Three fronts in the fight to save Australia, world

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Lead Editorial

16 August 2023
Vol. 25 No. 33

Don’t tie us into another war! A showdown over Australia’s dangerous Anglo-American alliance is unavoidable at the 17-19 August ALP national conference, despite efforts to smother it. That will be almost impossible, with some 40 local branches opposing AUKUS or calling for a review, and planned motions for the conference demanding the government reconsider AUKUS, from the Victorian division of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and a NSW state MP. A new Labor group, Labor Against War, which bills itself as a “grassroots network of ALP members opposed to Australia being dragged into another US-led war”, is leading the charge.

On Monday night Defence Minister Richard Marles convened an online town hall meeting to try to quell dissent. This occurred even as leading Labor figures such as United Firefighters Union boss Peter Marshall, who is vying for a spot on Labor’s powerful national executive, denounced the party’s effort to stifle debate on issues such as AUKUS. And an Australian headline last Friday declared: “ALP conference to be a Paul Keating-free zone”. The former PM, who has harshly criticised the AUKUS deal and Australia-US alliance, is clearly not welcome. He will not be in attendance as the party seeks “to avoid stoushes”, the paper reported.

The arrangement Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has locked us into “increases the likelihood of our involvement in a disastrous US-led war in Asia”, the conference motion put up by NSW MP Anthony D’Adam correctly noted. But Albanese spoke passionately against the same dangerous alliance at the time of the Iraq war, denouncing Australian government subservience to the “decisions of a foreign power” (back page). Every day more Labor leaders are pointing to the hypocrisy. “I marched for peace, opposed US warmongering with many who now support AUKUS. WTF has happened”, former Labor Senator and AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron tweeted on Tuesday.

Save our towns! Western Australians have finally had a chance to have their say in the parliamentary inquiry into regional banking closures, and boy are they making their sentiments known! As of writing, Bankwest reps are being interrogated at the Beverley hearing, and at Carnamah yesterday the devastation of regional areas, despite being responsible for a massive portion of the nation’s wealth via the resources boom, was laid bare. Without a local bank there is no local investment and Carnamah doesn’t even have a local high school, forcing families to split up, with one parent often moving to Perth with the kids. These towns should be rich, with all the best possible services; but we are a nation that is looting itself, colonial-style, to keep a bankrupt financial order afloat. A man in his 90s told the hearing how he has to take a two-day trip by bus to visit the closest bank. This hearing was a cry for help, but it was a cry that was heard in advance by former Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate, which is why she fought the banks to make them pay properly for Bank@Post services, and developed a vision for a public postal bank. Post offices are now closing by the dozens and the population is rankled, as indicated by a major protest planned at Australia Post’s Melbourne headquarters on Thursday.

Open a new financial era! The BRICS summit (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), with mooted membership expansion and discussion of an inclusive new financial order, takes place 22-24 August in Johannesburg, South Africa. Forty nations have expressed interest in joining BRICS, and at least 22 have formally applied for membership. Its impact can be gauged by the freakout from Reuters, Bloomberg, the Atlantic Council and the London Economist, the latter noting worriedly that if all applicants became members, “the bigger BRICS would account for half the world’s population.” This is the cutting edge of a nonnegotiable prerequisite for civilisation to survive: the abandonment of post-World War II shifts that entrenched global control in an Anglo-American “informal financial empire” and military industrial complex.

In this issue:

• Western Australians to have their say on bank branch closures this week
• Sign the Parliamentary Petition on Australians’ Right to Banking Services
• Senators slam banks’ free ride, regulatory inaction and government cover-ups
• ASPI’s ‘cyber-interference’ allegations: more junk research
• Labor’s ‘renewables are cheapest’ lie exploded
• Dump monetarism to head off new crash, save the economy
• Moody’s cuts credit ratings on 10 US banks
• Central banks’ inflation is turning into dangerous deflation
• Our minerals are ripe for the plucking by the US
• No bank, no Post Office, no town!
• Albanese’s powerful arguments against joining AUKUS war drive
• ALMANAC: What every Australian patriot should know (Part Two)

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