“THE WORKERS PARTY”

WITH:

JOHN SINGLETON

ROBERT HOWARD

ROBERT MOORE, ABC

AND A STUDIO AUDIENCE

Broadcast: Monday, 10th February, 1975.

ANNOUNCER: MONDAY CONFERENCE returns for 1975.

Tonight the Workers Party — or is it? With Party Chairman John Singleton (and an audience of the unconverted).

ROBERT MOORE: Good evening. Welcome back to MONDAY CONFERENCE.

During the intermission a new political party was formed. It’s called the Workers Party. It’s for what it calls “productive” workers and it’s against what it regards as the unproductive or the “parasitical”. It’s for the individual and it’s against the mob, State, gang or Governments. It thinks that all the present major parties are socialist, to one degree or another. It regards itself as the only party based on “morality and logic”. It propounds as its FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE: “non-interference”.

Well the Workers Party was formed at the end of last month. Its membership fee is 50 dollars a year. It holds meetings, publishes pamphlets and intends to run candidates at the next election when, if it comes to power, it will not only begin to abolish taxation, public schools and most Government departments but will also sell the ABC to private enterprise! (LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE FROM SOME MEMBERS OF AUDIENCE)

John Singleton is Chairman of the Workers Party. (Laughing, in response to applause: I don’t know how to take that!) Mr Singleton is Managing Director of a major Sydney advertising agency. He achieved more than passing fame at the time of double dissolution election in May last year with a series of what became highly contentious television commercials directed against the Labor Party.

Tonight, Mr. Singleton is principal spokesman for the Workers Party. He is Chairman, as I mentioned before, and he will be assisted, where appropriate, by Robert Howard. Mr Howard is a Governing Director of the Workers Party, editor of the “Free Enterprise Newsletter” and a mechanical engineer by profession.

Among the critics of the Workers Party in our audience tonight are supporters of the major political parties, members of unions on the receiving end of the Workers Party’s policies, members of the general public … and a small contingent of the Workers Party itself … who have a watching brief only tonight!

Mr Singleton, given your track record and general attitudes it’s not surprising that you’re critical of the Labor Party. I think the most interesting thing is why the disillusionment with the Liberal Party? I mean you see it only as a matter of degree, don’t you? The only advantage of the Liberal Party is that it’s a slower socialist party than the Labor Party?

JOHN SINGLETON: There are other advantages but I think they’re irrelevant. I think the thing that … when we looked at supporting the Liberal Party — and most of our members so far are either members or supporters of the Liberal Party — we did so not because we had any belief or strong feelings about their policies — in fact we can’t define exactly what their policies are — we thought it does seem strange in a country as young and virile as Australia and so potentially rich, that no one within the Liberal Party has either the foresight or the courage to promulgate the only way those riches can be potentialised, and that’s through a free market economy.

So there’s two ways you can do this; you can hope to join the Liberal Party and reform it — or help to reform it — or you can give people an intelligent alternative, and that’s the course we’ve elected to take.

ROBERT MOORE: Would, say, Mr. Malcolm Fraser present a more acceptable face of “Liberalism” to you than Mr. Snedden does?

JOHN SINGLETON: Oh, far more acceptable, but it’s hard for me to say because I have not met with Malcolm Fraser, I’ve only read some of the things he’s written and I’ve listened to him on many occasions, and I could say that in my opinion at least he does initiate free enterprise thinking, and I think he is the sort of man who would rather lose an election than win it by giving away my money to people I don’t want to give it away to. I would look upon him as a preferable leader, but alternately he’d still be stuck with the same platform — or lack of platform.

ROBERT MOORE: What does Sir Robert Askin think about the Workers Party and its attack on the Liberal Party? I mean you worked very closely with him on the election campaign last year didn’t you?

JOHN SINGLETON: That’s right I did, but in all honesty I haven’t discussed it with Sir Robert Askin.

ROBERT MOORE: No. Well now can we get to the Fundamental Principle which is mentioned, or is written, at the bottom of every page of your platform, page after page, which you obviously take very seriously. Could I just quote it to you? It says:

No man or group of men has the right to initiate the use of force, fraud or coercion against another man or group of men.

I must say I’m not quite clear what that means. In a sense to me it’s simply a truism. It’s like no person has a right to …

JOHN SINGLETON: It’s true. It’s pointless having a truism that doesn’t exist.

ROBERT MOORE: No, but to me it’s like saying no person has the right to kill anyone else except we do make exceptions in war time and so on. Now does this Fundamental Principle have any higher status than that? When you say …

JOHN SINGLETON: Yes, it certainly does.

ROBERT MOORE: What does it mean?

JOHN SINGLETON: I think the example … what we’re trying to say is that to have a policy, to have a platform, you have to have one major stated objective. One major philosophy. And that philosophy which none of us can disagree with — and I’ve not been able to get anyone to fundamentally disagree with us — is exactly as stated, that no man or group of men has the right to initiate force, fraud or coercion against you or me, or any of us, and it’s happening today, major force and coercion against each and every one of us is government, and the people who are supposed to define rights and protect our rights are instead those that do most to subjugate those rights.

So I think the philosophy … the important question with the philosophy is not its practicality but its morality, and I don’t think anyone, even here today, could argue with the morality of the statement.

ROBERT MOORE: Could I ask you this, just … ‘cos if the answer is yes it might make for a quicker understanding of the philosophy behind the party. Have you been influenced much or at all by Ayn Rand’s writing?

JOHN SINGLETON: Oh very much. I think anyone in the free market, any free market economist or anyone who supports the free market economy must have made some study of Ayn Rand, or should have done so and should have also studied the other free market economists. I should point out to the audience that what we’re suggesting isn’t all that year 2000 because President Ford’s chief economic adviser, Allan Greenspan, follows the free market economy. He’s a free market economist.

The Nobel Prize winner in Economics last year was another free market economist, so I think these people — name’s Hayek — these people and Ayn Rand have obviously had a major part to play in stimulating our thought.

ROBERT MOORE: Yes. It seems to me that far from being a new philosophy, a lot of what you’re saying is something that the mill owners and the mine owners of the late 18th century and early 19th century would have understood and thought. I mean you want to get rid of government welfare programmes — they didn’t have them then; you want to get rid of compulsory education and the State school system — they didn’t have them then.

JOHN SINGLETON: Right.

ROBERT MOORE: Isn’t it in effect, your policy, a very reactionary one? You simply want to go back to those days no?

JOHN SINGLETON: No, it’s radical. Radicals get into the roots of the problem. Reactionaries just try to make a quid out of what’s there. I think the thing … if … picture if we were back these days when you were talking about it and we were talking to this audience, in a free market where we earned our money and we did what we liked with it, if I suggested to you we were going to set up a new platform, a new party, that you were going to work 2 days in 3 for this thing called government, who were going to do all these things you were previously doing for yourself — that would be lunacy, but that’s the society under which we now live, so if we are talking about a system that was acting back in centuries — and I’m not a philosopher nor a student — then what I suggest is it is still really irrelevant because things then were different; resources were different, knowledge was different, science was different, so the fact that a philosophy may have existed a hundred or 200 years ago doesn’t make it right or wrong, it just makes it interesting.

ROBERT MOORE: No, well it does more than that doesn’t it? I mean didn’t the welfare state, if you like, and government activity come about not just because of a plot but because people recognised the injusticies of child labour, say, schooling being unavailable to most people in the community, and it seems to me you’re saying we want to go back to that, to ignore the lessons of the last 200 years say.

JOHN SINGLETON: I think we could learn a lot more if we just worried about the lessons of the last 10 years. What we’re not … one of the things that must be made clear is we’re not suggesting a return to child labour; we’re not suggesting a lack of education. What we are suggesting is greater education, more intelligent education, more applicable education.

What we’re suggesting instead of a welfare state is a state where people have incentive to look after themselves. Today there is every incentive for you not to look after yourself. There’s every incentive not to work. There’s every incentive not to try. There’s every incentive not to get educated because you know someone else is going to go to that trouble and the major government will rip the money off them and give it to you anyway so that the incentive in society today is not to try, not to work and worst is not to get educated and we’re suggesting that’s because everything is compulsory, it’s forced upon you and I don’t see that the Government has that right.

I’ve failed to know … I don’t know any parents who care less about their children than Cairns, Connor, Crean etc. I think that the child is the paternal responsibility, not Government responsibility.

ROBERT MOORE: But supposing parents, you know, don’t care about their children. Doesn’t society have some obligation to those children to insist that they go to school because, you know, otherwise they will suffer because of the inadequacies or lack of concern of their parents.

JOHN SINGLETON: Well, you’re talking a hypothetical question. (EXCLAMATIONS OF DISAGREEMENT FROM SOME MEMBERS OF AUDIENCE) For a start children have their own rights. I think the more important question is if there is someone down the road whose parents aren’t looking after them, aren’t caring about them, if you care about them you do something about it. I care about it, I’ll do something about it, but I don’t want someone to tell me I have to do something about it.

I don’t believe now that people voluntarily are helping the children down the road whose parents won’t educate him because they know that they will do it. What I’m suggesting is that we ought to get away from “they” and get back to “us”. That we should accept some responsibilities ourselves, and we can’t do that today when everything’s being done for us.

ROBERT MOORE: Thanks Mr. Singleton.

Now somebody from the audience? Yes.

SENATOR PETER BAUME: Peter Baume, I’m a Liberal Senator for New South Wales. Look, we’re here because we care to see people get opportunity and we care about what happens to them, and we’re appalled by your platform, and if I can just quote a bit of it, that you advocate “the eventual termination of all government welfare programmes”. You don’t say it once, you say it twice.

Now don’t you recognise the existence in society of innocent victims?

JOHN SINGLETON: Yes I do.

SENATOR PETER BAUME: Of orphans, of a number of people for whom there is no provision, and don’t you recognise the duty of society to take a role because we do in the Liberal Party and we’re not going to move a whit away from our position on welfare and pensions. We reckon we’ve got enough trouble in Australia from Whitlam and Cairns, and we reckon that there’s no time now to start fragmenting the anti-socialist forces.

JOHN SINGLETON: Well Peter I don’t think it’s a matter of fragmenting the anti-socialist forces, I think it’s creating an anti-socialist force is more the problem, and I think when you’re talking about the welfare state, we mentioned twice that the welfare state should eventually be removed, you’ve glossed over that word “gradually” and “eventually”. I think one of the things I must share with you is our greatest concern, that if I knew tomorrow the anti-socialist forces could be removed indefinitely, or forever, then we would have done our job.

What I would suggest though is that the anti-socialist forces wouldn’t be removed tomorrow by return to a Liberal Government. It would be preferable, but it wouldn’t be the ideal. What we’re suggesting is a gradual removal of the welfare state. Gradual. Not tomorrow. Not next year, because if you take pensioners — and we’ve got a million in Australia — there’s two things that’s wrong with that. (1) I don’t know what the percentage is, but the percentage of pensioners who are pensioners because they are forced by government decree to retire at 65 is significant. These people have been robbed all their lives, and it would be immoral for us to suggest that if we won government tomorrow that we would removed those pensions — people have been robbed all their lives so they’re only getting a small fragment of their money back, and we’d suggest that those pensions in the indefinite future would remain, but certainly the unemployment relief would not remain.

SENATOR PETER BAUME: But you’ve avoided the innocent victims who still remain, the small group.

JOHN SINGLETON: No, I didn’t mean to Peter, the question there is very … the question — I should have answered that. I think the reason now the innocent victim — I’m equally concerned with you — but what I’d suggest to you is that in this audience we could do far more for the innocent victims voluntarily, voluntarily, if we weren’t being ripped off at the rate of $2 in every $3 by Government, being Labor or Liberal.

And I don’t believe that voluntary charity wouldn’t be greater than Government charity and I don’t believe that you care more than I do.

ROBERT MOORE: On the aisle, yes.

MALE QUESTIONER: Do you really … do you really honestly believe, after what we’ve seen of your politics in the recent elections that the weak, the sick and the poor would be helped by your party?

JOHN SINGLETON: Yes I do.

MALE QUESTIONER: Do you really … I think that if you had been a student at all and read Charles Dickens you would glory in the pre-Dickens age because you express every token of the industrial revolution and you’re really reversing us back. The Labor politics have … we brought in the pensions for the sick, the weak, the aged and the infirm, and the Liberals have now come along and jumped on this bandwagon, but … and the only thing different between them and the Labor today is that we would have 500,000 unemployed if the Labor Party … er … the Liberal Party were in office. (APPLAUSE AND INTERJECTIONS FROM AUDIENCE)

JOHN SINGLETON: That’s 500,000 instead of a million under Labor. I think again the question you made is not a question, it’s a statement so it’s very hard to answer it.

MALE QUESTIONER: Well I ask you, what’s going to happen to the sick, the weak , the poor and the aged under you? Are you just going to … are we going to rely on handouts from your millionaire mineralists … mineral and oil friends?

JOHN SINGLETON: Well if you want to make a point of that, yes, I think there’s a very big difference, that what you’re talking about is what the Labor Party has done for people. What the Labor Party has done is hold the country up to ransom to give the money to their friends, the voters, and I don’t believe the Labor Party voters or the Labor Party members would give their money to the sick, the weak and the poor if it wasn’t the only place that get votes from.

MALE QUESTIONER: But we’re just simple voters aren’t we?

JOHN SINGLETON: So am I.

ROBERT MOORE: Why shouldn’t the Government give the people what they want? And they express what they want by their votes.

JOHN SINGLETON: Well I think the critical thing … the reason for the formation of this party, I should stress, is we’re not suggesting that the Liberal and Labor Parties are known to people for what they are; we don’t believe that people have what they want or can vote for what they want because we don’t believe they have a significant choice.

What we think, if at the very worst we can educate people to think about politics, to think about the role that Government plays, to realise that this country could be the richest in the world in 12 months without government controls — we would have full employment, no inflation — it’s all Government-caused. These are the questions you should be asking instead of vote catchers. Then we wouldn’t have … then those questions you asked would be absolutely irrelevant and unnecessary.

ROBERT MOORE: The lady on the edge — I mean on the side.

LADY QUESTIONER: I’m a public servant, and you call yourself the Workers Party. What do you have to offer the worker?

JOHN SINGLETON: Well I think most public servants are non-workers. The reason we chose the name Workers Party was to hammer home to people the fact that the Labor Party exists not for the worker but for the non-worker; the person who want to live on hand-outs and kick-me-downs. 1 in 4 of the workforce is a public servant. We work 2 days in 3 for the Government. I don’t think we get 2 days in 3 back and therefore I think the public service … I think you must understand, if you answered me honestly, how many people that you work with every day in the public service, how many people really earn their money.

MALE QUESTIONER: Well, do you believe in the police force?

JOHN SINGLETON: Yes I do.

ROBERT MOORE: Yes?

JOHN BUTTERWORTH: John Butterworth, I’m N.S.W. Convenor of the Australia Party. Mr. Singleton, your policy says that the Government will virtually only run a police force and a defence force, and that everything else should be run by private enterprise.

JOHN SINGLETON: Right.

JOHN BUTTERWORTH: To take 2 examples …

JOHN SINGLETON: Eventually, eventually, eventually.

JOHN BUTTERWORTH: Eventually, right. To take 2 examples where I think your policy booklet is contradictory. One, for instance, roads would be built by free enterprise and therefore run at a profit, which means we’d pay tolls, presumably, to give people back their investment. Since there’d be no price control on the tolls what guarantee would there be of free access to citizens or does everyone build their own roads?

In schools, and you talked about education, this worries me considerably because it seems that you want to take us back a hundred years from where we are now. What you’re saying is that schools will be run for profit, which means that people can charge what they like pupils to make a profit from their school which means that it will formal education for those who can afford it and, fair enough, a hundred years ago the mine owners and the land owners might have disapproved of our present welfare state, but the oppressed classes wouldn’t have disapproved.

JOHN SINGLETON: Well the question I think first, on roads, again it’s obscure to take a platform of free enterprise and take it to an illogical extension.

JOHN BUTTERWORTH: What’s illogical about it?

JOHN SINGLETON: If you want to get … it is illogical to suggest that tomorrow, if we had government, that what we would do is sell the roads to private enterprise. It wouldn’t work, but what I am suggesting is, if you want one practical example instead of Disneyland examples, the highway that was supposedly going to be built between Sydney and Newcastle was put out for two private tenders 10 years to the lowest tender … the highest tender, rather, would have finished that road three years ago at a quarter of the price of the highway now which still isn’t half finished, so …

JOHN BUTTERWORTH: But would we be able to use it though?

JOHN SINGLETON: Of course you would be able to use it because if someone owned the road, like any other private business, if you own a business you only do so at a profit and you only do that by encouraging customers not by discouraging them, and that’s why if you drive along the highway between Sydney and Melbourne you’ll see what happens when you have a lack of profit motive. Anyone can use the road, but Christ do it at your own risk.

ROBERT MOORE: Gentleman right … yes.

DEBESH BATACHARYA: Debesh Batacharya from Sydney University.

I get the impression that you have not been a student of economic history. If you really read history of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Ricardo who are the greatest champions of laissez-faire and free enterprise, the type of thing which you are advocating, even they came to the conclusion that there should be a positive need for Government intervention in public education, transportation and many other public projects like health, irrigation, flood control and things, so if you really read their history you would find that your type of preaching is far more reactionary than what they had advocated 200 years ago.

Secondly, most of your statements in the pamphlet are half truths, and if you really follow, on economic grounds, if you have really free enterprise, perfect competition, what would happen, according to the rationality, economic argument, that you’d come from a progressive state to a stationary state while everything would be stagnant.

Now one thing I would like to comment here that your pamphlet does not give any indication of any positive economic objective. Almost all the other economic objectives which we need, like full employment, economic growth, stable currency, you just backside them and tell that only one negative objective that government intervention should not be there. If Government intervention is not there what would happen to the 18% of the Australian poor people who are suffering? They would not be able to go to school; they would not get any unemployment benefit; they wouldn’t get anything.

Then also, coming to …

ROBERT MOORE: Sorry, would you let Mr. Singleton answer that?

DEBESH BATACHARYA: … multinational question problems.

JOHN SINGLETON: That was an interesting book. I think if we’re going to discuss philosophy of economics I’ll ask Bob Howard to do it. I think though that one thing I would point out to you is obviously if you’re from Sydney University you’re a full-time student and I’m just a simple businessman, but the end result of economics, the only point I’d like to make to you, if all the economists are so smart, if all their homework’s been done so well — we live in a country where we have 300,000 unemployed admitted to, where we have an inflation rate between 20 and 30% — then I suggest that maybe, maybe there is an alternative, so Bob would you like to run through some of the economic philosophy?

ROBERT HOWARD: Yes. Look, I’m always amazed when people judge the laissez-faire economics or free market economics by Adam Smith. To me that’s somewhat similar to judging physics by Galileo. You know, if you want to have a look at the full free market economic theory then I suggest you look instead to people like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard who are contemporary economists rather than people who made a first start many years ago. Right?

How our basic defence of free market economics is not on the grounds of … primarily on the grounds of practicality, it is primarily on the grounds of morality, and we also make the philosophical point that if something is right, if it’s moral and correct, it will therefore work. If it doesn’t work it’s because it’s wrong.

DEBESH BATACHARYA: I cannot find any merit in your economic argument.

ROBERT HOWARD: Well what’s the point, can’t you make a …

JOHN SINGLETON: Look let me give you a practical example instead of these theoretical Disneyland examples. In Western Australia, seeing our mining friends name has been brought up twice already — here, let me give you a practical example of what the free market could do.

It was in 1960 that the Government — it doesn’t matter what Government, State, Federal, Liberal, Labor Government — had an export embargo on iron ore in this country. Why? Because in their judgement, in their wisdom, they knew we had enough iron ore to last us only for our internal uses until 1965. In 1960 the export embargo was lifted and Lang Hancock was then able to announce discoveries of iron ore — not just enough to last us until 1965 — but, if you want facts, 127 million tons. That’s enough to last mankind in every country in the world for as long as it’s taken man to come out of the trees and be here tonight.

Why hasn’t it been done? Why haven’t the mines been allowed to develop? Why don’t we have a separate steel mill competing with BHP in the Pilbara? Why? All because of government intervention.

ROBERT MOORE: Lady over here.

LADY QUESTIONER: … (inaudible) to pollute one of Australia’s lovely rivers in the process. This was something that he wasn’t at all concerned about.

JOHN SINGLETON: The total earth surface we’re talking about is .3% of the total earth surface of Australia. I doubt whether you’ve ever been to the Pilbara — kangaroos don’t even tend to visit the place. What we’re talking about is making Australia the richest country in the World while you sit there talking about a beautiful river.

LADY QUESTIONER: I’m not talking about the mines, you were talking about building a smelter or some such thing along one of the rivers, and it was going to mean incredible pollution.

ROBERT HOWARD: But we’re against pollution anyway. If you read our platform you’ll find that we are totally opposed to any form of pollution. (LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE) (To Lady) I beg your pardon.

LADY QUESTIONER: I see no sanctions in your platform, it’s up the the individual businessman — we’ve already found out that individual businessman are not all concerned about pollution.

ROBERT HOWARD: No, no, pollution would be one of the areas in which there is legitimate … is the legitimate concern of the Government, of the police forces and the court.

LADY QUESTIONER: Not if the person has total control over the land that he’s been able to buy.

JOHN SINGLETON: If he owns the land. If he owns the land then no one should have any control over what he does with it, but if he doesn’t own the river and you swim in the river, then he pours pollution on you you can take him to court.

LADY QUESTIONER: But what if he puts a factory on that river and … on the land and it spews out smoke? What’s he going to do about it?

ROBERT HOWARD: Then you sue him. If the effects of his pollution can be traced to your property or somebody else’s property then you sue him and take out an injunction against him and get him to stop it and the law should uphold that.

JOHN SINGLETON: If we’re going to talk about going back to the 18th century, before the industrial revolution, before industry and before all this vicious pollution we all hear about mankind lived in the western countries to an average age of 34. Now with all this vicious pollution will live now to 72.

LADY QUESTIONER: Because we don’t work down in the mines of the Workers Party owners.

ROBERT MOORE: The lady back here, I did give the call some time ago. Yes?

DEBORAH ANTER: Thank you. Deborah Anter, Citizen. Would you kindly tell me, in the event of a Federal or State election to whom would your preference go?

JOHN SINGLETON: As the platform stands now they would go to the Liberal or Country Parties or any individuals ahead of the Labor Party or any socialist party.

JOAN KERSEY: Joan Kersey, Social Worker. I’d like to ask you a question concerning the position of private charitable organisations in the world you imagine. Now the expenditure in the last balance sheet of Red Cross was in excess of 1.1 million and it was over 133,000 in the red. Now imagine if Social Security, Repatriation and all government departments were to close and there is a great avalanche of people descending on private agencies like Red Cross — even slowly descending on them — now how would they be able to cope with this tremendously increased demand.

Now to pre-empt the answer to that question I’d just like to go on one second please, and that is what you say, you say in your platform that it’s naive for a few men in government to do what … you say it’s naive to think that they can do more than any concerned group outside government.

JOHN SINGLETON: To care more we said. To care more.

JOAN KERSEY: They care more and can do more? Now is it not, is it not equally naive to imagine that in this modern society everybody, even with their increased incomes, will be so sufficiently generous that they will give enough to counter-balance what governments have given in the past in dispensing welfare, and also, is it not absurd Mr. Singleton, to imagine that you’re going to get a great army of volunteers who will march forward with concerned expressions on their faces to take the place of the fully trained and qualified and salaried social worker. (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE)

JOHN SINGLETON: I understand your concern and I share it, but I do believe that the point at issue is … the point at issue is that today there is no reason for the individual to be concerned or car because it is being done for them. I think charities like the red cross would derive substantial benefits above and beyond that of government as it was left to us, and I can only give you one practical example, that I run a very small company and yet that company last year was able to voluntarily — because they were concerned — for one charity, to raise over half a million dollars — which is more than the salary bill of the agency — they raised for other people because they were concerned.

I think it can be done but I don’t think there’s any chance of it being done while government is handing out money to all and sundry, and I should also point out to you that while the structure is as it is, that we’re not suggesting if we took government tomorrow that we would disband the welfare programmes. What we’re saying is they would gradually be negated. If we were proven wrong — that the Cairns and Connor and so forth really do care more than we do — then it wouldn’t have been a fight worth fighting.

ROBERT MOORE: Gentleman on the aisle, yes.

MALE QUESTIONER: Yes Mr. Singleton in … unless I read your policy wrongly, you have stated that you wanted to do away with bludgers. Well I happen to be an old age pensioner and I worked for 51 years before I retired and I think I made enough contributions to live in decent retirement. Now, in the last century, when people got old, the only method they had was becoming bludgers by living on their parents or living on their children, and you want, obviously, to return them to the status of bludgers.

JOHN SINGLETON: No, that’s not what I said.

MALE QUESTIONER: Now wait a minute, just a minute. I want to make this statement. It is only in the last 2 years since the Federal Labor Government got into power that the pensioners can look forward to … they have a programme of paying to pensioners 25% of the average male rate of pay, so that, you know, what I want … (INTERJECTIONS FROM AUDIENCE: INAUDIBLE) … well wait a minute, now what I want to impress on you is what elderly people what to do is to live in dignity in their old age and this is something that you want to take away from them.

JOHN SINGLETON: Wrong. Sir let me tell you this first. (1) I agree with you. If you’ve worked for 50 years and you’ve been robbed all your life you deserve, under this system we live in today, to be given a pension. I wouldn’t take that from you. I would point out to you, however, that under the system we’re propagating to you that when you knew there wasn’t a welfare programme you could have,  as a matter of personal choice, entered into any one of the insurance funds which would have given you a far more satisfactory pension now than this. (INTERJECTIONS OF DISAGREEMENT FROM AUDIENCE)

I should also point out to you that it is pointless at the end of … the pensioners have been conned more than any other segment of the population in believing … (INTERJECTION: Other than insurance policies) (LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE) … but that’s again caused by inflation, which brings us back again to the core of the problem, that once you remove inflation, once you have a private insurance programme then you know you can get a pension with dignity having worked and earned your just retirement, but as it stands now you’re living on whims of politicians, on money that’s becoming increasingly irrelevant and increasingly meaningless.

MALE QUESTIONER: Well what happens then to those people who have illness through the years and unemployment — as we suffered in the 30s — and every 10 years under this system under which we live …

JOHN SINGLETON: As you’re about to suffer again.

MALE QUESTIONER: … we run into a boom or a bust. What happens to these people who are out of work and they can’t pay their insurance premiums or they can’t pay their superannuation? They then become bludgers and live on their children.

ROBERT HOWARD: Most of the problems that you’re mentioning there were caused — in our analysis at least — were caused by government intervention. See the overall problem with pensions … we’re not saying that we don’t have any feelings or sympathy for anybody who’s living on government welfare at the moment, but what we are saying, and I think this is very important, is that it is a situation which has an inbuilt growth factor.

Now, no matter how much might be concerned about these people, no matter how much you might want to help these people, in the long run you’re not helping them by turning the whole country into a group of dependent people. What we want to do, over a period of time, is to make as many people as possible independent.

Now the only way you’re going to do that is by making the incentives within the system such that they are directed towards producing independent people. Today all the incentives within the system are directed towards producing dependent people and as a necessary consequence the more people that become dependent the greater the tax burden on all of us. You have to pay for it somewhere and, you know, it’s got a growth rate that’s just going the wrong way and the end result of it must be totalitarianism as far as I can see.

MALE QUESTIONER: What’s going to happen to the sick though?

ROBERT MOORE: Sorry, I have been a long while …

MICHAEL HORSBURGH: Michael Horsburgh. I teach social work at Sydney University. It’s very difficult to compare your health and welfare platforms with anything that’s actually going on in the modern world because it projects itself so far into the future, and on such wild hypotheses it’s very difficult to know what to say about it, but your programme looks very much like the actual programme that existed in New South Wales in the 19th century where people did believe in providing incentives; where voluntary charity was promoted and the government and the citizens were very keen on it.

Now I don’t want to point out that under these circumstances the conditions were very bad — which they actually were — what I want to point out is that even when people were trying and believed in similar principles to yours, government actually contributed more than 50% of the income of private charity and that your … it’s naive to imagine that private charity can marshal the resources that are required for the very many dependent people that any community produces.

My conclusion from this is that your programme is unfeasible and because it is unfeasible it is therefore, despite what you claim, highly immoral. (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE)

JOHN SINGLETON: I think there’s a question that you must ask yourself, and that is if in the 19th century half that money was coming from government, where did government get it from? They got it from the people so in fact the people contributed 100%. It’s no good treating it as their money and our money. It’s all our money. Government doesn’t produce anything, government only takes away and then reallocates, redistributes wealth. (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE)

So what you’re suggesting, what you’re saying is that … we’re still back to the same argument, that we think that the private individual can be concerned more given greater incentives and rewards than any government can.

MICHAEL HORBURGH: But even when they tried it they couldn’t do it.

JOHN SINGLETON: Bob do you want to take over? Can we just finish that one because that is the point.

ROBERT HOWARD: Well look the problem with it, governments won’t help us more than we help ourselves. They can’t. For one thing you get the cut taken off the top that has to pay fro all the people within the government; we always pay our own in the end. As John said, it just comes from them via the government and back … it comes from is via the government and back to us.

JOHN SINGLETON: Less the costs of running it.

ROBERT HOWARD: Less the costs.

MICHAEL HORSBURGH: This still doesn’t answer the other problems because even in private charity and private charity in the 19th century people still worked for them and they has a Wages Bill and …

JOHN SINGLETON: But you’ve got to … everyone keeps talking 19th century, you’ve got to remember this is the 20th century … (INTERJECTIONS: Inaudible)

Australia has known to it in the 20th century today the greatest physical resources of any country in the world including the United States and including Russia. It is in a far different economic circumstance potentially than it was in the 19th century. These resources are now known to us and not utilised by us because of government control and intervention, so you’re talking about two different ball games altogether.

ROBERT MOORE: Right over on the extreme my right, extreme my right. Yes.

MALE QUESTIONER: Mr. Singleton, I’m not happy with the present state of affairs either, but I think that the move forward is not your way. You seemed to have learned nothing from history.

True, taxation comes from the people and goes back to the people. The thing you’ve failed to recognise is that it comes from the different … it goes back to the … to different people from which it comes. (INTERJECTION: Based on what morality?) Based on the need of those who are aged, infirm or sick. You have to remember, Mr. Singleton, as you observed, that in the 19th century the expectancy of life was 34 years of age and now it’s 72, and you wish to advocate the sorts of conditions in which the expectancy of life was 34. (INTERJECTION: Rubbish) Look, the development of government intervention has been to curb the worst abusers of laissez-faire. Laissez-faire free enterprise led to the development of monopoly and monopoly has in fact reduced the freedom of the community.

JOHN SINGLETON: I think despite the fact you haven’t been listening … if you could answer that Bob?

ROBERT HOWARD: Yes. Look, whether you like it or not, one of the facts about human nature is that people won’t work without incentive and if you set up a system in which you are virtually punished for succeeding and rewarded for failing — you know, it’s not strictly in those terms, but that tendency — then I can’t see in the long run how you’re going to end up with anything but a total failure.

MALE QUESTIONER: What’s to stop us becoming dependent on monopolies?

ROBERT HOWARD: Most monopolies we’ve got today are not free market monopolies, they are coercive monopolies. That is, and it’s a very important point that has to be made, and that is that when we stand for free enterprise we do not stand for corporate capitalism, that is the type of thing that’s existing to an extent here in Australia today, but predominantly in America and that is a situation in which all the big corporations use the government as a tool to get privileges and monopolies.

They’ve just put the pressure on the government, historically, and you look at a lot of the Left writings, Gabriel Cocker, Arthur Eckhert, and have a look at their analysis of the historical process and you will find that these big corporations in the States, particularly, ‘cos that’s where they’re writing have used their position, their influence and their power to use government to get what they want, now that it’s the type of thing we want to get right away from. If you can get a monopoly on a free market you can only get it by providing a good service at a low price because if you don’t …

MALE QUESTIONER: Until you get the monopoly.

ROBERT HOWARD: No, but once you get the monopoly if you start to abuse your position by charging higher prices you make the industry a very lucrative one and you attract a whole lot of investment and before you can turn around you’ve got half a dozen competitors.

MALE QUESTIONER: Who is curbing it?

ROBERT HOWARD: The market will curb it.

MR. A. VINEY: My name’s Viney, I’m a Liberal State parliamentarian. Mr. Singleton you say here in criminal justice, “the goal of the legal system upon a determination of guilt should be restitution to the victim for his loss but only at the expense of the criminal”. Now for goodness sake, Sir, are you advocating that the person who’s been knocked down, bashed up or something, suffers severe injury, maybe turned into a paraplegic, and that the man who did it has got nothing but he is the one that … it is impossible through his life to make that restitution that the other … the victim has just got to be left lying in the gutter because of that, because all through this pamphlet I get the feeling (EXCLAMATIONS OF DISAGREEMENT FROM AUDIENCE) that you are not prepared to see that society looks after the deprived who have been deprived through no fault of their own and you say …

ROBERT MOORE: Could we deal with that one, because we’re now getting a bit long with the questions.

JOHN SINGLETON: I can tell you’re a typical politician because I’ve never seen a fact played around with so much in my life. What we’re saying is … what I’m saying is that if I walk out of here now and you knock me down and turn me into a living vegetable then it’s not much good my paying for that all my life by not being able to work for pay again, and my family pay again to keep you in free board and lodgings for the rest of your life. What I think is more practical, given the fact you’re not an incorrigible criminal — although in that case you probably would be — that then I think you should turn around and work all your life, all your life to make up for the fact that I can no longer work, rather than me and my family having to keep you in luxury for the sake of you having knocked me down. (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE)

MR. VINEY: Well you don’t say it.

MALE QUESTIONER: But what if you can’t find him Mr. Singleton, what if you can’t find the man who does it?

MR. SINGLETON: What if you can’t find him now?

MALE QUESTIONER: Mr. Howard said that the weak dominate the strong at the moment. He made this at their party meeting. Your policy advocates a change, you know, is this an elitist that “might is right”?

ROBERT HOWARD: All we’re saying is that people should be free to achieve whatever level that they can, by their own ability, but we don’t want a situation in which you cut off the top and lift up the bottom and bash everybody into a lovely neat mould in the middle.

MALE QUESTIONER: But you said … you’ve completely turned it around, you said that the weak dominate the strong, now you want to completely reverse it.

ROBERT HOWARD: No, no, that’s not what I said. What I was implying …

JOHN SINGLETON: … (inaudible) to the people who are trying to get rewards get rewards, and those who don’t want to try give them the right to fail and give us back the right to succeed. (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE)

ROBERT MOORE: In your model free enterprise system, you know, as a general moral principle — I mean you talk about morality and logic — is it true that those people who succeed by and large are those who deserve to? You know, is there some sort of moral …

JOHN SINGLETON: That’s right.

ROBERT MOORE: There is, it works that way?

JOHN SINGLETON: It doesn’t but it should.

ROBERT MOORE: No it should, and under your system it would?

JOHN SINGLETON: That’s right.

MALE QUESTIONER: Like Nixon and Capone.

ROBERT HOWARD: They are products of government. Capone only got where he was because of the prohibition on grog.

JOHN SINGLETON: Capone was only created by government gain. Capone wasn’t created. (LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE) You can laugh about that, but prohibition is one of the things we still live in. The things we’re still … the dangers today, as 4 or 5 people have said, we should give it to the needy.

Someone once said, more famous than us, that we work according to our ability and give it according to our needs. What we’re all drifting into is the danger of government deciding that we can work as hard as we possibly can and then they’ll redistribute it. What they forget is that we won’t work if we don’t get a change to get rewards. That’s what people have forgotten.

When you talk about Capone you forget the only reason Capone was created was because of prohibition, because only 40 years ago, only 40 years ago, government decided it was bad to get drunk so the government decided they’d have prohibition so then you have grog plus crime and we have it today in Australia, we have prostitution plus crime, drugs plus crime. By the government stepping in government created Capone, Capone didn’t create Capone at all.

ROBERT MOORE: Well I’m sorry, there’s one important area we haven’t touched on, and we are getting towards the end of our time, particularly with a party called the Workers Party, that’s your Industrial Relations policy. It’s quite clearly, you know, of a great deal of importance.

As I understand it you wouldn’t have any regulations about hours and conditions of work, is that right?

JOHN SINGLETON: No, that’s right.

ROBERT MOORE: No minimum wage.

JOHN SINGLETON: No.

ROBERT MOORE: And the relationship between employer and employee would be a simple civil contract. Is that right?

JOHN SINGLETON: That’s right.

ROBERT MOORE: Now, would there be any restrictions on the kind of contract that a man could enter into?

JOHN SINGLETON: Yes, the contract must not be fraudulent. If you’re going to work for me and I purport to offer your conditions of (a) and you find out you don’t get what the contract offered you, well then you can take me to court, that would be an illegal contract as it is today.

ROBERT MOORE: No, sorry, I meant something more than that. I mean would you allow for a system of indentured labour or even — and, you know, this is not too hypothetical — even slavery under this. I mean could a man enter into a contract …

JOHN SINGLETON: We have slavery today.

ROBERT HOWARD: You can make a slave of yourself but you can’t make a slave of somebody else.

ROBERT MOORE: But you would allow someone to make a slave of himself?

ROBERT HOWARD: Sure, if he wants to do it it’s no business of mine.

ROBERT MOORE: But supposing the pressures on him are at the time that he wrongly thinks or …

JOHN SINGLETON: The thing is today, what the most important point is that the workers, the trade unions are the people that have the rights. They have all the rights and the employers have no rights. (LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE) Employees can withhold their labour — the employers can’t fire them. The employees can demand better conditions but the employers can’t ask them to work harder. (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE)

ROBERT MOORE: Could I ask for a contribution in industrial policy? No, no one’s interested? Yes.

WALLY PECK: Wally Peck, Trade Union Secretary. Mr. Singleton would you, your party deny the right of the workers to combine … to freely combine to sell their only product, their brain and their brawn, their muscle?

JOHN SINGLETON: Not at all.

WALLY PECK: You wouldn’t deny them to right to combine?

JOHN SINGLETON: Not at all.

WALLY PECK: Not even if they injected into the terms of the contract that they would require the same sort of things as a social contract, social services etc?

JOHN SINGLETON: If they did that they’d be happy to do that, but if I was the employer I’d say well look that’s very nice of you but we’ll hire someone else.

WALLY PECK: But they’d be combined, you wouldn’t be able to get anybody else.

JOHN SINGLETON: Well you see you’re back to propagating mob rule. (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE) I think this country today is living in the midst of mob rule where 65 power workers can hold this country up to ransom, and we’re not in a position to do anything about it. If those people don’t like their conditions and don’t like their job why don’t they go and get another job? (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE) If they have accepted that job, if they have accepted it under a voluntary contract and they break the terms of that contract, they still have the right to strike but they don’t have the right to that job being theirs. It wouldn’t be their job any longer.

ROBERT MOORE: Yes?

IAN BURNS: Ian Burns, rank and file member of the Australia Party. The Australia Party practises internal democracy within its party because it believes in democracy in the country. The Workers Party apparently has a self-perpetuating executive where you have four governing directors who presumably are the elite and presumably can propagate themselves.

Now, my question is, does this mean that you would run the country that way? Is it a reasonable thing to infer that governments …

JOHN SINGLETON: I think I can answer that briefly. One, if I was leading the Australia Party I wouldn’t care too much about democracy of policy because when you don’t have a policy you have nothing to defend, but I think … (APPLAUSE FROM SOME MEMBERS OF AUDIENCE) … that in the case of what we’re suggesting is that the last thing that we want is in the initial period to have 200 people join from the Australia Party and just change what we stand for so what we have done is we’ve still made it democratic but we need 2/3rds of the members to vote an amendment and them have 2/3rds of the directors agree (LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE) …

IAN BURNS: But will you run the country that way?

JOHN SINGLETON: I think that’s entirely our right because if you don’t agree with it you don’t have to join. It’s a voluntary contribution.

IAN BURNS: But will you run the country this way? Will everybody have one man-one vote when we have a Workers Party government?

JOHN SINGLETON: You’ve missed the whole point. If we had government, what we’re suggesting is we’d decreasingly run things. What we want to do is less, not more. (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE)

IAN BURNS: But can we get rid of your system by democratic means if you get in on the democratic system?

JOHN SINGLETON: It’s very easy for you now. All you need to do now is … we have 300 members, all you need to do is to get 200 a year to join and vote and amendment and you’ve got it changed.

IAN BURNS: Did you hear my question Mr. Singleton?

JOHN SINGLETON: I’ve answered it three times. You just haven’t understood.

MALE QUESTIONER: Mr. Singleton, after reading carefully your platform and after listening to your answers I would like to ask you a simple question. Is your party a fair dinkum party, political party, or is all that the launching pad of a new toothpaste or a new ultra-soft toilet paper? (LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE) If you are a party with a programme and this is your programme I will suggest that your mate GPs which are in great number of your governing body to refer themselves and the others of this rank to the nearest psychiatric centre. (APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE)

ROBERT HOWARD: What was the question?

JOHN SINGLETON: It was a hard question to answer. Oh, I’m happy to answer it but …

MALE QUESTIONER: I would like an answer.

JOHN SINGLETON: The point is I think that it’s very easy to make a frivolous statement, it’s very easy to stand up and say something as frivolous as that because it’s very easy to misunderstand the fact that this country is in an economic crisis point. When we said it a year ago people laughed. People will laugh now, but in a year’s time when unemployment is nearer half a million than 300,000, when employment hits 30%, when you sit there and say that and you don’t realise that this government, in a Budget set down 7 months ago, they’ve given the workers an average of an extra $27 a week and they’ve increased his tax 70%, just his income tax, and you don’t think it’s important that we start to think. If you don’t care that the government, the people who run our country, … a Budget — in all honesty, supposedly, to us — with a $23,000,000 surplus which has turned around already into a 2 billion dollar deficit in 7 months, if you don’t think it’s important enough to at least think about the alternatives we’ve opened to us, then I apologise for having failed to communicate to you what we stand for.

What we stand for is getting people to think. We don’t care whether you agree or disagree with us. We do care if you think, and I’m saddened by the fact that you obviously haven’t. (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE)

ROBERT MOORE: Lady over here.

LADY QUESTIONER: Mr. Singleton, there’s been a lot of talk this afternoon about morality. It’s a word that you play around with much to my amusement. If your definition of morality the same as the series of advertisements that you created at the last election, or would you consider that they were … that that was a moral act?

JOHN SINGLETON: I consider that last campaign as one I’m very proud of. If you take the trouble to read what the advertisements said and not what people said about the advertisements you’ll realise that everything they said was right. All it said was we’re moving increasingly …

LADY: I saw them on tely and they were full of half truths.

JOHN SINGLETON: It was full of truth. If you buy Quadrant this month re-read the scripts you’ll see that it made a lot of sense and the only thing wrong with that whole campaign was the Don Chipp didn’t have the courage to support it. (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE) He came out on a populist issue and said that he wouldn’t have endorsed them, and then it was up to the Labor Party to cast scorn on the ads, not the substance of the ads but the form of the ads and I think if you re-read them you’ll see that that question was impertinent and wrong. (APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE)

ROBERT MOORE: Mr. Singleton, Mr. Howard, thank you both very much and thank you everyone else — our time is up.

If MONDAY CONFERENCE has come back this year without much beating of the drum it’s just because we have not been able to find the drum … or much else yet, but that’s another story.

However, we have found this book. Last year I mentioned it was coming out. Well now it is out, as you can see. It’s a collection of MONDAY CONFERENCE transcripts dealing with population, resources, ecology etc., and among others it includes programmes with Paul Ehrlich amd Alvin Toffler. It’s called Saving Our Small World. It costs $2.50, and if you want a copy they’re available at your nearest ABC office. If you want the book posted to you, please send the round sum of $2.83.

JOHN SINGLETON: And cross your fingers. (LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE)