Nexus - 1104 - New Times Magazine-pages

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You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul. — Mahatma Gandhi The tide of privatisation that engulfed Australia during the mid- and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. 1990s took with it many government departments which now incor- Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will porate a sometimes shadowy corporate component in what has resist an evil system with his or her whole soul. become known as PPPs or "private-public partnerships". Many — Mahatma Gandhi Australian public hospitals became privatised when large health-care corporations moved in and bought up the public real estate for fire- Elector Initiated Referendums sale prices. These corporations promptly downsized the hospital Keep your eye on the Constitution...because there are great staff and charged private patients exorbitant fees while dipping into protections... The protection of our liberties does not ultimate - the taxpayer's Medicare purse. Recently, PPPs more often meant ly depend on Parliaments or even courts. It depends on the double-dipping by hungry corporations than efficiency.> love of the people for liberty. During this era, governments often cried poor while the compliant — Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby media periodically whipped up the angry mob against some unfortu- nate teenaged mother living on welfare—yet completely ignoring True to his determined nature, Malcolm McClure taught himself corporations that failed to pay billions of dollars in tax while they the rules of democratic and electoral process. Then he gave up sucked on the taxpayer's teat. teaching and stood for parliamentary election as an independent can- By 1997, Malcolm McClure's home state of Victoria, under didate. In his spare time, he set about drafting an Act of Parliament Premier Kennett, was leading other states in the public assets sell- that would guarantee the Australian people a voice in Parliament by off, and so it was only a matter of time before Mr McClure would way of Elector Initiated Referendums (EIRs). collide with the globalist agenda. Mr McClure adopted the EIR as his campaign platform. His Malcolm McClure is a thoughtful man with a gentle nature. His intention was to ensure direct communication between electors and fair Scot's complexion, neat pony tail and solid determination make _ their representatives. The system would restore the true spirit and his appearance more reminiscent of a function of democracy wherein the elec- Celtic tribal warrior than a slippery tors would determine the laws they citizen of the 21st century. However, wanted passed or removed. This was his gentleness evaporates when he is in keeping with the democratic ideal indignant about social injustice. Under common law. however, that the "supreme absolute and uncon- 3 , When faced with the unjust or trollable authority remains with the tyrannical, he appears to grow in a contract must be knowingly, people", as stated in the Preamble to war eorgones venice | voluntarily and intentionally Ms sustatin Constitution, ues. He becomes even more incensed entered into or it is recent government initiative to scrap when bureaucrats or politicians retreat unenforceable the Constitution's Preamble was into dogma in the face of logic; then he prepares to argue his case all the way to the High Court if necessary. because of the power that this passage alone confers on the people.) By 1998, McClure was running in In 1997 Malcolm McClure taught two by-elections and a federal election. science, physics and maths to bright However, his campaign was stymied students. One evening while driving home from his workplace by the refusal of the media to grant him air time, while the two through Lygon Street in inner-city Melbourne, he heard on the radio —_—s major parties received massive campaign contributions from big that road tolls were soon to be introduced upon roads that were business and maximum airwave saturation. On polling day, he already established and fully paid for, where no tolls had ever been _ noted that there was additional discrimination against independent imposed before. candidates as a result of the difficulty that voters encountered when On that trip, in that moment, it came upon him to stand against filling out the ballot if they chose to vote for an independent candi- road tolls in Victoria. The right of passage—a most fundamental date. Voting "below the line" meant the voter had to tick off dozens right—was being threatened, and he felt this at his core. of candidate preferences, and in the event of making an error their He travelled regularly on that public road and had financially con- vote would be counted as a preference vote for another party. tributed to it as a taxpayer, as had his parents before him. In addi- McClure gained a great deal of experience but lost the election. He tion, he paid a petrol (gasoline) tax each time he tanked up, which was indignant about the blatant discrimination inherent in the voting the government had told the public was for the purpose of building _ system and took his case to the High Court in 1999 and maintaining public roads. He discovered that only three cents The following year, Malcolm McClure established VOICE out of every litre found its way back to road maintenance and con- (Voting Organisation for Individual and Collective Empowerment), struction—out of the 60 cents per litre that the government collected. a non-profit and non-political association that would bring the elec- He began to wonder what had happened to the billions collected tors' wishes to the attention of the government. On 27 May 2000, he each year from motorists. He wondered which laws had been took his first Elector Initiated Referendum on the road to allow the passed in the dead of night that allowed double dipping from the public to vote officially on issues of importance. With a small but public purse. dedicated group of volunteers, McClure set up his voting procedures It was a defining moment in Malcolm McClure's life. The along appropriate electoral rules—ballots in triplicate, voters on the answers he found disturbed him more, including the fact that most of __ electoral roll signing and receiving a copy of their ballot, and ballots the money collected from the toll by CitiLink went overseas into numerically numbered. After a year of gruelling all-weather work private hands. on a shoestring budget, McClure and his team of volunteers had Before too long, he decided to do something about a situation that _ travelled through four out of five States, canvassing citizens’ votes appeared to him a government scam on the taxpayers. on issues such as road tolls, the goods and services tax (GST), Elector Initiated Referendums Keep your eye on the Constitution...because there are great protections... The protection of our liberties does not ultimate - ly depend on Parliaments or even courts. It depends on the love of the people for liberty. — Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby Under common law, however, a contract must be knowingly, voluntarily and intentionally entered into or it is JUNE — JULY 2004 NEXUS = 21 Privatisation and Road Toll Protests unenforceable. www.nexusmagazine.com