Citizens Electoral Council
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The Citizens Electoral Council of Australia (CEC) is a minor political party in Australia affiliated with the international LaRouche Movement, led by American political activist Lyndon LaRouche.
The CEC was originally established as an electoral front for the Australian League of Rights, an extreme right-wing group led by Eric Butler. In about 1996 the CEC was taken over by supporters of LaRouche, and League of Rights publications now regularly warn their readers to avoid it. The CEC leader is National Secretary and National Treasurer Craig Isherwood of Melbourne, who has been a CEC election candidate three times. Other members of the Isherwood family are also prominent in the CEC. Noelene Isherwood is the party's National Chairman.
As is the case with LaRouche's political organisations in the United States, the CEC's policies are difficult to categorise. Some, such as "the establishment of a National Bank and State Banks to provide loans at 2% or less to agriculture (family farms), industry and for infrastructure development" are traditional policies of the left in Australia, now abandoned by the Australian Labor Party. Others, such as "the repeal of all Federal and State anti-union legislation passed over the past several years, beginning with the Federal 1996 Workplace Relations Act," are shared with all parties of the left. The only prominent CEC policy associated with the right is "a real war on drugs." The thirteen-point platform includes:
- The establishment of a "New Bretton Woods International Monetary System".
- The establishment of a National Bank and State Banks.
- The repeal of all federal and state anti-union legislation
- The repeal of recent laws which the CEC believes have "taken away the civil rights of Australians"
- An immediate halt to the privatisation of Commonwealth and State assets and regulatory bodies
- An immediate moratorium on foreclosures of family farms
- The immediate elimination of the National Competition Policy
- The elimination of the Goods and Services Tax
- The reassertion of national control over Australia's oil and gas and huge mineral resources
- A "dramatic expansion" of resources to all public health facilities
- A "dramatic upgrading" of federal and state infrastructure
- A "real war on drugs"
- The establishment of "generous immigration quotas"
In its campaign literature, the CEC associates itself with what it asserts is a tradition including such Australian figures as the Rev John Dunmore Lang, King O'Malley, William Guthrie Spence, Frank Anstey, Daniel Deniehy, Jack Lang, Ben Chifley and John Curtin. These figures are generally not seen as representing a single political tradition. The CEC also seeks to associate itself with a "bygone tradition" of the Australian Labor Party [1], by which it appears to mean the social democratic and protectionist policies abandoned by the ALP over the past 30 years.
Critics of the CEC maintain that these policies are a populist front for the CEC's real objective, which is the promotion of what are alleged to be the conspiracy theories of Lyndon LaRouche (see Political views of Lyndon LaRouche). Some Jewish organisations maintain that these theories are a coded version of traditional anti-Semitic theories such as those expounded in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Anti-Defamation Commission of the Australian branch of B'nai B'rith (a similar body to the Anti-Defamation League in the United States) closely monitors CEC activities, which it believes conceal an anti-Semitic agenda.
The CEC's counter-attack on the ADC suggests some of its real beliefs. In 1999 a CEC-linked website described the ADC "as a front for Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council, the ruling body of the British Commonwealth." (The British Privy Council is a purely ceremonial body which no longer has constitutional connection with Australia or the Commonwealth.) The CEC's belief that there is a link between the ADC and the alleged power of the Privy Council is the fact that Sir Zelman Cowen, a former Governor-General of Australia and a member of the Privy Council, is an honorary patron of the ADC.
The CEC is a registered political party under the Australian Electoral Act. At the 2001 federal election its candidates polled extremely low totals. In the New South Wales Senate elections, for example, the CEC ticket polled 2,370 votes out of 3.8 million votes cast.
The party fielded candidates for the Senate and most House of Representatives seats at the 2004 federal election. In some seats it distributed glossy full-colour pamphlets setting out its views as well as billboards and television advertising in some areas, suggesting that the party has access to sources of finance greater than its small electoral base would suggest. Australian Electoral Commission records indicate that the CEC has successfully raised several million dollars since 2001.
Despite this fundraising, the CEC again polled extremely low totals. The day after the election preliminary figures showed that the CEC had 34,177 votes, or 0.35 percent of the national vote, in the House of Representatives. Out of the 95 electorates in which they were represented, the CEC came last in 80 electorates.
[edit] Youth movement
The Australian LaRouche Youth Movement (ALYM), the Australian branch of the International LaRouche Youth Movement, also exists within the Citizens Electoral Council. This group was founded in August 2002, when then younger members of the CEC were grouped as such and began to tackle the economic thought of Lyndon LaRouche, and Australia's "republican tradition of figures such as John Curtin and King O'Malley" (neither of whom were in fact republicans).
Its responsibilities have included managing the groundwork in Federal campaigns, aiding State Campaign efforts, collecting signatures for petitions, and mobilising the public and Parliament against the Anti-Terror laws. ALYM members are often found on the streets of Melbourne, base of the National CEC office.
In October 2003, the members of the ALYM, with the help of some members of the International Youth Movement, organised its first "Cadre School" (an expression borrowed from the communist movement). The ALYM hopes to "organize the youth population of the country and harness the enthusiasm and optimism that they offer." The ALYM works for CEC candidates in election campaigns, distributes La Rouche literature and collects signatures for petitions.
The ALYM claims that its membership grew during the 2004 federal election campaign, during which they worked for CEC candidates in three election campaigns in the Melbourne region, in Maribyrnong, Calwell and Melbourne Ports, where they door-knocked voters handing out copies of the election edition of the New Citizen, which featured articles on the fight for a National Bank in Australia and the founding of the Australian Liberal Party in the 1940s, and explaining the potential of "LaRouche's New Bretton Woods" and the "dirty state of the Australian political scene".
Twelve ALYM members ran for the House of Representatives and for the Senate in Victoria at the 2004 election. They also managed three "flag ship" campaigns in the Melbourne Region, including the campaign of Aaron Isherwood, himself a member of the ALYM, standing against Michael Danby (well known to be hostile to LaRouche) in the seat of Melbourne Ports. All these candidates polled very low votes.
[edit] External links
- Official website
- ALYM website
- B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission (document format)
- Anti-Defamation Commission: "The LaRouche Cult: The Citizens Electoral Council (PDF)
- Retort to the Anti-Defamation Council by CEC (PDF)
- The (Victoria) Age:"Fascist Australia" (about CEC)
- Green Left Weekly: "Beware of the Citizen’s Electoral Council!"
State and Territory governments: ACT ('04 election) – NSW ('07 election) – NT ('05 election) – Qld ('06 election) – SA ('06 election) – Tas. ('06 election) – Vic. ('06 election) – WA ('05 election)
