Well, the Murdoch organs have an interest in garnering some republican readers too, at least so that oligarchs like Rupert himself (and "minimalist" republican Turnbull too) can ensure the more effective imperial-liberalist tenure on Australia's riches via less official and overt means i.e., the English/Dutch-based finance sector and its supra-national bodies like the recently pumped-up IMF slush-cum-clearing house of toxic hedge fund waste.

As for me: I fear that I was kicked off the ALP bus long ago, along with the (more discreetly jettisoned) coffins of Lang, Curtin, and Chif.

The rot really began to set in when Malcolm Fraser liberalised the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act after the Whitlam Government was booted out.

Had the Whitlam Government not been drive out of office by our wealthy elite and Minister for Minerals and Energy Rex Connor instead been allowed to proceed with his plans to buy back the farm and make Australia Energy self-sufficient we would not be in the mess we are in today.

However, instead, Australia is being turned a colony as we speak.

Whilst the fact the foreign mining company Rio-Tinto owns so much of the mineral wealth that was once ours is already very bad, having that company changed into one largely controlled by a Chinese would make a bad situation worse.

Another alarming development not mentioned much these days are the plans to build a massive, polluting, climate-changing government aluminium smelter on wetlands just to the north of Bowen in northern Queensland. This will practically guarantee the destruction of those wetlands. It is to be owned and operated by Chalco, owned by the Chinese Government.

The story, "Bowen a sure thing for Chalco", of 26 Jun 08 reported:

"... schools discussed the possibility of introducing the Chinese language into their curricula to expand job opportunities for students."

If the necessity of learning a foreign language in order to be able to secure employment in your own town is not a symptom of colonisation, then what is?

For more information, see "Stop the sell-off of Australia's mineral wealth!" at http://candobetter.org/node/1171 http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/03/31/more-on-the-yellow-peril/#comment-679127

While this board is being kept busy with sheeple's opinions, this country is being sold out from under us by collectivists.As this forum requires opinions, this is my opinion: "Water is sold off, Food production is being tampered with,(GMO's and Radiation) Phone and power is not owned by the people....Jobs are going overseas, next our TOTAL freedom is gone! Scaremongering is their game (GW), now the masses are openly told the NWO is here! They are right and we the sheeple let it happen. Who will stand up and become a real leader? Any on this forum? Maybe the FFI will straighten you all out." http://www.freedomforceinternational.org/videos/video.cfm?&player=An_Idea_Whose_Time_Has_Come

I just must challenge eftfnc,s view we are sheeple.
That the great unwashed who think differently do so because we blindly follow our party/leaders/the wrong people.
Rarely are people with such views right.
The idea others who we disagree with must be wrong is amusing.
Let us however look at the differing impacts of China, if we lived in one of those African country's China is involved with.
Fighting illness, bringing water and food, yes self interest for sure.
But how would it be different to England in India?
Holland in Asia?
America in south America?

Baaa...baaa...yellow (peril) sheep.

Sudan has just recently opened its hydrolectric dam built with Chinese aid in a deal promising a return of oil for China. Meanwhile, a phoney insurgency keeps going via Darfur, with the extra-judicial and (largely) Soros-initiated and -funded ICC trying to claim the scalp of Sudan's leader. Very sickening, given that his is the government that brought Sudan three universities and over 90 schools, whereas before there was hardly any education system (and certainly no uni).

Then the rest of Africa sees another foreign-backed destabilization: this time Rwanda-based against the Congo. Why? Because that country too has persisted with Chinese development projects.

It makes me feel uneasy describing this because the prevailing outlandish anti-Chinese hate propaganda in the west compels me to reply with the very positive facts - facts which would seem, by contrast, to be bombastic propaganda themselves! Problem nowadays is that China's pursuit of just, civilized development and common welfare is such a positive force, in stark opposition to nasty debt regimes that have kept regions like Africa in particular (and East Timor for a closer example) down in the dark ages, and so obviously as a matter of callous, deliberate policy of ruthless exploitation and "We win You lose" barbarism.

If Australia continues to saddle itself with the harebrained, nasty schemes of western financiers, while avoiding such positive force for the common good as in China's example, there can be little doubt that such myopic and monetarist approaches will need many decades, if not centuries, of diplomatic repair work in our region.

Thank you, mill-observer for your learned pronouncements about the rights and wrongs of the various international conflicts that confront us.

It appears that the Chinese are knights in shining armour and whichever governments they choose to back are forces for incomparable good in the world and whichever governments or insurgencies stand opposed to those governments are forces for incomparable evil. (Let's not get too fixated on minor concerns such as Chinese textile exports wiping much of the Africa's textile manufacturing as well as Australia's, shan't we?).

So, now that mil-observer has set the record straight, let's all join in and cheer on the Chinese buyouts of our mining companies which are only being contemplated by the Chinese for no reason other than to free us from the clutches of western financiers and let's demand that many more Chalco controlled aluminium smelters on our shores to be powered by yet more privatised, Chinese-owned electricity generators.