Philip McIntosh, “New party formed ‘to slash controls’,” The Age, January 27, 1975, p. 3.

Sydney. — A radical new political party formed in Sydney at the weekend is committed to a new deal for all workers and huge cuts in Federal Government power.

Founders of the new group, the Workers’ Party, claim it is designed specifically for productive workers whether they be labourers, professional men or executives.

They say it will contest House of Representatives seats in the next election.

The party has strong backing from Western Australian mining magnate Mr. Lang Hancock but he is not a member, he says.

The president of the Workers’ Party, which was launched at a dinner at the Opera House on Saturday night, is an Adelaide general practitioner, Dr. John Whiting, who heads a board of four other directors.

They are Dr. Duncan Yuille, general secretary of the General Practitioners’ Society; Mr. Mark Tier, an economist; Mr. Bob Howard, a mechanical engineer; and Mr. Ramon Barros, a solicitor. All live in Sydney.

Within 15 hours of its inauguration, the party claimed to have 100 members at $50 a head. Most are believed to be professional people.

A detailed manifesto released at a Press conference in Sydney yesterday declared that, as a government, the party would:

  • Abolish sales tax, capital gains tax, gift and death duties.
  • Gradually reduce to “an absolute minimum” all other taxes, including personal and company taxes.
  • Reduce the number of Federal Government departments to five and ultimately to only one.
  • Remove all controls on wages, prices, rents, incomes and interest rates.
  • Reduce and eventually eliminate all tariffs, quotas, subsidies and bounties.
  • Abolish all government business monopolies.

Mr. Hancock, who attended yesterday’s Press conference, said he believed in the philosophy of the Workers’ Party and wished it well. But he said he was not a member of the party, claiming he would do it more harm than good.

“I have a lot of enemies and I’d be lead in the saddle,” he said.

Asked about his financial support for the party, he said just because he was guest of honour at the inauguration dinner did not mean he was going to buy the party.

“I’m not financially involved any more than I’d be financially involved in the army if I was a guest of honour at a function of theirs,” he said.

Dr. Whiting, a former South Australian chairman of the General Practitioners’ Society, caused a stir in 1973 when he said he was ready to be gaoled in defiance of a South Australian Government prices control order limiting his fee increase to 15 per cent.

Dr. Whiting, 53, who admits to voting Country Party in the last Federal election because it was the “least worse” choice, said the new party was truly radical because its policies went to the very roots of the problems facing Australia.

The essential difference between the two major political parties was one of degree only.

“Whereas the Socialists are openly dedicated to total Government control over the individual’s life, the Liberals are dedicated to ever-increasing and unspecified control,” he said.