Rest of the article Note the date of this article was September 19, 1977. Change some of the names and it could have been written yesterday. Credit to Ben Marks for digging out out preserving this and many other historical Australian essays.
Interesting interview with Robert Duffield, Rogue Bull: The Story of Lang Hancock, the King of the Pilbara (Sydney: Collins, 1979), pp. 203-04. RD: What do you think of government assistance to business and industry big or small, mining or not? LH: I don't think hand-outs do any good. I think that's where Australia has fallen down. Our national anthem seems to be a tune called "The Government Oughta" the government oughta feed me, the government oughta clothe me, the government oughta assist me, the government oughta lay down guidelines, the government oughta do my thinking for me. This idea of total dependence on the government has led to Australia's undoing; it's a disease that has spread through us and I believe we can only cure it ourselves. Governments can only get bigger and bigger, and the bigger they get the more they take away from big business, small business, everybody in the community. You've got to face the fact that once taxation exceeds 25 per cent of an individual's income, the country is on the downgrade. That's what has happened in Britain, and it's only seven or eight years away here. RD: So you think government should basically restrict itself to defence and the police force. How, then, would it handle a social problem like drugs? LH: Drugs? The problem is simply cured, but it would be dynamite for any politician to suggest it. Where does the problem lie? It obviously lies with the big international criminal element that pushes these drugs on to the market. The fellow who takes the drugs is just the last of the line he's doing less harm to society than all the pushers and corrupters and Mafia men. You've got enormous expense to the taxpayer, with men at the Customs and all over the place; half the time of the police is taken up trying to arrest people selling, buying or using drugs; you've got government inquiries into marihuana growing all at the expense of the poor taxpayer. The answer is quite simple. You put a forty-gallon drum full of drugs, just out of children's reach, on every street corner. Then anybody who was addicted to them could help himself, and there'd be no profit in selling them and therefore no crime, and all the criminals would disappear. And since the bravado of breaking the law would also disappear, I think our young people would stop taking drugs, and they would become less of a problem than, say, the consumption of sugar in our society. But, of course, such common sense is politically impossible. But you know, I never give much thought to questions which are not purely economics. Somebody else can do the moral preaching, there are plenty of people for that, but I don't think morals are going to make or break our civilization. But if people can't get enough to eat, if they can't get jobs, if they can't keep warm, wherever they live in the world Their material welfare is the main concern. RD: How about the various Consumer Affairs Bureaus, then? They have some sort of economic role. Would you have them done away with? LH: Very, very quickly. They're trying to teach people that they can be protected from being foolish. All they can do is make articles dearer. You cannot save people from being fools by legislation; all that legislation can do is benefit the bureaucrat and cost the man in the street. RD: But you wouldn't deny that there are fraudulent businessmen? LH: There are fraudulent people in all walks of life, but legislation is not going to change them. All it achieves is to create a higher class of fraud the one who knows how to beat the system. RD: An ombudsman? LH: Sheer, unadulterated waste of time. He cannot under any circumstance fight a big department. The moment he did this he'd lose his job. The ombudsman is something put up there to help a few unfortunate individuals get publicity for television. Sometimes a minor wrong is righted, but usually the main beneficiary is the television station rather than the wronged individual.
Every physical posession that any person has ever owned was either grown or mined. Why the Fruit Bats hate farming and mining so intensely is a mystery to me.
Yes its a shame......Oz depends soooo much on mining and they're trying to take it away. Try being one of the miners working in those harsh extreeme temperature conditions.
More quotes from Lang Hancock "Mining in Australia occupies less than one-fifth of one percent of the total surface of our continent and yet it supports 14 million people. Nothing should be sacred from mining whether it's your ground, my ground, the blackfellow's ground or anybody else's. So the question of Aboriginal land rights and things of this nature shouldn't exist." In a 1984 television interview Hancock suggested forcing unemployed indigenous Australians specifically "the ones that are no good to themselves and who can't accept things, the half-castes" to collect their welfare cheques from a central location: "And when they had gravitated there, I would dope the water up so that they were sterile and would breed themselves out in the future, and that would solve the problem." [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMaRuk6pGOc[/youtube]
Thanks for posting this Bordsilver. Was a great read while on the bus. Haven't listened to that video yet, but I'm sure he knew more about Aboriginals than anyone that will bring that video up.
