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    A Nation of Takers

    By
    David Leyonhjelm
    -
    1

    One of the many inequities of Australia’s welfare system is the exclusion of family homes from the means test. Recipients of age or disability pensions can own houses worth millions of dollars while remaining eligible for pensions funded by the taxes of people who cannot afford to buy a house at all. 

    In private, many politicians agree that excluding the family home leads to unfair consequences. However, neither side of politics is willing to change it. There are simply too many Australians who insist they are entitled to a pension. 

    It is much the same with the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). It is widely known to be extensively rorted, with scheme providers charging participants several times what they charge non-participants for the same service. It is also well known that many people on the scheme are only mildly disabled, if at all. And yet, even as the cost threatens to bankrupt the country, even minor reforms prompt screams of protest. 

    Australia relies more heavily on individual income taxes than other developed countries

    Also threatening the national budget is the cost of childcare. It is no longer sufficient to keep small children happy while their parents are at work; it is now early education. Advocates have created a narrative that children who remain home with their mothers are somehow deprived. Childcare is rapidly becoming yet another entitlement to be funded by the government.  

    There was a time when Australians liked to think of themselves as self-reliant and quick to help each other, while receiving welfare was an embarrassment and an indication of failure. 

    This has been replaced by a culture of entitlement in which there is absolutely no compunction about receiving money from the government. Many people insist they have a right to a pension simply because they have paid taxes, despite that never having been the situation in Australia. Even those who have never paid tax (apart from GST), or who frittered their savings away on gambling and ‘substance abuse’, demand it. 

    Some of this thinking is attributable to the fact that a proportion of immigrants originate from countries which have contributory pension schemes. They assume it is no different in Australia. But a far bigger factor is the entitlement mentality. If someone else can get a pension, I should also get it. If someone else is receiving benefits via the NDIS, it’s only fair that I obtain them too. In fact, if there is money being handed out for anything, I’m entitled to it. 

    There is no longer any disgrace in receiving government benefits. Indeed, a thriving industry of accountants and Financial Planners specialises in rearranging their client’s affairs to meet eligibility requirements for government benefits, especially pensions and the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. 

    There is even intergenerational welfare, with extended families living on welfare their entire lives. This is particularly the case with certain indigenous communities, while “Lebanese back” is apparently sufficient to qualify for a disability support pension.

    Some admit that ‘government money’ originates with taxpayers, but it makes little difference. The sense of entitlement defies guilt, facts and reason, hence the reluctance of politicians to make changes for fear of losing votes. Even worse, many politicians use taxpayers’ money to buy votes. 

    The sense of entitlement owes it origins to the growth of the welfare state over the last half century, together with the rise in taxation that accompanied it. Although Australia has had an age pension for more than a century, disability assistance, childcare subsidies, unemployment benefits, medical benefits and many other handouts and subsidies are far more recent. 

    It has led to the perception of an all-pervasive government with unlimited resources. Moreover, if you go about it the right way, money can be extracted from it. 

    Also a factor is the level of income tax. Getting something back from the government to compensate for the amount of tax paid makes sense. Australia relies more heavily on individual income taxes than other developed countries, on average taking 25% of earnings. Plenty of people see little benefit for themselves. 

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    Obviously, this situation is unsustainable in the long term. As Margaret Thatcher once said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” 

    Australia is already living beyond its means, with budget deficits year after year. It is also actively discouraging industries that support the economy – think coal exports, gas exports, sheep exports – while increasing energy costs. It obviously cannot last. 

    What the country needs is a government that encourages self-reliance rather than dependence on the state. Unfortunately, there is no sign of that.

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    Liberty Itch is Australia’s leading libertarian media outlet.

    Its stable of writers has promoted the cause of liberty and freedom across

    the economic and social spectrum through the publication of more than 300 quality articles.

    Do you have something you’d like to say? If so, please send your contribution to editor@libertyitch.com

    Olympic Dam’s Gold Medal Performance

    By
    Bob Day
    -
    0

    It is exactly 50 years since Western Mining first discovered the massive gold, silver, copper and uranium ore body at the aptly-named Olympic Dam in South Australia. A golden anniversary indeed!

    But discovering the ore was just the beginning. 

    The fight to allow uranium mining at Olympic Dam was brutal. 

    The ruling Labor Party, under then Premier Don Dunstan, was vehemently opposed to uranium mining and particularly opposed to uranium mining at Olympic Dam.

    One of the key opponents of Olympic Dam, calling it a ‘a mirage in the desert’, was one Mike Rann, an anti-uranium campaigner from New Zealand who had come to South Australia to work for Dunstan. Rann eventually became Premier of South Australia in 2002.

    The Liberal Party, led by David Tonkin and his deputy Roger Goldsworthy, won the next election and in 1980 set about implementing their proposed ‘Olympic Dam Indenture Agreement’, building both the mine and nearby township of Roxby Downs.

    Its final passage, through the SA parliament’s Upper House in 1982, came down to a single vote – Labor’s Norm Foster. A former wharf worker, Foster had sat on the select committee into Olympic Dam and did not agree with Labor’s position that uranium mining was an environmental or ethical scourge. 

    On the day before the final vote on the project Foster resigned from the Labor Party and, the following day, crossed the floor of parliament to give his vote to the Tonkin government thereby clearing the way for the new mine.

    For years following his actions, Foster was vilified by the ALP. However, his role in establishing one of South Australia’s most successful projects (and biggest earners!) was later acknowledged by the Labor Party and his membership restored.

    Fast forward to 2024, and Australia is experiencing a similar political challenge closely related to uranium mining – nuclear energy.

    The case for nuclear power has been well argued, but there are more than just economic and energy reliability reasons for embracing nuclear power. There could also be significant strategic benefits.

    First, if there’s one thing we learned from the pandemic, it’s the importance of self-reliance. 

    Australia has for too long been dependent on overseas supply chains – fuel and energy being no exception.

    Australia’s future energy needs are currently being assessed against three criteria – reliability, affordability, and emissions intensity. 

    Unfortunately, the laws of physics and economics do not allow all three. Two out of three yes, three out of three no. 

    As emissions intensity has pretty much been mandated, this leaves only reliability and affordability to choose from. Clearly, reliability has to win.

    No form of renewable energy generation yet invented or discovered is reliable enough to meet Australia’s base-load demand.

    Nuclear power is both reliable and emissions-free. 

    It is, however, expensive to build. Again, two out of three.  

    In addition, there is a fourth aspect worthy of consideration – regional security.  

    South Korea, Japan, India and Pakistan all have nuclear power. Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh and the Philippines are looking to develop it. 

    All have, or will have, spent nuclear fuel.  

    As Australia engages more with Asia, we bring a unique perspective and relationship devoid of the centuries-old enmities and history that exists between some of these countries.  

    We could be the Switzerland of the South.

    Australia could establish an Asia-Pacific office for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).  We could host conferences and bring the world’s best nuclear minds here.  

    We could bring together expertise on the ways in which other nations are storing their spent nuclear fuel.  We could, as the 2015 SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission heard, store that fuel in South Australia, and not have it stored within the borders of nations with fractious relations and/or unstable geology.  

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    “The International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA) could establish an Asia-Pacific office in Australia. We could host conferences and bring the world’s best nuclear minds here.”

    The countries whose spent fuel was stored here would have an interest in our security.

    And as well as the multi-billion-dollar economic benefits – abolishing Stamp Duty, Payroll Tax, Occupational Licencing charges and many other taxes, charges and levies – with the latest technology we may even be able to extract more recycled power from the spent fuel in the future.  

    The more we engage with the nuclear question, the more positive the opportunities arise.  

    But first we must remove the regulatory obstacles and legislated bans blocking Australia’s economic and energy independence. 

    Got something to say?

    Liberty Itch is Australia’s leading libertarian media outlet.

    Its stable of writers has promoted the cause of liberty and freedom across

    the economic and social spectrum through the publication of more than 300 quality articles.

    Do you have something you’d like to say? If so, please send your contribution to editor@libertyitch.com

    More Political Competition

    By
    Dimitri Burshtein
    -
    0

    According to Treasurer Jim Chalmers, increasing competition among supermarket giants will help deliver lower grocery prices: “If it is more competitive, more transparent and people are getting a fair go, better outcomes will be seen at the supermarket checkout“.  

    The ACCC also notes that competition encourages innovation.  

    But where enhanced market competition can lead to improved consumer outcomes, enhanced political competition can lead to improved citizen outcomes: the former through lower prices and better quality, and the latter through lower taxes and better services.

    And just as those in the commercial sector prefer less competition, so too do the players in the political sector; the dominant political parties frequently colluding to modify electoral laws to defend their incumbency.  

    The Albanese government, while pursuing a business competition reform agenda, is also surreptitiously running an electoral reform agenda which will have the opposite effect, reducing political competition.

    Australian states and territories used to compete on policy and tax rates, acting as “laboratories of democracy”

    In his 1776 magnum opus The Wealth of Nations, the father of economics Adam Smith wrote, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

    This quote is often used to describe the potential for anti-competitive behaviour within business.  However, with politics now more of a trade than a calling, Smith’s description equally applies to our elected class—a group that regularly meets, often for merriment, in a well-appointed building, to conspire against the Australian public.

    While Chalmers and Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh pursue new competition law amendments claimed to “make our economy more productive, more dynamic, and more competitive”, Special Minister of State Don Farrell is developing plans to make it more difficult for small parties and independent candidates to compete in the political marketplace.  Farrell even recently stated that “the Westminster system provides for a two-party operation.”  A duopoly that is.

    Recently also South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas proposed to ban electoral donations.  Were such a reform implemented, it would further privilege and embed the major parties by making it exceptionally difficult for new parties to emerge.  Raised barriers to entry lead to reduced competition.

    Political parties are exempted from many important laws including privacy and the proposed mis- and dis- information laws.  This makes their perpetual assault on political competition and concentration of political power even more nefarious.

    At a time of declining support for the major parties as measured by first preference voting and polling, the major parties continue to work together to maintain their political duopoly.

    Although the latest electoral proposals are being driven by a Labor Government, the Coalition also has dirty hands.  In 2021, the Coalition government passed laws, with Labor’s support, to shorten pre-polling periods and force the deregistration of some minor parties.  As part of this the major parties confiscated the words “liberal” and “labor” from the political lexicon, perpetually vesting these terms in themselves.

    Even Gough Whitlam’s grand dream of fixed four-year electoral terms has received bipartisan support with both John Howard and Peter Dutton offering endorsement. Extended terms transfer power from the people to the elected with no recourse, such as binding citizen-initiated referenda (as occur in Switzerland) or recall elections (as occur in the US).

    It was not always thus.  Over recent years, our neo-professional political class has increasingly and incrementally colluded to raise the barriers to entry for alternative parties and candidates.  This has contributed to a homogenization of personnel and policy, making the differences between the average Labor and Coalition candidate barely discernible to the average voter.

    For all the talk of diversity, this homogenization has led to much reduced experiential, cognitive and policy differentiation among politicians.  Many members of our parliaments, irrespective of party, gender, race, sexual preference or religion, follow similar educational and pre-parliamentary career paths.  While elected governments may change, there is a consistent trajectory of permanent government expansion and price rises through ever higher taxes.

    Since the turn of the millennium, it has been bipartisan policy and practice to increase spending, taxes, and the volume of regulations to ever greater levels.  The assaults on civil liberties and the crowding out of civil society similarly continue unabated.

    But where enhanced market competition can lead to improved consumer outcomes, enhanced political competition can lead to improved citizen outcomes

    It is not just a reduction of competition at the political level.  There has been a long-term de-federalisation project to aggregate power in Canberra; a manifestation of the French “disease” described by Alexis de Tocqueville as the tendency to concentrate authority in central government; something Tocqueville believed to be detrimental to political and social health.

    Australian states and territories used to compete on policy and tax rates, acting as “laboratories of democracy”, a term coined by US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.  Death duties in Australia were abolished not through some fiat from Canberra but because of competition between the states and territories.

    However, today some 81 percent of total tax revenue is collected by the Commonwealth, leading to policy centralisation and standardisation.  Matters constitutionally the provenance of the states, such as health and education, are now increasingly directed out of Canberra; fidelity to the intent of the Australian constitution and of tax and policy competition be damned.  

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    Just recently, the United States celebrated 248 years of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, it included this famous sentence: “… Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”.

    Just as politics is downstream from culture, policy is downstream from politics.  It’s time to change the way politics is done in Australia.

    Carpet Call: The Imperfect Gift of Religious Freedom

    By
    Bob Day
    -
    0

    John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) is a clever guy. 

    As Robert McCall (aka Denzel Washington) says in the movie Equalizer 2 to Miles, a troubled teenager: ‘It takes talent to make money, Miles, but it takes brains to keep it’. 

    Regardless of one’s taste in music, there’s no doubting John Lydon had talent – and brains.

    ‘Imperfection is at the heart of life’, Lydon once said. ‘Imperfection is the greatest gift of all.’

    ‘Arabic rug makers will make their work perfect except for one tiny stitch, because nothing is perfect in the eyes of God. Only God is perfect. I think that is magnificently intelligent’.

    Before the 2022 federal election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to overhaul religious protection laws in Australia. 

    Under existing law, when hiring teachers or workers, faith-based organisations are able to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity via an exemption from anti-discrimination laws.

    Forcing faith-based schools to become indistinguishable from secular schools with respect to staffing is irrational

    The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) now says that exemption should be scrapped. No legislation has yet been introduced.

    Not content to wait for the Federal Government to act, activists have shifted to the old ‘State by State’ stalking horse approach – find the most amenable State, introduce the law there and then get other States to adopt it one by one. Once a few States have adopted the new law, the Federal Government is then pressured into doing the same. It’s a tried-and-tested model of creeping change.

    Former SA Greens Senator and now Greens SA Upper House member Robert Simms is proposing to introduce legislation into the SA Parliament next month which would remove all exemptions from anti-discrimination laws.

    Robert Simms

    There are some things people will not be dictated to or lectured about. One of those is their faith or their morals – particularly what they teach their children. They will certainly not be brow-beaten or cowed into submission by being called bigots or homophobes.

    The Left talks about equality and tolerance but this religious freedom debate is not about either of those. It is about discrimination against religious people. The Left may call for tolerance but what they really want is for everyone to agree with and endorse – even celebrate – their view of the world. They are not interested in debate or argument; they simply want the legislative power of the state to force everyone to comply.

    If being free means anything, it means citizens having the right to ensure that the religious and moral education of their children conforms with their own convictions – as outlined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia is a signatory. 

    It means having freedom of conscience, and the freedom to believe and practice the core tenets and values of a person’s faith. It is the state’s role to protect those rights.

    There’s no doubt that the Left is out to undermine our freedoms. They’re coming for our churches, our schools, our faith-based organisations, our farms, our mines, our cars and, most of all, our children. They’re also coming for our old people with their euthanasia packs, for our about-to-be-born babies with their grotesque abortion laws, and they’re coming to indoctrinate our primary school children. They’re also coming for Christmas Day and Australia Day and Anzac Day and Remembrance Day. These people mean business.

    People and faith-based organisations – schools, hospitals, aged care providers and charities – should not have to rely on exemptions from anti-discrimination laws to function in accordance with their faith. 

    The Left talks about equality and tolerance but this religious freedom debate is not about either of those.

    They should, by right, have the freedom to select people as they see fit. 

    Political parties grant that right to themselves because they believe, quite rightly, that the political allegiance of a job applicant matters. 

    In environmental groups, views about climate change are relevant; in women’s shelters, gender is very important. 

    Saying you can only become a member of a chess club if you play chess is not discriminating against people who don’t play chess! 

    In ethnic clubs and institutions, ethnicity is sensible and practical. 

    We accept all these differences. 

    And in faith-based organisations, faith matters. 

    Forcing faith-based schools to become indistinguishable from secular schools with respect to staffing is irrational. After all, no-one is forced to work for a faith-based organisation or send their children to a faith-based school where all the staff follow that particular faith.

    Expressions of faith by a person or faith-based organisations must be declared lawful. Statutory exemptions are totally inadequate. Exemptions granted can just as easily be withdrawn – as is now being proposed.

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    The right to religious freedom must be treated as a pre-eminent right and be recognised and protected. Human Rights Commissions should have no role to play. 

    A Commonwealth law, by reference to its Objects clauses, must recognise religious freedom as pre-eminent and override all state and territory anti-discrimination laws.

    To paraphrase John Lydon, while such a law may be imperfect, it would be a magnificent gift.

    Out of Proportion 

    By
    Max Payne
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    0

    Recent elections in both the UK and France highlight major flaws in their electoral systems, with lessons for Australia. 

    Compare the pair:

    UK Labour (2024 UK election)

    • National vote share: 33.8%
    • Seats won (% of chamber): 63.38

    Australian Labor Party (2022 Australian Federal election)

    • National vote share (2pp): 52.13% 
    • Seats won (% of chamber): 51

    How can an electoral system be considered fair when one party (Labour) can take 34% of the national vote and win a ‘landslide’ election, while another (Reform) can take almost 15% and go home with 0.8% of the seats (5 out of 650)? It’s a similar story in France, where National Rally comfortably won the popular vote but will walk away with less seats than Macron’s centrists and the NPF. 

    Political candidates and parties receive public electoral funding in Australia on a per-vote basis.

    It highlights the importance of two key pillars of Australia’s electoral system, but also points to a couple of weaknesses. 

    I believe the UK election highlighted the fact that first past the post voting is neither fair nor representative. In an election dominated by an almost universal will to unseat the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats often campaigned on prior results or current polling to indicate that voters should vote ‘tactically’ to ensure the Tories lost.

    On the other hand, Nigel Farage’s Reform Party did not encourage such a practice, instead seeking to simply gain votes at everyone’s expense. As a result, the right-wing vote was regularly ‘split’ and either Labour or the Lib Dems were able to take the highest vote share.

    Apart from the national vote being wildly out of proportion to the composition of Parliament, it is unfortunate that parties should gain votes tactically. It is regrettable that voters, rather than choose their preferred party/candidate, feel compelled to vote for the one they feel is most likely to defeat an incumbent they dislike. There’s no way to know how many votes for each party represent a genuine first preference for them. 

    The secondary issue here is the lack of a vehicle for proportional representation. If the UK had a second (democratically elected) house of parliament that was elected via proportional representation, its make-up would more closely resemble the national vote share, at the same time negating the need for any tactical voting. 

    To bring us back to Australia, although preferential voting in the House of Representatives mostly renders tactical voting unnecessary, there are exceptions. The two-party preferred (2pp) system can influence voters under certain conditions to change their first preference in order to ensure a supposedly more viable candidate is not eliminated early – this occurred in ‘Teal’ seats at the 2022 Federal Election. 

    UK election highlighted the fact that first past the post voting is neither fair nor representative.

    This issue is compounded by the fact that political candidates and parties receive public electoral funding in Australia on a per-vote basis. This practice should ultimately end, not only for the aforementioned factors that influence voters, but due to the ongoing advantage it gives larger political players. 

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    The other meaningful change that I’d make to Australia’s electoral system would be to abolish any districting within our state upper houses. By creating geographic segments within the overall electorate, the vote quota needed to gain a seat increases – again locking out smaller players and denying their voters representation. In my home state of Victoria, new legislation (similar to recent reforms in WA) could remove our upper house regions, creating a state-wide proportional race for the Legislative Council.  

    So don’t knock preferential voting: it allows for the most genuine expression of voter intention, and proportional representation ensures even the small players take their rightful place in the chambers. The alternatives are not fit for purpose. 

    Childcare – Why should you pay for it?

    By
    David Leyonhjelm
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    0

    Starting before they are born, our governments spend a lot of money on children. 

    The Commonwealth budget for education alone is $67 billion, and in NSW $24 billion. Add the other states and territories, plus health care, and as the saying goes, pretty soon you’re talking real money. 

    While our society obviously values children highly, it is rare that anyone questions why so much of their cost is socialised. Having children is, after all, a choice. Other lifestyle choices do not attract such taxpayer generosity.

    Among the taxpayers who provide the funds are many who do not have children themselves. Some are yet to start a family, while others have chosen not to have them. But there are also those who, for various reasons, would very much like to become parents but cannot. 

    A strong case is always necessary to justify spending other people’s money, but a particularly convincing case is required to justify compelling those who cannot have children to pay for other people’s children. It’s like obliging paraplegics to pay for the running shoes of the able bodied. 

    The government thinks there is a strong case for childcare. It wants women to return to the workforce as soon as possible, so they resume paying tax and contributing to government revenue. With state and federal governments all addicted to spending more than they collect, they have a strong incentive to increase taxpayer numbers. 

    The government also argues that the less time women are out of the workforce, the more they retain their work skills. This is presented as a benefit to the women, as women who return to work more quickly typically earn higher incomes. However, they also pay more tax. 

    For the mothers of the children, the case is not so clear. Some women are obviously career oriented and anxious to return to the workforce as soon as possible. However, there are many who would prefer to care for their children themselves, especially while they are small, rather than entrust them to strangers in childcare facilities. Motherhood is a powerful instinct, and most jobs are rarely more engaging than raising a child. 

    The government also argues that the less time women are out of the workforce.

    The key reason most do not remain at home is economic: single income families with children typically struggle to pay a mortgage or rent plus general living expenses, vehicle expenses and the rest. 

    The underlying cause of this is government policies, particularly high income taxes, excise on essentials such as fuel, and the regulation and taxes that lead to expensive housing. Remove these and it would be a lot easier to live on one income. 

    From the point of view of the children, the case for childcare is even less compelling. Mothers have been caring for their children for thousands of years and have not recently become incompetent. 

    But we are told that it is no longer sufficient to simply keep children safe, happy and entertained while their parents are at work; the children must now be educated by qualified early childhood educators. It is now known as early childhood education and care (ECEC).

    Moreover, whereas childcare workers were once just sensible, caring people, most with children or grandchildren of their own, they must now hold post-school – and sometimes even university-level – qualifications. Mothers who have successfully raised four children of their own cannot become childcare workers unless they have obtained the appropriate qualification, while those who have a qualification but no prior childminding experience are fine.

    There has also been a ratcheting up of regulation of the physical environment, the programs and routines offered, plus the ratio of staff to children in childcare centres. 

    For the most part this has been driven by middle-class parental guilt. That is, parents seeking to justify the decision to place their children in childcare are demanding standards that allow them to believe their offspring are receiving a better start in life than if they stayed at home. It makes them feel better about leaving the kids with someone else. 

    Unfortunately, there is no evidence to show that these standards are enhancing children’s outcomes. This was conceded in the Productivity Commission Inquiry Report into Childcare and Early Childhood Learning. The evidence indicates that the only children who benefit from ECEC are from dysfunctional households, such as those where substance abuse is an issue. 

    Furthermore, the ramped-up regulation and credentialism have made childcare seriously expensive. Even moderately well-paid parents baulk when the cost is almost as much as they can earn by going to work. For the poorest parents, especially single mothers who have a strong need to return to work, it is simply out of reach.  

    A strong case is always necessary to justify spending other people’s money,

    Childcare advocates, especially those with a pecuniary interest, are seeking to convince the government to implement a universal ECEC system, based on recognising early childhood education as a fundamental need. Naturally they claim this should be provided at minimal cost to parents, arguing it would give children the support they need to thrive into adulthood, while parents, particularly women, would be better able to balance work and care responsibilities.

    This is a profoundly elitist view, based on the assumption that virtually all women prefer to return to work, and that virtually all children benefit from early childcare education. As previously discussed, neither is true. Moreover, the cost of such a system, tens of billions of dollars, would be borne by taxpayers.

    What is never considered is changing the incentives so mothers do not feel so pressured to return to work. If income taxes were significantly reduced by, for example, allowing single income households to split their income between working and non-working parents, the pressure would ease. If the cost of childcare was tax deductible, it would help. If fuel excise plus GST did not take over half the cost of fuel, households would have more money for other purposes. If housing was not so heavily taxed and regulated by local, state and federal governments, there would be more houses at affordable prices. 

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    And if childcare was less regulated, with only those opting for early childhood education paying for it, the cost of ordinary childcare to mothers who genuinely need it would be more affordable. 

    As it stands, ECEC is a taxpayer-funded elite middle-class racket. Rather than hit taxpayers for ever increasing subsidies, the sector needs to be substantially deregulated.  Middle and upper-middle class families who expect gold-plated, diamond-encrusted childcare – with its university educated workers and low staff ratios – should pay for it themselves.

    The Coming Populist Revolt

    By
    Gary Johns
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    0

    Populism occurs when the masses revolt against the elites’ view of the world. Elite opinion does not often deal directly with popular opinion, that is, with the people who have to pay for elite opinion. When elites get it wrong, the masses revolt through the ballot; the Voice referendum being a good example. The question is, when is the next chance?

    Currently, the elite consensus on issues like net zero, immigration and identity politics is so far removed from the reality of the masses that it is no wonder they are pushing back. The populist revolt, should it occur, will play out at three levels – international, national and personal.

    International

    Net zero is a preposterous notion. The world population is eight billion people. By 2050, it could be 10 billion people, a 25 per cent increase. These people will need energy. World energy consumption is 600 BTUs. By 2050, it could be 900 BTUs, a 50 per cent increase: more people, higher living standards, more energy. Electricity generation will rise mainly in the Asia-Pacific among developing nations. Renewables do not generally feature in developing countries’ energy mixes anywhere near developed nations’ proportions.

    Women have gained formal and substantive equality in Australia.

    Of 144 nations tracked for net zero, only 26 have placed in law their commitment to net zero by 2050 (or sooner). For example, the Maldives has pledged net zero by 2030 but it has no plan or accountability mechanism; it is pure hot air. Even Goody Two-Shoes Finland leaves out aviation and shipping and has plans but no mechanism for carbon removal. The US (2050), Russia (2060), China (2060), India (2070) and Brazil (2050) have a ‘policy document’, but nothing in law.

    Australia has a plan written in law that is sure to kill the nation’s wealth. Industrial and economic mayhem, loss of reliable energy and higher energy prices will reduce living standards. Minister Bowen’s deployment targets are logistically impossible in the time frame.

    Kenneth Schultz estimates a total cost of $1.4 trillion for the Coalition’s renewables-nuclear option. He estimates the cost for Labor’s renewables-battery option at $4.4 trillion, nine times the federal government’s total annual revenue.

    National 

    Migration in Europe and Australia is dangerous at levels that challenge national unity. Numbers count. If one million Palestinians settled in Australia in a short period, for example, the result would undermine Australian society. Palestinians would settle in a few suburbs and recreate a Palestinian society, i.e. one that recreates the hatred extant in Gaza and the West Bank.

    Values also count. Australia would do well to distinguish migrants by the nature of their observance, which is apparent in the laws on marriage, succession, or rape in marriage among our key Islamic migrant source countries: Lebanon, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia. A striking feature of those laws is that they distinguish the application of the law by religion. Religion first; the rule of law second. The question is how to distinguish this at an individual level. Classing people by source country is too crude and unfair, but not to distinguish people would be foolhardy. Why should Australia invite those unlikely to integrate or, worse, become an enemy?

    Those who appreciate the benefits of the nation-state would support Prime Minister John Howard’s view that, ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.’ Howard and the Australian electorate recognised that some people are not welcome as they are unlikely to fit in. In the long term, Australia will be much more Indian and Chinese. Of the three million permanent migrants who arrived in Australia since 2000, almost 450,000 were from India, and nearly 350,000 were from China. The assumption of integration must be reinforced.

    The easy assumptions of integration post-World War II no longer hold. Since 2022, the Netherlands has required a substantial investment from a person applying for permanent residence before that privilege is granted. The civic integration requirements are set out in the Civic Integration Act 2021. The point of the Netherlands law is that applicants must be sufficiently integrated before they become permanent.

    The populist revolt, should it occur, will play out at three levels – international, national and personal.

    Personal

    Women have gained formal and substantive equality in Australia. They are free to sing the praises of Palestine. Homosexuals are free to marry and raise children. But the trans lobby wants to abolish gender, which is dangerous to the mental health of trans people. Sex must be understood in evolutionary terms. There must be sperm and eggs for reproduction. Two women do not create a child, and two men do not create a child. They may care for them, and we wish them well. The proposition that sex is not binary, that it is socially determined, is dangerous, especially to those who find that they are not at ease with their sex and want to reassign their sex to suit their ‘gender’.

    Anyone should be free to express themselves as male or female. But when sex is detached from reproduction, there are consequences. As Zachary Elliott argues in Binary: Debunking the Sex Spectrum Myth, ‘If we abandon sex as an important category in our society, how can we conduct safe and effective medical research and treatment; fight sex-based injustices; record accurate crime statistics; maintain fair, safe, and competitive sports categories; and implement equal opportunities for both sexes?’

    There is a claim that almost two per cent of the population is intersex, neither male nor female. The numbers consist almost entirely of those who suffer developmental disorders, such as late-onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia. People with these conditions account for nearly all the males or females who do not appear to be one or the other. The disorders occur in nature and do not result in good health. They are not socially determined.

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    Populism in the service of correcting the madness of net zero, overplayed migration and undermined sexual identity are ground zero for the populist fightback. The masses await the right leader and the right policies. Populism? More please!

    Gary Johns is Chairman of Close the Gap Research 

    This article was first published in The Spectator.

    Can libertarianism become a brand in Australia?

    By
    Jonathan Cole
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    Dean Russell, a staff member at The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), was the first to propose that America’s classical liberals and individualists rebrand themselves as “libertarians.” In an article published by FEE in 1955, Russell wrote: “Let those of us who love liberty trade-mark and reserve for our use the good and honourable word ‘libertarian.’” 

    That good and honourable term was actually coined, or at least first used in print, by William Belsham in 1789. At that time, and until its political repurposing by Russell, it denoted a distinct philosophical school in the context of debates about free will. The opponents of philosophical libertarians then were necessitarians.

    The context for Russell’s proposal was the perversion of the term “liberal” in the American political context at the hands of big government New Deal interventionists. This development led to the rather awkward, and unusual, situation of political opponents using exactly the same language to define themselves. The libertarian rebrand was, if nothing else, an admission of defeat: the term “liberal” had been irredeemably corrupted in the eyes of American liberals who identified with the tradition of nineteenth century liberalism and the principles of the American revolution. Yet, it proved to be wildly successful and is now in wide usage by America’s liberty lovers in all their diversity and eccentricity. Indeed, there now exists a robust “libertarian” ecosystem in America, replete with think tanks, academics, journalists, magazines, personalities, the odd celebrity and a political party to boot.

    The truth is that the liberalism rebranded libertarianism in America, and only belatedly in Australia

    However, this linguistic turn, which proved so successful in the American context, has struggled to find relevance and application in other contexts like Australia. Here, “liberal” has stubbornly retained its nineteenth century brand connotations, if not its genuine ideological content. Thanks to the dominance of the Liberal Party as the right-hand pole in Australia’s bipolar political contest, the term “liberal” continues to evoke in the minds of many political consumers something right of centre, as amorphous, incoherent and ill-defined as that may be. This brand phenomenon has served as a bulwark against the kind of leftward semantic evolution that the term “liberal” underwent in early twentieth century America. 

    Moreover, the most ambitious among those who now embrace the term “conservative” to describe their political identity still find the Liberal Party of Australia to be the most conducive vehicle for political influence, notwithstanding pressures and temptations from Australia’s motley collection of right-wing populist minor parties. As such, Australia’s Liberal Party boasts an influential conservative wing, described routinely in left-friendly media outlets as the “hard right” or “far right.” This association of the term “conservative” with “liberal,” let alone “hard right” with “liberal,” is an association that simply does not exist in the American political market. It is a peculiar distinctive of the Australian political landscape, a quirk, as it were. It does, however, provide yet further explanation for why the term “liberal” has resisted its American descent into the semantics of liberal progressivism, at least in the minds of the public, and through them the political vernacular of Australia 

    The term “liberal” had been irredeemably corrupted in the eyes of American liberals

    The fact that Australia’s most successful libertarian party was founded under the name Liberal Democrats in 2001 and only changed its name to the Libertarian party in 2023 speaks volumes about the fortunes of the term “liberal” in Australia (there were legal reasons to change the name). It speaks, on the one hand, to the classical liberal connotations of the term in Australia of 2001, the golden age of Howard’s Broad Church, with its putative synthesis of Millian liberalism and Burkean conservativism. Its name change, on the other hand, in an era in which so-called “moderate” liberals in the Liberal Party stand for woke-lite social policy and a slightly less interventionist economic policy than the Australian Labor Party, signals the final severance of the conjunction “classical” and “liberal in the Australian context, more than 200 years after it arrived in the Australian continent with European settlement, and 68 years after a libertarian rebrand in America. 

    The Liberal Party is now constituted by incompatible liberal progressives and conservatives, neither of whom show any real interest in advancing the classical liberal cause. While an uneasy truce prevails following the sectarian civil war of the immediate past, they now inhabit a rather unhappy marriage of convenience. They sleep in separate bedrooms, but stay together for the sake of the kids, in this case the chance at electoral success. Meanwhile, Australia’s classical liberals have deserted the Liberal Party and thrown in their lot with Australia’s radical liberals to embrace, albeit with some consternation and anxiety, the label “libertarian.”

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    The challenge confronting Australia’s nascent libertarian movement, now that it has finally parted ways with the term “liberal,” is to galvanise Australia’s small but passionate band of liberty lovers around a term that is foreign to the Australian political lexicon. More challenging still, there is the task of cultivating a libertarian constituency that prizes and prioritises individual freedom, property rights, unhampered markets, limited government and peaceful international relations in a country whose founding mythos and national identity are not centred around the concept of liberty, as they are in America. The truth is that the liberalism rebranded libertarianism in America, and only belatedly in Australia, are different species of the genus “liberalism,” each with their own distinct origins, political histories and intellectual development. All political ideologies face a temptation in the Australian context to simply ape and regurgitate the loud, exciting and flamboyant political ideas and innovations that inevitably flow downstream from America to Australia. This is a particular temptation for Australia’s right-wing heirs of the liberal tradition who have recently chosen to embrace the language of the much more highly developed and institutionalised ecosystem in America. If libertarianism is to have any future at all in Australia, it will need to take inspiration from the best that American libertarianism has to offer and adapt, refine and develop it for the unique socio-political environment of Australia. 

    Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

    By
    James Hol
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    For those of us who still occasionally like to check in on what the mainstream media is doing, there has been a topic that has got chins wagging and jowls flapping lately: “the tobacco wars”. 

    While the mainstream media, in typical fashion, has sensationalised the story, it is true that black and grey market tobacco is abundant in the community.

    BLACK, WHITE AND GREY

    As a (recently quit) smoker, I see it everywhere. My smoker friends brag about the newest place they discovered, with even cheaper prices, while they pull a cigarette out of their fully branded pack. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw a drab-brown (plain packaging) pack of cigarettes. And I wouldn’t be much of a libertarian if I didn’t confess that I haven’t bought a pack of cigarettes through a shop compelled to display a “retail tobacco merchant license” in well over a year.

    The obvious appeal of black and grey market tobacco is the near-two-thirds savings. I can buy a 20-pack of Marlboro Reds for under $20, while an authorised tobacco merchant is selling the same pack for over $50 (which I had to look up because it has been that long). And as more shopfronts pop up, the price is pushed down – a testament to the free market. 

    Anybody serious about removing the illicit tobacco market

    Even your poorest friends can afford to smoke chop-chop, illegally grown roll-your-own tobacco, at 50c per gram – a sixth of the price compared to roll-your-own tobacco in the authorised market.

    ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

    Despite the fact that, I would guess, most smokers are paying less for cigarettes than they have in over a decade, there are serious concerns that accompany a rising illicit market for an addictive product. Bikies and organised crime groups are starting to muscle in on the market, aggressively extorting tobacco merchants (as opposed to the more passive extortion of tobacco tax) and violently vandalising competitors.

    Stories of tobacco shops being vandalised and torched are becoming a near-weekly occurrence. And while I have little sympathy for organised criminals, it is not only criminals being affected: legitimate tobacco merchants are in their crosshairs and innocent victims are inevitably caught in the blaze. So week-in and week-out, the mainstream media trots out some new “expert” on the matter who declares another hair-brained measure will solve this problem once and for all.

    One of the more popular new measures being touted is to implement a licensing system to regulate tobacco merchants, similar to booze. The one problem with that is it already exists and has done precisely nothing to stem the flow of illicit tobacco. In South Australia, where I live, we have a had a tobacco merchant licensing system for as long as I have been a smoker (15 years) and illegal tobacco – and the organised crime that comes with it – is thriving.

    Even your poorest friends can afford to smoke chop-chop, illegally grown roll-your-own tobacco

    STATING THE OBVIOUS

    At the risk of sounding like another idiot who has the solution for this problem once and for all, there is actually an incredibly obvious solution to this problem: lower the price of cigarettes. There is only one way for those “evil”, “scary” big tobacco companies to sell their products at a loss and for merchants to make pennies on the dollar: abolish (or at least significantly reduce) tobacco tax. Well over half the price of the average pack of cigarettes or pouch of roll-your-own tobacco goes to the government in tobacco excise alone. Tobacco, like petrol, is also double-dipped on tax with an additional 10 per cent of GST.

    So while even someone with a cursory understanding of economics knows the only way to combat this problem is to compete on price – especially in a market where almost all forms of non-price competition have been outlawed – the obvious remains unspoken. To even suggest we use the only realistic solution to combat the illicit tobacco market, while also removing the most regressive tax in Australian history, is complete heresy.

    UP IN SMOKE

    Instead, we’ll pile on more regulations, evaporating the few legitimate tobacco merchants left, and “crackdown” on illicit tobacco, as governments continuously claim to do for no avail. We have known for a long time now that prohibition never works, and now we know that a surreptitious prohibition, via ever-increasing prices, achieves the same result.

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    Anybody serious about removing the illicit tobacco market, preventing organised crime from gaining a foothold in another industry and legitimately saving the lives of those caught in the collateral damage, knows the answer to this problem. Now it’s time to say it out loud.

    Does Australia Need a Bill of Rights?

    By
    Lushington D Brady
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    Does Australia need a Bill of Rights? After all, Australia is, it surprises many to learn, the only Western democracy with neither a constitutional nor legislated Bill of Rights. Various attempts over the years to legislate one have failed.

    The closest Australia ever got to a Constitutional free speech right was in 1992, when the High Court ruled that the Constitution carried an implied right to free speech — in political matters only. As the Chief Justice observed:

    To sustain a representative democracy embodying the principles prescribed by the Constitution, freedom of public discussion of political and economic matters is essential:  it would be a parody of democracy to confer on the people a power to choose their Parliament but to deny the freedom of public discussion from which the people derive their political judgments.   

    If that sounds like a reach, later High Court rulings found that it was. When a public servant who had been sacked for criticising the government on Twitter appealed the sacking on the grounds of such an implied right to political speech, she lost. The court ruled that there is no personal right to free speech, but a restriction on legislative power, which “extends only so far as is necessary to preserve and protect the system of representative and responsible government mandated by the Constitution”.

    The Australian government is, very quietly, once again resurrecting the idea of a legislated “Human Rights Act”

    If anyone still doubted that Australians’ basic rights are not protected from government overreach, the last five years should have put a brutal end to such illusions.

    But Canada has a Bill of Rights, and so does New Zealand, and yet their governments were no less draconian in crushing basic rights, from informed consent, to free assembly, to free speech.

    So it looks like a Bill of Rights is worth precisely shit when the government boot comes down.

    Or is it?

    For all its faults, the United States’ Bill of Rights is holding up reasonably well against sustained assault by the state and its corporate attack dogs.

    The difference lies in how a Bill of Rights is framed: to whit, which view of freedom is at its heart.

    There are, in essence, two basic conceptual frameworks of freedom, with very different outcomes. These are positive liberty and negative liberty. At first blush, “positive liberty” may seem like the preferred option. It’s “positive”, after all!

    In fact, positive liberty is the stomping ground of collectivist ideologies which are almost invariably associated with the worst shackles placed on individual freedom. That’s because positive liberty is better understood as “freedom to”.

    That is, the freedom to act only within the constraints set down by law and society. Anti-discrimination laws are an example of positive freedom: citizens are free to act only within the bounds established by the laws enacted by the state. You are free to say only this and not that. You are only as free as the state decides to let you be. You can choose any colour, so long as it’s black.

    Negative liberty is very different. Negative liberty is the “freedom from”. Freedom from constraint. Negative liberty establishes what citizens can tell the state it is not allowed to do. It is the type of freedom associated with classical liberalism and libertarianism. The US First Amendment is a negative liberty: Congress shall make no law… The Second Amendment is in the same vein: the peoples’ right shall not be infringed.

    The other great difference between the USA’s, and NZ’s and Canada’s, Bills of Rights is that the United States’ is Constitutional; NZ’s and Canada’s are legislative.

    A Constitutional law is the absolute bedrock law of the land. No matter what the government of the day may legislate, it must conform to the Constitution.

    Legislation can be overturned by a simple vote in parliament. Or, like NZ’s, it can be restricted such that it cannot override any other legislation. Unlike the US Supreme Court, a NZ court cannot strike down or override any act of parliament with reference to the Bill of Rights. Which makes it a moot point as to why it exists at all.

    The only way to get a Constitutional Bill of Rights in Australia would be by referendum. Good luck with that. The Australian Constitution was framed such that amending it is extremely difficult: a proposed amendment must secure not only a national majority of voters, but a majority of voters in a majority of states as well. Australians have, by and large, chosen to validate that high hurdle: of 45 referendums since Federation, only eight have ever been passed.

    No referendum has ever passed without bipartisan support (and few indeed of those that had bipartisan support). Given that a legislated Bill of Rights has never made it past parliament, the chances of it passing referendum seem almost nil.

    A major reason that a Bill of Rights has never passed parliament, let alone been proposed at referendum, is the suspicion voiced by former prime minister John Howard that such a Bill would transfer power from elected representatives to unelected judges and bureaucrats. It’s not hard to see the wisdom of his observation: consider, after all, just how much power health bureaucrats seized during the pandemic.

    The closest Australia ever got to a Constitutional free speech right was in 1992

    Even the High Court’s “implied right to free speech” decision could be seen as just the sort of judicial overreach Howard warns against. As the US Supreme Court did in 1973 with Roe vs. Wade, the Australian High Court took it on itself to invent a potentially far-reaching decision out of Constitutional thin air. More recent High Court decisions, which affectively affirm the role of magic — a supposed Aboriginal “spiritual connection to the land” — in law show that such unelected judges are the last people to whom we should trust our rights.

    As it happens, the Australian government is, very quietly, once again resurrecting the idea of a legislated “Human Rights Act” — and it’s even worse than you might think. 

    As should surprise no-one, given its origin in a left-wing government, it’s mired, waist-deep, in a mindset of positive liberty. That is, it’s all about what the state will allow Australians to do — not what Australians can tell the state what it cannot do.

    For instance, freedom of religious belief is only allowed at the discretion of a judge. A judge can restrict religious freedom any time he or she considers it “reasonable” and “justified”. Religious freedom may be restricted in order to “protect public safety, order, health, morals or the rights of ­others”.

    Who wants to take bets on how politically-appointed judges will interpret that one?

    Freedom of speech gets even shorter shrift. Speech may be restricted — again, at a judge’s discretion — “in order to respect the rights and reputations of others or to protect national security, public order or public heath”. Ask Zoe Buhler, the Victorian mum arrested, pregnant, in her pyjamas, and crying, in front of her children, simply for posting the details of an anti-lockdown protest on Facebook, how that one’s likely to play out.

    Perhaps the most alarming aspects of the proposed Human Rights Act is that it would include a mechanism that would enable everyone to sue for monetary compensation whenever they decided that their rights had been breached. Again, we only need to look at how aggrieved activists, most notably the “rainbow” lobby, have weaponised the existing “human rights” infrastructure to threaten critics and impose a chilly pall of silence on matters of essential public debate.

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    While it may be bad enough that Australia lacks any formal Bill of Rights, the threat of an ill-intentioned, badly framed one is infinitely worse.

    It all comes down, in the end, to what Tony Abbott so famously asked during Australia’s last referendum campaign: do you really trust politicians?

    Anyone who still does, clearly spent the last five years either in a deep coma, or developing a slavish taste for boot leather.

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