Recent stories exclusive to (how to) subscribe/rs of the Australian National News of the Day:
Queensland State Candidates meet the
people 15th March 1998
Hanson on Channel 9s Midday Show 14th
March 1998
One Nation, the First Year 12th March
1998
Pauline
Hanson tackles the MAI in Parliament while the media re-writes
history 10th March 1998
Feature:
How did the Hanson phenomenon start?
8th March 1998
Presentation on
"the level playing field" that ain't 7th March
1998
B
A Santa Maria on Australia pre- and post- Hawke.
6th March 1998
Lateline report
on the MAI - 80% of Australia's economic activity is controlled by
multinationals. 5th March
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Today's
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an Aussie's viewpoint on Australia's
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Since
October 1995
Hanson's New South Wales Roadshow moves into top gear
Some 300 guests sat and cheered as Pauline Hanson spoke at the Dural Country Club last night.
Not one protester appeared as the wind seemed to go out of their sails.
Today Pauline will announce 12 New South Wales Federal candidates for the upcoming elections. I will provide details in due course.
The Queensland State Election web page has been updated with more candidates being added to the list. This list is not complete as yet.
What does the proposed Telstra sell-off mean to Aussies?
My perception of John Howard as
an honest politician hit another low yesterday as he swung out a short term
perceived gain for Australians in an expensive drive to win the next Federal
Election. The carrot was the proposed Au$40 billion sale of Telstra -
Australia's most valuable public utility. The call for the sale of the remaining
two-thirds of Telstra comes hot on the heels of the
comments by the
American chief executive, Frank Blount, (seen here right) that Telstra
should be sold off.
The pitch to the Australian voters was centered around the following comments by John Howard which we will briefly investigate...
"Greatest home owning democracy in the world... I want to make Australians the greatest share owning democracy in the world."
Just days ago we reported that some 5 million Australians (or about 30%) now live below the official poverty line. They are in no position to share in the sale of Telstra. They did not benefit from the earlier sale of one third which has seen investors almost double their money in a matter of months.
This spectacular growth in the value of Telstra represents a massive undervaluing of 33% of this public utility when it was put on the market. In other words the gain by the investors who could afford to buy the shares was a loss by the people who could not afford to buy the shares - because they shared in the value of the assets sold as a public utility before the earlier sale.
It has got to be remembered that the Prime Minister has put a cap of 35% on foreign ownership of Telstra if the total sell-off proceeds. The same move made by Bob Hawke in 1985 when the Australian banking industry was opened up to foreign investors. Just 10 years later, through the FSIA, the foreign ownership of our entire banking industry became an unregulated prize for the Rothschilds and Rockefellers whose lobbyists in the treasury, Reserve Bank and Parliament secured the ultimate reward of the 1985 decision.
Today the banking industry in Australia is the most profitable - yet it is the industry which has laid off 40,000 jobs since foreigners were allowed to compete here.
Id this good for Australia? I think not.
The other Howard statement:
"A good and useful social bonus"
This reminded me of another great porky pie by Bob Hawke just before the 1986 election that "No child would live in poverty in Australia by 1990."
Over the weekend
I visited
a large nursing home in Mt Gravatt with One Nation candidates.
(Pic left: Richard Duffell at the nursing home). What I saw
was a disgrace. Infirm and old people being left in front of the television
set for hours totally unattended. The nursing staff complained that with
the reduction in funding they had had to lay off staff and that they could
not provide adequate care for those who needed it.
This morning when Communications Minister Richard Alston was asked by Channel 9s Today presenter Steve Liebman whether this social bonus would include better funding for the elderly Alston refused to clarify what Howard meant...
Now let us remember that this is our asset - not Howard's, not Alston's, which is being used as a political carrot to a carefully selected segment of the Australian population.
The profits raised by Telstra in the future will not longer be used to improve the service or maintain services in remote areas where it might be unprofitable to do so - the profits will be returned to shareholders. History tells us that Telstra shares will become increasingly foreign-owned until another asset is lost to us.
The issue is a disgrace and one that has to be exposed. The Liberal Party, like the Australian Labor Party do not deserve to have the confidence of the Australian people when they pull tricks like this one.
Free land offer for Chinese investors
The western New South Wales town of Broken Hill is to offer free blocks of land to Chinese investors in an effort to generate jobs.
Mayor, Peter Black, is heading a delegation to the Chinese city of Taixing this weekend and will be accepting an invitation to set up a sister-city relationship.
Mayor Black says he will also be offering Taixing residents free blocks of land in an industrial area on the condition they put some investment into Broken Hill within two years.
"If we have to go on our hands and knees and beg for some overseas investment, well so be it, I'll do it," he said.
"It's in the expectation I can generate, through the support of the council, a few jobs in Broken Hill."
US Lesbian case may be taken to church's highest court
While the Uniting Church in Australia is an absolute mess because of the gay and lesbian lobby - it would now appear that the cancer has now spread to the Methodist church as well. A jury of 13 United Methodist ministers in Nebraska yesterday found a fellow clergyman not guilty of disobeying the church by conducting a "marriage" ceremony for lesbians.
The acquittal of the Rev. Jimmy Creech by the nine-man, four woman jury ended the first legal test of the church's ban on homosexual "marriage" ceremonies.
"The church has spoken", said Bishop Joel Martinez, head of the Nebraska Conference, but a church spokesman, Tom McAnally, said the prelate hopes to send the case to the denomination's highest court, the Judicial Council.
Eleven jurors ruled that Mr. Creech, who has hedged on whether his "covenant" ceremony was meant to be, a "wedding" did conduct a "homosexual union ceremony."
Yet only five - it takes nine jurors to convict - believed that Mr. Creech had disobeyed the church by defying Bishop Martinez and ignoring a ban on such ceremonies in the churches Social Principles.
Mr. Creech is free to return to the 1,900-member First United Methodist Church in Omaha as its pastor. He was suspended Nov. 10.
On the stand Thursday, Mr. Creech was asked by the Rev. Lauren Ekdahl - the church's advocate, or prosecutor --- whether he would conduct more homosexual ceremonies at the church.
"Yes I will," Mr. Creech testified in a courtroom set up in a church gymnasium in Kearney., Neb., 200 miles west of Omaha. Ninety-two United Methodist clergy had signed a petition during the trial saying that if Mr. Creech was convicted, they would defy the church by holding covenant and blessing ceremonies for homosexual couples across the nation.
In testimony yesterday, the Rev, Philip Wogaman, pastor to President and Mrs. Clinton at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, said the. church's Social Principles do not constitute rigid dogma.
"No one is required to believe them," said Mr. Wogaman, an expert in social ethics and supporter of a liturgy for committed homosexual relationships, arid he said he was concerned that convicting a clergyman of disobedience might turn the Social Principles into a "club."
The church advocate contended that Mr. Creech had taken the church marriage rite and altered it for homosexuals, then conducted it officially in a church.
Retired Bishop Kenneth Hicks testified that when a statement in the Social Principles "takes on a judicial tone," it means that is the church position. He said the church has five times voted down petitions to the General Convention to approve homosexual "marriages".
The Rev. Glenn Loy, the Nebraska pastor who filed the complaint against Mr. Creech, said he sees the Social Principles as binding. "When the General Conference put in the words 'shall' or 'shall not, 'that is intent," he said.
The Social Principles can be amended every four years by the church's General Convention. In 1996 the convention added a passage saying clergy "shall not" perform ceremonies for homosexual unions in churches.
Mr. Creech's primary defence was that he broke no rules.
Since the 1980s, Mr. Creech had been an advocate for homosexual rights in his home state of North Carolina, and for this could not get a church appointment there.
Yesterday, Mr. Creech's defence team --- a professor of religion assisted by a lawyer - called psychologist Gregory M. Herek to testify about prejudice against homosexuals.
The defence also called a member of the Omaha church, a black man who is a homosexual and attends with his partner, to testify about what they perceive as prejudice in much of the church.
Making the
news" -
Anne Scott snubbed by the ALP
Last week my letter appeared in the Queensland Times revealing that I had been told in January that one of Labor's most outspoken pre-selection candidates for the seat of Oxley, Anne Scott, had already had her fate determined by the Labor hierarchy.
Yesterday my source was proved right after Anne Scott failed to get one vote from Labor's electoral college with Bernie Ripoll being selected.
In the earlier branch vote she received 49 of a possible 247 votes just behind Ripoll who received 52.
In the electoral college at which the heavyweights like Peter Beattie were the decision makers Ripoll received 23 out of a possible 42 votes, Barry Burton 10, and John Flynn 9 votes. Mrs Scott didn't receive one.
"The men in the Labor party say we make the decisions in the party, the women make the sandwiches and that's where you will stay," Anne Scott said after the vote.
"I'm very disappointed because I thought the Labor Party would take this opportunity to put a woman into one of the state's winnable seats.
"I believe that they can't cope with having a woman in a winnable seat - they just want the winnable seats for their mates."
Where her argument comes somewhat unstuck is the selection by the ALP of
Virginia Clark for Blair and Karen Struthfield for the safe ALP seat of
Archerfield. Anyone with half an ounce of brain in their head knows that
the result reflects
her argument
with state secretary Mike Kaiser last year when Wayne Goss temporarily
put his hand up for the seat of Oxley - a move which got Kim Beazley's immediate
endorsement.
Subject: Keep up the good work
My wife and I were really impressed with Pauline's interview with Kerri-Anne on the midday show. Keep up the good work. Maybe the people will listen to you, when they realise you ARE RIGHT. And you have that nice air of confidence. This country is full of deros and hopeless thinkers who want all for nothing.
If they don't wake up soon they will LOOSE IT ALL.
All the best.
We are pensioners and can't do anything for you but encourage you to go forth, with THE POWER WITHIN YOU.
regards
alan & donna
Subject: Australia officially given away to Asians
For years the politically correct have accused us of starting 'conspiracy theories', regarding the sellout of this country to foreigners.
Well now there are people not happy with selling out Australia, they are giving it away for nothing, and willing to grovel so that the Chinese will take it.
This is nothing less than treason.
Gweilo
BUSINESS COSTS COMPARISONS PREPARED BY THE MULTINATIONALS:
Economist Intelligence Unit estimates
Production wages aren't the only story. Components of the estimates include wage costs (including executive salaries), business travel, taxes, rents, telecoms, and transport. For some unexplained reason, Japan isn't included. Note Australia is in the top ten most expensive countries.
| Germany | 100.0 | US | 91.8 | Belgium | 89.4 | UK | 81.4 | France | 79.5 | Netherlands | 74.2 | Sweden | 68.6 | Australia | 65.4 | Italy | 64.9 | Singapore | 59.0 | Canada | 58.5 | Argentina | 54.1 | Spain | 52.9 | Brazil | 52.3 | Mexico | 50.2 | Hong Kong | 48.8 | Russia | 47.3 | Poland | 25.1 | India | 22.1 | Czech Rep | 20.5 | Chile | 19.0 | China | 10.4 | Thailand | 5.6 | Hungary | 2.2 | Malaysia | 1.7 | Indonesia | 1.6 | South Africa | 1.0 |
Another perfect day in paradise.
Have a good one.
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