To The Australian        Neville Clark's useful advocacy of the term "authoritarian extremism" (11/4), when applied to the coming elections, shows that there is much greater danger of this noxious behaviour in Australia at the moment from the Left than from the Right. Barnaby Joyce correctly points out ("Beware the red dawn") that ALP/Green policies threaten our nation with decline into the sort of socialist/communist tyranny that Solzhenitsyn spent his life exposing for the horror that it is. There is simply no credible fear at all of a comparable Nazi/fascist takeover here. Swinging voters would be well advised then to keep the Coalition in government. Admittedly, like the UK's Conservative Party, it is ideologically divided and weak about sticking to true and tried principles. Too many of its representatives and supporters prefer hedonism to metaphysics. However, casting a primary vote for one of the centre-right minority parties is the best way of administering a timely rebuke to its MPs.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

*Responsibility for electoral comment authorised by K. W. Grundy 13 Carsten Court, Happy Valley, SA.