Community Law Association

Priesthoods & Sinecures

This potentially great community of ours - Australia - is in the stranglehold of a number of organised crime operations or mafias. The result is that effort is defeated and merit wronged, talent wasted and other valuable scarce resources stolen, misallocated and otherwise abused.

These mafias are not Sicilian or Russian; they don't carry guns, as a rule, since they control the Police forces and Military that do carry guns and have legal powers to do just about anything, thanks to Bush's 9/11 legislation, slavishly emulated here for the same purpose as in the USA - total control of the civilian population.

They are essentially home-grown, the product of pampered upbringing in preferential circumstances. The mafias is question are the unholy Priesthoods of the Law, the Political Machines, the Public Services, High Finance and Corporate Commerce. To put the problem into perspective, the scale and scope of what is conventionally called 'organised crime' in Australia is insignificant compared with the depredations of the Priesthoods.

Look at Law - one hundred years ago the only qualification required to represent somebody in court was a qualification in English; now, one needs a law degree and acceptance by the priesthood as a barrister. Only the initiates can have access to the mysteries of the Law. Of course, the Law is now far more profitable than previously for its priesthood. Such is the benefit of organised labour.

The Public Service is another insidious priesthood - like a virus, it exists to sustain and propagate itself. It has rigorous screening practices to keep out undesirables, persons who don't have the right social and educational background, persons who might rock the boat. Like the Law, it pays its members very well, and protects them from the inconveniences of life: an incompetent manager gets regular 'secondments' so that responsibility for his goofs is obscured because someone else occupied his function for a while; a female falling pregnant gets to take a year off from her work, with  the assurance that her 'job' will be waiting for her on her return. That another person has to perform her job in the meantime, with no chance of security of employment or advancement, is not the concern of the PS.

The political machines are masters of smoke and mirrors - they are the unelected ones who make the political decisions that are supposed to be made by the democratic process of government. They maintain the pretence of democracy with all of its traps and trimmings; they keep the ball in play so that the punters - you, and you, and you - can't see the wood for the trees, can't tell the myth from the con. That they have Shanghaied democracy and enslaved us as surely as any tyrant of the ancient world ever did.

What do I need to say about the Banks and other financial entities? Once they won deregulation - under Adolph Howard, you will remember - they suddenly went from profits of $500 million per year to $5 billion per year, mostly thanks to an obscene range of new charges and 'fines' on private banking customers.

Let's close down the priesthoods, let's end the exclusive and privileged sinecures and niches these people have made for themselves. Let's start with limiting Public Service employment to three years, after which the individual must find gainful employment in the private sector for at least two years before becoming eligible for a further three years of PS employment.