The Raging Reds
Cold War politics in the Wild West
The major urban region of Perth is currently at extreme risk. The civil administration is not adequately equipped to guarantee the continuance of constitutional government.
Sir Charles Court
In the late sixties money poured into the Western Australian economy from the outside world. As the states mineral wealth became more apparent, the government offered extraordinary benefits to foreign investors to take those minerals.
Australia's first Labor Government for twenty-three years was elected on December 2nd 1972. Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam declared it was time to buy back the farm. He attacked the previous government for allowing mining corporations to take millions of dollars of taxpayers money in the six years prior to 74. “Their profit on their operations for the last six years was $2,000 million,” Mr Whitlam said to students at the Western Australian Institute of Technology.
“Our predecessors developed a system of taxation concessions so generous to these struggling corporations that the Australian taxpayer gave $341 million in subsidies and concessions.
“The companies paid only $286 million in taxation royalties – again at your expense a $55 million loss.”
The PM promised Labor would introduce tough new measures to control foreign ownership in Australian industry. Changing world conditions and these measures succeeded in putting the brakes on foreign investment.
In 1973 interest rates and inflation spiraled after OPEC dramatically increased oil prices. The economy took a nosedive.
In WA, the euphoria surrounding foreign investment, the land boom and the mining boom all came to an abrupt halt. The cold light of dawn flooded in as the soaring economy about faced and headed on a rapid downhill slide.
The $1.3 billion Alwest Alumminium project was put on ice, property slumped and big agricultural projects up north stalled. The Australian Land And Cattle Company, a massive 4.3 million acre multi-million dollar enterprise in the Kimberley set up by Texan cattle rancher, Jack Fletcher, was on the verge of collapse as foreign investors called back in their money. Western Australian entrepreneurs, Alan Bond and Laurie Connell teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. All blamed Canberra and the ‘raging communists’ for their woes.
Western Australia would become famous for the bold and brash tycoons who launched themselves during the mining and property booms of the sixties. Alan Bond, Laurie Connell, and Robert Holmes a Court loomed larger than life and dominated the corporate stage for the next two decades. Western Australia had been referred to as “The Wild, Wild, West”, and its businessmen earned the reputation as ‘cowboys’.
The government of the day gave many of the cowboys a free ride to indulge their greedy pursuits, their frenzied spending sprees would later change the face of corporate Australia, creating political scandal and leaving a mountain of debt in their wake.
Bond was virtually insolvent when he gave the green light to the slogan “Power-Hungry Whitlam Must be Stopped”. Bond Corp had expanded twelve fold and borrowings had multiplied at almost twice that rate, with roughly $100 million of debt and assets that would fetch only $50 million in a forced sale.
Sir Charles Court was there to back Alan Bond in his battle against ‘the creeping cancer of communism’. When Alan Bond sought urgent meetings with his American bankers to try and stay afloat, Sir Charles Court had already paved the way telling them what a fine citizen Bond was and how important it was for Western Australia that Bond survive. “The bankers in New York would have had little trouble picking up the hidden message, if it was hidden, that their chances of doing business in Australia would be slim thereafter if they were the ones who sent Bond down,” wrote Bond biographer, Paul Barry.
Lang Hancock, joined the vocal affray attacking the federal government policies and for a change Hancock and Court were on the same side. Whitlam was forced to make an about face and decrease his foreign deposit requirement to five percent. The entrepreneurs were not assuaged.
The passion and paranoia of prominent Western Australians about communism was viewed as extreme by many in other states.
Iron-ore magnate Lang Hancock declared “The Canberra road leads Australia directly into the communist camp, with Russian military bases on WA soil helping the Indian Ocean to become a Russian lake.”
Lang Hancock financed the Westralian Secessionist Party to fight Canberra: Mr Hancock said he feared that federalism would eventually mean confiscation of properties, nationalisation of industry and abolition of State parliaments. He was fascinated by Hitler and according to Rose Hancock kept a library of books on right wing dictators.
Under secession Hancock forecast security of tenure for West Australians, freedom from “Canberra’s socialist controls”, lower taxes abolition of death duties and cheaper air fares.
Mr Hancock said there was no doubt that Western Australia could support itself economically if it seceded.
On defence he said: “We’re a minus quantity now. This place could be taken by telephone anyway.
For a successful defence of the Western seaboard his solution would be “Buy an F-111 and arm it with a nuclear warhead so that the militarily stronger nations on our borders will know that if they should feel tempted to attack us, they will be handling a fairly prickly hedgehog”.
Spurred on by his US mate, Edward Teller, father of the H. Bomb and member of the Whitehouse Science Council and the Committee of the Present Danger (1983) an anti- communist US think tank looking at ways to contain the Soviet Union, Lang called on Australia to embrace nuclear blasting of the north-west to build dams, mines and harbours and to blast undulating terrain and channels through the Pilbara.
“If we are prepared to jump into the nuclear age immediately, there is no reason why the Pilbara in Western Australia could not become the 'Rhur of South East Asia'. With the ensuing build-up in economic strength Australia would be strong enough to defend itself. The raw materials are here. What is lacking is leadership, guts and foresight."
To critics of nuclear power, Hancock wrote, “By toadying to this communist infiltrated element, hiding under the cloak of ecology you have encouraged the propagation of some of the vilest and most damaging subversive propaganda that has ever invaded this country.
“There is no such thing as a current nuclear debate it was won 29 years ago when Dr Teller examined all safety aspects of nuclear power and made his recommendation to the US government.”
Lang Hancock had no illusions as to where power lay in Australia. “Government don’t have any power. They have no say. They can’t do anything. They’re irrelevant”, he said in 1983. Lang Hancock, ALCCO which operated a 1,500,000 hectare cattle station and irrigation project at Camballin in the Kimberleys & Alan Bond approached the Shah of Iran for finance deals in 1974 to try and keep their teetering empires afloat. The Managing Director of ALCCO, Jack Fletcher was advised that because Alan Bond knew who was to be paid off he was essential to the deal. Fletcher expressed concerns about Bond and refused to include him in the deal. (Texas Jack's Australian Outback Adventure, Jack Fletcher).
Lang Hancock arranged for the Shah of Iran to visit Australia in 1974. He wanted to keep him away from Sir Charles Court so he was instead feted by Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen. Sir Joh and Lang had a vision splendid for WA and QLD to go it alone, the two states bridged by a transcontinental railway financed by the Middle East. When Whitlam wanted to break Japanese cartel buying of Iron-Ore he spoke to Lang Hancock in the lead up to the Shah’s visit. Lang later explained to a journalist about that meeting.
But I also explained that the Shah was on a goodwill visit. [he] the King of Kings, the Light of the Aryans, did not soil his hands with such earthy matters as commerce. I said the Shah made no investments until they were first dry-blown [checked] by a firm of solicitors in America, the head of which was the trigger man for every cent that Iran invested.
This seemed to intrigue the prime minister. I had impressed on him that everything we were talking about was in strict confidence, and he had accepted this. But now he asked if he could discuss the matter with the Minerals and Energy Minister, Mr Connor. I said OK, but remember that the wider circle of knowledge the less chance there is of success. Looking back, I think the Khemlani loans affair started there, because I had unwittingly sowed the idea that to get at the Arab millions you needed a middle man. Certainly Whitlam and the men around him must have thought that if I had potential access to millions of petrodollars, then his government and its department should be able to obtain similar access. (D. Marshall. Lang Hancock p 106)
The WA Premier, Sir Charles Court stated, The major urban region of Perth is currently at extreme risk. The civil administration is not adequately equipped to guarantee the continuance of constitutional government.
Documents exposed by Richard Hall, adviser to the Whitlam government, in his book “The Secret State”, revealed the extent of Court’s paranoia about communism during the Whitlam years.. Sir Charles had called for a special intelligence terror unit to be set up to contain “rising civil disorder” if it developed in Western Australia. The unit was to be called the Directorate of Public Safety, the author of the report seemed blissfully unconscious that the unit’s name was derived from the ‘Committee of Public Safety’, which was Robespierre’s instrument of terror during the French Revolution and which sent thousands to the guillotine.
By late 74 Whitlam was forced to drop the no interest deposit requirements on foreign investment to 5% and in an ironic twist it was the searching out of a foreign loan that led in part to the government’s downfall. Foreign and local businessmen were baying for his blood.
Solicitor to crooked businessman, Laurie Connell, Leon Musca, was also helping WA businessmen escape the raging reds. His 1979 entry in “Who’s Who- The Way stated “Made globe trotting representation of overseas businessman allegedly under threat from Russian agents”. Mr Musca has not returned calls to explain exactly what was the threat posed by Russian agents nor who those agents were but what Mr Musca did reveal later on during WA Inc Royal Commission was a system of ‘warehousing’ companies whereby companies would be held in the name of someone else – to hide the government’s involvement.
A legal storm erupted in 1989 when the media was gagged from reporting Musca’s evidence about events which preceded the collapse of Laurie Connell’s Rothwells merchant bank, the event which had lead to the WA Inc Royal Commission.
Musca alleged former Labor Premier Peter Dowding suggested the Government could buy Western Collieries from Rothwells as a way of pumping cash into the failing financier. Dowding accused Musca of fabricating evidence over a claim Dowding had suggested the purchase could be “warehoused” – to hide the government’s involvement. Musca sued Dowding for defamation and won an apology and an out of court settlement.
The mysterious Gofair Investments Ltd has never been fully explained, a clandestine management company set up in Hong Kong which seemingly performed no task apart from collecting money and with no apparent directors. The “Pike Report” on the Secret Wheelings and Dealings of the WA government during the WA Inc days was unable to establish who owned Gofair. Gofair was appointed to manage the Western Australian Petrochemical Industries company Ltd (PICL) project on behalf of the WA government and Bond Corporation Holding Ltd, a project which failed with considerable losses by the government on behalf of Western Australian taxpayers. Gofair was to receive substantial management fees throughout the construction period for the management of the PICL project and the post-construction for the management of the operations of the petrochemical project. The PICL deal revealed a web of legal mechanisms designed by the executive of government to bypass parliamentary scrutiny and approval for the use of government funds.
Mr Kenneth Judge, an associate and director of Bond Corporation Holding Limited and a director of Petrochemical Investments Pty Ltd and Petrochemical Holdings testified to the Pike Committee.
We made inquiries in Hong Kong – we (that is. Bond group) have an office there. The nearest we came to establishing its background was that it was a company registered out of Price Waterhouse in Hong Kong. We were unable to establish anything further because the corporate structure as we were able to trace it disappeared into itself. There were no obvious beneficiaries and it appeared to have no directors or secretaries. It was a satisfactory structure for someone who did not want anyone to know who was the owner of Gofair.
Western Australia and Queensland were two state economies dominated by foreign capital. An economist, from the University of Sydney, Associate professor E. Wheelwright, warned Australia at a conference in the late seventies that the two states might be moving to a kind of Australian fascism as they battled in the international auction for capital and jobs.
The late Professor of Politics at UWA Patrick O’Brien said the WA government of the eighties became a ‘virtual dictatorship’.
In Western Australia, executive government owns and operates over 1000 corporate organisations employing tens of thousands of people with tens of thousands of others principally dependent upon its favour for their livelihoods. It is in fact the single largest employer in the state. It is also engaged in a vast array of joint ventures with private operators and entrepreneurs who it favours. Where it does not own and control, it regulates and licenses. It has power to enhance the credit of those whom it favours and, conversely, put out of business those whom it disfavours or targets as “enemies”, a power which is irresistible.
Executive government determines salaries from the Governor down and has the power to award honours and social status. It determines who shall be Queen’s Counsels in the legal profession and thereby who shall be among the highest and most privileged income earners in the state.
It appoints members of the governing councils of universities, hospitals and other “public” institutions. “No monarch of old had such powers of patronage. When it is considered that most of these powers can be exercised without reference to parliament, it can be said that the real and potential powers of the office of Premier are literally awesome”, wrote Professor O’Brien.
Moreover, in combination with its vast powers of patronage, the subtle but decisive shift of power to the executive government has the potential of transforming our system into a mammoth favours dispensing machine in which those who have been given the right entry cards or who have paid sufficient dues to the ruling party have every chance of punching jackpots for themselves until the general revenue is exhausted. Thus, and without exaggeration, government in Western Australia can easily become a giant “pork-barrel” greased by the Premier and cabinet; an instrument for serving not the public interest but private and even corrupt interests.
If either the Labor or Liberal government were warehousing businesses in the 70’s or 80’s the question remains – How many companies were warehoused? What happened to companies warehoused by the government at that time and did they continue to secretly operate; or were they absorbed in to the private assets of individual politicians, lawyers and businessmen? Could some of the companies associated with government deals in the eighties actually have been owned and financed by the public of WA at the outset? Have they all been identified and if not who is administering the public assets?
Cold War politics in the Wild West
The major urban region of Perth is currently at extreme risk. The civil administration is not adequately equipped to guarantee the continuance of constitutional government.
Sir Charles Court
In the late sixties money poured into the Western Australian economy from the outside world. As the states mineral wealth became more apparent, the government offered extraordinary benefits to foreign investors to take those minerals.
Australia's first Labor Government for twenty-three years was elected on December 2nd 1972. Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam declared it was time to buy back the farm. He attacked the previous government for allowing mining corporations to take millions of dollars of taxpayers money in the six years prior to 74. “Their profit on their operations for the last six years was $2,000 million,” Mr Whitlam said to students at the Western Australian Institute of Technology.
“Our predecessors developed a system of taxation concessions so generous to these struggling corporations that the Australian taxpayer gave $341 million in subsidies and concessions.
“The companies paid only $286 million in taxation royalties – again at your expense a $55 million loss.”
The PM promised Labor would introduce tough new measures to control foreign ownership in Australian industry. Changing world conditions and these measures succeeded in putting the brakes on foreign investment.
In 1973 interest rates and inflation spiraled after OPEC dramatically increased oil prices. The economy took a nosedive.
In WA, the euphoria surrounding foreign investment, the land boom and the mining boom all came to an abrupt halt. The cold light of dawn flooded in as the soaring economy about faced and headed on a rapid downhill slide.
The $1.3 billion Alwest Alumminium project was put on ice, property slumped and big agricultural projects up north stalled. The Australian Land And Cattle Company, a massive 4.3 million acre multi-million dollar enterprise in the Kimberley set up by Texan cattle rancher, Jack Fletcher, was on the verge of collapse as foreign investors called back in their money. Western Australian entrepreneurs, Alan Bond and Laurie Connell teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. All blamed Canberra and the ‘raging communists’ for their woes.
Western Australia would become famous for the bold and brash tycoons who launched themselves during the mining and property booms of the sixties. Alan Bond, Laurie Connell, and Robert Holmes a Court loomed larger than life and dominated the corporate stage for the next two decades. Western Australia had been referred to as “The Wild, Wild, West”, and its businessmen earned the reputation as ‘cowboys’.
The government of the day gave many of the cowboys a free ride to indulge their greedy pursuits, their frenzied spending sprees would later change the face of corporate Australia, creating political scandal and leaving a mountain of debt in their wake.
Bond was virtually insolvent when he gave the green light to the slogan “Power-Hungry Whitlam Must be Stopped”. Bond Corp had expanded twelve fold and borrowings had multiplied at almost twice that rate, with roughly $100 million of debt and assets that would fetch only $50 million in a forced sale.
Sir Charles Court was there to back Alan Bond in his battle against ‘the creeping cancer of communism’. When Alan Bond sought urgent meetings with his American bankers to try and stay afloat, Sir Charles Court had already paved the way telling them what a fine citizen Bond was and how important it was for Western Australia that Bond survive. “The bankers in New York would have had little trouble picking up the hidden message, if it was hidden, that their chances of doing business in Australia would be slim thereafter if they were the ones who sent Bond down,” wrote Bond biographer, Paul Barry.
Lang Hancock, joined the vocal affray attacking the federal government policies and for a change Hancock and Court were on the same side. Whitlam was forced to make an about face and decrease his foreign deposit requirement to five percent. The entrepreneurs were not assuaged.
The passion and paranoia of prominent Western Australians about communism was viewed as extreme by many in other states.
Iron-ore magnate Lang Hancock declared “The Canberra road leads Australia directly into the communist camp, with Russian military bases on WA soil helping the Indian Ocean to become a Russian lake.”
Lang Hancock financed the Westralian Secessionist Party to fight Canberra: Mr Hancock said he feared that federalism would eventually mean confiscation of properties, nationalisation of industry and abolition of State parliaments. He was fascinated by Hitler and according to Rose Hancock kept a library of books on right wing dictators.
Under secession Hancock forecast security of tenure for West Australians, freedom from “Canberra’s socialist controls”, lower taxes abolition of death duties and cheaper air fares.
Mr Hancock said there was no doubt that Western Australia could support itself economically if it seceded.
On defence he said: “We’re a minus quantity now. This place could be taken by telephone anyway.
For a successful defence of the Western seaboard his solution would be “Buy an F-111 and arm it with a nuclear warhead so that the militarily stronger nations on our borders will know that if they should feel tempted to attack us, they will be handling a fairly prickly hedgehog”.
Spurred on by his US mate, Edward Teller, father of the H. Bomb and member of the Whitehouse Science Council and the Committee of the Present Danger (1983) an anti- communist US think tank looking at ways to contain the Soviet Union, Lang called on Australia to embrace nuclear blasting of the north-west to build dams, mines and harbours and to blast undulating terrain and channels through the Pilbara.
“If we are prepared to jump into the nuclear age immediately, there is no reason why the Pilbara in Western Australia could not become the 'Rhur of South East Asia'. With the ensuing build-up in economic strength Australia would be strong enough to defend itself. The raw materials are here. What is lacking is leadership, guts and foresight."
To critics of nuclear power, Hancock wrote, “By toadying to this communist infiltrated element, hiding under the cloak of ecology you have encouraged the propagation of some of the vilest and most damaging subversive propaganda that has ever invaded this country.
“There is no such thing as a current nuclear debate it was won 29 years ago when Dr Teller examined all safety aspects of nuclear power and made his recommendation to the US government.”
Lang Hancock had no illusions as to where power lay in Australia. “Government don’t have any power. They have no say. They can’t do anything. They’re irrelevant”, he said in 1983. Lang Hancock, ALCCO which operated a 1,500,000 hectare cattle station and irrigation project at Camballin in the Kimberleys & Alan Bond approached the Shah of Iran for finance deals in 1974 to try and keep their teetering empires afloat. The Managing Director of ALCCO, Jack Fletcher was advised that because Alan Bond knew who was to be paid off he was essential to the deal. Fletcher expressed concerns about Bond and refused to include him in the deal. (Texas Jack's Australian Outback Adventure, Jack Fletcher).
Lang Hancock arranged for the Shah of Iran to visit Australia in 1974. He wanted to keep him away from Sir Charles Court so he was instead feted by Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen. Sir Joh and Lang had a vision splendid for WA and QLD to go it alone, the two states bridged by a transcontinental railway financed by the Middle East. When Whitlam wanted to break Japanese cartel buying of Iron-Ore he spoke to Lang Hancock in the lead up to the Shah’s visit. Lang later explained to a journalist about that meeting.
But I also explained that the Shah was on a goodwill visit. [he] the King of Kings, the Light of the Aryans, did not soil his hands with such earthy matters as commerce. I said the Shah made no investments until they were first dry-blown [checked] by a firm of solicitors in America, the head of which was the trigger man for every cent that Iran invested.
This seemed to intrigue the prime minister. I had impressed on him that everything we were talking about was in strict confidence, and he had accepted this. But now he asked if he could discuss the matter with the Minerals and Energy Minister, Mr Connor. I said OK, but remember that the wider circle of knowledge the less chance there is of success. Looking back, I think the Khemlani loans affair started there, because I had unwittingly sowed the idea that to get at the Arab millions you needed a middle man. Certainly Whitlam and the men around him must have thought that if I had potential access to millions of petrodollars, then his government and its department should be able to obtain similar access. (D. Marshall. Lang Hancock p 106)
The WA Premier, Sir Charles Court stated, The major urban region of Perth is currently at extreme risk. The civil administration is not adequately equipped to guarantee the continuance of constitutional government.
Documents exposed by Richard Hall, adviser to the Whitlam government, in his book “The Secret State”, revealed the extent of Court’s paranoia about communism during the Whitlam years.. Sir Charles had called for a special intelligence terror unit to be set up to contain “rising civil disorder” if it developed in Western Australia. The unit was to be called the Directorate of Public Safety, the author of the report seemed blissfully unconscious that the unit’s name was derived from the ‘Committee of Public Safety’, which was Robespierre’s instrument of terror during the French Revolution and which sent thousands to the guillotine.
By late 74 Whitlam was forced to drop the no interest deposit requirements on foreign investment to 5% and in an ironic twist it was the searching out of a foreign loan that led in part to the government’s downfall. Foreign and local businessmen were baying for his blood.
Solicitor to crooked businessman, Laurie Connell, Leon Musca, was also helping WA businessmen escape the raging reds. His 1979 entry in “Who’s Who- The Way stated “Made globe trotting representation of overseas businessman allegedly under threat from Russian agents”. Mr Musca has not returned calls to explain exactly what was the threat posed by Russian agents nor who those agents were but what Mr Musca did reveal later on during WA Inc Royal Commission was a system of ‘warehousing’ companies whereby companies would be held in the name of someone else – to hide the government’s involvement.
A legal storm erupted in 1989 when the media was gagged from reporting Musca’s evidence about events which preceded the collapse of Laurie Connell’s Rothwells merchant bank, the event which had lead to the WA Inc Royal Commission.
Musca alleged former Labor Premier Peter Dowding suggested the Government could buy Western Collieries from Rothwells as a way of pumping cash into the failing financier. Dowding accused Musca of fabricating evidence over a claim Dowding had suggested the purchase could be “warehoused” – to hide the government’s involvement. Musca sued Dowding for defamation and won an apology and an out of court settlement.
The mysterious Gofair Investments Ltd has never been fully explained, a clandestine management company set up in Hong Kong which seemingly performed no task apart from collecting money and with no apparent directors. The “Pike Report” on the Secret Wheelings and Dealings of the WA government during the WA Inc days was unable to establish who owned Gofair. Gofair was appointed to manage the Western Australian Petrochemical Industries company Ltd (PICL) project on behalf of the WA government and Bond Corporation Holding Ltd, a project which failed with considerable losses by the government on behalf of Western Australian taxpayers. Gofair was to receive substantial management fees throughout the construction period for the management of the PICL project and the post-construction for the management of the operations of the petrochemical project. The PICL deal revealed a web of legal mechanisms designed by the executive of government to bypass parliamentary scrutiny and approval for the use of government funds.
Mr Kenneth Judge, an associate and director of Bond Corporation Holding Limited and a director of Petrochemical Investments Pty Ltd and Petrochemical Holdings testified to the Pike Committee.
We made inquiries in Hong Kong – we (that is. Bond group) have an office there. The nearest we came to establishing its background was that it was a company registered out of Price Waterhouse in Hong Kong. We were unable to establish anything further because the corporate structure as we were able to trace it disappeared into itself. There were no obvious beneficiaries and it appeared to have no directors or secretaries. It was a satisfactory structure for someone who did not want anyone to know who was the owner of Gofair.
Western Australia and Queensland were two state economies dominated by foreign capital. An economist, from the University of Sydney, Associate professor E. Wheelwright, warned Australia at a conference in the late seventies that the two states might be moving to a kind of Australian fascism as they battled in the international auction for capital and jobs.
The late Professor of Politics at UWA Patrick O’Brien said the WA government of the eighties became a ‘virtual dictatorship’.
In Western Australia, executive government owns and operates over 1000 corporate organisations employing tens of thousands of people with tens of thousands of others principally dependent upon its favour for their livelihoods. It is in fact the single largest employer in the state. It is also engaged in a vast array of joint ventures with private operators and entrepreneurs who it favours. Where it does not own and control, it regulates and licenses. It has power to enhance the credit of those whom it favours and, conversely, put out of business those whom it disfavours or targets as “enemies”, a power which is irresistible.
Executive government determines salaries from the Governor down and has the power to award honours and social status. It determines who shall be Queen’s Counsels in the legal profession and thereby who shall be among the highest and most privileged income earners in the state.
It appoints members of the governing councils of universities, hospitals and other “public” institutions. “No monarch of old had such powers of patronage. When it is considered that most of these powers can be exercised without reference to parliament, it can be said that the real and potential powers of the office of Premier are literally awesome”, wrote Professor O’Brien.
Moreover, in combination with its vast powers of patronage, the subtle but decisive shift of power to the executive government has the potential of transforming our system into a mammoth favours dispensing machine in which those who have been given the right entry cards or who have paid sufficient dues to the ruling party have every chance of punching jackpots for themselves until the general revenue is exhausted. Thus, and without exaggeration, government in Western Australia can easily become a giant “pork-barrel” greased by the Premier and cabinet; an instrument for serving not the public interest but private and even corrupt interests.
If either the Labor or Liberal government were warehousing businesses in the 70’s or 80’s the question remains – How many companies were warehoused? What happened to companies warehoused by the government at that time and did they continue to secretly operate; or were they absorbed in to the private assets of individual politicians, lawyers and businessmen? Could some of the companies associated with government deals in the eighties actually have been owned and financed by the public of WA at the outset? Have they all been identified and if not who is administering the public assets?
References
- Marshall D. Lang Hancock Allen & Unwin 2001
- Sykes T. The Bold Riders Allen & Unwin 1986
- Barry P. Going for Broke – How Bond Got Away with It Bantam Books 2000
- Reid G. D. The Premiers of WA 1890 -1982, University of Western Australia 1982
- Barry P. The Rise & Fall Of Alan Bond (Paul Barry) Bantam Books 1990
- O’Brien P. & Webb M. The Executive State WA Inc & the Consitution Consitutional Press 1991
- Read J. Marksy The life of Jack Marks, Read Media, South Fremantle Western Australia
- Hancock L. – Defence of Australia through National Resources Aug 4 1974
- The Sydney Morning Herald PM orders inquiry into foreign miners’ profit 3 May 1974
- Fletcher J. Texas Jack’s Australian Outback Dream: A pioneering Investment Journal American University & Colleges Press 2001
