AUSTRALIAN Reformists'

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Australia's 'Watergate' continued its ominous simmering last week, with all the main parliamentary parties treating the network of scandals, alleged 'backhanders' resignations and dismissals with extreme caution.

Labour Premier Gough Whitlam opposed a demand from opposition members of the Senate (the upper house of the Australian parliament) that a dozen senior officials of the civil service should be made to answer questions on the government's conduct in seeking to raise overseas loans.

Whitlam and his daughter The present round of scandals started after a series of exposures gave Whitlam sufficient reasons to 'chop' his Deputy Prime Minister and Federal Treasurer, Jim Cairns - also a 'left' within the Australian Labour Party and one of Whitlam's long-standing rivals.

Cairns was accused of giving people with whom he had personal connections - including his stepson - authority to negotiate for massive government loans in the Middle East and London. Since the loans involved sums of the order of 2,000,000,000 dollars they could have meant 'commissions' of several millions for those involved with them.

REVELATIONS

A series of 'revelations' in the press, based on letters and documents from civil service files, went hand-in-hand with a carefully orchestrated Parliamentary campaign to bring this to the public eye. To add fragrance to the affaii some rumours also connected Cairns' private secretary, Miss Juni Morosi, as a go-between in the loan negotiations.

Whitlam first demoted Cairns, then removed him altogether. Last week the Parliamentary Labour Party attempted to put a stop to the scandal and restore some stability to Whitlam's government by voting in Frank Crean to replace Cains as deputy leader of the Party and deputy Prime Minister.

But further rumours began to surround Rex Connor, Whitlam's nationalistic Minister for Minerals and Energy. Connors has been head ing a campaigniagainst the foreign companies who control the exploitation of about 60% of Australia's vast mineral resources, trying to give a bigger share to Australian capital.

To do so he attempted to raise a 4 billion dollar, loan in the Middle East, through London financier Tirath Khemlani. According to gorernment cables published in the Melbourne press Khemlani stood in line for millions of dollars in com missions had the deal gone through.

HESITANT

But the opposition in Canberra - Malcolm Fraser's capitalist Liberal Country Party - seem hesitant to exploit the matter to the hilt. For one thing, details on Connor's loan dealings were allegedly provided through Australian merchant banks offended at not being in on the floatation themselves.

And the opposition contains many spokesmen for foreign capita wishing to get a slice of the vast profits potentially offered by the country's natural resources.

Thus they accepted - with only cries of 'Shame!' - Whitlam's refusa to allow civil servants to be questioned and his claim that to force this would be a breach of 'executive privilege' - essentially the same defence as Nixon offered at the beginning of the Watergate affair!

CORRUPTION

The corruption exposed in t Australian reformist party has a common cause with scandals i W. German social democracy, aad the revelations in Britain of corrupt practice of leading Labour Party members.

This has included the invoive ment of Labour NEC member T. Dan Smith with architect John Poulson and N.E. Labourite Andrew Cunningham in a network of back. handers and development contracti involving Labour councillors in the North East, as well as Wilson's private secretary being tied in with property speculation.

The current adventures of Walsall MP Stonehouse are also part of the same crisis - which flows from the class-collaborationist policies of reformism.

Thus during the boom period reformist leaders grew attached tc the bourgeoisie, their lifestyle and their corruption - and now the break up of the boom is drying up the gravy train. Meanwhile the capitalist press, with such information at its finger tips. bides its time, waiting only to use it for best political effect.

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