John Henningham, The Australian, January 27, 1975, pp. 1-2.

A radical party promising abolition of pensions, unemployment payments, rural subsidies, government schools and taxes — and calling itself the Workers Party — was launched at the weekend.

“When we used the word workers, we are referring to the productive worker, the fellow who wants to get off his backside,” the president of the party, South Australian general practitioner, Dr John Whiting, said yesterday.

“We are not interested in human leeches, parasites, no-hopers and bludgers.”

Included in the group the Workers Party is not interested in are pensioners, unemployed people, the handicapped, invalids and the sick, who he said were the proper concern of private charity, not the Government.

The party expounds that children are the concern of their parents, not the Government, and should not have to go to school if they are not sent, and should be free to leave home and go to work at any age.

If parents fail to care for their children this again is the concern of private charity, not the government.

“What we are doing is attempting to change a whole culture,” Dr Whiting said.

“The more opportunity we have to talk to people the more opportunity we have to convince them that there is a rational alternative.”

The party, he said, had enlisted almost 100 members (at $50 a head) since its launching at a Sydney Opera House banquet on Saturday night, and the phones were running hot with enquiries.

Chairman of the party is Mr John Singleton, who produced the controversial Liberal Party television commercials in last year’s Federal election campaign.

A non-member supporter is Western Australian mining multi-millionaire, Mr Lang Hancock who, while denying that he would be “the new party’s Gordon Barton,” sat at Dr Whiting’s right hand during yesterday’s press conference.

“I wish the new party well and I believe in its aims but I am not financially involved,” he said.

“I am not a member of the party for the reason that I would be lead in the saddle for them. I have many enemies and I don’t wish to do them [the Workers Party] any harm.”

Dr Whiting said the Workers Party represented the first new political philosophy to be developed since Marx. The main plank was the principle of non-interference and it would work for a drastic reduction of the interference of government with people’s liberties.

On the basis of the conviction that no conflict existed between civil order and individual rights, the party would press for almost unrestricted freedom for society’s members — ranging from free trade to the freedom to use and sell any drug.

The only limits to freedom would be actions infringing the rights of others, and the only function of government was to protect citizens’ freedom.

Dr Whiting said the party believed taxation was theft and should be replaced by lotteries or by “fee for service” — meaning a citizen would have to pay for particular government functions from which he benefited, like a police inquiry into a burglary.

But the need for government revenue would be considerably curtailed by the handing over of many government function to private enterprise — including schools and hospitals.

Welfare handouts, he said, would be replaced by private charity, but people would be expected to make provision for sickness and retirement through insurance and superannuation.

“Until the productive workers, both employers and employees, wake up to the fact that it is they who are being exploited, robbed and swindled by non-productive power-lusters, they will never be able to plan their lives, achieve their goals and live as happy dignified human beings,” Dr John Whiting said.

The party would contest Federal elections this year aiming at both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

“Because of its sound philosophy, based on morality and logic, the Workers Party is here to stay,” he said.

“I have no doubts that we will be mocked, smeared and attacked by all those who wish to see individual freedom erased from the face of the earth, but I make this prophecy now — whatever hard times there are ahead, in the end we will win.”