This was written twenty five years ago, it refer to the situation at that time.
Tregear, 14-9-1983.
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER Mr. HAWKE AND THE MEMBERS OF THE LABOUR PARTY.
Mr. Hawke and colleagues,
For twenty years I have always voted Labour. I believed that the Labour Party was the best hope for this country. I believed that only the Labour Party had the imagination and the guts to develop this rich and beautiful land for the future of the Australian people, and would lead them to self-determination and self-reliance.
I thought that never there was such an opportunity like in this country to show the world how different races and nationalities could work together in cooperation, grow in numbers and produce a strong, healthy and happy society. In Australia we could have shown the world what Humanity could do in an atmosphere of social justice, cooperating within a rationally planned economy in which everybody had the right and duty to participate. Not a society of masters and servants, but a Nation of equals.
But now, Mr. Hawke, I have come to despise the Labour Party. Already in 1973 I began to doubt the strength and wisdom of our labour leaders. I started to realize then that you did not have a sound strategy, and your actions were determined by expediency and compromise. Your social objectives were becoming secondary to your determination to stay in office at all costs as an end in itself.
You should have known better. For seven years before you came to power in 1972 you had the opportunity of watching the British Labour Party perform. You could have seen it taking the road towards self-destruction by identifying itself with capitalist economy and compromising everything it had stood for. England was not ready for Lab or and the Labour Party, instead of waiting a little bit longer, for the sake of staying in office began to shift more and more to the right. Now it has split, a derelict old prostitute.
What good has the Labour Party's policy done to the working people and the Lab or movement of Great Britain?
The Australian Labour Party has chosen to follow on the same road. In the first few months after you came to power in 1972 it became obvious, and you should have realized, that with the Senate and big business against you, you did not stand much chance. Before you became trapped, you should have gone back to the people, and you should have told them that either you should be allowed to implement your program without compromise or you would rather go back into opposition. There, without having lost face and credibility, you could have actively waited for a few years letting the Liberals sink deeper into the quicksand of their own economy; then, well prepared, you could have taken the field. But your backsides were stuck to the seats of office, you were blind and you did not see the snare.
You wanted to buy back Australia for the Australian people. It was a grand idea, deserving to be proclaimed without apologies to the four winds. But, as you could never handle the media, you chose to go about it in a shady way. When you were found out, you behaved like schoolboys caught doing something shameful. We all know the result.
In 1972 you took us a step forward on the way of progress. Since 1975 we have been pushed several steps backwards. In this way you did a disservice to us and to yourselves.
There is no point for you to be in government if you can do no good. We can defend ourselves from those who want to exploit us, but how can we defend ourselves from those who profess to be acting on our behalf?
After 1975 until March of this year I still hoped that not everything was lost. I was hoping that you would have learned the lesson of what had happened to you and to the British Labour Party. But I finally must realize that I was wrong. Your only solution to the problem of handling the media is to comply with its requirements - to pay lip service to your old ideals and to do as those who control the economy and also influence the media tell you.
Without reserve you have chosen to tie yourselves and us to the rotten ship of capitalist economy that is slowly sinking. You have decided to outdo the Liberals in futile efforts to save a hopeless economy, no matter how much it hurts. This is why the Liberals are in disarray, you have stolen their place and now they are worried. If your objective was to be in government for the sake to be in government, then you have got it made as long as you can deliver the unions, the media will be your friend. The Liberals will have to shift further to the Right, as the Conservatives did in England, and they will be ready to take over when those who control the mass media will decide that you have become redundant. In the meantime we and the country as a whole will be the losers.
Mr. Hawke, in our two party system one capitalist party was quite enough. Why have two?
Why not let those who believe in this obsolete economy to sink with it? And in the meantime we could prepare and organize ourselves in every detail for a new alternative, a new Dawn? Do not worry about the liberals making a mess of the economy; they will not make a bigger mess than what you will eventually make.
In you and the Labour Party I can see now the demise of a social movement that has completed its full cycle of evolution - from a progressive beginning to a conservative end. But in our two parties political system you were our only hope. Now we have been left without any real alternative. In substance Australia has become like a banana republic under a disguised capitalist dictatorship without any meaningful opposition -
Thanks to your kind, Mr. Hawke
This is why now I despise the Labour Party
You have tied us without a way out to the sinking ship of international capitalism. We have lost our freedom of action. We have sold our independence to a foreign country whose economy feeds on a policy of brinkmanship for the benefit of a self-perpetuating industrial-military complex. A country whose government believes that it can win and survive a nuclear war by striking the first blow. A country that is suffocating in violence, that is mislead by the machinations of a hard-line administration, where the security services are intertwined with organized crime.
We had a unique opportunity in Australia to start something clean and new, but you have let us down. You have abused our confidence; you have confounded us and left us without real hope.
That is why now I despise the Labour Party.
You call for “accord" and compromise to save capitalism. But for us “accord” means that we must accept quietly to be sacrificed to the dictates of an economy that has become irrational that will never fully recover. Moreover, what have we to compromise Mr. Hawke?
Many of us are already out of work, some are confined at home in darkness as transport and electricity have become luxuries for them, and they are too proud to beg. Those of us who are still working are constantly in fear of redundancy; therefore we have to compete against each other’s like in a snake pit. What else have we got to compromise?
How long will the unemployed have to stand the look of reproach or pity of those who do not understand? How long will we have to withstand the stresses that this situation puts on our families and our lives? Soon the shame of being cast outside the economic and social life of the society will turn into desperation, desperation into rage. We do not want handouts; we want a purposeful participation in a more just and rational society. Not in the distant future, we want it now. It is easy for the like of you to say that we must be patient.
In your economic plans for our future, how much is the cost of the degeneration, loss of pride and hope of just one young person, Mr. Hawke? Did you put a price on it? Will that young person ever be redeemed in three, four or more years when, as you say, the U.S. willing, our economy may recover? Or will that young person have been wasted forever and for nothing? Multiply this tragedy a thousand times, a million times, Mr. Hawke.
Do you realise that you and your Party have assumed this responsibility?
Why not leave it to the Liberals who honestly believe in capitalist economy, and actively prepare yourself and us for a more rational and humane alternative when they fail?
But in your vanity you have taken their place, you have compromised yourself, you have set yourself as a scapegoat. You have not learned the lesson of 1975; you have got it all wrong. How silly will you look in history? You have assumed a place in the "dustbin of history”. But what about us in the present?
Who will we turn to in this two Party system, Mr. Hawke, when you fail?
Can we turn to the Liberals?
You should know that the laws and mechanism of capitalist economy cannot be harnessed, and that its nature cannot be changed.
This is why I despise the Labour Party, Mr. Hawke
You have compounded the confusion of the good-natured Australian people. You are leading us either to a nuclear war to save capitalism or to an endless agony of sacrifices and degeneration, in a land of plenty, amidst a revolution in the technology of production never seen before. Does it make sense to you, Mr. Hawke?
You are repeating over and over that there is no money and that we must increase the profits of business; but Adam Smith, "the father figure of capitalism, who was an honest man, said two hundred years ago that real wealth is not in money but in the lab or of Man and in the Land; money is our invention. Why are we unemployed, Mr. Hawke?
Why are people, the real capital of a nation, rotting without work?
Adam Smith also said that we should never allow capitalist businessmen to become “the rulers of mankind”, and he warned that we should be always "suspicious" of "their advices.
Why do you kneel in front of them, Mr. Hawke?
This is why now I despise the Labour Party, Mr. Hawke.
By trying to save a system that has become obsolete, irrational and destructive you do not save us, Mr. Hawke; you are hurting us by prolonging and aggravating our agony and that of our children. Let the Liberals do it, not Labour; how can we defend ourselves from those who profess to be our friends and abuse our name?
Do you realize that your economic cures are killing us? We cannot afford to keep people in hospitals, criminals in prison, patients in mental homes; we cannot look after our young or after the old. The British Laborites were doing the same in England ten years ago, look were they are now.
With the progress in technology, in the land of milk and honey, we cannot afford any more those services that were considered essential and commonplace when technology was less advanced and production was much slower. Does it make sense to you, Mr. Hawke? Try to analyze more deeply your explanations for this situation and honestly see if there is any natural common sense and human rationality in your reasoning.
Are you trying to con us when you repeat like a parrot over and over that we must become competitive on the world market? Did it ever cross your mind the obvious fact that another one hundred nations are doing the same and already some are sacrificing their populations ten times more than you do, Can you imagine what will be the result of this stupid race amongst Nations to throw each other out of' work? Who will benefit, Mr. Hawke?
Do you really believe in what you are saying? Mr. Hawke? We may be fools. But what are you? An honest dill or an intelligent crook?
These are some of the reasons why now I have come to despise the Labour Party and also you, Mr. Hawke.
Tregear, 14-9-1983.