At a loss to understand prophet Barnaby? Read this
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Barnaby Joyce’s obsession with the idea that Australia and the developed world generally is facing an economic Armageddon, caused by it drowning in mountains of debt is nonsensical, but Joyce is playing to an electorally powerful audience when he spins these alarmist lines. They resonate with some hard-right voters, and particularly those who used to support Pauline Hanson and One Nation in Queensland. This is the voter who thinks that free markets and liberalised trade are destroying Australia and that the financial system is collapsing around us. Governments, on this view, need to reregulate financial institutions, and somehow make Australia self reliant. If we do not, this argument warns, we will lose our sovereignty to international banks and multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund. In 1998, One Nation’s federal election policy document warned that a “continuation of these globalist” policies will drive Australia to financial disaster and change us from a wealthy and self sufficient nation, to a “third world” nation, depending on the International Monetary Fund and loans to pay its debts, thereby losing its economic and political freedoms.” And when she made her infamous maiden speech to Parliament in 1996 Hanson specifically referred to the fact that Australia was “$190 billion in debt with an interest bill that is strangling us”. One Nation is not alone in proffering this extremist view of the world. The Citizens Electoral Council, an extreme right organisation, which is strong in Queensland (the CEC has received more than $500,000 in recent years from one of its former candidates, Queensland farmer Ray Gillham) — would not disagree with Senator Joyce’s dire warnings of chaos and collapse. On December 29 last year the CEC’s national secretary Craig Isherwood issued a media release — in which he warned that “we’re a nation drowning in debt” and that the “global financial crisis is in essence an unpayable debt crisis”, which is “a swelling volcano, and it is set to blow”. It should be noted that it is not suggested that Joyce has any connection with the CEC. In other words, there is nothing new in Joyce’s rhetoric and any idea that he is simply loose mouthed and doesn’t mean what he is saying, should be scotched immediately. He knows exactly what he is about and it is this — cultivating the voters who turned on the Keating government with a vengeance in 1996 in places such as Queensland and who then flirted with One Nation and applauded John Howard’s dog-whistle politics. These are voters who genuinely believe that the world has gone to pot and that it needs prophets such as Barnaby Joyce to tell us so. I spoke to several of these types of voters a decade ago when I ran an industry group, the Australian Gold Council. A handful of concerned citizens from the Gold Coast used to contact me regularly urging me to tell the public that the gold price was deliberately being kept low by bankers, governments and speculators. They used to sound just like Barnaby Joyce and I found out later at least a couple of them were active in One Nation. |
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8 Comments
The Citizen’s Electoral Council has been campaigning and spreading propaganda in Queensland for a long time and is obviously well funded. It has always had a lot of influence in the National Party here and has concentrated its activities on regional and rural areas. It also targets people who don’t have a lot of education and those who love the sound of a conspiracy. Their ideological influence seems to be growing amongst the conservative side of politics and Bjelke Petersen always pandered to their supporters and included most of their ideology in his pronouncements. One Nation was also one of their ideological children. These people have not gone away and you can hear their thoughts now on a daily basis from conservatives everywhere. I am constantly reminded of Bjelke Petersen by the current Federal Liberal leadership. The dangers of embracing these notions should be obvious to everyone.
Sure they are froot loops, but have you ever read any of their stuff? If you want a trippy evening, forget The Matrix - pour yourself a glass of wine and go have a read. What a mind job.
Crikey also became a bit of a cheerleader for these guys when they started running David Hirst and his “Planet Wallstreet” column. Some of the stuff he writes is pure fantasy.
I think it’s important to make it clear that the CEC is group that follows the political ideas of conspiracy theorist and convicted felon, Lyndon LaRouche.
I wonder how much traction would they get in country QLD, if the punters knew that CECs ideological head believed Queen Elizabeth II was the head of an international drug-smuggling cartel.
On the upside, imagine the rush to become a republic if it became widely known that our head of state was in fact a drug dealing space lizard.
So are they only concerned about federal government debt? Haven’t heard anything from Barnyard about the real Australian problem - individual private debt.
Why is individual private debt a concern of politicians? Has nothing to do with the Government as they don’t have to underwrite it. That’s what bankruptcy laws are for.
Government has enough to do without policing the credit histories of it’s citizens. The banks have enough expertise to do it themselves. Let the market sort it out.
Barnaby wrong about Australia’s debt crisis—it’s worse!
“The politicians and the media threw a fit over Senator Joyce’s comments on Australia’s debt, to hide the real debt situation, which is over $800 billion worse than he said,” Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood revealed today.
“PM Rudd claims his government’s debt is the lowest in the world, but he wants the public to ignore the fact that to bail out the banks, his government has gone guarantor for over $800 billion in bank liabilities, which it is in danger of being forced to honour by the repercussions of the Greek sovereign default crisis.”
Mr Isherwood detailed the debt figures:
$122 billion—Commonwealth government debt, about 10 per cent of GDP.
$1,232 billion ($1.232 trillion)—Australia’s gross foreign debt, over 100 per cent of GDP.
$1,200 billion (1.2 trillion)—Australia’s household debt, 100 per cent of GDP.
$827 billion—foreign debt of Australia’s banks and other financial institutions.
$441 billion—bank and other financial institutions foreign debt with maturity of less than 90 days.
“When politicians and the media go hysterical like they did this week, you know they have something to hide,” Mr Isherwood said.
“This is it: they only want to talk about the 10 per cent of GDP Commonwealth debt, so the public don’t start questioning how much debt we are exposed to by the bank guarantees.
“The fact is, our government effectively faces the same crisis as every other government in the world, because instead of reorganising the bankrupt financial system in 2008 along the lines prescribed by the expert economist Lyndon LaRouche, they bailed it out, and transferred the bankruptcy on to the public.
“The Australian government guaranteed $700 billion in bank deposits up to $1 million, and new foreign borrowings by the banks of more than $140 billion—over $840 billion in total.
“They insist that those guarantees were just a show of confidence in the ‘soundness’ of our banks, and will never have to be honoured, but when those same banks carry a $441 billion 90-day debt exposure to the international money markets, how can they ever pay it back?”
He continued, “They can’t. They have to keep borrowing more and rolling it over, but that means the government’s exposure is not so much to the banks, but to the international money markets.
“The Greek sovereign default crisis threatens to blow those markets up—and if not Greece, it could be Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, even the U.K. and the U.S.—and Australia’s banks will be caught out just like in October 2008 when they faced bankruptcy and the government rescued them with its guarantee, but this time it is the Australian public which will be caught out.
“In these looming circumstances, Australia then joins the ranks of nations crushed under their public debt.”
The CEC National Secretary concluded, “What is proving increasingly impossible to hide, is that the whole system is rotten—15 months of coordinated government bail-outs of the financial system has just created more debt, and bankrupted the governments.
“Now is the time to finally go with LaRouche’s and the CEC’s solution, of bankruptcy reorganisation, a new credit system run by a government-owned national bank, and long-term public investment in infrastructure development and reindustrialisation.”