to THE AGE
     The Prime Minister is right (‘Hate mail - Fears of malicious campaign’, 10/8) that, during the run-up to the marriage postal vote, ‘the views of all sides should not be censored, even if offensive and extreme.’ That is an essential aspect of free speech. On this question there are obviously powerful arguments on both sides: it is not a simple black-and-white matter. Views which one commentator sincerely believes to be truthful and relevant may well appear to an ideological opponent as ‘misleading and deceptive’.
     Is a compromise possible? Defenders of traditional marriage are unlikely to object, for example, to gay partners having ‘rights such as next of kin or being named on a partner’s death certificate’ (Letters).
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

     Previously I have reported on the trend of the financial elites seeking bug out locations in places like New Zealand, as well as building expensive underground security fortifications at their homes:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/29/silicon-valley-new-zealand-apocalypse-escape

    It seems now that elites lower down the food chain are starting to move in the same direction; a recent story is of http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-08-09-why-a-former-facebook-executive-quit-the-tech-industry-moved-to-the-woods-and-bought-guns-and-ammo-collapse-is-coming.html.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4761458/Ex-Facebook-exec-says-society-collapse-30-years.html

     Our economy is static rather than dynamic in the sense that as a society we cannot access what we have already produced until we produce even more—not to purchase what we are producing but to buy goods produced in the previous costing cycle.

      In order to purchase the goods upon which we are currently working when they are completed we must first engage in a whole new and additional round of production.  This is consequent to a price-system that pre-maturely cancels purchasing-power and leaves a deficiency when the final goods come off the production line.  

     Marxist and extreme political ideologues in general typically do not debate.  Their characteristic strategic behaviour is to misrepresent, condemn and intimidate.  

     Their aim is to create social chaos, leaving an opening for them to seize the reins of political power.

     In news that should worry all Australians, the Coalition government has today told public servants that they can be sacked for their political opinions.  From The Australian:

The Turnbull government will today seek to impose restrictions on public servants criticising the Coalition on social media, warning that employees risk disciplinary action for “liking” anti-government posts or privately emailing negative material to a friend from home.
Documents obtained by The Australian show public servants would also be warned they could be in breach of the public service code of conduct if they do not remove “nasty comments” about the government posted by others on the employee’s Facebook page.
You can read the new guidelines here.

to THE AGE
     No, despite your editorial claim (‘Leaders should unite on push for republic’, 29/7), the monarchy is much more than ‘a colonial and imperial relic’.  Monarchy by its nature enshrines something that no republic can provide: a glorious and spiritual mystique which has extraordinary power to unite subjects in a loyalty that provides national strength as well as the sense of being part of a noble enterprise, divinely sanctified. The oneness of the monarch echoes the oneness of God.
     The world’s arts and literature are filled with the joyful celebration of royalty. You will never find there anything comparable for republican presidents or prime ministers. As for Mr Shorten’s plans, it looks as though in a shifty manner he and his fellow-republicans are trying to dodge a referendum on the fundamental question. Such irresponsibility is the opposite of statesmanship.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     Galarrwuy Yunupingu has given a clear and noble account of the traditional Aboriginal process of settlement, but seems unaware of how, after the history of the last two or three centuries, it is irrelevant to constitutional procedures in the Australia of today.  Another mistake he makes is to imagine that Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten can speak on the issue of constitutional recognition for all Australians. They cannot, and true democracy demands that any change must be effected by means of a properly conducted referendum. Finally, there is a contradiction between his professions that he and the authors of the Uluru statement wish to be part of a unified nation, while he pursues an obviously divisive course which does not represent the wishes of all Aboriginals anyway.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic.

to THE AGE
     My defence of the spiritual nature of monarchy and its unifying capacity within the realm has struck a few nerves (letters, 1/8). Yes, of course there have been some very bad monarchs and others have been unable to successfully protect their peoples from disorder; but the majority of kings and queens, and not only those of Britain, have by and large ruled well and not betrayed the ideal. History has, too, a lengthy list of corrupt republics.
     It is significant that the world’s arts and literature are filled with the joyful celebration of royalty. By their very nature republics and presidents simply can’t compete, and no amount of derision can hide this.   
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     Tony Abbott effectively nails the republican issue on the head (‘Imagine Bill our Head of Fate’, 2/8) by reminding us that the Crown gives us ‘national continuity and a focus of loyalty that’s above politics’. Something enormously valuable that has been bequeathed to Australia by the British people’s 1100 year-old constitutional history will be lost if the republican campaign is successful. Abbott could have added that a constitutional monarchy, based on sacred tradition, is by far the best protection of a people against tyranny, whether that is based on inadequate ideology pushed by ‘green-left’ witchdoctors, lust for power in unbalanced persons or financial greed of cliques of merchants.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic.

     Back in the year 2000, there was a UN document prepared which championed the idea of “replacement migration” in Europe, to deal with the alleged problem of a declining and ageing population: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/migration/migration.htm.  No prizes for guessing the conclusions: migration is the big answer to every problem, provided that it is the migration of non-White people to the West. They meant it when talking about “replacement.”

     Documents such as this are actually quite common, and form the standard tool kit of the pro-migration lobby. It would be a mistake to identify one document as being the key, just as old salts activists decades ago, used to single out the Lima Declaration as being the main bad guy document leading to what we now call globalism. There is no one document, but rather a cultural movement among the power elite to push for changes, undermining the traditional world.

Paperback, 165 pages $24.95 ISBN: 978-1-925501-40-7

Alan Moran has been a prominent writer on regulatory matters for thirty years. He was the inaugural head of the Australian governments’ regulatory review office and researched the issues in “think tanks”.

Working outside and within the Victorian Government, he was a major participant in the disaggregation of that state’s monopoly electricity business into a dozen independent parts and in the creation of what later became the National Electricity Market.

Dr Moran has written many books and articles on the interface between climate change, energy and economic well-being. These include editing and contributing to the 2015 best seller, Climate Change: the facts.

Climate Change: treaties and policies in the Trump era, is an examination of:
• The setting of the climate change agenda
• Its position in the international arena where nations have agreed to treaties and agreements that have increasingly placed pressures on governments to take actions in conformance with their provisions
• The developments leading to the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, which incorporated governments’ “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs) on abatement of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
• The costs nations are actually and prospectively incurring in meeting their INDCs and in other measures designed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions
• President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement and other nations’ responses.

The book foreshadows the collapse of the Paris agreement and gradual, if not abrupt, dismantling of the costly measures it entails – primarily involving forcing consumers to subsidise wind and solar energy.

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     Is the Leader of the Opposition planning to avoid the rigor of a referendum in his push to make us a republic? (‘Revival for republic plebiscite’, 29-30/7) Our forefathers wisely gave us a model for constitutional change that avoids hasty acts that might later be regretted. It does this by requiring rather more than a mere 50% plus 1.
     The proposed question for the plebiscite should be asked at a referendum. If the plebiscite does occur, then the subsequent referendum should include an option for the people to say ‘no’ to a republic.
     And it is essential that government funding and publicity for any plebiscite or referendum should be completely fair: 50% each.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

     At the moment the political class is in panic about court rulings reinforcing the Constitutional requirement that prevent dual nationals from running for parliamentary office.  At present Senator Canavan seems to be in trouble because his mother, Australian-born, but Italian, signed him up for Italian citizenship in 2006, without his knowledge: The Australian, July, 26, 2017, p. 1.

     The cartoonists have made fun out of this claim, but I do not see any reason to doubt the claim as being sincere, for Italian mothers could culturally do such things for their sons. Obviously, mum did not know the consequences. What now?
    Well, I believe that section 44 of the Constitution is quite clear what needs to happen:

     Economics dominates our world. Some feel that we should be all concerned about existential threats, but the human being is not like that. Take the so-called environmental crisis for example. Now we know it is all a scam, but just as a thought experiment, pretend we are just “normies.” Most kids at school are brainwashed into believing that there is some sort of climate change threat, but even so, hardly anyone changes their consumer behaviour. Now don’t panic, I am not saying that there is any truth here, but making a point. Even true believers, don’t follow through on actions if it is contrary to present interests. The Left support their grab bag of ideologies only because there is no personal price to be paid. It’s easy then when the system rewards treason against life, because of its built-in pathological death wish.

     Now consider debt and the standard of living. If anything is important, surely that is: “Cost of Living ‘crippling Families,’” The Australian, July, 28, 2017, p. 2. Here are the key points:

     Just six months after the arrival of the First Fleet in Botany Bay in 1788, one event in particular demonstrates just how important the concept of the rule of law was to the British founders of the colony of New South Wales. This is the remarkable story of two convicts, a ship’s captain and a missing package.

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     Rosalind Dixon suggests (‘Strong and clear: let’s support a voice for indigenous people on legislation that affects them’, 20/7) that ‘the main criticism that can be levelled’ at the Referendum Council’s proposal is that ‘it leaves too much to Parliament.’  Not so: the main criticisms against that and all other models of ‘constitutional recognition’ are threefold. They are unjust; they endanger national unity and security; and they will lead to more and more demands against the interests of most other Australians.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

Ross Cameron commented on The Australian article: Bill Shorten Calls for Bipartisan Cooperation For Fixed Four-year Terms http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/bill-shorten-calls-for-bipartisan-cooperation-for-fixed-four-year-terms/news-story/e3a36d3d9ab4b1c9a5b06a0a8543dc0c
     "Interesting how you can get bipartisan support to extend MP privileges, no chance of extending citizen privileges."   (or CIR-ed)

     Well on the way of making heterosexual contact illegal, feminists are moving onto the next horizon in Amsterdam: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/02/labour-seeks-to-make-sexual-harassment-on-the-streets-as-crime/.
     The Dutch Labour party has a bill to make sexual harassment on the streets a crime, with up to three months jail. For women, this initially sounds like a good idea.  And, ideally should help against migrant sexual assaults. But, on reflection, we should understand that it will do nothing of the sort, since sexual offences by non-Whites against women are not treated with the same degree of concern as sexual offences by Whites:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/10/06/europes-rape-epidemic-western-women-will-be-sacrificed-at-the-alter-of-mass-migration/
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2016/01/07/muslim-male-refugees-are-raping-women-in-europe-n2100918
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/19/dutch-battle-surge-of-desperate-violent-muslim-ref/
     The proposed measures are likely to be just more politically correct window dressing.

Australian Conservative, Senator Cory Bernardi, in his “Weekly Dose of Common Sense” shows the real agenda behind Free Trade Agreements and how the UN has morphed into a type of World Government.

He wrote, in part ………………

“As I told the crowd of over 450 people in Brisbane last night, it doesn’t mean any one of us has all the answers. Individually, we bring our unique gifts and skills and talents into the battle of ideas. But together, those gifts complement each other and strengthen our capabilities. Through working together, our individual differences become a source of strength rather than isolation.
That’s what being a community is all about. It’s that sense of belonging and contributing to something bigger than oneself that strengthens families, clubs, cities and nations. It strengthens political parties too.
However, all communities need ties that bind. They need the thread of continuity that runs through all so that we may be drawn together.
At the most basic level that thread is familial. In a political party it is idea, vision and values. As a nation, it is culture.
Culture is our language, our traditions, our laws and our expectations of each other. It emerges over successive generations, each one building upon the previous, bringing us ever closer.
Except that’s not what’s happening now. There is a new force at work within our culture. It isn’t of us and it isn’t working for us. Many refer to it as globalisation but it can take on many monikers.
Despite the reckoning of many pundits, globalisation isn’t about free trade or international markets. Those forces can and do work to our advantage. They provide local businesses with export opportunities and local consumers with a broader range of more competitively-priced goods.
Rather, globalisation is a direct attack on our national sovereignty and self-determination.
It sees unelected bureaucrats in supra-national bodies influencing our domestic agenda through groupthink, peer pressure and intimidation.
The best example is the United Nations. Formed in 1945 for the purpose of preventing another world war through dialogue, it now sees itself as a quasi-world government.
It dictates refugee policy, spruiks the great global warming scam, redefines marriage, smoking policy and so many other virtue-signalling and identity-politics agendas that it has simply become a vehicle for the globalists to push their view.
The UN’s stacked resolutions and dodgy reports are used by political outfits like the Greens to undermine our domestic policy agenda in favour of someone else’s.
These people truly believe they are the enlightened powers that should be running a world of open borders and wealth redistribution in order to save us all. Perhaps that should be ‘enslave’ us all.
It’s time for that to change. We need to reassert our self-determination. That means we need to revisit the treaties, agreements and pacts of decades past to make sure they are working in our interest.
Let’s review them to see if they are achieving what we thought they would. We could start with the UNHCR refugee treaty. It was written in 1951 and the driving forces and key players have changed since then.
Just as every prudent person would insist that every contract has a termination or review date, so too should we insist on reviewing our government’s international agreements at regular intervals.
It will help ensure a check is kept on the agenda that is intent on diminishing, rather than strengthening Australia.”…

I wonder of the Australian Conservatives have a firm position to introduce Citizens Initiative and Referenda as a "core" (non-redactable) policy-ed