10th December 1997
The Editor
Queensland Times
Dear Sir,
There is no better argument for the need for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation to gain a real position of influence for you, your readers and I, just mainstream Australians, than the secret trade agreement currently being drawn up between the world’s largest multinational companies and the twenty-nine largest countries in the world (OECD).
We have watched night after night as Beazley puffs up his chest and proclaims his desire to do what is right for Australia and Aborigines. We have wondered why billions of our dollars are being thrown at our Asian neighbours by the Federal Coalition to support their currencies while our fragile dollar free-falls as a result.
In a word it is called ‘collusion’. This word could be replaced with a simple three letter acronym MAI. Where MAI stands for ‘multilateral agreement on investment’ - an agreement being drawn up between OECD countries and the ‘real multinational money’.
While the debate about MAI buffets Canada and the USA we have been closeted from its terrifying impact because our media moguls - Packer and Murdoch who stand to gain the most if it is, and it will be, accepted in a binding legal international agreement by Australian bureaucrats currently in Paris.
The bureaucrats work for the Reserve Bank of Australia (Mr Peter Costello’s department) but have worked on this same project since 1995 - ie under the Labor Party.
So what does MAI mean to our democracy? While the Republican debate is portrayed by Murdoch in the media as the big issue we (nothing more than a ‘living resource’ to the multinationals) are not supposed to know that: ‘MAI is a fetter on the future sovereignty of nations. And worse than that, its being developed by six or seven men (representing the multinationals) in the backroom in silence, and supposedly in the best interests of all of us. Without any consultation, without any open and transparent process of critique and analysis. You know, those kind of scenarios are recipes for anarchy in my view, because what they say to people is that governments can’t help you, that governments become irrelevant, that really its going to be a small group of elite businessmen, quite distant from your nation, developing policies for and on your behalf.’
Perhaps the greatest revelation in the facade currently being presented by the major parties in collusion with the media is the ‘native title or Wik debate’.
Quote by Sharif Seid Australian National University’s Research School of Social Studies, ‘A foreign investor can (under MAI) challenge the government on the basis that Australian government has given a more favourable treatment to the Aborigines than the foreign investor. But here countries are allowed now to make reservations where certain provisions of the MAI would not apply. So I expect the Australian Government to make some reservations on this area, land titles and Aboriginal rights. But again, these reservations are temporary because every country is required 1) to make no new restrictions on foreign investment; 2) to roll back, to withdraw, current restrictions through time. So even if certain reservations would be made now, after a certain period of time they should arise again, that is Australia will be required to withdraw that reservation and then this land title legislation will face extinction.’
At least Pauline Hanson has the guts to stand up for us Australians not just a political career path... the end result will be the same on native title but you don’t have to be an Einstein to see who’s looking after those who voted her in.
Scott Balson, Karana Downs
All the background information (ABC Radio transcript and Internet links) is on the Internet