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Mercifully, after about a minute they stopped playing, and in a reference to Live Aid, said, “We’ve just demonstrated that economists don’t make good rock stars. Likewise, rock stars don’t make good economists!”

Conference delegates were then treated to a systematic dismantling of the folly of events like Live Aid and the damage that people such as Bob Geldof, Bono and others do with their fatuous statements along the lines of, ‘they have nothing, because we have everything’.

The ‘they’ of course refers to the third world, and the ‘we’ refers to us in the West.

In other words, their problems are all our fault.

To quote British writer Gareth Roberts, “In a way, it is our fault. The Ethiopian famine, for example, certainly was our fault – but not in the way Live Aid blithely assumed. It was the direct result of the deadliest of all western exports, Marxism.“

The Derg regime of Ethiopia – the Red Terror – forced farm collectivisation and so-called ‘land reforms’.

“The Marxist government of the dictator Mengistu is estimated to be responsible for the deaths of two million Ethiopians in the famine.

“We exported Marxism to Ethiopia, and it starved to death.

“But don’t worry, Mengistu is living in luxury in exile in Harare, today.”

It was former South Australian MP Bert Kelly who said, ‘The really bad ideas never go away’.

That is certainly the case with Marxism – or its modern-day stalking horse, ‘democratic socialism’, led globally by the Democratic Socialists of America.

We have seen this ideology play out in both Australia and the United Kingdom, where its influence continues to shape policy debates and public discourse despite repeated historical failures.

Modern socialists increasingly integrate indigenous and anti-racist struggles into their analysis. They focus on the displacement of indigenous populations through the lens of ‘settler colonialism’ and ‘indigenous sovereignty’.

Groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America portray the history of the United States and other Western nations as ongoing projects of ‘settler colonialism’.

These projects, they argue, persist through systemic ‘racial oppression’, ‘land theft’, and ‘corporate exploitation’ of native territories.

This framing turns complex historical and economic realities into a simple narrative of perpetual guilt and redistribution.

Global solidarity to the cause further defines the modern socialist project.

The movement also strongly aligns with the Palestinian cause, explicitly framing Israeli government policies in Gaza and the West Bank as an extension of ‘Western-subsidised settler colonialism’ – the ‘red-green alliance’ of Marxists and Islamists.

This alignment reinforces a worldview in which Western success is treated as original sin, while failures elsewhere are attributed to external oppression rather than internal governance, institutions, or culture.

As a result, efforts to reform traditional top-down government aid packages to developing nations are becoming harder, not easier, even though the evidence against them is compelling.

Decades of experience show that large-scale financial transfers have failed to produce lasting prosperity. Instead of lifting people out of poverty, such aid frequently entrenches corruption, props up inefficient or authoritarian regimes, and disrupts local economies by creating dependency and distorting incentives. Palestinian aid was routinely funnelled into building terror tunnels and purchasing weapons.

A better approach rests on three interconnected principles.

First, market-based development, with a strong emphasis on individual property rights, offers the most reliable path out of poverty.

When poor citizens can hold clear title to land, homes, or businesses, they gain the ability to leverage those assets for credit, investment, and long-term planning. Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has shown that the lack of private ownership in many developing countries leaves vast amounts of ‘dead capital’ that cannot be productively used.

Formalising those rights unlocks economic potential far more effectively than external grants.

Second, free trade. Eliminating global trade barriers allows developing countries to grow through commerce rather than charity. Access to larger markets encourages specialisation, innovation, and the creation of real jobs.

History demonstrates that nations which opened themselves to trade achieved sustained growth that foreign aid alone never delivered. Protectionism and preferential treatment for favoured regimes, by contrast, often shields inefficiency and punishes the very producers who could drive progress.

Third, the rule of law and transparent legal systems.

Democratic accountability, independent courts, and predictable enforcement of contracts create the institutional foundation on which markets and property rights can function. Without them, even well-intentioned reforms collapse under the weight of arbitrary power, corruption, or political favouritism.

Establishing these institutions is slower and less glamorous than writing large cheques, yet it is far more durable.

These alternatives – secure property rights, open trade, and the rule of law – directly challenge the central Marxist/Socialist claim that poverty is primarily the product of Western extraction or systemic oppression.

They locate the solutions inside the societies that need them, rather than in perpetual transfers from outside. They also refuse the moral blackmail that treats every disparity as evidence of guilt.

Bert Kelly’s observation remains as relevant as ever. The really bad ideas never go away; they simply reappear in new clothing – democratic socialism, settler-colonial theory, or solidarity politics – each time promising justice while delivering the same familiar results: dependency, stagnation, and the quiet empowerment of those who thrive on grievance rather than growth.

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It is the sound of voters walking away from the two-party establishment.

An ABC report on Liberal leader Jess Wilson’s campaign through Gippsland reveals just how serious the revolt has become. A recent RedBridge poll placed One Nation on 32 per cent of the primary vote in the Eastern Victoria Region, ahead of the Coalition on 28 per cent and Labor on 22 per cent. Across Victoria, One Nation has also polled 27 per cent, marginally ahead of both major parties.

These numbers cannot be dismissed as a temporary tantrum. Nor can voters be patronised as angry people looking for somewhere to lodge a protest. They represent the accumulated consequences of governments that have treated regional communities as expendable and an opposition that has too often watched it happen.

Gippsland has seen coal mines, power stations and timber mills closed or condemned. Secure industries that sustained families and towns have been replaced with transition plans, glossy brochures and promises of green jobs that seldom arrive in the same number, location or wage bracket.

Labor calls this progress. The Coalition calls it regrettable. The people who lose their jobs call it reality.

After 12 years in government, Labor cannot pretend it is an innocent observer. Its energy and environmental policies have been imposed with the enthusiasm of people who will never have to explain to a worker why his job has disappeared or to a small manufacturer why electricity has become less reliable and more expensive.

Yet the Coalition’s defence is hardly more inspiring. Nationals leader Danny O’Brien says that voters who want to remove the Allan government must vote Liberal or National because other parties represent “protest and grievance” rather than solutions.

This is the cry of a political establishment discovering that the electorate no longer belongs to it.

Regional Victorians have supported the Nationals and Liberals for generations. They are entitled to ask what that loyalty has delivered. Where was the effective opposition while power stations were marked for closure? Where was the political fight when the native timber industry was shut down? Where was the alternative economic plan before communities were presented with another fait accompli?

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The Coalition wants the electorate to believe that voting for it is the only practical way to remove Labor. That argument might carry more weight if it had not spent so many years treating conservative voters as captives who had nowhere else to go.

The Liberals drifted towards the fashionable centre, surrendered arguments before making them, and seemed more frightened of being criticised by the ABC than of disappointing their own supporters. The Nationals continued relying upon inherited loyalty while regional industries disappeared around them. Now that voters have found alternatives, both parties demand unity—provided everyone unites behind them.

That is not unity. It is entitlement.

One Nation’s rise presents a genuine opportunity, but polling alone will not change Victoria. The party must convert public frustration into credible representation. That means selecting capable local candidates, properly vetting them, and producing a Victorian platform addressing matters the state government actually controls.

Affordable and reliable energy must be central. Regional jobs, responsible resource development, sustainable forestry, manufacturing, small-business regulation, roads, health services and the growing concentration of power in Melbourne are also important.

One Nation does not need a telephone-book-sized manifesto written by consultants. Voters have endured enough policy documents that promise everything and deliver nothing. It needs a short list of clear commitments, accompanied by an explanation of what will be done, how it will be achieved, and what it will cost.

Other non-major conservative parties and credible independents also have a role. They should resist the temptation to spend the campaign attacking one another for ownership of the same disillusioned electorate. The objective should be to break Labor’s hold on Victoria, end the major-party duopoly, and ensure that conservative preferences are not exhausted or delivered back to the government through vanity, incompetence or personal feuds.

Cooperation does not require ideological uniformity. It requires political maturity. Smaller conservative parties can retain their identities while reaching practical agreements on preferences, upper-house strategy and a core program of shared principles: cheaper energy, smaller government, lower taxes, stronger regional economies, individual responsibility and an end to ideological attacks on productive industry.

The most damaging mistake would be allowing several conservative alternatives to divide the vote while Labor wins through the wreckage.

One Nation must also avoid overconfidence. Social-media enthusiasm is encouraging, but comment sections do not elect members of parliament. Candidates, volunteers, booths, scrutineering, preference discipline and local credibility do. Declaring victory months before nominations close risks turning momentum into complacency.

Nevertheless, the opportunity is real. Morwell may be “ground zero”, but the revolt extends well beyond Gippsland. Outer-suburban families, tradespeople, manufacturers, farmers and small-business owners increasingly recognise that Labor and the Coalition are competing managers of a system that no longer listens to them.

The major parties will call it grievance because they cannot admit it is judgement.

Victorians are not abandoning the political establishment because they have stopped caring about government. They are abandoning it because government stopped caring about them.

November 28 offers voters something more powerful than another change of management. It offers them the chance to change the political equation itself—and remind both major parties that no electorate is their property.

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But public sector unionism is not the same as private sector unionism; the employer is not a private business but the state; the money being negotiated belongs to taxpayers, and citizens often have no practical alternative but to use the services being withheld during organised industrial action.

That changes the equation. Why should employment by the state include a legally privileged power to bargain collectively over public resources, or interrupt public services, to compel concessions from a democratically elected government?

Australian union membership is increasingly concentrated in the public sector. Unionism has collapsed across much of the private economy, yet remains comparatively strong among government employees.

ABS data from 2024 puts public sector union membership at approximately 32.2 per cent, compared to 7.9 per cent in the private sector. Government itself has grown into a massive employer, with around 2.6 million public-sector jobs in Australia.

This creates an obvious problem. A public sector union seeking a pay rise has a concentrated incentive to organise, campaign and apply pressure. The cost of whatever it wins is dispersed across millions of taxpayers.

In the private sector, a union bargains with an employer spending its own money. Push too hard and the company can lose customers, shrink or fail. There is a natural limit to what can be extracted.

Governments do not face the same discipline. Ministers and senior bureaucrats negotiate with money raised through taxation. If costs rise, the government can tax more, borrow more, cut somewhere else, or pass the bill to future taxpayers.

Public sector unions also allow public servants to exercise political influence more than once.

As citizens, members of public sector unions have the same vote as every other Australian. But in addition, their union can campaign, donate, lobby and pressure MPs individually and governments generally, as well as gain a second institutional channel of influence by bargaining directly with government over public expenditure and, in some cases, threatening to withdraw services if their demands are not met.

That does not literally give public servants two votes, but it does give an organised minority leverage that ordinary taxpayers do not possess. An organised public sector union can exert significant control over government, even if that government may have received an overwhelming electoral mandate.

This is where the democratic question becomes unavoidable: should a powerful minority of organised public servants be able to organise against the democratic voting majority?

The problem becomes more acute when bargaining extends beyond wages and conditions into public policy. Staffing levels, outsourcing, deployment, disciplinary rules and organisational structures can constrain the ability of an elected government to change how public services operate.

At that point, collective bargaining can become a shadow political process. Voters elect a government to govern, yet it can be constrained by agreements no voter approved, and that may outlast the politicians who signed them.

Then there is industrial action. A private sector strike usually imposes its greatest immediate cost on the employer. A public sector strike typically imposes the greatest cost on innocent third parties: the people.

When public transport workers strike, commuters suffer. When teachers strike, parents and students suffer. When health workers take action, patients may suffer. If police, prison officers or emergency workers withdraw their labour, the consequences can become far more serious.

Unlike consumers in a competitive market, citizens cannot usually take their business elsewhere. There is no rival passport office, alternative police force or competing criminal justice system across the road. Government frequently grants itself a monopoly over the very service being withdrawn.

Australia already accepts curtailed public sector unionisation in one important area –Australian Defence Force personnel do not enjoy ordinary trade union rights. We recognise that national defence, military discipline and obedience to lawful civilian authority are incompatible with soldiers collectively withholding their labour.

Once that principle is accepted, the debate is no longer about whether public sector union rights may ever be restricted. It is about where the line should be drawn.

Other democracies draw it in different places. Britain prevents police officers from belonging to ordinary trade unions and from striking. Germany allows career civil servants to organise but prohibits them from striking. In the United States, North Carolina allows public employees to associate but prohibits collective bargaining arrangements. Japan imposes strong restrictions on police, coast guard and prison officials.

These examples point toward a more defensible libertarian position than simply banning public sector unions outright.

A group of nurses who want to meet after work and campaign for better salaries should be free to do so. Public sector workers should be free to join associations, publish criticism and lobby for political change.

However, none of those freedoms necessarily creates a right to compel the elected government to bargain collectively, obtain exclusive bargaining status, bind future governments over matters of public policy, or withdraw monopoly public services as leverage against taxpayers.

Those are not natural rights; they are powers created and protected by law.

Libertarians should be especially suspicious when the state creates legal privileges for organised interests inside the state itself. Reform should begin by removing those privileges. Public sector unions should not have an automatic entitlement to collective bargaining. Matters such as outsourcing, staffing structures, headcount policies, deployment and agency design should remain with elected governments. Strikes should be prohibited in coercive and essential services, with a strong case for special restrictions covering police, prisons, emergency services and similar institutions where continuity is fundamental.

Liberal democracy is supposed to rest on political equality: one person, one vote, with governments accountable to the whole electorate. Public servants should enjoy the same civil liberties as every other citizen, but they should not enjoy a privileged capacity to organise against the public that employs them.

Government in Australia is already large and powerful enough. We should be wary of building another layer of organised power inside it.

It must be voters through democratically elected representatives who ultimately decide how taxpayers’ money is spent and how public services are run, not an organised minority of government employees with special leverage over both.

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No seriously, they should.

Let’s have a Karen for banning apps when a face-to-face interaction could do the same in half the time.

We’d hear announcement after announcement about the Anti-App Karen crawling into every nook and cranny of our lives, sniffing out annoying app transactions like a pig finding truffles. Though the Anti-App Karen would lose every lawsuit she ever filed, the perception of her threat would chill would-be “innovators” to force their idle, doomscrolling workers to *gasp!* ask people if they want extra fries with that.

We can’t stop there. Let’s have a Karen for deciding who stands where on escalators, if failing to wave at fellow drivers for letting you pass should mean jail, and if “learnings” is a word (it isn’t.)

The public would think it was gross overreach; nanny state micromanagement gone mad. It would inspire a mass uprising against unelected, broad-spectrum fun and common-sense killer commissioners. Well, everywhere but Victoria.

Yet, we have the eSafety Commissioner, non-lovingly referred to as the eKaren by anyone with half a brain, intruding into the most mundane of mundanities as if she was on a tireless crusade like Alexander into Persia and through to India. We’re not stopping Hephaestion, until every PC and phone is SAFE!

Safe from what, exactly, we’ll never quite know.

The eKaren’s latest escapade has seen two major casinos bringing in billions of dollars suddenly shut down by its parent companies. You didn’t hear this on the news because the casinos and/or houses of ill-repute reside in Los Santos, Valentine, and Saint Denis, locations only accessible if you purchase and play Grand Theft Auto: Online or Red Dead Redemption 2.

In the latest power grab guised under “won’t somebody think of the children”, parent company Rockstar Games pulled the ability for Australian players to access casinos or gambling features in the titles, despite being available for over seven years.

For those not familiar with either game, you play as either a present day (GTA:O) or Old West outlaw (RDR2) that’s given an entire open world to steal, maim, murder, destroy, and/or deceive for personal profit.

Not real dollars, obviously, but in-game currency. Though you can buy the currency using real world dollars, you can’t “cash it out.” It’s how Rockstar makes massive billion-dollar revenues on ten-year-old titles. The currency isn’t exclusive to gambling; you can buy in-game items such as vehicles, property, and weapons to gain an edge over opponents. It’s a much-maligned feature called “pay-to-win” – like in almost every mobile game.

There’s no real “object” to the game either – you can spend your entire time playing minigolf or dominoes if you so desire. Most players don’t, of course. But they sure as hell don’t sit there playing poker or slots for eight-hour stretches when you have a literal, consequence-free murder simulator – using frickin’ lasers mounted on helicopters – to roam around in.

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So why remove the gambling part?

It’s another example of the government not understanding video games, part eleventy-billion in a series.

In the 1990s, the halcyon days of Doom and Mortal Kombat, governments of both flavours needed to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20^th Century, only introducing a R18+ adult rating for video games in 2011. Prior to that they were limited to MA15+, like films and television. If a title “exceeded” the amounts of gore or sex or whatever arbitrary element the censors deemed unacceptable, they were outlawed. Even under the new regime, 17 games were refused classification (although some were re-classified after developers agreed to cut “offensive” content.)

When broadband became available (sort of) we could sail the high seas for “free” from about 2002 to 2010. When massively multiplayer online gaming or gaming as a live service became popular, there was no more getting around paying full price for entry. Therefore, when it came to gambling content, the Australian Classification Board introduced M and R18+ ratings. Though not prohibited outright, games with “an element of chance such as paid loot boxes” (so pretty much all of them) would get an M rating, while any game with simulated gambling receives an R18+ rating. In a perfect world.

The eKaren’s introduction of an eSafety (lol) code that sits alongside an imperfect yet “functional” classification regimen is unnecessary duplication of bureaucracy if we ever saw it. Video games aren’t a niche for nerds, but mainstream. A Screenhub survey shows 82% of Australians play online games of some kind (think Candy Crush Saga rather than Battlefield 6 – see you on Tsuru Reef, scrub) and 71% are over 18. Not exactly pimply teens playing Goldeneye 007 anymore.

Most live service games like GTA:O must be purchased via gated digital distribution platforms, which require credit cards or online payment processors; something under 18s can’t (easily) access. Hell, the same report says 89% of parents play with their children as a bonding experience. Minecraft, we hope. As for GTA:O, most players are over 18 because it’s an adult game aimed at adults.

If we must concede one liberty to protect children from harm, surely the classification system and half-decent parenting should be able to do the job? Surely consenting adults should be able to access all features of a live service video game if they choose? Or am I asking for too much? (eKaren: yes.)

Like everything in Australia – if it’s not mandatory, it’s banned.

So, I’ll continue to load up Red Dead Redemption 2 so I can shoot up a gun store, kill the owner, and use my blood money to buy more unregistered guns just to shoot Pinkertons and US Marshals faster. I just can’t walk across a gore-soaked dirt road and play blackjack. In a saloon. Teeming with outlaws, prostitutes, and bootleg everything.

I know this will fall on deaf ears and blind eyes but Julie, if you’re reading this: at least make your censorship make sense.

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Apparently, I was capable of leaving school, learning a trade, building a manufacturing business, employing people, surviving recessions, risking my home, meeting payroll, paying millions in wages and taxes, and accumulating my own wealth, but I cannot possibly be trusted to manage my retirement savings.

For that, I apparently require the paternal supervision of unions, politicians, regulators and generously remunerated financial experts from the top end of town.

Chief executive of Cbus, Kristian Fok, wants minimum balance requirements imposed on Australians establishing self-managed super funds (SMSFs) in case they encounter sharks, schemers and scammers.

No doubt they might. Fraud exists, as does bad advice, and some people make poor investment decisions. The proper response is to prosecute fraud, regulate conflicted advice and provide Australians with clear information — not prevent competent adults from controlling their own property.

What makes the argument particularly brazen is that the article quoting Mr Fok acknowledges that most investors caught in the Shield and First Guardian disasters were channelled into those investments through platforms managed by regulated trustees, including Macquarie, Netwealth, Equity Trustees and Diversa. Yet the lesson we are expected to draw is that SMSFs require additional restrictions. That is rather like the captain of the Titanic warning me that my rowing boat looks unsafe.

Cbus does not come to this with clean hands. In February 2025, APRA accepted a court-enforceable undertaking from Cbus trustee United Super and launched an investigation following findings of fundamental deficiencies involving governance, fitness and propriety processes, and expenditure management. Those are APRA’s words, not mine.

The conflict of interest is impossible to ignore. SMSFs are competitors to large industry funds. Every Australian who leaves an institutional fund takes their retirement capital and the associated fees with them. Cbus is therefore not merely a concerned observer offering disinterested public advice, it is a participant in the market asking government to make it more difficult for customers to leave that market.

Naturally, this proposal will appeal to the Australian Uniparty. Labor has deep political and historical ties to the union and industry-superannuation establishment. The Coalition, meanwhile, will probably mutter something about choice before accepting another compromise that leaves government with more power and Australians with less. That has become the familiar routine: Labor proposes the ratchet, the Coalition complains about how quickly it is turning, and neither seriously considers turning it back.

Compulsory superannuation has created an enormous pool of private wealth over which governments, unions, fund managers, banks, consultants and activists all want influence. They describe it as retirement policy, national capital or an economic asset. I describe it more simply: it’s my money. It did not appear through government generosity. It represents years of work, deferred consumption and personal sacrifice.

A compulsory minimum balance would be especially perverse. It would tell Australians that financial independence is reserved for those who government considers sufficiently wealthy. Someone capable of establishing an economical SMSF with $150,000 would be prohibited because a regulator or industry lobbyist had nominated $200,000, $500,000 or some other arbitrary figure. It would also ignore the obvious point that funds grow. What matters is not simply the opening balance but costs, contributions, investment knowledge, strategy, time horizon and the trustee’s willingness to accept responsibility.

Nobody claims an SMSF is suitable for everyone. It requires work, record keeping, compliance and sound judgement. Some people quite reasonably prefer an industry or retail fund. That is their choice. What I reject is the institutional arrogance that treats voluntary dependence as sensible but voluntary self-reliance as dangerous.

This is precisely the political territory One Nation should occupy: defending the right of ordinary Australians to control the fruits of their own labour against the combined power of the political class, union establishment and corporate elite. The party should unequivocally oppose arbitrary barriers to establishing SMSFs and demand genuine transparency from every superannuation fund—industry, retail or self-managed.

One Nation’s opportunity is to articulate the principle the major parties have abandoned: government exists to punish wrongdoing and protect individual rights, not to infantilise responsible citizens. The law should pursue scammers, dishonest advisers and fraudulent promoters with full force. It should not use their existence as an excuse to herd Australians into large institutions favoured by politically connected insiders.

The reader response to the Cbus proposal reveals something the establishment repeatedly fails to understand: Australians are not merely comparing percentage returns. They are asserting ownership. Many would prefer to accept responsibility for their own decisions than surrender control to distant boards, consultants and political fellow travellers who may have priorities very different from theirs.

If Cbus wants Australians to remain members, it should earn their confidence through performance, service, transparency and accountability. It should not ask Canberra to build a higher fence around its customers.

I accumulated my wealth myself. I accept the risks of managing it and will live with the consequences of my decisions. I do not need Labor, the Coalition, the unions or the top end of town deciding that freedom is too dangerous for me.

Stay out of my wallet. Stay out of my retirement. Stay out of my life.

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Ultimately Labor, the Greens and Teals would be happy to ban all firearms, while the Liberals might exempt water pistols. None has made a serious effort to engage Australia’s one million licensed firearm owners as a constituency.

The National Party has been more supportive, with figures such as Senator Bridget McKenzie advocating on behalf of sporting shooters. However, the party’s position remains cautious and largely defensive. Rather than questioning the foundations of Australia’s firearms laws, the party accepts the National Firearms Agreement as an appropriate framework, arguing only that additional restrictions should not be introduced without consultation with rural stakeholders.

One Nation adopts a somewhat stronger position by explicitly recognising the legitimacy of sporting shooters, firearms businesses, clubs, farmers, landholders and recreational hunters. It argues that government efforts should focus on criminal misuse of firearms, illegal trafficking and organised crime rather than imposing additional regulatory burdens on law-abiding firearm owners, and advocates an evidence-based and practical approach to regulation.

However, both the Nationals and One Nation frame firearm ownership primarily as a rural and regional issue. This overlooks an important reality: the majority of licensed firearm owners live in metropolitan areas, even if many travel to rural locations for hunting or other recreational activities. The persistent assumption that legitimate firearm ownership is principally rural contributes to recurring proposals that would effectively confine civilian firearm ownership to country areas. Such proposals are founded on misconception rather than demographic reality.

More concerning is that no party with the potential to determine government policy approaches the subject based on principles. None addresses the assertion in the National Firearms Agreement, subsequently enacted in state laws, that the ownership of firearms is a privilege. None attempts to identify what gun laws are intended to achieve, or considers how to assess their effectiveness. And even when they claim that evidence is needed to justify changes, they do not specify what kind of evidence is relevant.

The National Firearms Agreement is not evidence-based. It has no objectives, no assessment of outcomes, and no review process. It was an emotion driven reaction to the Port Arthur tragedy, just like the changes introduced in response to the Bondi shooting.

If an objective can be implied, it is to prevent future mass shootings. That would, at least, be measurable. On that basis, the Port Arthur gun law changes have been a complete failure. While there is no universal agreement as to what constitutes a mass shooting, based on the common definition of four or more victims including the perpetrator there have been at least seven mass shootings in Australia subsequent to Port Arthur, including Bondi. Furthermore, that is more than what occurred in the same period prior to introduction of the Port Arthur gun laws.

Another objective might be inferred from the statements of former Prime Minister John Howard, who argued that Australia should avoid importing “American gun culture.” Unlike reducing firearm homicide or preventing mass shootings, this objective is inherently subjective. It lacks any measurable definition, making it impossible to determine whether policies are succeeding or failing. Moreover, the emphasis on American culture is itself arbitrary. Countries such as Switzerland and New Zealand also have longstanding traditions of civilian firearm ownership, yet are rarely invoked in Australian policy debates.

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Developing measurable objectives for firearms policy is neither difficult nor controversial. Reducing firearm-related crime, minimising mass casualty incidents, lower firearm homicide rates or preventing firearms from being acquired by individuals who present a demonstrable risk to public safety, for example. Once such objectives are specified, policy can be evaluated according to evidence rather than political symbolism.

The question then becomes whether Australia’s existing firearms restrictions contribute to achieving these objectives. That question is rarely examined. Comparative evidence from other jurisdictions indicates that countries with substantially less restrictive firearms laws can nevertheless experience comparable, and in some cases lower, rates of firearm violence. Such comparisons do not by themselves establish causation, but they do challenge the assumption that tighter restrictions produce better public safety outcomes.

In the absence of measurable objectives, public policy is shaped by personal sentiment. John Howard famously declared that he “hates guns,” a statement that reflected a personal value judgement rather than an empirical policy rationale. Some people hate alcohol, cigarettes and boxing too.

More recently, the governments of Western Australia and New South Wales have justified legislation designed to reduce the number of firearms owned by licensed individuals on the basis of “getting guns off the streets.” Yet there is no evidence that reducing the number of legally owned firearms will produce measurable reductions in firearm violence.

Without clearly defined objectives and supporting evidence, such policies amount to political gestures rather than effective public safety measures.

A principled approach would instead distinguish between regulating people and regulating objects. Firearms do not commit crimes independently; criminal acts are committed by individuals. It is therefore logically defensible to prohibit firearm ownership by those demonstrably incapable of exercising responsibility, including children, individuals with severe mental incapacity and persons with histories of serious violence. The same reasoning supports secure storage requirements intended to prevent unauthorised access. These measures can be directly connected to identifiable public safety objectives.

By contrast, restrictions based primarily on firearm design or cosmetic characteristics are difficult to justify empirically. Both the Port Arthur and Bondi legislative reforms expanded prohibitions on particular categories of firearms, yet there is no evidence that a straight-pull rifle presents a greater public safety risk than a conventional bolt-action rifle, or that a lever-action shotgun with a seven-round magazine is more dangerous than an otherwise identical firearm limited to five rounds. Without empirical evidence linking such distinctions to measurable public safety outcomes, these classifications appear arbitrary.

History demonstrates that regulating weapons is not a modern phenomenon. Roman authorities restricted the carrying of swords while permitting daggers and clubs, and Elizabethan England imposed limits on sword length. The issue has always been political rather than technological: who should possess weapons, who should decide, and on what basis should those decisions be made? Should regulation rest upon clearly defined objectives and demonstrable evidence, or upon symbolism, emotion and personal preference?

Political parties that are genuinely seeking the support of Australia’s licensed firearm owners should therefore articulate a principled philosophy of firearms regulation. That philosophy should begin by identifying legitimate public safety objectives, defining measurable outcomes, and evaluating laws according to evidence rather than political instinct.

Without such a framework, firearms policy will continue to be driven by reaction and rhetoric instead of reasoned public policy.

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A digital first society poses a significant risk to civil liberties due to the centralised nature of data. It creates a system in which disenfranchisement can occur with the single click of a button, with a person or group deprived of the ability to rent, travel, buy and sell property, do business, use telecommunications and the internet, and even access basic needs.

This can already be observed in China, which has a network of digital and real-world surveillance that determines whether a person can access certain benefits or activities based on a social credit score. The mostly digital nature of Chinese society makes the system very difficult to evade.

Digital first systems incorporate significant amounts of personal data and allow for a level of mass surveillance that wasn’t possible in the past. Data can be utilised by corporations and government to build profiles on individuals that affect the way they are treated. This is especially relevant when governments implement polices such as predictive policing, which criminalises those who have committed no crime based on invasive data driven predictions.

Digital first policies prioritise the use of digital payments while discouraging and even stigmatising the use of cash. Many jurisdictions already subject cash-based or cash dominant businesses to a higher level of scrutiny. This creates a society in which those who prefer cash or are unable to access banking services can find themselves unable to access certain services and even essential goods.

This includes those fleeing abusive and domestic violence situations, low-income individuals who struggle to afford bank fees, those who are homeless, and even those who have been legally excluded from certain digital based services.

This is especially relevant with the rise of debanking based on political criteria and the ever-increasing KYC (know your customer) requirements, which encourage surveillance and the pre-emptive debanking and freezing of accounts of those who fail to comply. Banks increasingly cite KYC and corporate social responsibility obligations as a cover for politically motivated and malicious debanking.

There are recent examples of the banking system being weaponised by governments against individuals and groups for political reasons. In the 2022 Canadian Trucker Convoy even those who donated to peaceful protests found themselves with frozen bank accounts. In practice, debanking becomes a weapon which the government uses to silence dissent and punish people for things it doesn’t like.

Those who struggle to use or are unable to utilise certain technologies become de facto second-class citizens. In practice a digital first society requires people to pay to access the infrastructure including buying a computer or a phone, along with internet or a phone plan. Those who live in rural and outback areas can struggle with connectivity regardless of the ability to pay.

A digital first society also faces significant security issues. Digital payment structures can become non-functional during natural disasters and during cyber-attacks. Hackers recently deleted the entirety of Romania’s land registry, for example, which crippled its real estate market. The nation is currently in the process of trying to replicate it from non-digital back-ups.

A digital first society sets up a digital ecosystem which governments can use to mandate and coerce digital ID. Mandatory digital ID combined with a digital first policy creates significant problems in terms of freedom, privacy and security, including data leaks, loss of anonymity on the internet, and the need to hand over an unlocked phone to police and random strangers to prove identity.

As civil participation becomes increasingly digital, many governments have implemented invasive and repressive internet policies including online and operating system identity verification and chat control to manage access to online spaces and speech. If offline modes of communication are further neglected, we may very well become a society in which our ability to communicate and organise with others is dependent on permission from governments and corporations.

Governments are also resorting to measures such as internet blackouts to suppress protests and political movements. This has become standard practice in Iran, and India recently implemented an internet blackout to curb recent student protests.

This also has the effect of disrupting local digital payment infrastructure, meaning no one could pay with a card and businesses cannot make money. This demonstrates the importance of cash, which is resistant to restrictions on digital infrastructure.

To protect civil liberties and to prevent the further centralisation of government power, governments should adopt a policy of digital neutrality in which citizens and businesses have the right to decide whether they conduct their lives through digital and non-digital means. We must ensure the right to paper, the right to conduct business in cash, and freedom of choice.

Digital systems should be an option, not a mandate.

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I rebuilt my life, regained my independence and became, in every meaningful sense, a single woman living on my own terms. Yet official paperwork continues to insist that I identify myself as “divorced,” even though that does not describe my present life. Recently, after ticking that box, I was required to provide the name and address of my former husband, the man who abused me. A decade after the relationship ended, I was compelled once again to write his name beside mine.

This is not merely an irritating feature of bureaucracy- for survivors of domestic violence, it can be invasive, humiliating and re-traumatising. The Scarlet Letter has not disappeared. It has become a compulsory box on an official form.

I do not deny that my marriage and divorce occurred. They are part of my legal history. But history and identity are not the same thing. “Divorced” describes the legal conclusion of a past relationship; it does not describe a present life.

I am not married. I am not partnered. I am single. Nevertheless, many official forms do not allow me to say so. The category “single” is often treated as synonymous with “never married,” so once a woman has married, she can never officially return to being single. She must carry the label “divorced” indefinitely. This creates a strange and outdated form of social classification. A woman’s status is defined by her past relationship to a man, even when that relationship ended many years ago, and even when it involved violence, coercion or abuse. The marriage may be over, but the bureaucracy still refuses to release her from it.

Australian law and social policy already accept that an official classification recorded in the past should not necessarily determine a person’s lifelong identification. Australian government guidelines support changing government records so, for example, they accurately reflect a person’s current preferred sex or gender identity. This creates an obvious irony: a person may, subject to the applicable legal process, have a sex or gender marker amended across important government records, yet a woman whose marriage ended ten years ago may still be denied the ability to describe herself simply as single. Instead, she can be permanently classified as “divorced” and may even be required to name the former husband who abused her.

This is not a hypothetical concern. In some Centrelink applications for financial assistance, for example, an applicant who selects “divorced” may then be required to provide details about a former spouse, including their full name, date of birth and address, as well as the dates on which the relationship began and ended. For a person who has left an abusive marriage, such requirements can amount to an administrative reconstruction of a traumatic past. A divorced applicant seeking first-home buyer assistance may also be required to produce a divorce order or certificate, again making a former marriage part of a present application.

The same distinction is embedded more broadly in Australian government systems. The Australian Bureau of Statistics standard categories for registered marital status are “never married,” “widowed,” “divorced,” “separated” and “married.” There is no ordinary option for “single.” However, the Bureau also distinguishes between registered marital status and social marital status, demonstrating that legal history and present circumstances are not necessarily the same thing. The legal categories of gender and marital status are not identical, but the underlying institutional principle is comparable. If autonomy, dignity and present identity are important enough to justify altering official gender records, why are those same considerations dismissed when a divorced woman asks not to be permanently identified through a former marriage?

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Why is one historical designation capable of amendment, while another becomes a lifelong administrative label? This is the double standard I am questioning.

I am not arguing that anyone should lose the right to amend their records. I am asking why the principle of compassionate and accurate legal recognition is applied selectively. Surely a system capable of accommodating a person’s choice of gender identity is also capable of allowing a woman to state truthfully that she is single, while recording her previous marriage separately only where it has genuine legal relevance.

There may be limited circumstances in which a person’s full marital history is legally relevant. Matters involving estates, taxation, property settlements, family law, pensions or financial obligations may require accurate historical information. But when marital history is genuinely necessary, institutions should explain why. It should not be collected automatically, habitually or without regard for emotional and privacy implications. Forms should distinguish between two separate questions:

What is your current relationship status, and, have you previously been legally married?

The first question concerns the present, the second concerns legal history.

Where a former spouse’s name is required, the form should explain the precise legal or administrative reason for requesting it. Survivors of abuse should not be compelled to disclose the identity of an abusive former partner merely because a poorly designed form contains a blank space demanding an answer. Institutions should practise data minimisation and collect only the personal information genuinely required for a legitimate purpose.

To encounter an official form that says, in effect, “This marriage still defines you, and you must now name the person involved,” can reopen what a survivor has worked hard to put behind her. The institution may regard this as neutral data collection; the survivor may experience it as forced remembrance. Her abuser’s name appears once again beside her own. The administrative system recreates the attachment she fought to end. She is reminded that, at least in the eyes of bureaucracy, she remains classified by that relationship.

The solution is straightforward. Official forms should allow people to accurately identify their current circumstances. Where previous marital history is legally necessary, it should be requested separately and accompanied by a clear explanation. Where the name of a former spouse is required, the institution should state why it is required, how it will be used and whether an exemption or alternative process is available for survivors of domestic violence. “Divorced” should be treated as a legal history category, not imposed as a permanent social identity.

I am single. My marriage happened. My divorce happened. The abuse happened. But none of those things is the whole of who I am. I am single. I am independent. I am not an extension of my former husband, and I should not be required to invoke his name whenever a form decides that my past marriage matters. Privacy should not disappear because a woman was once married. Survivors should not remain administratively chained to the people who abused them. It is time for our institutions to remove the Scarlet Letter.

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Almost no one stops to ask the question that actually matters: what does an Australian monoculture mean?

It need not mean one race, one religion, one ancestry or the erasure of anyone’s heritage. It should mean one nation: a shared civic culture built around common laws, institutions, language, responsibilities, loyalties and values.

That is the idea behind The Great Southern Land — Australia’s Monoculture: One Australia. The Sum of All Parts.

As the son of Italian migrants, I do not regard my family’s heritage as something Australia demanded we abandon. Nor do I believe preserving that heritage required us to remain culturally detached from the country that welcomed us.

My parents’ generation understood a straightforward bargain. Australia offered opportunity, security and freedom. In return, migrants were expected to work, contribute, learn the language, obey the law and become part of the nation. They could remain proud of where they came from while becoming unquestionably Australian.

That was integration. It was neither cruel nor unreasonable. It was the foundation of a successful migrant nation.

After more than three decades building a manufacturing business and employing Australians from many backgrounds, I have seen this principle operating in practice. Every morning, people born in different countries walk through the same factory doors. They may speak different languages at home, eat different food and observe different traditions, but at work they operate under the same Australian Standards, safety rules and expectations.

Steel does not recognise ethnicity. Engineering drawings do not change according to ancestry. A finished product is judged by whether it meets the required standard.

That is monoculture in its constructive Australian sense: not sameness of origin, but unity of purpose.

Australia’s culture has never been the possession of one ethnic group. It carries the heritage of its First Peoples, the institutions inherited from Britain, the sacrifice of the ANZACs and the work of successive generations of migrants. We eat it, speak it, celebrate it, build it, create it and play it. Each generation contributes another piece, but those pieces must form one national picture.

Labor abandoned this objective when multiculturalism became an industry rather than a description of our population. Instead of encouraging integration, governments began institutionalising difference. Bureaucracies, grants and identity-based organisations increasingly taught Australians to see themselves as members of separate communities negotiating with the nation, rather than citizens belonging to it.

The Liberal Party complained from the sidelines but lacked the courage to offer an alternative. Whenever challenged, it either copied Labor’s language or offered a diluted version of the same policy. The Coalition wanted conservative votes without defending the national cohesion conservative voters valued.

The result is the familiar two-party fraud. Labor promotes division under the banner of diversity, while the Liberals promise resistance before surrendering at the first hostile headline.

Neither party wants an honest discussion about whether the size and composition of Australia’s migration program are compatible with successful integration. Neither wants to admit that housing, roads, hospitals, schools and essential services cannot absorb unlimited population growth. Neither will acknowledge that social cohesion depends on more than issuing visas and hoping separate communities eventually develop a common identity.

When Pauline Hanson and One Nation question current migration settings or speak about monoculture, the political establishment rarely addresses the substance. It attacks the vocabulary, condemns the speaker and declares the debate closed.

But the debate is not closed, because the consequences are visible to ordinary Australians.

They see housing becoming unaffordable while migration races ahead of construction. They see infrastructure buckling, wages pressured and social tensions imported from overseas. They see English proficiency and allegiance to Australian values treated as optional, while citizens who raise concerns are branded intolerant.

If asking whether migration serves the national interest is unacceptable to Labor and the Coalition, then One Nation is right to force the question.

This does not require hostility towards migrants. On the contrary, a clear integration policy respects migrants enough to tell them what citizenship means. It says: bring your skills, enterprise, family traditions and cultural inheritance, but bring them into the Australian story. Do not recreate the political hatreds or sectarian conflicts of the country you left. Australia is not merely an economy, a marketplace or a convenient geographic address. It is a nation, and membership carries obligations as well as benefits.

One Nation has an opportunity to develop this into something larger than a reaction against excessive immigration. It can advocate an intentional and persistent “One Australia” policy: controlled migration based on national need, strong English-language expectations, equal treatment under one law and the replacement of government-funded institutional multiculturalism with genuine integration.

The objective should not be cultural sterility. It should be national solidarity.

Australia does not need to choose between respecting heritage and maintaining unity. The choice is between a country confident enough to absorb new influences into a shared national culture and one divided into competing identities managed by politicians and bureaucrats.

Labor and the Coalition have chosen management, division and evasion. One Nation should choose cohesion.

Australia’s monoculture is not one bloodline or one birthplace. It is one allegiance, one civic standard and one national future—created from many parts, but belonging to us all.

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Try as they might, Australian politicians still refuse to learn the most basic lesson of economics: when government makes a legal product prohibitively expensive, demand does not simply vanish. Consumers substitute and evade, criminals enter the market, honest businesses lose sales, tax revenue falls, and the state then responds to the consequences of its own policy with more regulation, more police powers and more taxpayer-funded enforcement.

We have already watched this disaster unfold with tobacco. Now illicit alcohol is appearing in suburban bottle shops, pubs and nightclubs.

Recently, a group of researchers visited more than 100 Victorian liquor stores and found that at least 30 stocked illicit alcohol. They didn’t visit a single metropolitan or regional postcode without finding at least one retailer selling it.

Some illicit products are being manufactured in unlicensed facilities or produced off the books by otherwise legitimate distilleries. Other products are illegally imported.

Testing has detected methanol, plastic contaminants and industrial denaturants in bottles offered for human consumption. Police have warned of alcohol containing chemicals used in paint stripper, brake fluid, solvents and synthetic rubber.

The cause is exorbitant taxation and overbearing regulation, which have again produced less safety, less freedom, and more organised crime. The booming black market damages legitimate businesses and peddles products that may seriously injure or kill consumers.

The federal excise on most spirits is now above $100 per litre of pure alcohol. That means more than $30 in excise is loaded onto a standard 700-millilitre bottle of 40 per cent spirits before GST, transport, wages, rent and retail margins are added. The tax is normally indexed twice a year, allowing Canberra to increase it automatically without a politician ever having to stand before the public and defend another tax hike.

Alcohol taxation and regulation in Australia is creating a spectacular profit margin for anyone prepared to skirt the law.

The government’s own figures expose the scale of the failure. The Australian Taxation Office estimated that illegal activity created a $767 million alcohol-tax gap in 2023–24, approaching one-tenth of the alcohol duty that should have been collected. The volume involved has been estimated at more than 10 per cent of the spirits sold legally in Australia. The black market is becoming a serious competitor to the legal market.

Since 2000, Australian beer prices have risen 157.6%, compared with 82% in the United States, 67% in Germany, and 30.3% in Britain. Beer prices in Japan decreased by 3% in the same period.

Of course, Australia hasn’t abolished drinking; we’ve simply made it extraordinarily expensive. The result? Criminal cartels can offer a bottle at a price no legitimate distiller or retailer could possibly match. Honest retailers must pay excise, GST, licence fees, wages, insurance and compliance costs. Government has loaded one side of the scales and then wonders why the black market is surging.

This is another demonstration of the Laffer Curve – there is a point at which higher tax rates encourage so much substitution, avoidance and evasion that they lead to the collection of less revenue. Australia has comprehensively crossed that line with tobacco, and now appears determined to stagger across it with alcohol.

Neither major party can escape responsibility. The Coalition had almost a decade in government to reform this dysfunctional system and instead allowed automatic excise increases to continue. Labor has frozen the indexation of draught beer excise for two years, but this will barely dent our world-leading beer tax revenue. Spirits continue to be punished. Both parties tinker around the edges because neither will admit that excessive taxation is funding organised crime.

Instead, the uniparty continues to blame loopholes, inadequate licensing, poor traceability and weak enforcement. Some of those problems are real; the alcohol excise remission scheme may be exploited by fly-by-night operators, and retailers should know where their stock comes from. But piling fresh compliance costs onto every honest distiller and bottle shop will not eliminate the enormous financial reward for breaking the law.

Criminal syndicates do not care about licence fees, reporting obligations, health warnings or batch numbers. Every new rule is a cost borne by legitimate businesses and ignored by criminals. That is precisely how government regulation transfers market share from the compliant to the lawless.

Public health campaigners will say high prices reduce alcohol consumption. Perhaps they reduce some legal purchases. But a policy cannot be called successful when it pushes consumers underground and towards products containing unknown chemicals, sold by people who do not check ages, observe responsible service requirements or carry product liability insurance.

Harm reduction that makes the market more dangerous is not harm reduction.

The answer is not alcohol prohibition by instalment. Australia should freeze and substantially reduce spirits excise, end automatic twice-yearly increases, and replace the incoherent patchwork of beer, wine and spirits taxes with a simpler, lower and transparent system. Government should target violent criminals, fraudulent manufacturers and retailers knowingly selling contaminated products, not make every lawful drinker and legitimate business collateral damage in another moral crusade.

Australia’s tobacco wars were not an unforeseeable accident. They were the predictable result of government policy. Governments were warned, ignored the warnings and then pretended to be shocked when shopfronts were torched.

The alcohol black market is not emerging despite government policy. It is emerging because of it.

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The first thing that should be said about taxation is that we need less of it, not more.

Australia’s welfare system – pensions, childcare, income support, jobseeker, health, education, etcetera – costs Australian’s taxpayers more than $500 billion per year. About half of the welfare is ‘fiscal churning’ – taxing people’s income and then giving some of it back in the form of welfare benefits.

Ideally, the solution is to only provide welfare for those who need it, and to end the tax-welfare churn for everybody else.

A good place to start is in the areas of childcare, parental leave, and family tax benefit payments.

‘Income splitting’ is a policy which treats, as the basis of taxation, the family rather than the individual.

Double-income families currently have access to two tax-free thresholds, whereas single-income households, by definition, have access to only one.

Income splitting would allow a couple to combine their incomes – regardless of each individual’s earnings – and then ‘split’ them in half for tax purposes. Each would then be assessed on an individual basis, beginning with the tax-free threshold, thereby reducing the amount of tax paid by the highest earning partner.

Consider the following scenarios:

Scenario 1:

A family with one wage-earner on $100,000 pa currently would pay $22,520 tax based on current tax scales viz:

First $18,200 of income: tax-free.
Next $26,800 of income ($18,201 – $45,000): taxed at 15% ($4,020).
Remaining $55,000 ($45,001 – $100,000): taxed at 30% ($16,500).
Medicare Levy (flat rate of 2%): $2,000

A total of $22,520 in tax paid to the Federal government.

Scenario 2:

A family with two wage earners each on $50,000 pa would each pay $6,520 viz:

First $18,200: tax-free.
Next $26,800 ($18,201 – $45,000): taxed at 15% ($4,020 tax).
Remaining $5,000 (from $45,001 – $50,000): taxed at 30% ($1,500).
Medicare Levy (flat rate of 2%): $1,000

A total of $13,040.

That is $9,480 pa less tax than the one wage-earner family, despite both families having the same income.

It is difficult to calculate the cost to the Budget of introducing income splitting as behavioural incentives are unpredictable. Income splitting would clearly make it easier for one parent to stay at home to perform a child-caring role.

Some estimates are in the order of $12bn per annum but these do not take into account the substantial savings from reduced childcare subsidies, reduced parental leave, and potentially reduced family tax benefit payments.

Paid parental leave currently costs Australian taxpayers about $5bn a year. Childcare subsidies cost around $15bn per annum. And the big one – Family Assistance (Family Tax Benefit Part A and Part B) – costs around $20bn.

Simplifying the tax transfer system would greatly reduce the amount of fiscal churn.

When it comes to the tax system, Australia has one of the most hostile systems in the world for single-income families.

Eighteen OECD countries – including France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland, now have some form of income splitting, as does the United States.

Australia’s tax system effectively punishes couples who choose to do their own childcare by treating the individual income earner, and not the family, as the unit of taxation.

Many families prefer part-time work, informal care by relatives, or flexible arrangements that do not place their children in institutions for long hours.

The Labor government has made it abundantly clear that universal childcare – paid for by taxpayers – is non-negotiable. Maximising female participation in the workforce and childcare centres run only by approved childcare service providers are articles of faith on the Left. Labor’s recently announced ‘Three-Day Guarantee’ for childcare assistance is a central plank of its ‘cradle-to-grave’ welfare state mentality.

The stark contradictions between the taxation system, which taxes income earners as individuals, and the welfare system, which takes into account spouses and children when it comes to benefits because they are part of a family, are well-overdue for reform.

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That assumption is now dead.

The media, the consultants and the Liberal Party hierarchy are still behaving as though this is merely another rough patch. Another temporary downturn. Another election cycle that can be fixed with a new leader, a new slogan and a few carefully targeted focus groups.

They are wrong.

The Liberal Party’s problem is not that voters don’t know who Angus Taylor is. Its problem is that voters know exactly what the Liberal Party has become.

For years conservatives were told to be patient while the Liberals embraced net zero. While they expanded government. While they increased migration. While they surrendered culture issues without firing a shot. While they attempted to become a slightly more competent version of Labor.

The patience has run out.

The latest polling showing the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is not a protest vote. Protest votes come and go. This is something deeper. It is a vote of no confidence in the political establishment itself.

Millions of Australians have concluded that neither Labor nor Liberal is prepared to address the issues that dominate conversations around kitchen tables, workshops, factory floors, farms, construction sites and suburban pubs.

Housing, cost of living, immigration, energy prices, government waste, national identity.

The response from the political class has been predictable. They call it populism.

What they really mean is that the people who actually build, fund and sustain the country are no longer prepared to be lectured to by the people who merely administer it.

The political class has a favourite phrase whenever voters become restless: “ordinary Australians”.

Listen carefully whenever a politician, bureaucrat or media commentator uses it.

It usually means they are about to explain why the concerns of the people who build the houses, drive the trucks, run the businesses, work the farms, pay the taxes and raise the families should be politely ignored.

The implication is always the same. There are the “ordinary people” over there, and then there are the enlightened experts, professional politicians, consultants and activists over here.

But there is nothing ordinary about the people who keep a country functioning. There is nothing ordinary about the small business owner who mortgages their home to employ others, the tradesman working twelve-hour days, the nurse on night shift, the farmer battling drought, the truck driver crossing the Nullarbor, or the manufacturer trying to compete against imports while paying some of the highest energy prices in the developed world.

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These are not ordinary people; they are Australians from all walks of life. And increasingly they are reaching the same conclusion: the people who created the problems are unlikely to be the people who solve them.

For years commentators dismissed One Nation as a temporary phenomenon. Yet here we are, nearly three decades after Pauline Hanson first entered Parliament, and the movement is stronger than ever.

Perhaps the question is not why One Nation is growing, but why the Liberal Party continues to shrink.

The answer is obvious.

One Nation talks about issues voters care about. The Liberals talk about what political advisers think voters should care about.

One Nation speaks in plain English. The Liberals speak in consultant-approved corporate jargon.

One Nation has become the political home for voters who feel ignored. The Liberals have become the political home for people who still think it is 2004.

That doesn’t mean One Nation is perfect. No political party is. But perfection is not what voters are looking for. They are looking for conviction. For authenticity.

Most importantly, they are looking for people who appear to actually believe what they are saying. That is why the rise of One Nation matters.

But it is also why the rise of other centre-right alternatives matters.

The Libertarians are growing. Minor conservative movements are growing. Independent voices are growing.

Across the country voters are increasingly abandoning the belief that only the major parties are capable of representing them. This is not fragmentation; it is competition. And competition is healthy.

Free markets work because monopolies eventually become complacent. Politics is no different.

For decades Labor and Liberal operated as a protected duopoly. Both assumed voters would eventually come home. Increasingly, voters are choosing a different address.

The future of Australian politics may not belong to a single party. It may belong to a coalition of ideas. People who want lower taxes, affordable energy, government to live within its means. People who want freedom of speech, secure borders, and housing that their children can actually afford.

Some of those voters will choose One Nation. Some will choose the Libertarians. Some will choose other alternatives.

What unites them is a growing belief that the political establishment has become detached from the lives of the people it claims to represent.

The old political duopoly is weakening. Competition has arrived. And just as competition delivers better outcomes in the marketplace, it may finally deliver better outcomes in politics.

The media keeps asking whether One Nation can maintain its momentum. They may be asking the wrong question. The real question is whether the Liberal Party can recover the trust it has spent two decades squandering.

The Liberal Party still believes it is the natural home of centre-right voters. Increasingly, centre-right voters are proving otherwise.

The real question is no longer whether One Nation can continue growing. The real question is whether the Liberal Party understands that it is no longer competing against Labor, but is competing for its own survival.

And right now, the voters are looking elsewhere.

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Why was he arrested?

For wearing a belt that displayed ‘Mongols MC 1% East End’. A belt that no one present seemed to recognise, notice or care about other than WA police.

He was targeted under legislation introduced in 2021 that prohibits the public display (defined very broadly) of symbols associated with certain ‘identified organisations’, currently including a collection of bikie organisations but perhaps in the future might include other groups including political groups that the WA government doesn’t like.

The legislation bans the public display of the organisation’s name. the logo or patch of the organisation, any symbol, image or abbreviation that the government deems to be associated with the targeted group, along with the numeral value of 1% (and 1%er).

Along with another individual, Mr Brajkovich is also currently facing charges under the same legislation for wearing Las Vegas Raiders merchandise which, as of the 6^th of July 2026, is available on the Rebel Sports website. How? Why? Because the WA police have decided that the emblem of an American sports team is now the symbol of a bikie group.

This is a good example of the Watermelon Effect. When you ban symbols, it does not eliminate the desire to express an idea or concept; people simply adopt new symbols to replace the banned symbols that also get banned. The cycle continues until you end up banning things that are impractical or stupid, such as the watermelon used by the Pro Palestinian Movement. I wonder what fruits the various bikie groups in Western Australia will eventually adopt?

Is Las Vegas Raiders merchandise now illegal in Western Australia? Are normal people now meant to keep up to date with current bikie fashion just to know what they can and cannot wear?

We live in a society where people wear tops with the names of bands they don’t listen to, sports teams they don’t follow, and companies and places they know nothing about. Will the WA government at least keep an updated webpage citing all currently illegal fashion?

Or is the law only applied to specific targeted people? People the police do not approve of? Will they mass collect data from surveillance cameras and use AI to identify the targeted people? Will they profile them based on their appearance, their dress, or whether they ride motorbikes?

In my view, legislation should focus on conduct, not status or identity. I don’t care if someone wants to ride a motorbike and identifies as part of a group. My concern is whether they violate the rights of others. The display of bikie insignia may be uncomfortable to some, but it does not inherently harm people or property, or violate the rights of others.

In WA there is not even a requirement for anyone to be threatened or intimidated, or to report what someone is wearing. WA Police enforce the legislation by tracking where the targeted individuals go and trying to catch them on surveillance cameras.

For example, four people were arrested and three convicted for visible tattoos at a hotel pool party. The pool was still deemed a ‘public place’ despite being in what a reasonable person would consider a private area. The obvious question is whether recently passed anti-hate symbol laws will be enforced in a similar manner.

The criminalisation of existing tattoos is particularly disturbing given this seems to suggest that a person has a legal obligation to alter their own body against their will. Cover tattoos and laser tattoo removal are invasive and expensive processes. How can a person getting a tattoo in the present possibly know what tattoos will become illegal in the future?

The criminalisation of the numerical value of 1% is particularly dumb and draconian given that it appears a lot, including in statistics and political slogans such as ‘down with the 1%’ and ‘we are the 1%’. Especially when the legislation makes no exception for political slogans.

Are some or all sections of the paper I am holding illegal in WA?

I initially discovered this story while scrolling through Facebook comments, which were highly critical of the arrest with many people describing the situation as stupid and a waste of taxpayer money and resources. The WA police may have thought they looked tough, but instead they came across as silly and authoritarian.

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With all that considered, why do they suck so bad at trying to convince the right to jump ship on to their rickety communist junk?

Here’s former ABC journalist Quentin Dempster on X:

“Pauline for PM: forced divestment of houses for temporary visa holders; round-up/deport over-stayers; reject Muslim migrants on ‘national security’ grounds; uncontrol guns; revoke neg-gear CGT reforms; paywalls for ABC/SBS; more x frack/drill/open cut coal; no EVs/renewables “

As the Spider-Man meme goes – I already bought it Quentin, you don’t have to sell it to me.

I don’t think One Nation is more libertarian than the actual Libertarians, but when it comes to economics, they’re still serving up more common sense than the Coalition at the moment.

Another smug professional leftist, Cheek Media’s Hannah Ferguson, delivers another inadvertent advertisement for One Nation in a video “Have a family member who wants to vote One Nation? Send them this!” as if mere exposure will sink into them like a hypodermic needle delivering cleansing political correctness straight to their bigoted veins.

Holding her lavaliere mic for some reason (You can clip them to your clothes, doncherknow!), she says,

“She’s voted against procedural fairness, against workplace protections, against increasing housing affordability. She’s also voted against making TAFE free, against criminalising revenge porn, against increasing access to subsidised childcare, against increasing political transparency, and against increasing media diversity. So, what is she for? Well, reducing tax for high income earners. She is for that.”

The HORROR!

We already know that Hannah and Cheek have a tenuous grasp on the truth much like lions are herbivores because they eat them – so why would any dyed-in-the-wool conservative believe her? And why are we still pretending that university educated professionals are on the side of workers?

Also, how dare common-sense family values Hanson vote against criminalising revenge porn? That’s because she actually voted for it – before voting against it. That’s because an amendment from the SA Centre Alliance watered the bill down from outright criminalising revenge porn to instead hand the eKaren more powers and create a prohibition as a civil matter, not a criminal one. Yeah, I would’ve voted against that BS too (as did the Editor of this very publication.)

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Why leftists just regurgitate the policies of their opposition as proof they shouldn’t vote for them could be explained, at least in part, by their moral outlook. The Moral Foundation Theory, put forward by social psychologist, freedom in academics activist, and outspoken proponent of the Under 16s social media ban Jonathan Haidt and others, ‘we can say that the moral domain in WEIRD cultures (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic) is fairly narrow, comparatively speaking.’ You aren’t going to get many people agreeing to bring back trial by combat, or something equally ridiculous.

The research aimed at mapping moral foundations over five dimensions: Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity (also dubbed ‘Purity’ in some literature). In the original paper, they wrote “the typical liberal scores were higher than the typical conservative scores on Care and Fairness, and the typical conservative scores were higher than the typical liberal scores on Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity.”

If people just cared more, the world would be fair, according to a typical liberal (in the American parlance.) What is “fair?” As fellow Liberty Itch scratcher Warren Wang says, “fair” is a moral distinction that’s often (and deliberately) conflated with mathematical concepts of “equality” or legal tenets of “justice.”

Of course, broad political care and justice inevitably flow from the barrel of a gun – not so caring or fair when you take the property or livelihood of someone who built it using the sweat of their brow, is it sweetie?

Haidt et. al. also examines how others infer other’s traits – on the care dimension, if a politician or public figure says they care, well, they can identify with that cause. Like they’re signalling… a virtue?

Although social science isn’t exact, leading with care and fairness is so innate and obvious to a leftist they tend to believe it should be apparent to everyone. Psychologist Paul Bloom described this in his 2016 book Against Empathy: A case for rational compassion.

“Empathy is the act of coming to experience the world as you think someone else does,” he wrote. Empathy can blind morality. Remember: empathy is bottomless, and empathy can also lead to violence, anger, and acts of evil. All care and no responsibility leads to shitty socialist government. When things go to pot, it leads to people looking for an escape route.

When it comes to interpersonal perception, it would seem that the typical leftist believes everyone has the same capacity for empathy and sense of fairness. Which, as humans, we absolutely do. However, their failure to realise that having the capacity does not correspond to exercising it as a rule.

Here’s a tip for both sides of politics: if you want to convince the other side of your efficacy, you need to meet them on their literal moral high ground. If you care about the rights and freedoms of your fellow man, understanding what Lenin said about “sweeping away the bourgeoisie” will either chill you to the core or inspire your lust for bloody revolution.

If you aren’t a sociopath, I’d hope it would tend towards the former.

Or you can make the same mistakes over and over. The Right will thank you for the free advertising – and right-wingers don’t even believe anything comes for free!

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Governments love talking about productivity. They simply don’t seem to recognise it when they regulate. The consequences extend well beyond economics; one of the quiet casualties of procurement creep, as I described recently, has been freedom of association.

Freedom of association has never meant simply the freedom to join an organisation. It equally protects the freedom not to join one. It recognises the right of employers and employees to negotiate lawful workplace arrangements suited to their own circumstances without governments favouring one lawful model over another.

When access to taxpayer-funded work increasingly depends upon adopting politically preferred industrial arrangements, freedom of association begins to look less like a right and more like a privilege dispensed by government. That should trouble anyone who genuinely believes in liberal democracy.

Governments should not be using taxpayers’ money to reward politically preferred commercial behaviour. Their role is to create a level playing field where businesses compete on merit, capability and value for money, not on their ability to satisfy whichever political priorities happen to be fashionable at the time.

Some readers will argue that governments have every right to impose conditions on those seeking public contracts. Of course they do. The real question is whether those conditions improve outcomes for taxpayers or merely satisfy political objectives. There is an important difference.

Australia once understood that distinction remarkably well. There was a time when our major infrastructure projects were conceived by engineers, economists and experienced public servants who expected to spend decades building institutions rather than election campaigns. Governments changed but institutions endured. Planning horizons stretched twenty or thirty years into the future because infrastructure was viewed as a national investment, not tomorrow’s media announcement.

Today, too much of that long-term thinking has been replaced by ministerial advisers, media strategists and political consultants whose planning horizon rarely extends beyond the next announcement and opinion poll. Infrastructure has increasingly become political theatre. Procurement has become one of its principal props. Taxpayers continue funding the performance.

Somewhere along the way, politicians also confused wearing a high-vis vest with understanding infrastructure.

A high-vis vest is a safety device, not a photo-op fashion accessory. Standing in front of an excavator doesn’t make someone an infrastructure expert any more than wearing a stethoscope makes them a surgeon. If our elected representatives spent half as much time understanding how projects are actually procured, costed and delivered as they do posing for photographs on construction sites, Australia might finally begin reversing its productivity decline.

The purpose of government is not to choose winners. It is to ensure everyone has the opportunity to compete fairly. That simple principle has been quietly disappearing from Australian public policy for far too long. Perhaps Lord Acton should have added another sentence to his famous saying that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Absolute power rarely arrives all at once. More often it arrives one regulation at a time, one procurement guideline at a time, one compliance checklist at a time, until eventually nobody remembers what the original purpose was.

That original purpose has never been complicated. Government procurement exists to obtain the best possible outcome for taxpayers. Not the best political outcome, or the best media opportunity. Not the best outcome for whichever interest group happens to enjoy the greatest influence at any particular moment. The best outcome for taxpayers.

That simple principle should be guiding every procurement decision made by every level of government in Australia.

Instead, governments have steadily expanded the list of objectives that procurement is expected to achieve. It must now solve social problems, industrial relations problems, environmental problems, diversity problems and political problems, all before it is allowed to solve the engineering problem. The more objectives governments attach to procurement, the further procurement drifts from its primary purpose.

That is not sophisticated public policy. It is mission creep.

There is another consequence that receives remarkably little attention. Transparency suffers. When procurement decisions become dependent upon subjective policy considerations rather than objective commercial criteria, it becomes far more difficult for taxpayers to understand why one tender succeeded while another failed. Capability, price, delivery and quality can be measured. Political preferences are far less transparent.

Good procurement should be capable of surviving public scrutiny. If taxpayers cannot easily understand why one business was selected over another, confidence in the system inevitably declines. That matters because confidence is one of the most valuable assets any market possesses. Without confidence there is hesitation, complacency, suspicion. Eventually, without merit, there is mediocrity.

History tells us that countries become prosperous not because governments successfully manage markets, but because they create conditions where markets can function freely and fairly.

Labor’s instinct has generally been to respond to problems by writing another rule. The Coalition’s instinct has too often been to complain about the rule once it has been written. For decades it has been spooked by industrial relations debates, reluctant to defend free enterprise with conviction and content to fight yesterday’s political battles instead of preventing tomorrow’s.

Australians deserve better than an opposition that simply arrives late to every argument. They also deserve governments prepared to govern by principle instead of opinion polls. Australia does not suffer from a shortage of regulations; it suffers from a shortage of governments prepared to ask whether another regulation is necessary in the first place.

We have no shortage of capable manufacturers, innovative contractors or skilled tradespeople. What we increasingly lack is the confidence to trust them. Instead of allowing open competition to determine the best outcome, governments attempt to manage commercial relationships from Canberra and Spring Street.

For a nation blessed with extraordinary natural resources, remarkable ingenuity and world-class businesses, we have become strangely reluctant to let merit do the heavy lifting. Perhaps we should introduce a simple aptitude test before anyone is allowed near infrastructure policy. The next time a politician stands in front of an excavator announcing another multi-billion dollar infrastructure project, don’t ask how much it will cost.

Ask a far more important question: Who does government procurement really serve? Because if the answer isn’t taxpayers, then everything that follows is simply politics disguised as public policy.

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Australia is about to learn a lesson that should have been obvious from the beginning: if you punish the people who provide rental housing, eventually they stop providing rental housing.

Who could possibly have seen that coming?

For years, both Labor and Liberal governments have searched for villains to blame for the housing crisis: developers, landlords, investors, negative gearing, capital gains concessions. Everyone except the people making housing harder, slower and more expensive to build.

Now we are watching the predictable consequences unfold in real time.

Across Australia, governments have systematically increased the cost, complexity and risk of owning investment property. Higher interest rates; more taxes; more compliance requirements; more regulations; more paperwork; more restrictions.

Then they stand before the cameras and wonder why investors are heading for the exits. It’s like smashing every window in your house and then complaining about the draft.

The uncomfortable truth is that private investors provide the overwhelming majority of Australia’s rental housing. Around one-third of Australians rent privately. Only a small fraction live in public housing.

That means every time an investor decides the game is no longer worth playing, the rental market loses another provider. Fewer rental properties, more tenants competing for them, higher rents.

This is not advanced economics; it’s Year 9 supply and demand. Yet somehow Australia’s political class continues to behave as though supply and demand are optional theories rather than economic reality.

Victoria provides perhaps the best example of how not to run a housing market. The state already has some of the highest property taxes in the country. Landlords face growing compliance obligations, increasing minimum standards, and mounting costs. Some of these standards are reasonable where they relate to genuine health and safety concerns, but increasingly they have crossed the line from safety into bureaucracy.

Properties that fail to meet each new requirement face expensive rectification works before they can be rented again. Some owners will comply; others will sell. Some will simply leave properties vacant because the compliance costs exceed the returns.

The result is exactly the same: less housing, more competition, higher rents.

And while governments lecture investors about their social obligations, they seem remarkably uninterested in the incentives that drive investment decisions in the first place.

The modern Australian approach to housing policy appears to be based on a simple formula. If something works, regulate it. If it survives regulation, tax it. And if it survives taxation, regulate it again.

Then establish a parliamentary inquiry to investigate why nobody wants to invest anymore.

Meanwhile, demand continues to surge and Australia’s population keeps growing.

Housing construction struggles under labour shortages, builder insolvencies, planning delays, infrastructure bottlenecks and endless layers of government approval. Governments keep turning on the demand tap while sitting on the supply hose. Then they act shocked when nothing comes out.

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Rental vacancy rates remain near historic lows. In many suburbs prospective tenants are competing against dozens of other applicants. Families with stable employment and solid incomes are attending inspections alongside forty or fifty other hopeful renters.

That is not a healthy market; it is a market screaming that supply is nowhere near demand.

Yet rather than asking how we can build more homes, the political debate revolves around how many more obstacles can be placed in front of the people willing to provide them. This is where the major parties reveal how little separates them.

Labor’s instinct is always more regulation, more intervention and more control. The Liberals talk a better game but rarely reverse Labor’s policies once they’re in place. Too often they merely manage the machinery built by Labor rather than dismantle it.

The result is what many Australians increasingly recognise as the Uniparty. Different slogans. Different press conferences. The same underlying assumption that government knows best.

A genuinely libertarian perspective starts from a different premise. Investors are not charities. Developers are not charities. Builders are not charities. People respond to incentives.

If government makes housing investment less attractive, less profitable and more risky, the market will produce less housing. That is not greed; it is human nature.

The next phase of this experiment is already becoming visible.

Higher borrowing costs, changes to capital gains tax treatment, restrictions on investment structures, increasing compliance obligations and ongoing regulatory uncertainty are steadily eroding the attractiveness of residential property investment.

Perhaps each one of these measures could be defended individually. But housing markets do not operate on individual policies; they operate on cumulative incentives. And the cumulative message being sent to investors is crystal clear: take your money elsewhere.

Rental housing does not magically appear when investors leave. Governments certainly are not building enough homes to replace them. Public housing waiting lists are already stretched. Construction activity remains constrained. New dwelling completions are struggling to keep pace with population growth.

The maths simply doesn’t work.

The greatest irony is that many of the policies being sold as solutions to housing affordability may ultimately make housing less affordable for the people who rent.

Politicians keep confusing home ownership with housing supply. They are not the same thing. A property does not become more affordable because an investor is driven from the market. The number of houses has not increased. The number of people needing somewhere to live has not decreased.

All that changes is the number of rental properties available. And when that supply shrinks, renters pay the price.

Australia’s housing crisis will not be solved by demonising investors. It will not be solved through more taxes, more regulations or more political grandstanding. It will be solved by building more homes.

That means freeing up land, cutting planning delays, reducing barriers to development, encouraging private investment, and recognising a simple truth that both major parties seem determined to ignore. Housing supply comes from incentives, not slogans.

The people who suffer the most will be the young couple attending their tenth rental inspection; the single parent competing against fifty other applicants; the family forced further and further from work, school and community because there is simply nowhere affordable left to rent.

Australia isn’t suffering from a housing shortage. It’s suffering from a shortage of politicians who understand incentives.

“You can’t regulate, tax and punish your way to more housing any more than you can regulate your way to rain during a drought.”

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The book is fundamentally about virtue, and translates to how we confront the many challenges and temptations in our lives. Spenser uses the framework of mythical knights, who each have to face different trials. There are six books in total addressing a different virtue: Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy.

I am focusing here on just Book Two - Temperance.

According to my trusted Roget’s Thesaurus, the word, temperance, means:

• Sedateness

• Sobriety

• Restraint

• Cardinal virtues

Temperance is one of the four cardinal virtues of classical philosophy, with the others being prudence, justice and fortitude. They were regarded as the structural conditions of a well-ordered life by Aristotle, Cicero and Aquinas. Without them, no person or polity could function with genuine dignity.

Prudence governs the mind’s judgement; justice governs our relationships; fortitude governs our response to danger and suffering; temperance governs our ability to restrain from the temptations of excess and move to a more ordered life under reasoning.

Spenser places temperance at the heart of Book Two of The Faerie Queene, as the lens through which to examine what happens to human dignity when self-rule collapses. The knight at the centre is Guyon, who is faced with the challenges of extremes and disorder. This story is an apt allegory for the disorders of any age, including, and perhaps even more so, for our own.

We don’t hear much about temperance in the modern age, but it is strongly associated with the Arthurian legends – the world in which Spenser has based his book. However, my focus is not King Arthur’s realm, but our contemporary one, specifically as it relates to our political class. Just imagine if it was required of them to attend classes in the Art of Temperance!

It is not out of spite I highlight politicians; it is in service to what we ought to all hold dear in our democracies – a sense of fairness, duty and a good dose of honour. Sadly, democracy in the West is now more in name only, as we watch the whole edifice crumble from lack of effective democratic leadership, and deteriorating economies.

We can only imagine the time and effort it took to produce this poem; how much fortitude was required to stay with it. The patience Spenser would have had to complete it would surely leave the modern mind in a spin.

We live in times where many politicians do not even read proposed legislation put in front of them, never mind the concept of writing a book of almost 1300 pages, roughly 300,000 words, taking about 15-20 years to complete. That is dedication – a virtue in itself.

To be fair, however, politicians have little say on the finality of legislation which is dictated by Ministers and the party rooms of major players. Independent members, or those of minor parties, do have a massive challenge with regard to the time spent reading copious amounts of legislation, and working directly with their constituents.

The point I am making here is to lament how we fail to regard detail when it is detail that can often make the difference in lives. Not to suggest we can all write an epic poem, but we can take those exemplars and their dedication, and apply it to the best degree possible in our own lives and polities. How this relates to my political analogy in a libertarian sense, is that the state should aim for less legislation rather than more. Perhaps then, more of the detail can emerge from the darkness.

The stanza I address here has nothing to do with politics. But it does have everything to do with the nature of mankind, how we conduct ourselves in life generally, and when under immense pressure. I argue that the link is a natural one to make.

I doubt anyone would deny that too many politicians ignore the will of the people who they represent, and I venture to say it has gone further, now being a case of indifference. It is entirely within reason to connect the individual with the office they hold, given that the decisions they make affect every aspect of our lives.

Let’s begin with Spenser’s original words:

Of all Gods works, which do this world adorne,
There is no one more faire and excellent,
Then is mans body both for power and forme,
While’s it is kept in sober gouenment;
But one then it, more fowle and indecent,
Distempred through misrule and passions brace:
It growes a Monster, and incontinent
Doth loose his dignities and natiue grace,
Behold, who list, both one and other in this place.

Of all the works God created, there is none fairer than the human body, both in strength and form – form in an Aristotelian sense: not merely shape, but that which orders our sense of reason, will, and passions. While we manage to keep it in a steady state, it is sublime. But if we allow it to become unchecked and unruly, it becomes something foul and indecent; like a monster that loses its entire dignity and native grace. If you look here, you will see both conditions side by side.

Read in 2026, it is not difficult to hold this up as a mirror to our current political class. Spenser’s “sober government”, as he applies it to our own body and form, can be applied just as well to that which we increasingly lack in public life – a true sense of honour among those who are meant to serve us, not rule over us.

There is nothing sober about a government that allows itself to become deformed through the tendency to tyrannical rule.

Why did I choose an epic poem to use as an allegory for modern politics? Because it matters as we navigate our way through these turbulent times, unsure if the world we know will land on its feet or adopt a whole new persona. What better way to hold a mirror up to our lost and rambling ways than to move through enchanted forests, courts and battlefields where every monster, castle, challenge, and temptation figures something we already know?

Why else do we gravitate to the wonder of times unknown but merely dreamt of?

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Measure twice. Cut once.

It is not merely a saying; it is a philosophy. It is an acknowledgement that reality does not care about your assumptions. Steel does not care about your feelings. A bridge does not care about your ideology. A machine does not care about political slogans.

Get the measurements wrong and the consequences arrive quickly. The larger the project, the more important the measurement.

Which raises an obvious question. If we are to spend trillions of dollars transforming modern economies, dismantling reliable power generation, covering productive farmland with transmission lines, subsidising favoured technologies, and fundamentally changing the way people live and work, shouldn’t we be absolutely certain we understand the problem?

Or are we making the biggest cut in human history before we’ve finished measuring?

For decades Australians have been told that “the science is settled.” Settled: what an extraordinary word. Science is never settled.

Science advances because people question assumptions. Every major scientific breakthrough in history began with someone challenging what everybody supposedly knew to be true.

Yet climate politics has evolved into something very different from science. It has become a belief system. A modern secular religion. And like all religions, it has its priests, its sacred texts, its rituals, its sinners and its heretics.

The priests are the politicians, bureaucrats and professional activists who assure us they possess special knowledge unavailable to the common citizen. The sacred texts are the reports that few people read but everybody is expected to obey. The rituals involve carbon credits, emissions targets and declarations of Net Zero virtue.

The sinners are motorists, miners, manufacturers, farmers and anyone else unfortunate enough to produce something tangible. The heretics are those who ask inconvenient questions.

Like the effectiveness of Net Zero and whether you are a denier.

Like the economic cost and whether you are irresponsible.

Like whether Australia’s sacrifices will make any measurable difference and are you opposing science itself.

This is not science; this is theology. The irony is that genuine science looks remarkably different.

Astronomy is science. Astronomy studies the heavens through observation, measurement and evidence. It seeks to understand the immense forces that shape our world. It studies the Sun, the Moon, solar cycles, planetary motion, ocean systems and the countless interactions that influence life on Earth.

Astronomers understand complexity. Astrologers prefer certainty. And increasingly, climate politics resembles astrology far more than astronomy.

The Sun delivers extraordinary amounts of energy to Earth every second. Ocean currents circulate heat around the globe. Volcanic activity affects atmospheric conditions. Long-term natural cycles continue to be studied and debated by scientists around the world.

Yet much of our political class speaks as though one of the most complex systems in the known universe can be reduced to a single variable and controlled by government decree.

That is not humility; it is arrogance. The arrogance that has infected both major political parties.

Labor and the Coalition pretend to be fierce opponents. They shout at each other across the chamber. They accuse each other of incompetence. They fight over details. Yet on climate policy they increasingly resemble two branches of the same establishment.

Labor promises Net Zero. The Coalition promises Net Zero.

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Labor subsidises selected technologies. The Coalition subsidises selected technologies. Labor expands government intervention. The Coalition argues about the speed of government intervention.

The destination remains identical; the argument is merely about which road to take.

Millions of Australians who are sceptical of this agenda look at Canberra and see no meaningful choice at all. The debate has become a contest between the fast lane and the slow lane on the same highway.

Meanwhile the consequences continue to accumulate. Electricity prices rise despite endless promises of cheaper power. Manufacturers struggle to compete against countries that prioritise affordability and reliability.

Investment leaves. Industries contract. Workers pay more. Families pay more. Small businesses pay more.

The political class responds by announcing new subsidies funded by the very taxpayers already paying the inflated costs.

It is a policy failure so spectacular that it requires additional policy failures to conceal the original one.

Even more remarkable is the moral vanity that accompanies it. Australia accounts for a tiny share of global emissions, yet governments behave as though the future of the planet depends upon whether a plumber in Frankston drives a diesel ute or an accountant in Melbourne buys an electric vehicle.

China continues to build coal-fired power stations. India continues to prioritise economic growth.

Developing nations continue to pursue affordable energy because they understand a truth that Western politicians have forgotten: prosperity is not the enemy of humanity. Prosperity is what allows humanity to solve problems.

The wealthy societies of today have cleaner air, cleaner water and better environmental outcomes than the poor societies of yesterday. Economic growth is not the problem. It is often the solution.

This is where the libertarian view diverges sharply from both sides of politics. The answer is not climate denial. The answer is recognising the limits of government knowledge and government power.

Politicians cannot accurately predict next year’s budget position. Bureaucracies struggle to deliver infrastructure projects on time and on budget. Yet we are expected to believe these same institutions can successfully redesign energy systems, influence global temperatures and manage planetary climate outcomes decades into the future.

That requires a level of faith usually associated with medieval pilgrimages.

A freer society would trust innovation more than regulation; competition more than mandates; markets more than ministers; adaptation more than panic; human ingenuity more than bureaucratic planning.

Most importantly, it would remember the lesson that built every factory, bridge, workshop and successful enterprise in Australia.

Measure twice.

Cut once.

The climate will continue to change, as it always has.

The Sun will continue to rise. The Moon will continue to pull the tides.

Nature will continue to ignore political narratives.

The question is whether Australians will continue to hand power to politicians who claim certainty about things they cannot possibly know with certainty. Because the bigger the cut, the more important the measurement. And there has never been a bigger cut than Net Zero.

The time has come to stop treating climate policy as a religion and start treating it as every sensible tradesman would treat any major project.

With scepticism. With humility. With evidence.

And above all else, with a tape measure in hand.

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More than a century ago, Lord Acton warned that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He wasn’t talking about procurement, but he could just as easily have been. History repeatedly shows that when power becomes concentrated, whether in governments, bureaucracies, corporations or unions, transparency suffers, accountability weakens and vested interests inevitably emerge.

The answer has never been to concentrate more power. It has always been to disperse it through competition, transparency and the rule of law.

Recent reports concerning corruption and undue influence in government procurement should concern every Australian, regardless of political persuasion. Rather than asking how another layer of regulation might fix the problem, we should first ask a much simpler question. What is government procurement actually supposed to achieve? Government procurement should not be a political reward system. It is a fiduciary responsibility.

Every dollar spent building a road, bridge, railway, hospital, school or defence facility belongs to taxpayers, not politicians. Governments are merely custodians of that money. Their responsibility is straightforward: purchase the highest quality outcome from the most capable supplier for the best possible value while ensuring appropriate standards of safety, quality and delivery. Anything beyond that risks turning procurement into an instrument of politics rather than public service.

Unfortunately, Australia has quietly drifted away from those principles. The latest proposals to give greater priority to industrial relations arrangements in Commonwealth procurement continues a trend that has been developing for years. Governments are increasingly using procurement to pursue broader social and political objectives rather than simply securing the best outcome for taxpayers.

This is not really about one particular proposal; it is about something much bigger. Government procurement has quietly suffered from what might be called procurement creep.

It began with sensible requirements. Contractors needed to demonstrate financial capacity, technical competence, workplace safety systems and an ability to deliver projects successfully. Few would argue with those fundamentals. Over time, however, governments kept adding new objectives: environmental reporting, diversity targets, ESG disclosures, modern slavery declarations, indigenous participation, cybersecurity, industrial relations. Individually, each new requirement might sound reasonable but collectively they transform procurement from a commercial exercise into a political one.

The result is that governments increasingly evaluate businesses not just on their ability to build something well, but on their willingness to satisfy an ever-growing list of policy objectives that often have little to do with building anything at all. That should concern anyone who believes governments exist to spend taxpayers’ money wisely. It should also concern anyone who believes in free enterprise.

Every additional procurement requirement narrows the field of competitors. Every additional compliance hurdle discourages another business from participating. Fewer bidders rarely produce better prices. Reduced competition rarely improves innovation. The laws of economics haven’t been suspended simply because governments are writing the cheques. Ironically, the biggest losers are often the very businesses politicians claim to champion.

Large corporations frequently welcome complexity because it becomes a competitive advantage. Every new compliance requirement protects established players from smaller, more agile competitors. Large organisations simply hire another compliance manager, another lawyer or another industrial relations adviser. Small and medium-sized enterprises don’t have that luxury.

They have owners who already wear half a dozen hats. They quote work during the day, chase debtors at night, train apprentices, manage cash flow, comply with workplace legislation and somehow still find time to innovate. Every additional procurement hurdle may appear insignificant to a government department, but collectively they represent hundreds of hours that could have been spent improving products, investing in new equipment or creating jobs.

Politicians regularly describe small business as the backbone of the Australian economy. They just keep forgetting to stop breaking its back. This is also one of the least discussed reasons for Australia’s productivity problem. Governments love holding productivity summits. They commission reviews, establish taskforces and release glossy discussion papers asking why productivity growth has stalled.

Perhaps they should begin by reading their own procurement policies.

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The United States? Ol’ Blighty? No: he’s talking about Australia. Of the 1930s, unfortunately.

If you can believe it, the Labor party constitution enshrined nationalisation as an objective in their platform until 2013. Just like when you buy plane tickets using modern smartphones and Web 2.0 when the actual computers running the booking system aren’t too far removed from reading punch cards, socialising the means of production was buried beneath talk of social democracy via the free market – even Kevin 07’s mantra of “economic conservatism” was dreaming of cuddles with Red Ted Theodore. (He even had his own Mungana scandal – pink batts.)

He was Hayek in the streets but Keynes in the sheets, to coin a phrase. When the Global Financial Crisis hit shortly after his election (what is it with Labor prime ministers coming in just as global finance goes to hell?) his first instinct was to spend upwards of 1% of GDP – then another $42 billion stimulus two years later.

Slow, steady surpluses devolved into the red quickly, and their rudderless Coalition counterparts did nothing to tame it – and now we’re staring down the barrel of a $1.022 trillion government debt with almost no appetite on either side (if we’re still pretending there’s two sides) to rein it in.

We were threatened at gunpoint to “trust the science” during the pandemic but when it comes to the dismal science, we’re just sort of winging it. We’ve always done it that way. Maybe it’s why we kinda suck?

According to Harvard University Kennedy School’s Economic Complexity Index, which ranks countries by their ability to manufacture and export a diverse range of complex goods and services, Australia’s economic complexity ranks 105^th out of 145 countries, just below Botswana.

Do you want to invent something? Raise capital for some new app that has a clock bolted on to an AI blockchain cloud solution? Don’t bother. Go overseas. If you want to make some real cash, buy a bunch of houses instead. Dig stuff out of the ground; don’t make anything with it though. Well, that was the conventional wisdom, anyway. Australian government has historically shunned boffins who know a lot about something, preferring their own heady smell of Dunning-Kruger style expertise.

German-born Australian economist Heinz Arndt remarked that the Commonwealth “in the 1950s and 1960s had the advice of better economists inside than were to be found outside […] They did not feel the need for outside help, so that university economists were more remote from government than in most other western countries.”

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Despite Robert Menzies snuffing out Labor’s lightman on the hill Ben Chifley with promises of V8-powered free enterprise against horse and cart socialism in 1949, Menzies through Treasurer Arthur Fadden retained the counsel of staunch Keynesian economist Sir Douglas Copland, former Prices Commissioner (we really were insane, weren’t we), Vice-Chancellor of the ANU and once and future founder of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia in 1960. Full employment forever and always, inflation… eh, worry about that later. Something about spoons and shovels and ditches come to mind.

Economic historian Alex Millmow described his approach as to “stabilise the economy and ensure a certain measure of security for all… it would be necessary for the nation as a whole to engage in public investment and not be fearful of national debt.” Sounds very, very familiar.

This Keynesian consensus ran through successive Coalition parliaments from Menzies’ election right until McMahon’s defeat in 1972. Funnily enough, tariffs on imports of clothes and cars were cut by 25% overnight by the Whitlam government – on the advice of two economics lecturers: Fred Gruen of the ANU, and Brian Brogan of Monash University. Too bad about the whole big bloated government thing.

Australia has only really experienced significant monetary reform once or twice in its history – most recently being the floating of the Australian dollar in the 1980s by the socialist revolutionaries Hawke and Keating. They encountered dogged bureaucratic resistance yet encouragement from (you guessed it) actual economists.

An actual economist Dr. Jim Chalmers, Ph.D. (on how great Paul Keating was… as a statesman) is not. Whoever he consulted to cook up the CGT changes and negative gearing wasn’t an economist either. Writing in 2023 in lefty rag the Monthly, he penned an essay, “Capitalism after crises.”

He advocated (and still does) for government to involve itself in capital markets to collaborate with enterprises that suit the government’s social and environmental priorities. He calls this ‘values-based capitalism’ which just sounds like microwaved Marxism; it’s a steaming pile when you open the door; if you dare dig a few scoops in, you realise it’s the same cold mushy gruel they’ve been serving up for going on 200 years now. Capitalism weathers crises just fine, Jim; leftist politicians like you stoke and exploit fears. “It’s not just our economic institutions that need renewing and restructuring, but our markets as well,” he wrote. No offence, but it sounds like some fucking commie gobbledygook to me.

When economics is left to economists, we do great things – at least in pieces. When we leave it to politicians and bureaucrats who think they know better – well, we get the 2026 Federal Budget; or worse. Let’s leave the plane flying to the pilots, yeah?