catholicism

A predictably appalling article from Nicholas Reece, City of Melbourne Lord Mayor, and a seasoned career growth enthusiast, has found a cozy spot in Australia's legacy press.

What makes Steve Bannon tick and is the corporate media and Soros-funded 'activists' right to portray him as a monster? Video inside.

This letter, which expresses concern about the dominance among the power elite of one religion in Australia, was not published by the Age. We publish it here for your information. Comments and discussion welcome.

From: Len Warfe
Sent: Tuesday, 22 April 2014 11:05 AM
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: Gospel truth

Dear Editor

I trust you will publish this letter in order to provide a countervailing view to those which dominate the media on this subject.

‘Gospel truth, Catholics come to power’ (Sunday Age 20/4) should raise concerns with the majority of Australians who are not Roman Catholic. The disproportionate numbers is not just the luck of the draw on the ballot paper, but has been carefully planned by the Vatican to subvert the Australian government and to have their right wing policies implemented. How demeaning to read that Abbot, Turnbull and Hockey all grovelled to a Jesuit priest to help determine which one of them would lead the Liberal Parity.

The same process is occurring in the ALP. Bill Shorten consulted a Jesuit priest before deciding to support Kevin Rudd instead of Julia Gillard for PM. Indeed, all parliamentary parties now have Roman Catholic leaders, as well as the Office of the Governor General and Attorney General, dominating the affairs of this country. The public policy impact of having so many Catholic ministers rolling out their antediluvian policies and attitudes is clear. The rush to sell off Medibank for ideological reasons and the destruction of other government assets, many being handed over to religious organisations to run on behalf of government speaks volumes about the dominating anti-socialist view of a government whose view is synchronised with the Vatican.

For decades the Catholic Church has committed unspeakable crimes against our youth, and has been able to conceal these crimes because of the lack of action from Catholic dominated parliaments. It took an atheist female PM to shine a great big light into that dark corner. The ALP found it necessary in the 1950s to purge Catholics from the Party. It is now time for the Coalition to clean out their Augean stables.

Len Warfe
Dromana

Richard Laverack writes about the connections between the Spanish property development lobby and the shocking systemic corruption issues in Spain. There are many similarities between the Spanish and the Australian banking and property development lobbies and their relationships with government. The Ballieu Government's push for Westernport and a new "bubble" in Webb dock is based on the same philosophy of friendly fascism. So was the preceding Labor Government's. This article gives a short history of fascism and corruption in Spain before describing the current financial problems and their relationship with property and finance.

Spain's newly re-instated monarchy

Spain is attracting a great deal of news coverage for all the right reasons lately, but the Spanish people have suffered enough.

It has a recently re-instated monarchy. On 22 November 1975, two days after fascist dictator General Francisco Franco's death, the Bourbon heir Juan Carlos was designated King according to the law of succession promulgated by Franco. In 1969, when Franco named Juan Carlos as the next head of state, Spain had had no monarch for 38 years.

It has a King who, as head of the Spanish “branch” of the World Wildlife Fund, thinks it appropriate to holiday in Botswana shooting elephants.

The king’s daughter, la Infanta Christina Federica Victoria Antonia, is married to Inaki Undangarin, Duke of Palma de Mallorca, who is currently facing charges of embezzlement of millions of euros.

Spain's justice system in tatters

It has a justice system in tatters. The Supreme Court suspended fellow Judge Baltasar Garzon from practicing for 11 years after investigating so called (7) irregularities in Garzon’s investigation into wide scale corruption within the conservative Partido Popular. Up to 70 senior members were being investigated.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Carlos Dívar on Thursday resigned under pressure for charging 32 long weekend trips to Marbella and other Spanish destinations to the judiciary. (1)

Spain and the Oil Wars, News Ltd and ex-Spanish PM, Aznar

Carlos Divar was appointed by Jose Louis Aznar, ex- prime minister of Spain from 1996 – 2004. Aznar, now a very prominent member of Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd board, was a founder member of the “coalition of the willing” leading the “oil wars”, even before John Howard. The only natural resources Spain has is a small amount of coal in Asturia.

Aznar was “scholared” in politics by Manuel Fraga. From 1951, Fraga served in various posts in the Franco regime, including minister for information and tourism. He took part in the Transition (restoration of the Monarchy), and formed the conservative People's Alliance (AP), the precursor to the Popular Party (PP).

Fraga was known as a heavy-handed politician. The drastic measures he took as chief of state security during the first days of the Spanish transition to democracy deeply damaged his popularity. The phrase "¡La calle es mía!" ("The streets are mine!") was attributed to him. This phrase was his answer to complaints of police repression of street protests. He claimed that the streets did not belong to "people" but to the State.

Partido Popular (PP) - The Peoples' Party

Appointing Aznar as head of the Partido Popular (PP) in 1989, Fraga duly became President of the PP. Fraga was known as a “social liberal”. He relaxed censorship laws (despite the severe lobbying of the Catholic Church) and finished his political career as Franco did, in office. He died in January 2012 serving as Spain’s ambassador to the European Union.

The “lineage” is further continued into the present day when Aznar’s “puppet”, Manuel Rajoy became head of the PP in 2004 after Aznar was dumped. (Rajoy is currently prime minister). Aznars wife is Mayor of Madrid, Spain’s largest city and the seat of government.

Fascism and economic crashes: the 1930s and 2012

Nothing has yet been mentioned of the fascist dictatorship, even less is currently spoken about the Second Spanish Republic from 1931 -1933, but if a cursory glance is cast, striking similarities can be seen to current events and recurring themes played out, separated by time but very relevant to the history of Spain.

Spain’s economy collapsed after the Wall St crash in 1930. General Primo’s 12 year dictatorship ended when the monarchy and people (who hated his brutal era) lost confidence in the government and elections were held that produced a republican and very anti-catholic majority. The unification of 1851 under the Bourbon (French) monarchy was being undone as King Alphonso XIII abdicated and Catalunya and the Basque became independent regions.

General Franco earned his stripes and became known as “the butcher of Asturias” after his brutal suppression of the miners strike in1933.

In January 1936 new elections were called which confirmed the socialist alliance as the dominant majority, but a series of assassinations and fascist/socialist violence (this is when Hitler and Mussolini were warming up), saw the invasion of Spain by Franco’s North African army. Three years later the civil war was won. General Franco, supported heavily by the catholic church, led a rebellion which systematically crushed the most progressive social and political reforms of the 20th century.

George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is a wonderful journey through the rag tag war.

A full length film “Living Utopia – Anarchism in Spain” (subtitled) – details this tumultuous period. It tells and shows an impoverished, hard- working intelligent, society realising the truths of brutal fascism with original footage. (6)

Franco’s victory in 1939 allowed a period of massive reprisals aided by the catholic church. Claiming neutrality gave licence to untold mass murder under the cover of world war 2, including asking Hitler’s Luftwaffe to bomb and destroy Guernica in the Basque region. A bonus was the post war escape from attention afforded many fascists of the time because Franco was now actively butchering the communist leftovers much to the approval of America and the U.K.

The random killings and brutality continued right up to Franco’s death. Many of the prison camps and detention centres remained into the nineties. It was not until the 2004 dumping of Aznar and election of socialist Zapatero that the statues of General Franco were removed from all the major plazas and intersections around Barcelona.

The Falange lives on in Spain. They recently brought a summons against Baltasar Garzon for forcing the recovery of over 100,000 bodies which still remain in mass graves throughout the country. Manuel Rajoy has stopped any federal assistance to the searches. There is a group called the Commission of Historic Memory Recovery (8) which flounders to bring about what is granted in Australia on an “as needs” basis, a human right proudly supported by the government, - to re associate families with their dead/missing relatives. They are not even buried in a foreign country for God’s sake. (4)

The Catholic Church offers no support, preferring to denigrate homosexuality and force the government to reverse abortion rights, access to the morning after pill, and gay marriage. (5) Their [Rajoy’s Peoples Party government] crackdown on public gatherings makes further fascist tendencies obvious.

Last week, Interior Minister Jorge Fernández gave more details: Peaceful resistance will be deemed a form of illegal undermining of authority, punishable with one to three years in jail; the punishment for civil disobedience, which is currently six months to one year in jail, will be increased to two to three years. (2)

The corruption in the judiciary and government is not a one-sided affair. The first socialist government since Franco was ousted because of corruption, and Garzon had prosecuted both socialist, Basque separatist, and conservative, even handedly, as corruption in Spain is endemic, apolitical and established for many reasons.

Banking, Real-Estate and Development corruption in Spain

The banking industry is yet another industry rife with corruption as a servant of the real estate/development industry and is a prime example of the rampant corruption which extends into every one of the three levels of Spanish government – Federal, Regional (autonomous) and local. All Spanish bank board approvals are political appointments, so builders, teachers, cleaners earn board fees for unknowingly approving sub prime loans and not assessing budgets.

Corrupt regional governments have been allowed to finance self agrandisment projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars with help from the E.U. The country was 3rd world when Franco died, just starting a “package holiday” tourist boom initiated by Manuel Fraga which virtually destroyed the Mediterranean coastline. Jose Louis Aznar’s neo conservative economics saw Spain BOOM. The property market rose exponentially from 1996 until in a repeat of the Wall Street crash of 1929, Wall Street crashed in 2008.

European money providing infrastructure projects such as high speed rail, air ports and solar thermal power generation, saw Spain’s investment levels reach record highs and become the center for European tourism and holiday home acquisition. During the Aznar years regional governments such as Valencia's were given carte blanche to go for the tourist dollar. An airport was built at Castellón at a cost of 200 million euros with a 300,000 euro statue of the regional governor at the airport entry. Although completed in 2010 a license to operate has not been issued and the runway has been found to be too narrow to allow international flights to turn round.
There are now 48 airports in Spain, double the number in Germany. Only 11 make a profit. (9)

1 million empty houses and unsalable real-estate

Many reports detail the 1,000,000 empty homes in Spain as well as real estate which is virtually “unsellable”. (10) Caused by the pre-2008 bubble, exactly the same as in the U.S. Iceland and more particularly, Ireland (see below - McCreevy). It has taken 4 years for the true picture to be known.

It has taken 7 months of lies to hide the true extent of Spain’s bankruptcy and finally ask the E.U. for a 100 million euros “bail out.” Meanwhile Spanish bonds have been downgraded to junk as the taxpayer further bears the brunt of sovereign debt totally caused by corruption, speculation, belief in infinite growth and a destruction of the environment.

Socially the results have been disastrous: 25% unemployment, 50% 18 – 25 year unemployment, evictions, general strikes, indefinite miner’s strike in Asturias causing flashbacks to 1933 and Franco’s repression. (This really is war and perhaps people are only just hearing about it (11))

A veil of secrecy has always been part of the Monarchic/fascist/conservative Spanish governments, which fawn on protocol and tradition, and assume an undue respect. Those that experienced the hardships and brutality of the fascist regime, and the prosperity that followed to make Spain the 4th largest economy in Europe and the 10th largest in the world, are fearful of a return to a brutal past which has never been discussed during the “transition to democracy”. The church is very powerful socially and has easy purchase within the Peoples Party.

Time and again corrupt regional governments in Marbella, Valencia, the Balearic Isles, Catalonia and Gallicia were returned in the hope they would keep the “good times rolling”. Never has the average Spaniard experienced such 'wealth creation'. It is now common daily news reporting to hear of a mayor or regional governor in court facing corruption charges, and a recent (June) El Pais article asks “Is something rotten in the state of Spain”. (12)

Rajoy Peoples Party Government ratifying illegal developments and enforcing evictions

The people voted for Rajoy and the Peoples Party knowing that election day was the anniversary of Franco’s death, and a return to “austerity” was already foreshadowed by Rajoy, who was keen to participate in the friendly fascism underway in the Goldman Sachs-ing of Europe. His answer to the 1000’s of houses built and completed illegally on land not zoned for development, is legalization and further destruction of coastal environment. His answer to whole of the building industry cast into unemployment was to enforce evictions.

Rajoy Peoples Party Government trying for another unsustainable housing bubble

His answer to unemployment and the recession, that Spain seems doomed to endure for another 10 years, is to create another bubble, this one courtesy of Las Vegas and Macau gambling multi billionaire Sheldon Adelston and “Euro Vegas” (13) with 6 casinos, thousands of hotel rooms and 18 BILLION euros worth of investment which would reportedly halve Madrid or Barcelona’s unemployment rate. This would add to the already established 30 casinos currently operating in Spain.

The Legacy

A very insightful book has recently been authored by the son of the Republic in Exile post Franco, Nicholas Sanchez-Albornoz. The book is called Prisons and Exiles and revisits Franco when the police caught up with him and his colleagues in the anti-Franco fight. The escape of Sánchez-Albornoz and his fellow prisoner Manuel Lamana from the slave labor practiced at Cuelgamuros near Madrid in 1948 was one of the legends that most damaged Franco.

The Franco regime never conceived of peaceful co-existence among Spaniards without political exile, the period from 1939 to 1942 in which, according to reports from the time, more than 100,000 people were executed. But Sanchez-Albornoz's account is not from that time. It

“begins in 1947, and I am sure there were still firing squads then because I lived through it. The executions lasted until Julián Grimau in 1962, Franco kept killing after the war.”

Sánchez-Albornoz sees the whole 40 year period as ;

“corrupt. Franco's authority rested on two elements: death and punishment, and corruption . . . .

Q./ The regime ended. But when your father returned from exile in 1976, then Interior Minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne prohibited a formal dinner in his honor. So, the regime was still there.
A./ And it is still here today. There is a de facto group, which stands for everything that fuels that dark side of a segment of the Spanish population.”
Q. How do you see this current period?
A. There is a global economic crisis led by the financial system and its abuses, which in the case of Spain has been worsened by a dreadful economic policy created by the PP in its last government (Aznar), to give free reign to the real estate sector, which resulted in a certain level of euphoria at the time. And Zapatero didn't put a stop to it; he didn't know how to burst the bubble. What is alarming in the current situation is the level of improvisation. There is a return to certain Francoist roots in society, and that is worrying. A very unpleasant Spain is surfacing. “ (14)

The remnants of fascist Spain can most easily be seen at peaceful public demonstrations. Tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets are a first response, now demonstrations are being made illegal. (15)

How did Spain's banks survive the 2008 crash? – Basically, endogenous corruption

The Zapatero socialist government introduced many reforms after 2004, including Zapatero's most popular one of withdrawing troops from Iraq as soon as elected, but weakly caved into a laissez-faire ignorance of the bubble. It has recently been discovered that when the execrement hit the fan, Spain’s central bank, the Bank of Spain, had, in the timeless Spanish tradition, been cooking the books.

The full extent of indebtedness was only hinted at when E.U. contagion was considered. Greece’s debt pales into insignificance when compared to the level of debt owed by the Spanish real estate sector. This comprises anything up to half the money the European Financial Stability fund has on its books, just to recapitalise the Spanish banks, whose debt is now seen as “sovereign debt”.

Both socialist and conservative governments have been shamefully responsible for dereliction of duty with the burden of debt. In true Goldman Sachs fashion, they have transferred the debt from the private to the public sector. Rajoy’s PP government has been in complete naïve denial and lied as much as it could to save face, to just kick the can down the road until after summer and the tourists have gone. The full debt is still not known and Rajoy was refusing to call for assistance as recently as the end of May. He is now openly criticized in all European media.

Only 12 months ago he oversaw the privatization of Bankia, Spain’s 4th largest bank. The share float began at 3.69 euros and is now 1 euro.

The end of year 2011 report declared a 40 million plus euro profit which, on independent audit, was revealed to be a 3.3 billion euro LOSS. Bankia has now asked for a 19 BILLION euro bail out. The total “immediate” bail out for the banking sector is said to be 62 BILLION euros, this is excluding the BoS as it would not have enough time to complete the audit until September as “too many staff would be on leave over summer”.

See also a report republished on The Automatic Earth, with a short history of the Spanish debt and how it has been handled internationally. In 2009 Charlie McCreevy, the EU’s commissioner for financial services from 2004 to 2010, who previously had been Ireland’s finance minister, has said that he knew Spain's banks were violating violating International Financial Reporting Standards, but thought it was okay for them to do so.

This is an interesting supplement to the drive for high immigration and a huge population in Australia. It also gives an account of the role played by The Movement (B.A. Santamaria) in the Australian Labor Party's long exile from government before Whitlam. Some interesting background on Labor Party figures currently in government or recently in opposition.

This research was concluded in 2000, when the ALP had been in opposition since Keating's fall, and the author welcomes feedback and new information on this period and its sequel. See also an analysis of what drives a similar pronatalist movements in Russia in Putin’s Pro-Natalism Miscarries

New South Wales Royal Commission into the Decline in the Birth Rate

In 1904, in response to the decline in the population growth rate in New South Wales and Victoria, the New South Wales Royal Commission into the Decline in the Birth Rate (RCDBR)[1], composed mainly of businessmen with a financial interest in liquidating stagnating property assets, launched pro-natalist and immigrationist recommendations that were to set the tone for a long time to come. In the future much Australian industry, but especially the housing construction and infrastructure industries, was to become dependent on population growth.[2] This is a dependency it shares with other new world colonial states, such as the United States and Canada.[3 ]

National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)

In 1944 the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) took up where the RCDBR had left off forty years ago. Deploring the “forty year decline in the birth rate” and disparaging a rise in the birth rate between 1940 and 1943 as due to a temporary rise in marriages due to war time, the NHMRC called for pronatalist policies [4], encompassing the provision of housing, home help, child care for everyone, and kindergartens and better medical services. They also drew attention to the importance of the role played by economic security. The only alternative to an increase in natural increase would be an increase in immigration, but in 1944 that seemed to them an unlikely prospect.

Chiffley and Menzies and Immigration

However the Chiffley (Labor) and Menzies (conservative, Liberal) governments, although strongly populationist, seem to have largely ignored the 1944 pronatalist policies recommended by the National Health and Medical Research Council and to have relied on immigration. This may have been because the baby boom made pronatalist measures seem redundant as long as it lasted. The initial hope was to rely on natural increase to make up one per cent of population growth and immigration to contribute another one per cent. In Australia the immigration program had marked nation building aims but also had the major function of providing a ready supply of labor for industrial expansion.

Papal conspiracy, Communism, Democratic Labor Party and ALP

But what had happened to the strong pronatalist traditions which had persisted through the Second World War to the 1944 Report of the National Health and Medical Research Council? How could they just have disappeared?
In fact pronatalism continued to exist, particularly in the Australian Labor Party, and especially among its Catholic members. However it is hard to find any record of related pronatalism and policies in the literature which has been written about family policy of this time. This may be because an entire block of pronatalists separated off from mainstream Labor parties in a traumatic split in 1954. The Democratic Labor Party which resulted from this failed to flourish.
Remarkably, these events do seem to have been the culmination of a down-under papist conspiracy, far-fetched as that may seem. At the time Protestants outnumbered Catholics in Australia and Catholics had encountered discrimination in the workforce, especially during the Great Depression. There developed a secret society of Catholics, organised and under the direction of bishops [5], to carry out a Vatican encyclical inspired plan to Catholise Australia.

Catholic Action and the Catholic Social Studies Movement and Dr Santamaria

The secret society, of which the full name was “The Catholic Social Studies Movement” grew out of “Catholic Action”, a concept developed in Europe in the 19th Century [6]. Catholic action had been active in Australia from the 1930s and was particularly concerned about the spread of communism. However “The Movement”, as it came to be called, had a wider range of free standing policies and combatting communism may in the end have been more of an excuse for its empire building activities. It was led by Dr Bob Santamaria, an Italian born Australian lawyer of unshakeable religious convictions, intelligence, charisma and a taste for power. The first edition of its weekly newspaper, Freedom, was launched in September 1943. The centre of the Movement was in the State of Victoria, although it was Australia wide.
The Movement was highly pronatalist and immigrationist [7]. The pronatalism and immigrationism, as well as important for increasing the number of Catholics in Australia, were also crucial to its major plan, which was to block further urban concentration and settle the hinterlands of Australia with a vast population of contented peasants congregated in rural communities. Redistribution of wealth – not communism, but in the context of setting up a population of small property and business holders - was the economic philosophy [8].
Among the stated policies of the Movement were:

“8. Payment of a marriage bonus and payment of adequate family allowances, 11. Possession of Family Homes for all.” [9]

In effect the campaign sought the reunion of Church and State, as we can see from the item about education:

“9. A National System of education, 20. Recognition of religion as the basis of education.”[10]

The leader of this movement, Bob Santamaria, gave pronatalist and defensive reasons for the emphasis on rural development in Rural Life, May 1951. He wrote,

“...The second reason was national. Professor Macdonald Holmes proved to us that the birth rate, the very strength, the very numbers of our community, depended upon the strength of rural life. We were given time and again the relative birth rates in metropolitan, provincial, and country areas, and it has been proved, not only through Australian experience, but through world wide experience, that any increase in population must come from the rural areas. Therefore if we hope for survival of the country everything has to be done to build up those areas which have been given us Australia.”[11]

Was Chiffley influenced by “The Movement” – Murray Darling Basin and Snowy Mountain scheme?

It is interesting to note that a number of policy items from the movement were eventually carried out. Arthur Calwell, (Labor) the first Minister for Immigration under the Chiffley Labor Government and main driver of the post 1945 massive immigration program was himself a practising Catholic [12], and, although he did not follow other Catholics into the Democratic Labor Party, it seems plausible his policies were influenced by ideas emanating from the Movement[13]. Among those polices taken up were two calling for the institution of a bigger migrant intake and intensive irrigation in the Murray Darling Basin, with hydro electricity generated in the Snowy Mountains to be used exclusively inland, to encourage industry [14].

ALP, Unions and Reds under the Beds and Santamaria

There is evidence that in later years the Labor Party showed a high degree of confusion on whether to take seriously the threat of imminent invasion, which, with the maoist revolution, suddenly replaced that of a communist takeover of Australian unions [15].

This is perhaps not surprising, given that Santamaria and Catholic activists who had preceded him in the Labor Party had initially been preoccupied with the 'enemy within', to wit, the issue of the communist take over of Australian unions. There was for years a battle for dominance within the party between its communist members and its Catholic members. When the Movement began to organise a secret resistance network to communism within the union movement and the Labor Party, the issue of communism as a threat was covertly sown but absolutely pervasive and deeply rooted. Suddenly, after the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, Santamaria virtually stopped pushing the communist union issue in order to take up foreign policy and the threat of invasion by Asian communists. His theme was “Ten minutes to midnight”[16].

ALP Split from within – confusion reigns

The seismic split that divided the Labor party in 1954 identified the Catholic activists from the Movement as the threat from within, and so this must have made those Labor party members outside the movement wonder if the communists really were the enemy. And, since the Movement activists had led the Ten to Midnight campaign about the threat of Asian invasion, it is not surprising that those Labor party survivors of the split had become disenchanted and distrustful of all that old rhetoric.

Liberal foreign policy

The rhetoric of course had taken on a life of its own, of reds under the beds and the yellow peril. It was now the basis of official foreign policy under the Liberals, with a major immigration program the chief strategy for defense. Birthrates were of course coming along quite nicely all by themselves.

Purge within ALP

In December 1954 the Movement-sympathetic Victorian Executive of the Australian Labor Party was outlawed. By means of elections run by the Federal Executive despite the defiance of the incumbent executive, it was replaced by a new anti-Movement Victorian Executive. On 30 March 1954 the John Cain Victorian State Labor Government resigned and reformed, excluding four Catholic supporters of the outlawed Movement-dominated Victorian Executive. Seven Victorian Federal parliamentarians – S.M. Keon, J.M. Mullens, R. Joshua, WM Bourke, TW Andrews, JL Cremean and WG Bryson – all Catholics except for R Joshua, were expelled from the Australian Labor Party because they refused to declare their loyalty for the new Executive.

Both ALP and the New Australian Labor Party (the early DLP) lose election

These seven expelled ALP members met in April 1954 and formed a new Australian Labor Party, known as the “Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist)”, which eventually became the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) [17].

Both Labor Parties contested the next Victorian election and, unsurprisingly, both parties lost to the Liberal Party.

It must all have been profoundly traumatic. Not only would documents and records have been lost, but there was a sudden rupture in the chain of human command and in the chain of human message bearers within the party.

Although the baby boom would have obviated any but extremist preoccupations about the birthrate, pronatalism must have been considerably “on the nose” anyway in the Labor Party, at both Victorian and Federal levels. It could not help but be associated with the policies of the treacherous Movement that had infiltrated the Party to such a degree. Even if there had been widespread concern about communism within and without the Party, the tactics of the Movement overshadowed this.

Whitlam Era: Pronatalism on the nose

At any rate, in these intrigues may lie the explanation for the apparent disappearance of pronatalism after 1945. It had been there but in one fell swoop a great many pronatalists had absented themselves to form a major political vehicle and had formed a new party. That party struggled on and probably assisted the maintenance of the Labor Party in opposition for many years. The Democratic Labor Party never really achieved much success for itself and whatever pronatalist agenda it retained failed to make much impact on Australian policy. In 1974, encouraged by Gough Whitlam, the last of the DLP members of parliament, Vincent Gair, resigned to take up an appointment as a diplomat to Ireland.

As well as distancing itself from a foreign policy based on threats of invasion, Whitlam’s government, from 1972, launched a number of widespread policies to promote family planning, women’s rights and equal opportunity. For a long time the Labor Party stayed well away from pronatalism.

“Movement” disbanded by Vatican 1957

The Movement was officially disbanded by the Vatican in 1957. The DLP became a Federal party, but never rose to any great success. Santamaria never became a member of parliament but was a major influence on the policies of the DLP. In December 1957 Santamaria formed the National Civic Council to continue anti-communist work.

The National Civic Council still exists. It has various offshoots, including the Australian Family Association, which is domiciled in the Thomas Moore Centre in North Melbourne. It is run by one of Santamaria’s daughters and produces a newspaper, the News Weekly, which has a circulation of 10,000. It is still a pronatalist organisation, but lately has become less supportive of high immigration [18].

For years Santamaria had a column in the Australian, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch who is a Catholic convert and was recently made a Knight of the Vatican. The newspaper is very much in favor of high population growth. Santamaria died in 1998. He had eleven children.

Pronatalism creeps back: Peter McDonald and others

Towards the end of the 1990s it seemed to me that pronatalism was returning to polite demographic discussion.

On the 14 October1999 there was a big demographic conference at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, “The Transformation of Australia’s Population 1970-2030.”

Chaired by ANU Demographer, Peter McDonald [19], the conference had a strong streak of pronatalism. It was the first conference of academic importance that I had attended where there was a serious and almost unquestioned assumption that Australia and much of the developed world were threatened by the ‘grave’ possibility of 'exponential decline' in population. Impressive Power Point displays showed the populations of the United States ballooning like a cheerful fat man, that of Australia dwindling and feeble and Japan, with a total fertility rate of 1.45 and zero net immigration fading to a pitiful anorexic spindle.

The presenter of this session on “Comparative Fertility Trends,” was Professor Phillip Morgan of Duke University. The assumption at the beginning was that Australia would not be able to get the kinds of skilled immigrants it was felt would be needed in sufficient quantities and that there would be economic chaos if the population were allowed to decline. This left the only option to somehow boost the birth rate. (Note that Bruce Chapman, ANU professor of Economics who presented the session on the future of the labor force did not share this opinion at all. Rather he surmised that, employment wise, it would probably be an easier world in the next 35 years than it had been!)

I have heard that the Federal Labor Party had eschewed mention of the declining Australian fertility rate for a long time through a strategic desire to avoid feminist backlash [20].

Kim Beasely as ALP leader, his MP father, and pronatalism

On 15 May 2000, however, the leader of the Australian Labor Party (in opposition), Kim Christian Beasely, made a press release regarding a discussion paper on ALP Family Policy. This was reported on West Australia local ABC news item on the 15th May.

Interestingly the current ALP leader’s father, Kim Edward Beazley, was still the patron of the Australian Family Association in 2000. The Australian Family Association in Victoria is housed in the same premises as as the NCC, at the Thomas Moore Centre and is something of a “sister group” to the NCC. Kim Edward Beazley was a West Australian member of Parliament and member of the Labor Party. In 1950 he was an Anglican [21] but showed sympathy to the Movement’s policy ideals, notably that of allying the party closer to US foreign defense policy than British [22]. He has long been a committed member of Moral Rearmament [23] and a dedicated anti-communist. In March 1955 the Federal Conference credentials of Kim Edward Beazley senior were suspended for three years by the Western Australian ALP along with those of three others who were identified as sympathetic to the divisive aims of the Movement [24].

The Family Policy that ALP leader (1996-) Kim Christian Beasely announced in 2000 included greater access to Child care and higher endowment, concluding with a statement to the effect that this policy package would also be likely to raise Australia's falling birth rate. This was most important as "the present birth rate was leading to an unsustainable population for Australia. There is a pressing need to encourage higher rates of childbirth."[25 ]

The paper itself, entitled “Family Futures” emanated from the office of South Australian member of Parliament, Mr Swan, the shadow minister for family affairs. It explicitly denied “putting pressure on people to have children, or any such antiquated rubbish, but rather, making life easier for families; both in financial terms and in terms of the time balance between work and family life. However, arresting our declining birth rate is only a threshold issue. If we can provide more people with the opportunity to start a family, we should be prepared to back this with policies that deliver ongoing support from the time children are born.” The bulk of the policies were for better provision of child care ; there was little, if any, financial inducement. Nevertheless it is inescapable that the document has for its major raison d’être increasing the birth rate.

Angela Shanahan

Apart from the more specialised Financial Review, the Australian (which also appears as the Weekend Australian) is the only wide circulation national newspaper in Australia [26]. In 1999 Angela Shanahan first appeared as an occasional feature writer in a column called Focus . Shanahan seems to have been selected by the Australian as a pronatalist writer. Her major qualification for this post, apart from her reasonable ability to write, is her claim to be the mother of nine children. Since mothers of nine are a distinct minority and therefore could not represent a large and influential market for the Australian, one assumes that the newspaper is towing a pronatalist line.

“Procreative minority” was the title of her piece in the Weekend Australian on 20-21/5/2000 [27]. In it she describes a “kind of pursed-lipped, neo-Darwinian attitude of “the poor breed like rabbits”” She pushes the line that Australia has a “shrinking and aging population”, concluding therefore that “opposition to income support for big families is puzzling.” She attributes this to “extreme environmentalism or an ideological antipathy to the nuclear, patriarchal family which, in feminist newspeak, is always oppressive.” She promotes the idea of greater financial support for big families because they produce the “taxpayers of the future.” Disparagingly, she describes single people as “lonely old singles who never did manage to confront their fading youth”, and she complains that her children will have to support these singles as well as herself and their father.

Essentially she is suggesting that government should pay a wage to women who produce children and that this should be scaled to the number of children and that the tax system should be reformed to tax families rather than individuals. She does not go into detail but refers to the policies of the National Civic Council linked Australian Family Association.

This paper was written in about 2000, placed here in pdf form on 28 June 2006, and slightly reedited for the internet on 9 Nov 2009. Copyright to Author, Sheila Newman
Astridnova[AT]gmail.com Please cite: Sheila Newman, “Pronatalist Policy in Australia from 1945 to the turn of the century,” (2000) candobetter.org/node/623

Notes

[1 ] See most documents dealing with the history of population enquiries in Australia, e.g. Neville Hicks, This Sin and Scandal, ANUP, Canberra, 1978, p.93, Stefania Siedlecky & Diana Wyndham, Populate and Perish, Australian Women Fight for Birth Control, Allen and Unwin, Australia, 1990 and Borrie, W.D., (Chairman), Population and Australia, A Demographic Analysis and Projection, First Report of the National Population Enquiry, Parliament of Australia, 1975, Parliamentary Paper No. 6, Printed by Courier Mail Service, Campbell Street, Bowen Hills, Brisbane, Queensland 4006., Vol.1

[2] Sheila Newman, Malthusianism, Neo-malthusianism and Women’s Rights in Australia, from 1770 to the 1990s, published on French internet site, Populatique, CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research), http://www.ehess.fr/populatique/, Ed. LeBras et Ronsin of EHESS. Curiously, the Commission had ignored the impact of gold rushes to New South Wales and West Australia in removing males of reproductive age from the South Eastern States, and they also ignored the dampening effect the desperate economic times must have on the remaining population.

[3 ] Conversely, from 1974, Western European economies began to gear to population stabilisation and decline and the housing industry adapted to factory built housing on demand, instead of engaging in land speculation. See http://dieoff.com/page194.htm

[4] Borrie, W.D., (Chairman), Population and Australia, A Demographic Analysis and Projection, First Report of the National Population Enquiry, Parliament of Australia, 1975, Parliamentary Paper No. 6, Printed by Courier Mail Service, Campbell Street, Bowen Hills, Brisbane, Queensland 4006., Vol.1, pp193-194.

[5] Paul Ormond, The Movement, Nelson, 1968, p 122. Ormond cites part of a letter from the Editor of the Melbourne Catholic newspaper, The Tribune, Mr Ted Adams, to T.M. Butler, (5 May 1961): “As at April 1955, the Movement was an authentic Catholic activity with a madate from the Hierachy. It was directed by and its executive officers were responsible to an episcopal committee. In such circumstances it was surely the function of a paper under Catholic control to reflect its policies without question, and to reject any submission which brought them into the sphere of open debate.”

[6] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, pp44-46.

[7] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, pp44-47.

[8] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, pp47-48. Murray cites the first issue of the Movement’s weekly newspaper, Freedom, where the movement’s policy was described under twenty points: 1. Public control of monopolies, 2. Public conrol of credit, 3. The Institution of Industrial Councils, 4. Assistance to small owners, 5. Part ownership of industry for the workers, 6. Co-operation in all aspects – producers, consumers, marketing, insurance and credit, 7. The principle of an Adequate Income for all, including a minimum wage that will meet all the needs of the family, allow it to provide for the future, attain to the ownership of property and imporve its cultural condition, 8. Payment of a marriage bonus and payment of adequate family allowances, 9. Wages a first charge in industry, before dividends or profits, 10. Equal pay for equal work, 11. Possession of Family Homes for all, 12. A strong program of regionalism, including spreading of all the conveniences of the city to the country home, 13. A national campaign for Family Land Settlement, 14. A radical crisis to solve the problem of rural debt, 15. Independent Farming as the normal productive policy, 16. Co-operation in agriculture, 17. A Fair Return for the farm production, 18. Self-government of agriculture, 19. A National System of education, 20. Recognition of religion as the basis of education.

[9] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, pp47-48. Murray cites the first issue of the Movement’s weekly newspaper, Freedom, where the movement’s policy was described under twenty points.

[10 ] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, pp47-48. Murray cites the first issue of the Movement’s weekly newspaper, Freedom, where the movement’s policy was described under twenty points
[11] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, p111
[12 ]Paul Ormond, The Movement, Nelson, 1968, p.116. Ormond comments that Calwell, who was a practising Catholic, felt that he had been ‘frozen out’ of his Parish Church when he did not go with the Democratic Labor Party at the height of the Labor Party Split in the 1950s. Instead he changed churches.

[13 ]Although note is taken that Calwell was criticised by Movement supporters for his failure to support the movement and was slurred as a communist. See for instance, Ormond, The Movement, Nelson, 1968, pp115-116.

[14] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, pp 55-56, “Mostly under the influence of [Colin Grant] Clark, [economic advisor to the Queensland Government and a convert to Catholicism], the main lines of Movement social policy by the early 1950s ... [included] 6. Social services designed to encourage big families, 7. A bigger migrant intake, to build up the population, with many of the migrants being settled on the land and a high proportion of them Catholics, 8. Intensive irrigation in the Murray Darling Basin, with hydroelectricity generated in the Snowy Mountains scheme to be used exclusively inland, to encourage industry....”

[15] K Betts, Ideology and Immigration, MUP, 1988, pp86-87. She cites Dennis Altman, Rehearsals for change: Politics and Culture in Australia, Fontana, Melbourne, 1980., p.101. Betts identifies the schema of threat of invasion as a motivation for populating the land. She comments that this was a topic of open debate towards the end of the 1960s, for a short time. “In the years after World War II the development of Asian communism seemed to make the issue simpler and starker, at least for conservatives.” She adds that the picture was rather more confused for the Labor Party, and describes Calwell’s attitude as combining strong committment to the threat schema, whilst refusing to assign that threat directly to either communism or to Vietnam. She cites Denis Altman as arguing that such confusion characterised Labor thinking in the pre-Whitlam era.

[16 ] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, p56.

[17 ] Paul Ormond, The Movement, Nelson, 1968, p.93

[18] Personal communication from Robert Birrell, reader in Sociology and Anthropology at Monash University and author of many books on population growth in Australia.

[19] McDonald’s articles about population projections have been cited by the Minister for Immigration (who is the defacto minister for population) and some McDonald material was displayed on the website of the Minister.
http://minister.immi.gov.au/media_releases/media99/r99115.htm:

“Minister Releases New Findings on Australia's Ageing Population, MPS 115/99 .
...A new report entitled The Impact of Immigration on the Ageing of Australia's Population has been prepared by ANU demographers Professor Peter McDonald and Rebecca Kippen, and projects that the proportion of Australians over 65 will double over the next 40 years. Those over 65 are expected to represent 24 per cent of the Australian population - the result of Australians having fewer children and living longer. While the report found that the ageing of Australia's population is inevitable, it states that factors including current migration levels will have an impact on the composition of the population into the second half of the 21st Century. "This research indicates that calls for a significantly larger Migration Program on the grounds that it would help keep Australia younger are misdirected and ill informed. Higher net migration would add to the size of the population but would have little impact on the age of the population," Mr Ruddock said. "Equally, heeding calls for zero net migration would accelerate ageing of the population." Wednesday, 11 August 1999, Media inquiries: Susan Sare (02) 6277 7860 or 0407 415 797.

[20] In 2000 I listed my source as confidential, but I don’t think this factor is any great secret.

[21] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, p.146.

[22] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, p.42 & 146.

[23] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, p.264

[24] Robert Murray, The Split, Australian Labor in the Fifties, Cheshire, 1970, p.241

[25] Report on ABC News Item sent to me by email on 16 May 2000 by Vice President of West Australian Branch of Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population, Paddy Weaver.

[26] The print media is almost exclusively dominated by only two chains; the Murdoch and the Fairfax Press.
[27] “Procreative minority” is the title of her piece in the Weekend Australian on 20-21/5/2000 p.30.

Date: Sunday, February 08, 2009
Source: CNN.com
Author: Anna Coren and Tim Schwarz

Dateline: Manila, the Philippines

Thanks to Bill Ryerson of the US Population Media Center for having advised me of this - JS

A debate is stirring in the predominantly Roman Catholic country of the Philippines: should the government provide contraceptives to the public?

More than 100 members of the House of Representatives have co-authored a bill that would allow government funds to be used to promote artificial contraceptives -- which is now prohibited in the Southeast Asian nation.

"The bill is not about religion. It is not about morality," said Edcel Lagman, a congressman. "It's about rights, health and sustainable human development."

Some one-third of the country's 90 million people live in poverty. The Asian Development Bank said that problem will persist until the country curbs its birth rate -- one of the highest in the world.

The nationwide Pulse Asia Poll found nearly two-thirds of people support the bill. But the Catholic Church is fiercely opposed, and is pressuring lawmakers to vote against it.

"Why should we use contraceptives, teaching our children the use of contraceptives," said Ed Sorreta of Pro-Life Philippines. "It's totally against the teaching of the Catholic Church. The poverty is really caused by other issues, moral values."

"When you talk about natural family planning, it needs discipline, that's where many couples fail. They lack the discipline."

Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, except in cases to save a mother's life. But the United Nations estimates that half a million illegal abortions are performed in the country every year.

Sheila Villanueva, a 25-year-old maid earning $2 a day, has five children.

"I married at eighteen. I had my first baby by the time I was nineteen. Then the babies came, one after the other," she said.

"Life is so hard, kids get sick easily, prices of goods are so high. That's one of the reasons why I don't want them to have too many kids," she said.

Still, Villanueva said she would not use contraceptives.

"Even if they say you'll end up with too many kids, I don't get swayed by their persuasions, I won't use those contraceptives," she said.

The legislation will go before the nation's Congress in the next few months.

"This bill, once it becomes a law, it will give information and access to those who want it," Lagman said. "But I will also underscore that central to this bill is the freedom of choice. ... (W)e compel women to make their own choices."

"(T)he government should be there to give them free information and free access to the products, particularly to the poorer of the poor," he added.

See also: www.populationmedia.org. Add your comments to the PMC blog.