Response to Discussion Starter 1

Like most prospective attendees at your conference, I am against many of the negative values of globalisation (as it is presently structured) and its loathed twin, the justifiably reviled 'market forces'.

I am in general agreement with Frank Stilwell's synopsis but I feel that to be genuinely socially and politically relevant to this nation's voters in an election year, requires something like the following detailed planning to start by early June 2001 at the latest.

1. A smallish committee of major stakeholders be coordinated
2. This ad-hoc committee meet several times to work out a list of broad recommendations to be placed before delegates at the July conference and the ultimate adoption, rejection or amendment of the recommendations by the delegates.
3. This pre-conferece committee of major stakeholders however, should take note of the Soviet bloc's demise (terrible and anti-democratic as it was), and the severe concentration of economic (and military) power in the hands of the United States of America and Western first world nations to a lesser extent. In my opinion, this non-binding, pre-conference committee should discuss , in considerale detail, the whys and wherefors of the oft-chanted acronym 'TINA' ('There is no alternative') by one-world order spokespersons; to their shame the leaders of the once-proud ALP, as well as the admitted conservatives, representatives of such august bodies as the World Bank, and spokespersons of the US government and their subsidiaries in the UK and Western Europe.

Is this sermon (Tina) of hopelessness and negativity correct? Is there NO logical and workable alternative to the presently structured economic rationalist world globalisation, and first world-driven anti-trade union market forces? If this conference is to be taken seriously, then rigorous and detailed debate has to occur at these pre-conference meetings, and clear-sighted recommendations have to be put to the assembled participants.

In my opinion, it would be ultimately completely counter-productive to place a set of warm inner-glow recommendations before the delegates.

We must successfully attempt to be taken seriously by the majority of the electorate in the forthcoming federal election.

Peter Goodsell, Quakers Hill, NSW