WAKE UP AUSTRALIA, BEFORE WE TIP INTO THE ABYSS
Australians should prise their eyes from the sporting and finance pages and face up to the dangerous situation their country has been allowed to slide into. And I don't just mean terrorists. Here's a nation that is not a member of the EU, belongs to no Asian organisations of real importance, and virtually treats the United Nations with contempt. Instead our heroic Prime Minister has jumped into the lap of President Bush with apparently no understanding of where it will take us.
John Howard is committing Australian lives to an aggressive, dominating power in areas where we have no need to be involved. He has destroyed years of patient building of relationships with Asian countries with his reckless and quite impracticable pre-emptive strike statement.
And now he's delivering what will probably be another body blow to Australian workers with his reduction of tariffs on imported motor vehicles. Australia is too small a fish in this globalised world to afford to do this, no other country does. Furthermore, Australia is hardly ever mentioned in overseas media and even President Bush had to be prodded into saying something about the Bali bombing well after it happened. Paul Keating's "banana republic" and "arse end of the world" statements are fast coming home to roost.
So whither Australia's destiny? With most of its important industries and resources more and more controlled by foreign capital, regarded as a non-entity by the rest of the world, and bound body and soul to a wayward, unreliable United States hell-bent on furthering its own interests and not really giving a damn about us, what are we to do?
The Labor Party is near enough to useless, and unfortunately the Greens haven't as yet the parliamentary numbers to take their place as a fully viable opposition. What we can do is to work hard to achieve as quickly as possible a massive groundswell of public opinion to change direction before we tip over into the abyss. For all our sakes we must think, reason and act. Otherwise I dread what the future history books will be saying.
Eric Macarow, Moorabbin
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