Recent stories exclusive to (how to) subscribe/rs of the Australian National News of the Day:
The Internet and
the DEATH of the MAI - 30th April
Launch of Pauline
Hanson's re-election campaign - 29th April
Second One Nation
protest surprises Bob McMullan - 28th April
Sultan
of Brunei buys up big tracks of Australia - then negotiates Indonesian
"settlements" 25th April
Maritime
Union of Australia win in the Federal Court 22nd April
Just
who is behind the dock war? 19th April
One
Nation Birthday Party on Pauline Hanson's farm 10th-12th April
One
Nation state and federal candidates meet in Toowoomba 4th -5th
April
Hindmarsh
Island Bridge case thrown out by High Court 2nd April
The
Hindmarsh Island Bridge farce revealed 31st March
Current topical links (available to all readers):
[Links to the MAI]
[Queensland
One Nation State Election website]
[One Nation Federal Web
Site]
Archive of weekly features (available to all
readers):
[The
Canberra Column]
[Economic
Rationalism]
Today's
Headlines
an Aussie's viewpoint on Australia's
first daily Internet newspaper.
Since
October 1995
Network Guerillas
Extract from an article on the death of the MAI:
Source: Financial Times THURSDAY APRIL 30 1998
This week the horde claimed its first success and some think it could fundamentally alter the way international economic agreements are negotiated.
The target of their attacks was the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) being negotiated at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the attackers a loose coalition of non-government organisations (NGOs) from across the political spectrum. They included trade unions, environmental and human rights lobbyists and pressure groups opposed to globalisation.
The opponents' decisive weapon is the internet. Operating from around the world via web sites, they have condemned the proposed agreement as a secret conspiracy to ensure global domination by multinational companies, and mobilised an international movement of grass-roots resistance.
Mont Pelerin Society responsible for recent Auckland and Brisbane blackouts.
There is always a germ behind any festering sore. In the case of undemocratic international treaties we need to look at what is the driving force behind them.
Elitist groups like the Mont Pelerin Society have a particular role to play - it is called Union bashing. Not all unions are bad, in fact some of them are very good. The difference between unions like the Maritime Union of Australia (or MUA) and the bankers or electricity union in Queensland, for example, is that the MUA is more organised, militant and threatening. The "good" unions tend to lie down and die when the boss steps on them.
The MUA has turned the Federal Government on its head over the last few weeks with support for John Howard washing away like a breached dam as the Federal Court's ruling last week plunged the docks into chaos and effectively bankrupted Patrick Stevedores.
We, as a nation, have got to note with alarm the men behind the union-busting mission - not the unions like the MUA who can look after themselves, but the placid unions who can't. The financial services agreement, for example, signed by the ALP in 1995 went unchallenged by bank staff but has since resulted in 40,000 of them losing their jobs - and with ATMs replacing branches and big bank mergers this is the trickle of job losses before the tide.
The losers are all ordinary Australians - with the rural area being devastated where bank branches have closed down - as the new foreign owners entrench their unique anti-social brand of economic rationalism on the landscape with the blessing of the tweedle dum and tweedle dee of politics - the Coalition and the Australian Labor Party.
An untold story in Brisbane is the tale behind the recent power strikes - and for Sydney-siders the story should spell alarm.
You see Mercury Energy recently won the contract to run the electricity grid in New South Wales.
Look in the story below what Wayne Gilbert, Mercury Energy's chief, has done to the electricity service in Queensland and New Zealand. To say that the respective governments had the interests of the people in mind when invoking his controls is laughable. Once again, there is a common link in loss of service - like the banks and the wharves it is called union busting and job shedding.
[Source: Australian Financial Review, Feb 24, by Garry West]
The Australian city of Brisbane, the capital of the state of Queensland, was recently crippled by power failures, in a bizarre parallel of the calamity that has struck Auckland in New Zealand.
Mechanical failures caused the break-down of generational units at 4 major power stations which resulted in power being supplied by rotational load-shedding, whereby power is only available to most residents for about one hour in every four.
The common denominator in both the Brisbane and Auckland power crises is Mr. Wayne Gilbert, the chief executive of Mercury Energy in Auckland, who was formerly the head of Brisbane's electricity supplier, the South East Queensland Electricity Board (SEQEB).
In 1985, Gilbert started slashing costs in Queensland's electricity sector by sacking the entire unionised workforce of SEQEB, and replacing them with non-union contractors. Gilbert's actions made him a hero of the HR Nicholls Society (read that as Peter Costello), the union-busting front of the Mont Pelerin Society in Australia.
After briefly overseeing the corporatization of Victoria's electricity industry in preparation for its sell-off, Gilbert joined the newly corporatized Mercury Energy in Auckland, the company responsible for the power failure that has shut down that city.
He also became a member of the New Zealand Business Roundtable, the Mont Pelerin Society front that directed that country's infamous economic reforms. As in Brisbane, the Auckland power failure has been firmly blamed on cost-cutting.
Note SEQEB is no more. It is now called Energex and is to be privatised by the Queensland State government.
THE HINDU: People's movements reject 'treaties of exploitation'
The Hanson Phenomenon, the mainstream media will have you believe, is something uniquely Australian - a rising tide of uninformed, ill-educated no-hopers who see Pauline Hanson as a mis-placed heroine who will save them from the unknown and lead them back to the "dark ages".
They are wrong. The article below unveils a growing tide of people power, the global movement that One Nation represents in Australia. The focus of concern for the "people power" groups is the world trade organisation, the OECD, the multi nationals and their elitist partners.
The Canadian, German, French, Irish, American, Indian and Australian nations, in particular, are seeing a growing tide of well-educated, family oriented citizens saying NO. Enough is enough.
While the mainstream media and their political buddies peddle "globalisation" as the only way forward for Australia the rest of the civilised world is taking a raincheck and saying "Hang on a moment, we want to get off." But you won't hear this fact being delivered by Murdoch's unethical media. They spin the line that somehow, Hanson's nationalism will drive Australia into international isolation - a world where our borders will be cut off and trade stops where the sea meets the Australian coast. The anti-Hanson message is spread by minority anti-family fringe groups like gays and lesbians who use their own selfish issues as bait for their collective vote at the polls.
One of the most remarkable examples of the rising tide of nationalism is India where poverty is rife and multinational money, if it was "good" for a nation like Australia would be fantastic beyond belief for the impoverished people there.
The reality as you will see below is very different....
The people's movements from all over the country have once again communicated their rejection of India's agreement with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and have pledged to intensify opposition to the global "treaties of exploitation such as GATT and Multilateral Agreement of Investment'' and to achieve control over people's own resources like water, land and forest by ousting global and national corporate powers. The organisations have also warned to launch a "new salt satyagraha'' across the country and to strengthen the farmer's agitation. This was declared at the public rally at the conclusion of the two-day "Janadhikar Panchayat'' organised by the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) at Ram Lila grounds here on Tuesday morning.
Around 5000 delegates from 13 States representing 100 organisations took a pledge to strive for a sustainable, equitable, social and political order and development policy. Their resolve was endorsed by jurist, Mr. Justice (Retd.) V.R. Krishna Iyer who was specially present on the occasion. Movements from all over India have vowed to intensify the struggle against the compulsion of the sale of the iodised salt all over the country from June 5, the day on which Jayaprakash Narayan launched his total revolution. Demonstrations and other programmes will be held in all States and satyagraha will also be offered by selling the natural salt and by integrating the salt producing communities. This will continue till the right to sell and utilise natural salt is established.
It was also declared that the struggle against Enron will continue in the Konkan region of Maharashtra and will be further intensified by extending the struggle to other parts, especially the South where Enron is planning to set up additional projects. Taking note of the refusal of Enron to set up a plant in Kerala, the NAPM said that the struggle will be widened by clubbing the anti-nuclear power struggle with it.
The NAPM will support the struggle of the farmers going on in different parts of the country. It will continue to oppose any amendment to the Indian Patency Act and fully support the rally of the farmers on May 1 in Hyderabad. The NAPM has set up a cell on the issue of farmers to formulate continuous programmes and strategy.
Reiterating NAPM's commitment on the issue and rights of the dalits, minorities including social and gender inequality, the leaders of the people's movements asserted that the efforts will be continued and a further endeavour will be made to unite with different organisations and movements in the field. The NAPM has vowed to intensify, increase and spread its struggle against MNCs and other institutions like GATT and MAI.
The NAPM will organise country-wide opposition through public meetings, demonstrations, meetings/gheraoing local MPs against the Bill on the Patent laws to be passed by the ruling BJP-allies Government in the forthcoming Parliament session.
Making the
news" -
ASIO
To The Editor,
Well here we go again, The government is again seeking to thrust extra powers over us by deception.
With the waterside court decisions going against them they are seeking to find other ways to control the People. To think we were once blinded with the evils of socialism and the like, we now have the government seeking to give greater powers to ASIO under the guise of giving greater power to ASIO to improve security at the Olympics.
Greater power to tap telephones greater power to tap into computer systems to monitor financial transactions. Plus a possible host of other things they would not tell the public about. Powers that will continue to monitor and control the Australian Public long after the Olympics are over.
And get this, giving the Director of ASIO the authority to issue warrants to carry out this type of covert monitoring bypassing the courts. (Sounds like something out of the X-Files)
Considering such directors are appointed by the government of the day this would give ruling governments and the behind the scene directors (NOT THE ELECTORATE OR THE PEOPLES COURTS) the power to conduct a purge of anyone they see as a threat to their plans.
An example of the type of scheme would be the recent action on the MAI. Imagine if the government had been able to set up objectors using and directing new ASIO POWERS to try to shut up any opposition in that area.
The Civil Liberties Movement is very concerned and we should all join them in voicing our objection to any legislation planned to give greater powers to any security organisation.
As the government used the Port Arthur incident to force new legislation to disarm Australia, I believe they will now try to use an imagined threat at the Olympics to give ASIO and through this organisation, give ruling governments greater power and control over the people.
Let us face the real truth, most major parties will do anything to entrench their parties and their financial backers interests first, over and above the interests of the Australian Public.
If we allow this to happen we will soon wind up in a situation like the dictatorship in Indonesia, putting down peaceful objections with force.
The same determination should be applied in preventing any legislation giving greater powers to secret organisations like ASIO. Determination as was shown in opposing the secret negotiations giving extra powers to multinationals under the MAI AGREEMENT.
Recent governments have clearly shown they cannot be trusted in such matters, actively plotting to secretly pass legislation not at all in the interests of the Australian People.
The recent Governments pledge to use Taxpayers money to help a private company get rid of employees is self-evident. The worms are starting to crawl out of that rotten pie now regardless of what you may personally think about the Waterside Workers and their work practices.
No matter what your political persuasion remember governments only seek to gain more power for themselves and will never willingly give Power to the people.
WAKE UP AUSTRALIA
Tony Fitzpatrick
Another perfect day in paradise.
Have a good one.
Return to Australian National
News of the Day
See GLOBE International for
other world news.