Said in a tradition of Australian politicians. I was thinking this morning would Australians talk of “defending the constitution”. Would they know what they were defending? Certainly, defending the Australian constitution is not defending gun rights, nor free speech, nor “inalienable rights”.
If we were to defend the Australian constitution, then there is a good argument that we would defend ourselves, at this historical moment, against the United States of America. Defending the Australian constitution is defending ‘free trade’. The formation of the Commonwealth of Australia was about defending ‘free trade’ against policies of tariffs. The concern was that should be no internal toll charges between the Australasian colonies. That was a domestic matter but the idea of ‘free trade’ was also defended by the mother country who, in technical terms, wanted the colonies to ‘free’ trade with ‘Great Britain’. That, of course, was not really free, the trade was weighted in Great Britain’s favour. Sound familiar? It is the same economic conditions which led to the formation of the United States. The Australian constitution is a document that defends “free trade” that, up until recently, has been the policy of the United States.
Trump has overturned the American tradition. Now, the argument has returned back to tariffs. Barton, as Australia’s first Prime Minister, was a compromised ‘appointment’ for the idiot population, most who could not read or write anything beyond a ‘free trade’ agreement. It takes intelligence to be a compassion population.
Although the ‘radical liberal’ Sir Samuel Griffith wrote most of the text of the Constitution, Barton was the political leader who carried it through the Convention. He was more conservative in his views, being an Australian politician. Although it was the Labor Party who was ‘radical’ beyond the pale until Prime Minister John Watson in 1904, it had been, in the long nineteenth century (1800-1919), the association of liberalism with radicalism by certain head-kickers in Australasia, including governors. That slowly changed with the second Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, with the twist that he was the leader of the Liberal Protectionist Party. Trump’s Protectionism is radicalism. By these early days of the Commonwealth, the political establishment took on ‘free trade’ policies for their own economic advantage.
What the idiot Australians have to understand – those persons who talk insidiously about “history” but never read a library of history books carefully – is that Australian liberalism at the turn of the 20th century was a very mix bag, ethically from our position in the early 21st century: the White Australia policy, compulsory arbitration, protectionism, state paternalism, and support for the British Empire. Most Australians think that those policies are unacceptable, but scratch the surface of the LNP and the federal Liberal Party, and you will find those socio-political attitudes, even unreformed from the days of Menzies.
So, if you want to defend the Australian constitution you need to attack Trump’s geo-economic policies. Not adopt his immigration policies.
Featured Image: Australian Politics and MICE
Neville Buch
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