8th May 2005

“We’re not just good at rocks and crops. Australia is starting to make a fortune in education” — Mr. Chris Richardson, Access Economics (St. George Bank luncheon, 6th May 2005).

If there were any doubts at all regarding the plans held by the internationalists for the future of our nation, they have all dissipated following the speech given by one Chris Richardson of Access Economics at St. George Bank’s recent “business lunch”.

Mr. Richardson did not hold back with his economic rationalist diatribe, claiming loyal Australians who insisted on supporting Australian industry and producers — Australian jobs, were actually doing the nation a disservice.

Mr. Richardson’s utopian view for our nation, according to his speech, is for our nation to rest predominantly upon growing wheat, mining minerals and educating rich foreign students. Where this leaves our nation’s workforce in the struggle to find secure employment is anybody’s guess.

Not content with his fairyland view of our nation’s economic survival in the international marketplace, Richardson turned his attention upon our country’s water resources, claiming that they were severely underpriced and a review should be conducted to have them revalued accordingly.

This review, according to Richardson, would drive our rice, cotton, sugar and our invaluable dairy producers out of production, leaving us to concentrate on “things we’re really good at” - supposedly denying Australian youth places at our universities in favour of rich foreign students, creating a massive underclass of unemployed Australians watching our manufacturing jobs head overseas (i.e. Hills Industries, Fletcher Jones, Sheridan, et al) while waiting for a vacancy as a university lecturer, wheat farmer or mining magnate to arise, one presumes.

Evidently, Mr. Richardson and his ilk believe Australia’s place in the New World Order is as a nation of consumers of imported goods, and somehow our country’s rural producers will produce enough to carry the nation through it’s perpetual spending spree and balance the books.

Under Keating’s reign I remember the claim that those of us employed in manufacturing need not worry as we watched our jobs head over to Asia and the “sub continent”, because Australia was to be the Clever Country and we’d all be working in Information Technology — creating computer programs and working in call centres of large corporations.

The only problem was there was never any support for workers ending up on the scrap heap — no re-training, no direction, no support for one’s family while one studied and certainly no much-fabled IT jobs for all the displaced factory workers.

IT and the support jobs for large corporations never eventuated — at least not here in Australia. How many readers when phoning to enquire about their finances, credit cards, etc. are forced to grapple with an off-shore employee located in the sub-continent? Electricity companies, telecommunications companies — all using outsourced employees from India so desperate for extra commission they refuse to accept no for an answer.

Mr. Richardson would have us believe that things will be different if only we accept our designated place in the economic marketplace. He’s correct, only it won’t be the veritable cornucopia his kind continually promise the Australian people.

Instead, we will be faced with an economic misery the kind of which we have never witnessed in this country. Australia’s economic sovereignty and in turn, our national sovereignty and self-reliance, will be non-existent. Australian workers will be reduced to mere serfs struggling to compete with imported cheap labour in a deregulated marketplace.

Weakened quarantine regulations as we import more primary produce, exploding trade deficits, spiralling unemployment and social problems as security disappears and the inability of governments to raise expenditure to care for our unemployed and elderly becomes increasingly evident.

Mr. Richardson’s comments gain even more weight when one considers the Howard Government gains control of the Senate in less than two months, with Labor happily crawling into the internationalist bed next to the Liberals in their quest for Industrial Relations reform (and God knows what else in banked-up legislation).

The choice is yours. Do nothing and accept the blame for the enslavement of future generations of Australians or support parties working to regain control of our nation’s future.