey anywhere, right ... so as far as you know we just don't know ... Mount what is it?"

Doyle: (laughter) "Yeah."

Frost: "We know nothing about nothing okay?" Newton Chan on the other hand was chastised by "NG" of Norwich after he told him at 3.38pm about the MPI-Kersey play. "Why wasn't this done yesterday? Shit ... So am I number 25 on your phone list or what?" NG asked.

In the opinion of Were's Ross King, the response of shares to MPI's news depended at least partly on whether or not "the good rabbi knows or not. I mean, if the good rabbi doesn't know, then you just got to f...ing buy the shit ..."

By the close of trading that day, Were had bought slightly more than 900,000 shares at an average price of about 63.5c - 219,000 for the MPI camp, more than 350,000 for itself and the rest for clients. More than half the shares were sold by Bell Securities, the broker that dominates trade in Gutnick companies.

The next day Kersey shares hit $1.45, the day after they sold up to $1.89 and by December 6 they had sold as high as $3.45.

"Is your new nickname Joe?" an unidentified caller asked Doyle on Wednesday, when the broker was mopping up.

Doyle: "He's in the office this afternoon here."

Caller: "Is he?"

Doyle: "Everybody buy my shares. Want to buy my shares? Everybody buy my shares."

Caller: "What's he doing in there?"

Doyle: "Just finding out "who has been buying my shares'."

Caller: "Is Permy there, mate?"

Doyle: "Mr Permazelstein? We're all called ..."

Caller: "Permy the order on the book but ..."

Doyle: "We're all bergs and steins around here now."

Caller: "Bloody Permy, tell him to clean up his book so we know where we ..."

Doyle: "We don't talk to Gentiles like yourself. Just hold on. One sec."

Were is in danger of making a habit of apologising. The chairman, Terry Campbell, has apologised twice about the tapes, first on August 5, when the first inkling of what the tapes contained surfaced in the Magistrates' Court. Before going public, he also approached Jewish leaders, including Nina Bassatt, the president of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, and Mark Leibler. Perhaps critically, attempts to meet Gutnick were unsuccessful.

Incredibly, a separate apology to Gutnick had been issued by Were on August 3, days before the telephone conversations became public, after Were resources analyst Tim Churcher issued a report in another Gutnick stable member, Great Central, that said while Robert Champion de Crespigny's giant Normandy goldmining group was a "willing" 25 per cent shareholder in Great Central, "an analogy comes to mind about what contribution a chicken and a pig make towards an egg and bacon breakfast - the chicken may be involved, but the pig is committed. Normandy remains an involved investor."

Gutnick says he has accepted Campbell's apologies, and says he believes that the stockbroker is "genuinely distressed" about what has happened. But Gutnick says he has not yet received apologies from those who wronged him. And he says apologies do not change the fact that he, his shareholders and employees have been damaged by the episode.


Making the news" -
an indepth exposé of media and political collusion at the highest possible levels in Australia.


email the editor

You say:

Subject: that submission

whoops! sorry, I thought I had sent it to some where else. It was a draft copy. Some of your readers might recognise that I have quoted other people and that there are some minor discrepencies but nevertheless the historic facts are true. Now it is out, tell all your enemies and friends too. Shout it from the roof tops. Wake up the people and start a brand new nation created by us. Get rid those Intenational Criminals who have abused our trust.

John Hugo

Subject: Our Constitution

I find it almost unbelievable that hardly anyone seems to be concerned about the fact that our Constitution is probably invalid and has been for nearly 80 years.Surely there are people who can see what this will mean ?

Alan Esson

Subject: Govt excise tax crackdown - Steve Blizard

How come the Govt can crack down on excise avoidance without a GST, but in the same breath says it needs a GST to crack down on tax avoidance generally? What a load of codswallop.

Costello is already alluding to GST Inspectors running around! They are going to have to employ another 2000 employees in Canberra to run it! Not to mention handing over State Control of current taxes collected.

With GST, solving problem A with problems B & problems C is NOT the solution.

Subject: Tax system

Hello

The time has come to bring to your attention again the inequality that farming communitie suffer. As a champion for equality for all Australians I beg you to revisit the Taxation system that Labor introduced in February 96 before the last elections Coalition Parties have assured that this draconian and unfair law will be withdrawn Mr Simon Crean then minister for primary industry had been given a hard time from Farming communities so ==was it a revange or payback??

The introduction of Reportable Payment System placed all farmers under the microscope of Taxation Dept.Every sale a farmer makes is reported to tax office from buyers. And on the end of the year the farmer must declare his or her income to match the info the dept has. All farmers must supply their Tax file Numbers to all buyers,wholesale or retail. Is nothing sacred. If farmers fail to supply tax file number a tax is deducted at 48%. My taxfile No. can finish up in unscrupolous hands and it does as I hear...I ask you to do something about it. With your One Nation Party's own tax reform to be unvailed within 2 weeks this draconian law must be abolished . A lot of additional support will be given in recognition of equality and justice for all Australians. It will be a magnificent platform and excellent public relationship It will confirm that One Nation stands for Justice and same privileges for all of us.

Thank you for reading this short note and good luck

Regards,
Eugen Vajtauer

Subject: Comments on Australian News of the Day

G'day Scott,

Concerning the Jewish Mafia etc, I would just like to ask JG Estiot;
Just what are "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" a forgery of?

Thankyou.
Pauline for P.M.
David Morgan.

Subject: Brave Little Johnnie

Howard says he puts his political future on the line for GST because he believes it is best for Australia. I will believe him if he is also prepared to put all his perks, Superannuation, special paid appointments etc. that they get after defeat, on the line as well. What do they call boxers who take a dive? In the context of what the globalists will do against Australia if we do not toe the line, Howard is probably being honest, but he is taking the CHowards way out. This IS un-Australian.

Philip Madsen.

Subject: Television

Dear Sir,

I watched part of Pauline's interview on channel 9 this morning.

You are one the right track about " transfer pricing"

The jap meat processors in this country pay little or no company tax.

I think that you may find that some of the meat product that leaves our country for Japan is marked up as much as 10 (ten) time in Japan.

Good Luck
R. A. Wenham

Subject: Counteract the rot.

It's so obvious,what Beattie is up to over there. One Nation should send a delegate over, to counteract Beaties Bullshit. And prove once and for all, that One Nation,is not a racist party. We just can't let this type of propaganda,from the other parties,spoil,and tarnish our wonderful party. Remember, if enough mud is thrown,some of it will stick.

Please do something, before it's too late.

Queensland is dead, without tourism !!!!

Steve Paris

Subject: The Scandal of third world debt

After the second world war, Germany would only agree to spend 3.5 per cent of its export income on debt repayments. It argued that anything higher would be “unsustainable”.

Today, the world’s creditor nations, including Germany, are demanding that the world’s poorest nations spend up to 25 per cent of their export incomes on debt repayment.

The cost of this hypocrisy is devastating.

Mozambique now spends $US107 million every year servicing its debt—$US6.60 for every Mozambican child, man and woman. In contrast, the country spends only $US2 per person per year on health and $US4 on education.

Ghana spends an average of $US4 a year per person on health. In 1996 it spent $US26 per person on debt service.

Zambia’s infant mortality rate in 1970 was 106 per 1,000 live births. In 1996 it had worsened to 112 per 1,000. Since 1990 the country has paid a total of $US4.8 billion in debt service - about one and a half times its total annual economic output.

International loans have become the instruments of neo-slavery. The response from the West is that the debts are legally binding, and the debtor countries have a duty to pay.

But is this correct? During the 1980s $US8.5 billion was secretly lent to the ex-President Mobutu of Zaire by Western institutions who knew that those loans were being corruptly diverted.

If Mobutu lacked the authority to raise money on behalf of Zaireans, under what duty are the people obliged to pay?

What of South Africa? The country is labouring under a $US70 billion debt. Interest payments alone are the second highest expenditure after education. To what extent are black South Africans obliged to repay the loans of an oppressive regime they could not elect?

These arguments are not new. When the US took over Cuba 100 years ago it cancelled Cuba's debt to Spain on the grounds that the burden was "imposed upon the people of Cuba without their consent and by force of arms". Such debts became known as odious debts—not obligations for the nation but for the powers that incurred them.

While the world’s debtor nations work up the confidence to default, however, the international community is pretending to help.

Under their Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund will partly wipe out a country’s debt if a country is prepared to take a good dose of IMF tonic. Six years of it. Under the euphemistically titled Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) countries agree to liberalise their markets and discard profligacies such as state funded education in order to show their willingness to help themselves. The debt cancelled, however, makes very little difference. In Mozambique's case an estimated $US1.4 billion was removed by HIPC, but these debts would never have been paid. As Joseph Hanlon from the debt relief campaign Jubilee 2000 argued “Mozambique would have more chance of sending a football team to France for the World Cup than paying those debts.”

So even after this “debt relief” Mozambique will continue to spend as much on debt service as on health and education combined.

The inadequacy of HIPC is part of the reason why Jubilee 2000, the international campaign for a one-off cancellation of third world debt - is gathering strength.

Cancelling the poorest nations’ debts, however, is just the start. It is equally important to reform the international lending system, for example, by: · reducing secrecy in lending. Routinely, neither the people from the poorest nor the richest countries know what their local elites are doing. Financial transparency should become a condition of taxpayer funded lending. · introducing an international bankruptcy law. Domestic bankruptcy laws allow individuals to write off unpayable debts and make a fresh start. The absence of comparable controls at the international level encourages irresponsible lending. Creditors know someone will have to pick up the tab. · introducing a Tobin tax. A small international financial transactions tax would discourage currency speculators from using national economies as tax-free high rolling rooms without punishing legitimate economic activity. It would also provide the United Nations with an independent source of income. More fundamentally, however, we need to question the orthodoxy of unbridled globalisation. As the World Bank's chief economist and senior vice president Joseph Stiglitz acknowledged, the convergence of policy from the US Treasury, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank—the so-called “Washington Consensus”—can be misguided, misleading and neglect fundamental issues.

Heaven forbid, it may even be wrong.

Increasingly, people are asking whether globalisation is delivering its promised improvements of global living standards, or whether it is simply forcing open “fragile societies to powerful, intrusive and exploitative foreign forces”.

By definition, globalisation cannot be assessed in terms of GDP per capita rates in the developed world.

For as long as we operate within the same trading system and the same environment, the problems of the poorest nations are our problems.

Matthew Townsend

Subject: ECCONOMIC IMPERIALISM: globalisation, rationalisation and the level playing field ?

Dear Scott,

I have just finished reading a series of articles focusing on the Dairy Industry which appeared in The COUNTRYTIME (August 98, QLD Community Newspapers, Pty.Ltd.) a new monthly newspaper circulating in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. Having friends in the Industry, and sympathy with the difficult circumstances of which they are confronted, I thought that their dilemma was pretty well summed up in the following quotes from Ralph Luton (from the Queensland Dairy Organisation) ;

" Zero tariff policy has had a devastating effect on many Australian industries..........
Zero tariff is happening and their is very little you or your organisations can do about it....
The influence of rural industries has declined sharply over the past quarter of a century.
The global market is so huge and Australia such a very small player. We export over sixty per cent of our wheat crop while the United States exports only ten per cent , yet their ten is much larger than our sixty.
World markets are dominated by two "bullies", the United States and the European Union. They are just so big that they can virtually do as they please.

They can subsidise their farmers whereas Australia does not have the tax base to be able to do that . In the dairy industry the ''bully'' is Victoria with over sixty per cent of the nation's milk production. For much of rural industry the ''bully'' is the supermarket.

In all cases if you are large and control a significant proportion of the marketplace you can make your own rules. That sort of power is all perfectly legal but may not be morally right,............................''

Ralph Luton later states that he ''Does not understand the rush by Australian Governments to sign everything and anything that comes along".

Perhaps an indirect swipe at the MAI ?

The Country Time added these following quotes in its editorial ;

'' When deregulation of the Queensland milk industry applies from January 1999, there will still be farm quotas but marketing controls will cease at the front gate.

A flood of imports is expected from NSW, Victoria and even New Zealand..........................
Over the years , rationalisation has reduced the number of Queensland dairy farms from around 40,000 to the current 1700 and an expected 600 to 700, and has also eliminated our local milk processors. ''

Further food for thought;

'' While import barriers are a major impediment to the Australian dairy industry widening its export base , the greatest impediment is the low level of world market prices, essentially set by European export subsidies. The farm gate price of milk in the European Union is almost double that of Australia and New Zealand.''

How did we get into this mess and more importantly what can we do about fixing it? Have a good weekend

....................Steve.

Subject: Issues for Pauline Hanson

As a union delegate, my fellow members and I are incensed at the way the union heirachy slavishly supports and promotes ALP policy. It is obvious that the internationalist policies of the Laborals must result in a dramatic decrease in the standard of living of Australian workers and I am sure that pressing this point will secure the support of many unionists. We feel the union movement should support whatever party is acting in our interests and not be tied formally to any one.

The Chevron gas pipeline bringing gas from PNG to run industries in Australia is being promoted in the media. Does Mrs. Hanson feel comfortable with Australian Industries (Jobs) dependent directly on the largesse of a foreign country? One of the large users of this gas is to be an American power generating group in Gladstone.

I do not think that raising such things as "conspiracy theories etc." in the parliament does our credibility any good. While it is easy to believe that someone is Orchestrating events that keep countries such as ours compliant to the wishes of capital, It is too easy for the media to use statements by parliamentarians on these issues, out of context, to ridicule honest politicians. I feel that it is enough to highlight the effects that the actions, past and future, of the Laborals have had, are having and will have on Australians.

Thank you.
Frank Andersen.

Business:

Social:

Personal trivia, from the global office:

Another perfect day in paradise.

Have a good one.


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Recent stories exclusive to  (how to) subscribe/rs of the Australian National News of the Day:

B'nai B'rith's discriminatory and un-Australian "Racewatch" - 18th August 1998
Four Corners become "Flawed" Corners - 11th August 1998
The Nicholas Street Rally - 4th August 1998
Their first day in Parliament - 28th July 1998
The 60 Minutes debate/debacle - 26th July 1998
Hawthorn - where the hooligans won - 21st July 1998
The Ipswich City Council re-institute a ban against Pauline Hanson - 19th July 1998
The One Nation mailing list published in the Australia/Israeli Review - 9th July 1998
The Barbara Hazelton betrayal - 2nd July 1998
Pauline Hanson's One Nation Queensland State MPs meet in Parliament - 27th June 1998
QANTAS censor Pauline Hanson - 24th June 1998


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