Editorial, The Australian, January 28, 1975, p. 6.

What’s in a name? The newly formed Workers Party poses the question with its revival of an 18th-century conservatism which, on the face of it, seems openly hostile to the workers.

Taking the abolition of “big government” as its central plank, the Workers Party proposes a much simpler and cheaper society: taxes would be eliminated, as would their products such as pensions, social payments and services like public schools and hospitals which most of us consider essential for an industrialised society to function.

As the party’s president, Dr John Whiting, explains, the Workers Party is not interested in “human leeches, parasites, no-hopers and bludgers.” Other people who are of little interest to Dr Whiting and his fellow-workers are the sick, the handicapped, the aged, the poor and the unemployed; they are the responsibility of private charities, not government.

It would be easy to ridicule this new version of laissez-faire capitalism, starting with Dr Whiting’s claim that his party’s platform is the first new political theory to be developed since Karl Marx.

But while the Workers Party, with its reactionary impracticalities, will never be a serious political force the dissatisfaction which it is voicing, even if in extreme language, is shared by many people who would normally deride the new group’s attitudes.

There is public unease about the growth of bureaucracies, both State and Federal. Laments about the disappearance of the “fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” ethic can be heard among conscientious tradesmen as well as in the nation’s board rooms and the often irrational sentiments that the unemployed do not really want jobs and prefer to become professional dole bludgers are too frequently voiced to be passed off as insignificant.

Even the Minister for Labor, Mr Cameron, touched on a favourite theme of the Workers Party when he spoke at the weekend of the effects of a punitive rate of personal income tax on what Dr Whiting calls “productive workers.”

It is a sign of this unease that bizarre little groups like the Workers Party are forming. But with their antiquated theories and solutions far worse than the present economic malaise itself, a WP government would be a floundering spectacle.

Who would handle the country’s foreign policy, defence forces, health services and public transport? These are all areas of “big government” that must be abolished, apparently.

Uncertain, frustrating times throw up fringe groups like the WP to irritate the political process. But while there is a place and a need for intelligent conservations, the Workers Party brand is forgettable.