I have to challenge the assertions of Don Morris (Your Letters, October 21) with his slating remarks against our longest serving Prime Minister Sir Robert Gordon Menzies (in one breath Mr Norris said Menzies was the Prime Minister for ‘over 20 years’ as well as 18 years!) However, those poor facts aside, Mr Norris uses insulting remarks against Liberal politicians including ‘little Johnny’ and ‘big ears’ and criticised Menzies because he ‘instilled fear’ in the Australian people. I remind Mr Norris as he praises the Australian Labor Party –there was a Cold War during the time Menzies was PM. Communist Russia was the most brutal regime in human history (Joe Stalin the Russian leader with his henchmen, and his Secret Police, the KGB, murdered 50 million Russians in the most cruel circumstances including a few million (Christian) Ukranians.) And the Russians wanted to ‘colonise’ Australia.
The KGB had even infiltrated Mr Norris’ ACTU in Melbourne in the sixties. Menzies had every good reason to ‘instil fear’ when the Labor Party had in its membership also as members of the Communist Party. I would also remind Mr Norris that under ‘Pig Iron Bob’ towards the end of the sixties, Australia had one of the highest standards of living on the planet. Gough Whitlam witlessly put paid to that.
It is a shame that the Communist Chinese government caused the destruction of thousands of years of Chinese culture and killed their intelligentsia during Mao Zedong’s reign. He drummed up Chinese youth in what was called the ‘Cultural Revolution’ which, among other things, had Show Trials with public humiliation and public beatings of the intellectuals and bourgeous. The Chinese youth were called the Red Guard.
The Labor Party still boasts that a former Labor Leader (G W Whitlam) was the first Western Party Leader to visit China (the term ‘ping pong’ diplomacy)when the Democratic West eg: the USA quarantined visits due to the appalling Human Rights record in Communist China.
Australian high school students have not been told of the mass genocide that existed in Communist China in the fifties and sixties, when an estimated 50 million Chinese people were exterminated. It should be compulsory learning as a part of Social Studies as a History component.
But we have less than fact coming from writers such as Mr Morris who leaves out facts, making me think he wishes to indoctrinate the readers. That is typical leftist strategy.
Jim Warren
