Lang Hancock, “Why the Hawke corroboree can do nothing,” The Australian, March 25, 1983, p. 8, as a letter to the editor.

SIR — If the recent election has proved nothing else, it should have demonstrated once again the axiom that politicians can fool most of the people most of the time.

Elections do nothing to change governments in Canberra — they only change the politicians.

The four real arms of unchanging government are:

  1. The enormous central bureaucracy forever expanding according to Parkinson’s law.
  2. The semi-permanent heads of some of the more disruptive trade unions.
  3. The firms with high pressure lobbyists, enabling them to keep their hands constantly in the till, obtaining subsidies, quotas, monopolies and tariff protections for industries declining in efficiency.
  4. The media which does the thinking for the unthinking majority.

If you consider the above you will see that the control of these four main arms of government does not vary with elections irrespective of which party is in power or who become Prime Minister.

For instance, the four press barons, like departmental heads, do not change with each succeeding government — neither does the utter futility of the elected representatives of the people because politicians don’t act, they only react to public opinion as formed by the media.

The media in all its forms was particularly influential in selling Fraser a pup in going to the polls early.

In short, an Australian election is nothing more than one of the greatest con games in history, which is being made even more farcical as television exerts its ever-increasing power over the public mind.

This was forcibly illustrated in the last election when charisma on the idiot box, rather than policies, decided who should fill the plum jobs and ride around in Commonwealth cars.

Seeing that the power of Parliament has been usurped by the four arms of government that I have mentioned, the only remaining function left to the politicians by which they could serve the nation would be to reject every piece of legislation put before them and revoke the thousands of unnecessary laws that have got this great country bogged down by legislation which interferes and restricts every conceivable area of industry.

After all, there is quite some truth in the statement that ever since Moses carved some fundamental laws in stone, all subsequent legislation merely adds power and benefit to the already over-powerful bureaucracy.

In the face of the above, only the knaves who created the Hawke myth and the naive who believe it will fail to admit that neither Mr Hawke nor the mob that he is assembling for the grand corroboree can do anything about getting Australia out of the mess which the permanent real government has got us into.

At all corroborees there are some who suffer the agonies of initiation ceremonies — unfortunately, in the case of the summit corroboree, the victim to be circumcised might well be Australia.

LANG HANCOCK
Perth