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Old 07-06-2004, 04:01 PM   #8 (permalink)
cchris
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Location: Sydney
Quote:
Originally posted by Strobs
Who is Rex Conner?
This is a long story but if he had pulled it off(so to speak) then this country would be very much different than it is today.
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Rex Connor and Gough Whitlam introduced a comprehensive package of legislation to assure Australian ownership over Australian raw materials; to give Australia the bargaining power to obtain fair prices from foreign buyers; and to construct a comprehensive national energy grid, as the precondition for further industrialisation, which was planned to include harbours, railways, pipelines and water projects. Connor and Whitlam also planned to develop and populate our almost barren north, an idea he had been deeply involved in since 1961. He had even set up an Office of Northern Development for this purpose, which planned huge water projects for the north. All these projects were engineered, and ready for construction.

All Labor had to do, was to find the money.

Connor was originally authorised by the Cabinet to borrow US $8 billion to finance these projects. This was an astonishing sum for the time, when our foreign debt was less than $5 billion. Given that Connor planned to further industrialise Australia, and therefore to further secure our nation's sovereignty, financiers in New York or London would almost certainly refuse to loan him the funds he needed.

The 'Loans Affair', as it became known,from December 1974 to October 1975, when the government secretly contemplated bypassing the Loans Council to raise $US4 billion in foreign loans. They officially abandoned the plan.
However, Rex Connor, Minister for Minerals and Energy, continued negotiating for such loans through Tirath Khemlani, an international broker. When Connor's role was revealed, Whitlam sacked him. However, the matter prompted the new Liberal leader, Malcolm Fraser, to claim that the 'extraordinary and reprehensible circumstances' of the case justified the Opposition in refusing to pass the Budget Bills in the Senate, as a means of forcing the government to call a general election over the issue.

The rest,they say,is history.
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