Australia
The Federal Government Should Deliver a Decade of Surpluses
A government’s balance sheet indicates whether it is engaging in intergenerational redistribution. If the government has negative net assets it is leaving future generations with more obligations than benefits. A government with positive net assets is leaving future generations with more benefits than obligations. Governments have no advantages over individuals in making decisions about what to leave to future generations,...
The Global Online Safety Regulators Network: A Global Surveillance State?
The journalist Michael Schellenberger recently discovered that there is a formal government censorship network called the “Global Online Safety Regulators Network” (GORSN). Australia’s top Internet censor, Julie Inman Grant, an American, described it at the World Economic Forum. The group includes censors from Australia, France, Ireland, South Africa, Korea, the UK, and Fiji. This is a concerning development for anyone...
Too Much Government
Expectations of the role of the government have been rising steadily over the last decade. They rose substantially during the eastern states’ bushfires in late 2019 and early 2020, and again in response to the floods that followed in NSW and Queensland. And they reached stratospheric levels during the Covid panic. Judged by the number of lives lost, those bushfires...
A Digital Dark Age (part 3)
‘We will continue to be your single source of truth. Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth’. So said former New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Covid When Covid hit in 2020, people had no reason to doubt what they were being told by their political leaders. However, the pandemic very quickly exposed the incompetence of many in the medical...
A Digital Dark Age (part 2)
The only currency that matters is power – getting it and holding on to it. Attaining power these days involves denigrating and silencing your opponents in any way possible: censoring them, branding what they say as misinformation, disinformation or malinformation, with the primary aim being to prevent them getting their message out. As has been observed, ‘When ideas are bad, censorship...
A Digital Dark Age
Step into my parlour, said the spider to the fly,'Tis the prettiest little parlour, that ever you did spy,Oh no, no! then said the fly, to ask me is in vain,For who goes up to your winding stair, Can ne'er come down again. Mary Howitt’s old poem could well be describing another web, the one that ensnares us all – the...
Another Round of the Circus
Reproduced with permission from The BFD https://thebfd.co.nz/2024/04/16/another-round-of-the-circus/ Another day, another court case, and the scandal that just keeps on giving… keeps on giving. Justice Michael Lee has handed down his verdict in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation suit against Channel Ten and Lisa Wilkinson — and what a curious judgement it is. On the one hand, Lee states what has been obvious from...
The Enhanced Games
Australian Olympic medalist swimmer, James Magnussen, is making news headlines again. He has publicly announced that he plans to “dope to the eyeballs” to break a swimming world record, and win $1million. The competition’s officials are giving him their full support. James is the first high-profile athlete to officially join the proposed ‘Enhanced Games’; an international, multi-sport event with...
