We need in-depth solutions that restore power to citizens

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Lead Editorial

20 April 2022
Vol. 24 No. 16

Australia desperately needs a policy approach that solves problems effectively, not just superficially. Unfortunately, we have a political system constrained by vested interests and ideology. Government is not “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, it is of, by and for the banks and related corporate interests. Even when politicians are occasionally sincere in trying to address a serious, urgent crisis, their minds are locked into these constraints, and their best efforts are half-baked. This is what the Citizens Party is combatting with our approach of developing in-depth policy solutions that aren’t defined by vested interests but are solely committed to promoting the best interests of the people of Australia.

This week’s AAS features an amazing account (p. 5) of the Whitlam government’s attempt in the 1970s to wrest Australia’s immense resource wealth from foreign control and establish a national resources authority, as the Citizens Party has long called for (p. 16). Whitlam, Rex Connor and Jim Cairns incurred the wrath of the British and American corporations which control our resources to this day, for which they were slandered mercilessly by the Murdoch and other corporate press. Thanks to the media, multiple generations of Australians see Whitlam’s government as “radical”; but now, with skyhigh fuel prices and hardly any national fuel reserves, which makes our national economy extremely vulnerable, it’s time for Australians to rethink that entire era, which was the last stand for a Labor government that was prepared to take on corporate interests, as Whitlam did. If he had succeeded, we would be better off today, as even Whitlam’s political enemy, Malcolm Fraser, admitted later in life.

The New South Wales state government has just announced its policy response to the Lismore and Northern Rivers floods, which is a Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation to help communities rebuild destroyed homes and essential services. In principle, this is an acknowledgement, from an otherwise extreme neoliberal government, that the government must take a leading role in the reconstruction of the region, including relocating parts of some towns to higher ground, and that it can’t be left to the “free market”. However, it is still a superficial solution, because it doesn’t include a funding mechanism outside of the state budget, which will be a serious constraint on the speed and scale of how it operates. An effective solution, as the Citizens Party has shown in recent months, would include the reconstruction corporation operating as a state bank, which can create and invest long-term credit to get the region back on its feet quickly. It could also function as a state-owned insurance company, so that residents have confidence in being able to rebuild.

In the federal election, the United Australia Party’s “Daddy Warbucks” Clive Palmer has latched onto the public’s fear about rising interest rates to pledge that his party, if in government, would keep interest rates below 3 per cent. When asked how he’d do that, all Palmer could cite was Section 51 of the Commonwealth Constitution, subsection 13, which gives the Commonwealth power over “banking, other than state banking”. As usual, Clive Palmer is gleaning from the Citizens Party’s information, but only the headlines. The Constitution does indeed provide that power, but a government cannot deliver on Palmer’s promise unless it is prepared to re-establish a national bank, with the powers the Commonwealth Bank had in WWII. As the AAS revealed last week, the power that Ben Chifley inserted in the Banking Act 1945, so the Commonwealth Bank could direct the lending policy of the private banks, is still in the current Banking Act! It just hasn’t been used since 1982, because the private banks have been in charge, not the government that represents the people. Is Palmer’s UAP prepared to take on the private banks and use this power? The Citizens Party is, and has the in-depth policy prescription to do so.

In this issue:

• Are elderly Sterling First victims less deserving of compensation than a Liberal Minister’s mistress?
• Australia to follow NZ into mortgage twilight zone
• The Petroleum and Minerals Authority: the battle for control over Australia’s ‘great mineral wealth’
• What every American-flag-waving Australian patriot should know
• Visiting US warmongers suggest basing US nuclear subs in Australia
• USA, UK, NATO trained Ukrainians eight years for war with Russia
• Vote 1 Citizens Party
• Create a ‘national champion’ to solve the gas crisis
• ALMANAC - Geopolitics: The deadly legacy of Halford Mackinder - Part 2
• The Nazi roots of the ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’

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