Philosophy
What Happens After Saturday?
She was a young tall Indian beauty, perhaps a model, but maybe an engineering student. She passed me as I handed out No how-to-vote cards to prospective voters at the pre-poll in Brisbane. She called to the exuberant Yes booth worker beside me, “I’m not a citizen, I can’t’ vote, but I am with you, why wouldn’t I, just...
We Ignore The Erosion of Democracy At Our Peril
Niccolo Machiavelli wrote that if a republic is to live long, it is necessary to draw it back often toward its beginning. “For all the beginning of sects, republics, and kingdoms must have some goodness in them, by means of which they may regain their first reputation and their first increase. Because in the process of time, that goodness is...
The Cult of Authority
Earlier this year, I described how the modern political left has largely been annexed by authoritarians, with those who would have been considered left wing not that long ago exiled from their political home and outcast as “extremists”. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that authoritarians constantly rely on a logical fallacy known as the appeal to authority. THE APPEAL...
A Different Way to Scratch Your Liberty Itch
Who is John Galt? To those who know, this question is rhetorical. It is a secret ‘handshake’ among fans of Ayn Rand and her seminal work, Atlas Shrugged. Reading Atlas Shrugged profoundly changed the way I viewed life, society and the world. It was like a stranger had tapped me on the shoulder, pointed out that I was sitting on a...
Welcome To Free Speech
A non-illustrated guide to where conservatives continually fall short on a key pillar of liberty… Libertarians and conservatives might be friends on certain issues, often shoved into the same corner by the ‘progressive’ left, but it’s time we libertarians took a hard stance on free speech. James Hol’s recent commentary regarding the proposed ‘misinformation’ bill reflected an attitude towards freedom of...
Liberty and National Borders
Libertarianism is all about the freedom of individuals from coercion. Libertarians believe the proper role of government is defined by JS Mill’s harm principle: ‘The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.’ Within a country this is relatively straightforward – reductions in...
Retaining The Bargaining Chip of Indemnities For Vaccine Companies
Should we legislate to stop a government offering indemnities to vaccine manufacturers? This was a matter which came before the Senate last week in a private members bill. Some of the reasons given for the Bill were: “Companies work for shareholders first and it is profits that motivate their decision and actions. People should always be put before profits”; “Indemnification has created an...
Sacred Geese and Rousing Speeches
Who would have thought that quacking geese could help save the Roman Republic from a Gallic horde in 390 BC? It prompts the question: could a stirring speech on liberty help save Australia from its government in 2023 AD? The Roman Republic was born when a warrior gathered his family from the ashes of Troy and founded a city destined to...
Bureaucracy and The Australian Ethos
“Perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanise them”. Hannah Arendt. The Royal Commission report into the Robodebt scandal has shone a spotlight on the leviathan that is now the Australian government. Not surprisingly, the Albanese government has distanced itself from the findings, portraying the...
The New Gulag
In his famous three-volume masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described the frozen wastelands of Siberia where political prisoners and dissidents the Soviet state considered dangerous were held (for their speech, not their actions). A gulag was a Soviet prison; an archipelago is a string of islands; hence the term ‘gulag archipelago’ – a string of camps, prisons, transit...
