On 28–29 March 2015 the
Citizens Electoral Council of Australia sponsored a remarkable
international conference in Melbourne, under above title.
The conference heard
that the rapid emergence of the BRICS group of nations
(Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), coming
just as the Anglo-American-dominated trans-Atlantic
system heads for likely the worst financial crash ever,
marks a turning point in human history. Speakers
came from around the world and ranged across the
political spectrum, among them being guests from
BRICS members Russia and South Africa.
Australia must join with China's One Belt, One Road project!
A presentation given by CEC Leader Craig Isherwood on 21 September 2016 in Melbourne
1 June 2016—A new body established in Melbourne last year by Chinese
and Australian trade and business representatives—the
Australia China OBOR Initiative—is promoting the mutual
benefit of Australian participation in China's One Belt,
One Road project. The group is advised by prominent Chinese
and Australian businessmen and economists, including
Orica chairman and BHP Billiton director Malcolm
Broomhead, who told The Australian on 27 May that Chinese
President Xi Jinping had invited Australia to participate
in OBOR during his visit here in November 2014. "We are
part of their strategic thinking", Broomhead said, and described
plans to develop northern Australia's infrastructure
and agriculture. Participation in OBOR—characterised by
the paper as a "strategy, recreating the ancient Silk Road,
[which] aims to drive massive new infrastructure projects
to connect China with Europe via Central Asia by land and
via Southeast Asia by sea"—will allow us to access "special
investment and funding" provided by the New Silk Road
Fund, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and
the China Development Bank. Mr Broomhead said that over
900 projects had been identified already. ...
22 June 2016—Forces greater than our prospective Prime Ministers,
Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten, will determine Australia's
fate. Given that, as a nation, we have not yet decided
to take the advice of former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser
to "grow up", we will surely be swept along with the tide of
change now taking place globally.
The CEC, with our international collaborators in our own
movement and within governments and institutions, is pushing
to ensure that that oncoming change is guided by the
principle of development for the benefit of all mankind. This
principle is being propelled into reality right now by the development
initiatives of China, in collaboration with Russia
and the other BRICS nations, and many smaller nations
working with them. ...
Australia must secure its future by aligning with the BRICS in a new, just world economic order
TO THE HONOURABLE THE SPEAKER AND MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
This petition of the Citizens Electoral Council draws to the attention of the House the opportunity for Australia, and all nations, to participate in the process that the BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have initiated: to create a new financial architecture for the world based on equitable and inclusive multilateral credit institutions that prioritise investment in physical economic development, instead of speculation.
The present, inequitable IMF-World Bank system is collapsing under the burden of hundreds of trillions of dollars of unpayable global debts and derivatives obligations, including the Australian banking system's derivatives exposure of more than $27 trillion. This is the legacy of decades of reckless financial speculation unleashed by IMF-enforced deregulation, and is the driver of the world's present strategic tensions which have increased the threat of a thermonuclear world war.
Through such new financial institutions as the $100 billion New Development Bank, the $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the $40 billion Silk Road Development Fund, the $20 billion New Maritime Silk Road Fund, and the planned Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) bank, the BRICS nations will direct massive investment in much-needed physical infrastructure projects on which all nations can collaborate, forging a basis for lasting global peace and economic prosperity.
We the undersigned therefore petition the House to commit Australia both to full participation in the AIIB, and to full support for the BRICS-initiated process of creating a new financial architecture for the world as the basis of a just economic order.
The significance of the BRICS alignment for Australia
The global financial system is now careening towards a new, far greater breakdown than 2007-08, a reality which drives the escalating threat of thermonuclear world war between the desperate, collapsing trans-Atlantic powers and Russia and China. Under these existential conditions, nations face a choice: to remain with the policies and alliances that are driving the collapse and war danger, or to join with fellow nations to establish a new economic world order that can guarantee peace and security.
To secure this new economic order, the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) together with a growing number of collaborators, have forged ahead in the last two years with grand development projects, and agreements on the credit mechanisms to fund them. The trans-Atlantic powers view the BRICS developments with ill-disguised hostility, as a threat to their hegemony; nevertheless the BRICS invite the U.S. and Europeans to collaborate with them in economic development. For instance, China has an open invitation to the U.S. and its Pacific allies Australia, Japan and South Korea to join the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB), but the U.S. is pressuring its allies not to participate.
In July 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the New Silk Road Economic Belt, followed in October by the announcement of the Maritime Silk Road. In early 2014 Russia endorsed the Silk Road proposal and signed a series of extensive agreements to cooperate with China, to create a new economic architecture in the Asia-Pacific. The 16 July 2014 "Fortaleza Declaration" of the 6th BRICS Summit in Brazil, signed by nations representing half of the world's population, made history with the creation of the BRICS' New Development Bank and Currency Reserve Agreement, to allow nations to break free of the vice-grip of the current City of London/Wall Street-dominated financial system.
From these beginnings a stunning series of bilateral meetings, summits, and conferences has consolidated the collaboration between nations intent on this approach of peace through economic development, exemplified by BRICS allies Egypt building the New Suez Canal and Nicaragua constructing the Great Inter-Oceanic Canal. Such great projects will transform the world economy and demonstrate the power of sovereign nations to deliver on the economic development needs of their people, independent of the IMF and World Bank.
Now Greece is asserting its sovereignty, becoming the first European nation to boot out a puppet government run by the Troika of the IMF, EU and European Central Bank, and to push for economic justice through a national debt reorganisation, a Europe-wide debt conference and measures to fund economic reconstruction.
As Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche summed up the world situation in her introduction to the recently published EIR Special Report on the World Land-Bridge: "There are now two economic and financial systems built on completely different principles. One, the trans-Atlantic system, as an imperial structure, seeks constantly to extend the boundaries of its sphere of power through supranational structures which threaten the sovereignty of other nations," including the use of regime change, terrorism and war. On the other hand, "The newly arising system of the BRICS nations and the countries associated with them, bases itself upon entirely different principles. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi formulated it most expressively at the plenary session of the Brazil summit, 'BRICS is unique as an international institution. In the first instance, it unifies a group of nations, not on the basis of their existing prosperity or common identities, but rather their future potentials. The idea of the BRICS itself is thus already aligned with the future.'"
For more than 25 years the Citizens Electoral Council has fought for Australia to adopt the very policies and principles now being championed by the BRICS. Australia must now choose: do we go down with the collapsing trans-Atlantic system, or, beginning with accepting China's offer to become a founding member of the AIIB, do we join the BRICS to ensure our future?
