This open letter assumes the reader has also read the Australian Financial Review column by Alexander Downer dated 4 Dec 2022 found here . Start there and follow with this Open Letter.
As a former State and Federal Executive member of the Liberal Party, as a former Young Liberal of the Year and participant in 72 pre-selections, I agree with much of what you wrote.
The fact that the Liberal Party has lost its philosophical mooring and is now drifting wherever the political currents take it was the very reason I left and joined the Liberal Democrats in South Australia.
They stand for fiscal restraint, individual freedom, rule of law, freedom of speech, entrepreneurialism, freedom of worship, free trade, equality before the law, innovation and science, the very things the Liberal Party have abandoned and seem unable to clearly articulate.
As an example of just how unable even Liberal Party senators have become to hold true and firm to these beliefs, see here Senator Andrew Bragg from NSW on ABC’s Q&A:
It’s not only the Liberal Democrats who provide fresh competition. There are good people in other parties who share these values but do not see the Liberal Party as their natural home any longer.
Nowhere was the Liberal Party’s drift more evident than during covid overreach. And it’s with that in mind that I turn to your column.
You wrote, “In South Australia, the public was on the whole supportive of the state government’s termination of traditional civil liberties.”
As you know, public opinion can be manufactured. When you say leadership was required rather than managerialism, nowhere was that needed more than during covid.
You wrote further, “The values of selfless individualism and individual freedom and responsibility are timeless. The Liberal Party shouldn’t allow them to be cast as anachronistic.”
You can see my emphasis in both these quotes.
I’d therefore like to ask you a simple question in an effort to reconcile those two quotes from your column:
Do you agree it was a mistake for the recent SA Liberal Government to have terminated traditional civil liberties at the expense of our timeless value of individual freedom?
This open letter is published on Liberty Itch, which boasts current and past MPs as well as current party leaders and activists as subscribers.
An entrepreneur who has employed 1,470+ people, Kenelm was admitted to the BRW Fast 100 three times with businesses in Australia, NZ, Singapore and New York, where he lived for 12 years. Kenelm’s investment firm performs mid-market leveraged roll-ups. He was a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review. Kenelm is the Founder of Liberty Itch.
In my last two articles, I showed how George Orwell’s 1984 seems to be coming true, how the size of government grows ever larger and how rent-seekers are not only doing what they’ve always done but are getting much better at it. How this happens without sparking a popular uprising, I invoke the fable of ‘the shrinking forest’. I also explained why our fellow citizens are so disengaged from politics and what they can do to start the fightback.
I’d now like to discuss how we’ve reached this position – specifically how our opponents have attacked classical liberalism and libertarianism by first undermining Christianity. You may be sceptical of this. You make not even see a link. But history reveals all and lessons from the past illuminate what our opponents are doing today.
Modern Western democracy was founded in Christianity and in the family. It’s why Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the co-authors of The Communist Manifesto, were determined to undermine both. Marx and Engels knew faith and family were the enemy. They did not like what families and people of faith talked about around the dinner table.
In his brilliant book, The Subversive Family, British writer Ferdinand Mount argued that marriage and the family, far from being oppressed by the ruling class, were in fact the chief bulwarks against authoritarianism. Family, faith and freedom are without doubt the best bulwarks against division and authoritarianism.
As for faith, removing Christians from the public square seems to be the unstated aim. ‘Net zero Christians by 2050’, quipped by Rebecca Weisser.
“Every citizen is equal before the law.”
I would argue that the Christian is the model libertarian.
Knowing that one day they will stand before their Creator and give an account of themselves, Christians aim to be the personification of personal responsibility. Endowed with a free will to choose right or wrong, Christians cannot blame anyone else for their actions. It follows therefore, that if God is going to hold people responsible for their actions, then God would give them the right to decide how they conduct their lives.
For example, taking away from someone the right to decide for themselves how much they are willing to work for, is to deny them a God-given right to work. People do things for their reasons, not yours, and people constantly make trade-offs depending on a range of factors known best only to themselves and their families.
It is also why the Bible tells us not once, but twice, “Do not favour the poor in court”. This is real justice, not ‘social justice’.
Favouring one group of citizens over another based on socio-economic or racial grounds is not only immoral, it also foolish. It always ends badly – especially for the favoured group.
Note, this is not to be confused with obligations we have towards each other in a personal capacity. ‘Who is my neighbour?’ Jesus was asked, in the famous ‘good Samaritan’ parable.
In this, the Christian has no difficulty with public policy, that is ‘what is sinful vs what should be unlawful’. Sin is personal, the law for everyone.
And then there’s family. There has been a relentless push to replace father and mother, male and female, with something else. A village perhaps? There was that leftist trope – ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ As one wag responded, ‘Yes, and it takes a village idiot to believe that.’
More troubling is the breadth of the battleground.
Just look at the global coordination achieved by the Left with respect to Black Lives Matter, Roe v Wade, transgenderism, climate and Covid. Notice the activists all seem to read from the same script. It’s formulaic for sure and almost robotically applied globally regardless of where the original issue occurred.
The Covid response was near uniform globally and we are only now seeing the effects with little to no accountability. There were protests in Adelaide with pictures of George Floyd – a police excessive-use-of-force issue in faraway Minneapolis USA. The US Supreme Court then ruled that abortion should be a state matter and, out of nowhere, the rapid response pro-abortion rallies were rolled-out city by city in Australia, each jurisdiction of which had abortion laws already in place. Go figure.
Whatever you think of these issues, my point is that the global coordination is chilling.
There is no doubt Australia has economic and social problems that it is going to have to solve – inflation, rising interest rates, high mortgages (forcing both parents out to work), high cost of living (educating and raising children, power prices, water prices) – and social ills caused by the rupturing of family relationships due to mental health and addictions of various kinds.
Our nation also has economic and social goals it wants to achieve – increased productivity, affordable housing, lower crime rates. However, looking to politicians, bureaucrats and regulators to solve these problems and achieve these goals seems to be a lost cause.
As for free markets, property rights, personal responsibility, self-reliance, free speech, lower taxes, the rule of law, and smaller government, these have all but been abandoned.
Major party MPs seem more interested in making friends across the aisle than looking for ways ‘to improve the life of the ordinary citizen’ as described by Charles Taylor in his book, The Affirmation of the Ordinary Life.
Once elected, MPs are easily captured. They like being Members of Parliament and they like being liked – including by members of other parties. They also love socialising; they don’t want to be ostracised or booed on the ABC for making a stand or championing a cause. On issue after issue, they seem weak. They have lost both their philosophical bearings and religious convictions.
Take away religious conviction and classical liberalism becomes less grounded.
One flows from the other.
I would argue it is not possible to ‘break through’ all this. We have to ‘break with’. We have to force the major parties’ hands through the brutal reality of balance-of-power politics.
Next week I would like to flag a ground-breaking idea for change. Something practical. An innovation which I trust will bring hope and optimism.
Bob’s contribution to the Australian community has been reflected in a wide range of appointments including National President of the Housing Industry Association, Co-Founder and Inaugural President of Independent Contractors of Australia, Director of The Centre for Independent Studies, and Senator for South Australia.
If you look at the evolution of the political landscape over the last few decades, you’ll notice some things just don’t seem to add up.
Not that long ago, populism was at the heartland of left-wing ideology. Occupy Wall Street, fighting ‘big pharma’ and ending the military-industrial complex were the biggest political and social movements of the 2010s – all of them were considered left-wing.
Now even the slightest criticism of Pfizer will have you labelled a ‘RWNJ’ and shadow banned on most social media networks.
But something changed, or has it?
The reality is that nothing has changed, you have just been viewing the political landscape from the wrong direction. Left versus right; conservative versus progressive; Labor versus Liberal. These are meaningless terms and wasted battles. What exactly does it mean to be left-wing in modern society? What exactly are conservatives conserving? And what values do either the Labor or Liberal parties stand for, exactly?
We have been programed to view politics through a false dichotomy of ‘left’ and ‘right’, yet very few can accurately define those terms. Fascism is often considered as the extremity of the right-wing, yet many right-wingers would consider small governments and free markets integral to right-wing ideology. This plainly cannot gel with fascism.
SHIFT YOUR PERSPECTIVE
Instead of viewing politics through a left-right dichotomy, let’s add another axis: libertarian versus authoritarian. While some may be familiar with the political compass consisting of authoritarian-left, authoritarian-right, libertarian-left and libertarian-right, this too does not quite cut it.
The extremities of each quadrant are simply not possible. How could you sit in the extreme bottom right-hand corner? Drug-law reform and extreme right-wing ideology is a circle that cannot be squared. The same applies to all corners. Instead, let us rotate the compass 45 degrees and change some titles.
NOT ANOTHER LIBERTARIAN PURITY TEST
Now this makes sense: to fully pursue liberty, you must trade your conservative or liberal tenets. This does not mean you cannot sit somewhere between conservative and libertarian. However, it does mean you cannot simultaneously be a radical libertarian and an extreme conservative.
I am not saying all of this to prove just how libertarian I am and prohibit libertarian-leaning people from unifying under the banner of liberty, precisely the opposite. We must know the true battleplanes in order to know where our friends and enemies are coming from.
WE HAVE FRIENDS ON THE LEFT
There seems to be a growing narrative that libertarianism is a right-wing ideology. I detest this narrative. It is plainly untrue. I, myself, came to libertarianism from the left. Growing up, the concept of criminalising victimless crimes never made sense to me. So, naturally, I considered myself to be left-wing.
When I was old enough to realise the importance of the economy, I applied the same philosophy: people should be free to direct their capital however they see fit, so long as they are not hurting anyone else, with minimal government interference. If we should not govern people based on subjective morals, then we should not be looting and pillaging people’s resources via taxation.
As it turns out, I was not left-wing.
So where have all the left-libertarians been hiding for the past three years?
During the height of COVID restrictions, governments heavily interfered with markets: shuttering businesses, slashing interest rates, employing quantitative easing and deploying abundant welfare. Yet we did not see a more egalitarian outcome, as many on the (authoritarian) left so often claim.
In fact, instead of wealth inequality easing, we saw the largest redistribution of wealth from the poorest to the richest people. Rich, laptop-elites with large property and share portfolios saw their net worth skyrocket, while middle- and working-class people were given scraps and are currently seeing their purchasing power plummet.
So where were all the socialists decrying this?
‘The left’ was long ago infiltrated and annexed by authoritarians. Socialists are not true socialists; progressives are not truly progressive; and liberals are far from liberal. ‘The left’ wants nothing more than government to grow and dissidents to be quashed – a far cry from the socialism of decades gone. There are countless examples of left-wing castaways who are now often called ‘right-wing’ or even ‘far-right.’
Joe Rogan is a man who campaigned with a self-described democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders. He is now considered far-right. Russell Brand, who publicly advocated for socialism, has been exiled from his left-wing home since he started criticising the COVID response. Even self-avowed British socialist Jeremy Corbyn expressed some criticism of vaccine mandates. Somehow, he managed to escape much of the backlash.
The libertarian-left hasn’t been hiding for the past three years, they have been un-personed. Castaway from their ideological home and called ‘far-right extremists’ – just like the rest of us.
They are not our enemies; they are our friends.
It is incumbent upon us to welcome them under the tree of liberty.
WE HAVE ENEMIES ON THE RIGHT
We are nearing the peak of woke leftism’s cultural hegemony. But as all pendulums swing, it will come back the other way – and hard. Despite my veneer of youth, I am old enough to remember the days of conservatives demanding an end to Marilyn Manson and ‘violent’ videogames. It may seem foreign to some, but the right-wing can just as easily prosecute free speech and advocate censorship.
The trappings of a return to morality-based governance are already there. It is not a stretch to see how the pendulum returns to hard-line drug laws and a ‘war against degeneracy.’ It is imperative we do not allow this to happen.
While the political right does seem to be largely on the correct side of the culture war (for now), it is important we do not simply add to the choir of conservative voices.
Provide nuance and always advocate the values of liberty.
While always avidly following politics and culture, James Hol was not politically active until the overreaction to COVID. In a matter of months, James gained invaluable insight into all levels of government, being heavily involved in Federal, state and local election campaigns.
I’ve said it before a hundred times. I’ll say it again.
Political philosophy matters.
There’s no point telling me that philosophy is for intellectuals only.
No!
Philosophy is the bedrock on which policies are created.
Everyday, regular Australians instinctively know this even if they’re not philosophy wonks.
Here’s the proof.
When the Liberal Party of Australia publishes Our Beliefs, it just doesn’t sound right. It feels like a part time-capsule of classical liberal aspiration, part welfare state socialism, part nod to the Greens, and actually quite a lot of word salad.
It’s certainly not consistent philosophy.
And this probably explains their disastrous election results of late.
Politicians, made timid from the comforts of entrenchment, have wobbled on philosophy and been weak-kneed on policy. The Party of entrepreneurship is now devoid of a policy innovation of its own.
Without the firm foundation of philosophy, the Liberal Party edifice is collapsing.
There are many fine members within the Liberal Party working towards an undiluted classical liberal reset. If the Party is to survive, it’s these people who’ll do it.
Others are turning to conservatism but simultaneously bemoan the loss of culture, institutions and once-safe seats. These people aren’t thinking clearly. Conservatism is nothing more than maintaining the status quo. Today, the status quo is with the social democrats, the welfare state advocates and the Marxists.
Conservatives are really classical liberals who don’t know they’re not in control anymore. You end this foggy thinking by sharply critiquing your belief system, your philosophy.
So, let’s do that together now.
I’ve reproduced Our Beliefs of the Liberal Party and added footnotes to show just how far they have strayed from their classical liberal foundation.
***
We Believe:
In the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples (1); and we work towards a lean government (2) that minimises interference in our daily lives (3); and maximises individual (4) and private sector (5) initiative (6)
In government that nurtures (7) and encourages its citizens through incentive (8), rather than putting limits on people through the punishing disincentives of burdensome taxes (9) and the stifling structures of Labor’s corporate state (10) and bureaucratic red tape (11).
In those most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy (12) – the freedom of thought (13), worship (14), speech (15) and association (16).
In a just and humane society (17) in which the importance of the family (18) and the role of law and justice is maintained (19).
In equal opportunity for all Australians; and the encouragement and facilitation of wealth (20) so that all may enjoy the highest possible standards of living, health, education (21) and social justice (22).
That, wherever possible (23), government should not compete with an efficient private sector (5); and that businesses and individuals – not government (24).- are the true creators of wealth and employment.
In preserving Australia’s natural beauty and the environment for future generations (25).
That our nation (26) has a constructive role to play in maintaining world peace and democracy (27) through alliance with other free nations.
In short, we simply believe in individual freedom (28) and free enterprise (29); and if you share this belief, then ours is the Party for you (30).
***
FOOTNOTES
(1) “freedoms of all people”, unless you were covid unvaccinated;
In short, when Alfred Deakin was PM, government expenditure as a percentage of GDP was 5%. When PM Scott Morrison left office, it was 45%. Not lean!
(3) “minimises interference in our daily lives”, except that it steals your wage earned on Monday and Tuesday each week, 10% of everything you buy to survive, plus 24 other taxes,
plus stops you leaving your house during covid, crossing state borders, leaving Australia, returning to Australia, forces you to apply for permission to protest, spies on you during those protests, collects your mobile phone texts, records your conversations, arrests you for social media posts et al;
(4) “maximises individual initiative”, how? Many OECD countries are more entrepreneurial;
(5) “private sector”, a term used primarily by people from the public sector to contrast themselves with the other side, a dead giveaway that this screed has been written by a career bureaucrat. The millions who work in small business don’t talk like this;
(6) “initiative”, the Liberal Party of Australia is responsible for more laws than any other party. Each time legislation is passed, either widespread initiative is crushed or monopolies are created or both;
(7) “government that nurtures”, no classical liberal government would ever think it could nurture free people. The government is not your mother. Nurturing happens within the sanctity of the family unit not a bureaucratic department;
(8) “encourage its citizens through incentive”, no. Any philosophical liberal knows you don’t manipulate the market. Citizens are most encouraged when the market is free;
(9) “burdensome taxes”, good grief. See The Long, Long, Long, Long List of Taxes here
(10) “Labor’s corporate state”, you want to see the corporate state grow over 120 years? See footnote (2);
(11) “Bureaucratic red tape”, it was the Liberal Party that forced every business owner in the country to double its role as a tax collector when the GST was introduced;
(12) “Basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy”, except when it joined Victorian Labor in blocking three MPs from taking their rightful place in parliament because they demanded to know the MPs’ private health details. Shame Liberal, shame;
(13) “Freedom of thought”, except that its government departments regularly force job applicants into group-think over Acknowledgement of Country and the efficacy of vaccines;
(14) “freedom of worship”, except that it shut churches during covid and regulates their charitable status;
(15) “freedom of speech”, except if you are a member of the Liberal Party of Australia, in which case you are prohibited from talking to the public;
(16) “freedom of association”, but not with your dying grandmother during covid;
(17) “just and humane society”, well, well, well. This is a new inclusion since I was a member in the 1990s. This doesn’t sound like freedom-loving liberalism to me! This sounds like the Labor Party, the Australian Greens or the Animal Justice Party;
(18) “importance of the family”, except of course that under successive Liberal Party government policies family break-up and depression have increased, schools can undermine parental authority and courts stack custody against fathers;
(19) “law and justice maintained”, well yes. Police powers have increased dramatically;
(20) “facilitation of wealth”, what? There is no classically liberal government which would ever think it is in the business of facilitating citizens’ wealth. No. Not a government role. Off track;
(21) “highest possible standard of education”, the Liberal Party endorsed Labor’s National Curriculum. Far from being the Party of the individual, the Liberal Party has adopted a collective, one-size-fits-all approach. Stifling;
(22) “highest possible standards of social justice”, well, well, well! The Liberal Party aren’t liberals but social democrats now! This was not a belief of the Liberal Party in the 1990s. No. Off track. Menzies would turn in his grave. Centre-right parties should have individualism and freedom as their philosophy;
(23) “wherever possible”, but Liberals often endorse government agencies doing what privately-owned companies could do. NBN is a good example. Many other examples;
(24) “businesses and individuals, not government”, if they believed this, they wouldn’t allow the trend described in Footnote (2). Why is the Government’s ABC competing with Fairfax and News et al?;
(25) “environment”, well, well, well, a new inclusion. Straight from the Australian Greens playbook. This was never a core Liberal tenant in the 1990s;
(26) “nation”, capitalise it to Nation! Have some pride;
(27) “world peace and democracy”, perhaps. Alliances are important for a country the size of Australia. But the Liberal Party has neither been stellar building our deterrent defence forces nor limiting our economic concentration on China, a glaring geopolitical risk. These failures damage our capability to remain free;
(28) “individual freedom”, a joke. They slowly crush individual freedom from tax file numbers to police security cameras. The Liberal Party are actively installing police state surveillance cameras and tracking software in the City of Adelaide, as one of many examples;
(29) “free enterprise”, a joke. Very few Liberal politicians have owned an employing business. Name ten in the Federal Parliament;
(30) “Party is for you”, well no. Rather, the Liberal Party is a net minus for civil liberties and economic freedom.
An entrepreneur who has employed 1,470+ people, Kenelm was admitted to the BRW Fast 100 three times with businesses in Australia, NZ, Singapore and New York, where he lived for 12 years. Kenelm’s investment firm performs mid-market leveraged roll-ups. He was a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review. Kenelm is the Founder of Liberty Itch.
These five quotes are from a speech delivered on 13 October 2022 in Australia by The Right Honourable Lord Jonathan Sumption, former senior judge of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
They go to explaining how our citizens invite authoritarianism, the cost of this, and what has held back despotism to date …
“In modern conditions, risk-aversion and the fear that goes with it are a standing invitation to authoritarian government”
“If we hold governments responsible for everything that goes wrong, they will take away our autonomy so that nothing can go wrong.”
“If we demand from the state protection from risks which are inherent in life itself, then the state’s measures will necessarily involve the suppression of some part of life itself.”
“The quest for security at the price of coercion and state intervention is a feature of democratic politics”
“It has only ever been culture and convention which prevented governments from adopting a totalitarian model. But culture and convention are fragile. They take years to form but can be destroyed very quickly. Once you discard them, there is no barrier left, the spell is broken. If something is unthinkable until somebody in authority thinks of it, then the psycological barriers which have always been our main protection against despotism have vanished.”
Our culture is becoming more risk-averse. Fear of risk grows. We’re apparently losing our grit, tenacity and adventurous spirit to manage our own risk. This manifests as a culture going soft with high-expectations that government will molly-coddle.
What then for us? How do we push back?
One fresh idea will be revealed on Liberty Itch this Thursday.
An entrepreneur who has employed 1,470+ people, Kenelm was admitted to the BRW Fast 100 three times with businesses in Australia, NZ, Singapore and New York, where he lived for 12 years. Kenelm’s investment firm performs mid-market leveraged roll-ups. He was a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review. Kenelm is the Founder of Liberty Itch.
You could be forgiven for feeling despair at the state of Australian politics right now.
Ditto for the West as a whole.
Unfortunately, despair doesn’t take us where we need to go.
There are four forces pulling us in the wrong direction at the moment. The quick summary is that the Liberty-Authority war is raging but Liberty is losing too many battles, our politicians don’t know how ‘mixed’ our mixed-economy should be and so are preferencing Authority in that war, there’s a kind of matrix hanging over us which makes things hard to change, and we aren’t giving our parliamentarians the right incentives to stop.
What we urgently need is clear-thinking on these four forces, an action plan to counter them and a lot of good people like you to follow the plan.
This article will give you the clear-thinking and the action plan.
Read what follows then decide whether you’ll join the fight.
LIBERTY-AUTHORITY WAR
First, the Liberty-Authority war is raging but Liberty is losing too many battles.
There are two extremes in government: 100% Liberty and 100% Authority.
Total Liberty is a utopia, which can only fleetingly exist before Authority is needed to stabilise it. At 95% Liberty and 5% Authority, stability is possible. Imagine 1880s London or 1980s Hong Kong. In this light-touch government, the enterprising individual flourishes to produce a dynamic, Liberty-loving productive society. Individual independence, live and let live lifestyle, free-trade, creativity, flair, ambition, initiative, vision, self-reliance, energy, innovation and self-actualisation abound. The society throbs with entrepreneurial instinct.
Total Authority is a dystopia, which inevitably collapses from the murder, starvation or flight of millions. It is frequently reformed out of necessity. At 95% Authority and 5% Liberty, the Liberty manifests as a barely-tolerated, hardscrabble barter just to ward-off widespread starvation. Imagine 2020s North Korea or 2020s Eritrea. The economy is small and centrally controlled. Basic needs are unmet. In this despotic, heavy-handed government, enterprise is crushed, initiative regarded with suspicion and people cower in fear and repression, forced into a life of misery. There is no spark in its people, no verve, no passion, no striving, no vivacity.
Australia sits nowhere near these two ends of the spectrum, of course. It would be feeble-thinking however to surmise that we are exempt from the Liberty-Authority war. All societies are subject to it, Australia included, and Liberty is losing.
Consider Authority’s recent wins:
Border closures
Vaccine mandates
Emergency power legislation enshrined and ready for reactivation
Job terminations over mandates
QR codes to track your movements and bar entry
Elected politicians denied entry into parliament
Peaceful citizens shot in the back with rubber bullets
Home detention of the population
Laws requiring employers to gather private medical data
Secrecy over vaccine purchase terms
Door-to-door visits for covid vaccine rollout
Opaque health information about vaccine injuries
Construction of covid detention camps.
Think that’s the end of it?
First, none of these powers has been removed as covid wanes.
Second, at the time of writing, there were 122 bills before Capital Hill, Canberra. This figure obviously changes but you can review the list at anytime yourself here.
I want you to think of the Commonwealth Parliament as a school of ravenous piranha. Every time a new law is passed, your personal and financial Liberty is being thrown in the legislative pond for thirty seconds. You scramble out with razor cuts all over your bloodied body. Then you’re pushed back in by errant leaders and the populist mob for another gasping swim. Again and again, the body politic is attacked, your Liberty weakened with every new law passed.
During my frantic attempts to call MPs during the covid overreach, part of my epiphany that the Liberal Party – far from being an agent for small government – is complicit in this process was a question I posed to an MP. I asked this person to find out from the Parliamentary Library how many Commonwealth statutes are active. The experts couldn’t come up with a number. We are suffocated with so many laws, we don’t know how many there are!
We’ve fought 121 years in Australia over whether we need more economic and personal Liberty on the one side, and whether we need more Authority and protection on the other.
Authority is winning.
One of the issues is that our fellow citizens are increasingly expecting government to be an end-to-end solution to every risk we face in life. What we demand of our governments is that they increasingly manage the risks of life which we have handled privately in the past. Fear is a powerful motivator.
We have to make our politicians understand that we don’t expect them to carry all the risks in our lives.
As Lord Jonathan Sumption said in a recent trip to Australia:
“If we hold governments responsible for everything that goes wrong, they will take away our autonomy so that nothing can go wrong.”
I think he’s being optimistic about ‘nothing can go wrong’ but you see his point.
MIXED ECONOMY
Second, our politicians don’t know how ‘mixed’ our mixed-economy should be and so are preferencing Authority in that war.
Throughout time immemorial, we have sought to balance these competing but innate needs. On one side, creative, independent, self-actualising Liberty and, on the other side, risk-avoiding, dependent, protective Authority.
Democracy, coupled with its ‘mixed-economy’, tries to navigate between the two. That is, there is constant tension within a mixed-economy democracy to balance Liberty and Authority.
How are each enabled?
The general rule of thumb is that the bigger a government’s budget, the greater the means by which our leaders can impose Authority.
Big government budget means more Authority and less Liberty.
Small government budget means more Liberty and less Authority.
So, what’s the trendline in Australia.
If we use government expenditure as a percentage of GDP as the litmus test since Federation in 1901, we see an obvious trend. I’m going to use cut-offs at the end of each Liberal government (or its predecessor equivalents) since centre-right Liberals are reputationally supposed to be the small government, pro Liberty advocates.
Here’s what we discover:
Deakin (third government): 5%
Menzies (second government): 17%
Fraser: 26%
Howard: 37%
Morrison: 45%.
The trend is clearly from Liberty to Authority.
We need to jettison this old Keynesian term ‘mixed economy’. It’s an umbrella phrase which masks intent. An economy set at 90% Liberty and 10% Authority is a mixed-economy of a sort. So is 10% Liberty and 90% Authority. Even comparing Alfred Deakin’s 5% government economy versus Scott Morrison’s 45% government economy, the two look nothing like each other.
Using the term ‘mixed-economy’ gives licence to the Authority-lovers to execute socialism-creep.
During our lives, government is becoming ever larger and the piranha are being fed. Government has the growing means to intervene, coerce and limit our Liberty by a thousand imperceptible cuts over time.
And the truth is that the Liberal Party has been completely unsuccessful over 121 years in reversing the trend.
Why?
TOCQUEVILLE’S MATRIX
Well, third, there’s a kind of matrix hanging over us which makes things hard to change. I call it the Tocqueville Matrix.
The answer is that we’re in a system bigger than ourselves. We can laugh at analogies with the film The Matrix all we like. However, the reality of our predicament today was well uncovered, not by the hacker Neo in that movie but, 187 years ago by the classical liberal philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville in his celebrated essay “Democracy In America”, the result of a fact-finding mission for France.
Alexis de Tocqueville. 1805-1859. Classical liberal.
Though published in 1835 on the other side of the planet, it was highly relevant to Australia at the time. The free-settled Province of South Australia was just one year from proclamation. A mere fifty-four years later, Sir Henry Parkes delivered his famous Federation-rallying Tenterfield Oration in which he said “Surely what the Americans have done by war, Australians can bring about in peace.”
Here’s what Tocqueville witnessed of the new American republic, at this point only two generations old. As you read his words, pay attention to the creaking tension between Liberty and Authority, and the ongoing, overall impact of democracy on its people:
“The protecting power of the state extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of Man is not shattered but it is softened, bent and guided. Men are seldom forced to act but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy but it prevents existence. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates and extinguishes. It stupefies a people until each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals to which the government is the shepherd.”
Dare tell me this is not Australia in 2022.
I’ve shown you our legislative losses. I’ve revealed the legislative agenda in progress. I’ve shared that we don’t even know how many laws are on the books. This is Tocqueville’s ‘complicated rules, minute and uniform.’
Further, who are our ‘most original minds and the most energetic characters’? We may not be shattered as a people. But who will deny we are ‘softened, bent and guided’?
The word ‘enervates’ means ‘to make a person drained of energy or vitality.’ If this is how you feel right now about politics, it’s the Tocqueville Matrix of democracy working you over! Resist it. Let your innate self-reliance and self-actualisation radiate.
I could have sworn Tocqueville was in Australia from 2020-2022 when writing that last sentence.
If you feel that your fellow citizens exhibit foggy thinking, if you believe they make terrible electoral choices, then take heart. We know why …
Australia, like all Western liberal democracies, has placed an apparatus over its citizens. This apparatus of uncountable statutes and a million regulatory miscellany soften, bend and guide us. Initiative, vigour and swashbuckling verve are all discouraged as is self-reliance. Our innate creativity, independence and self-actualising Liberty has been dampened. We are less Errol Flynn, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Sir Douglas Mawson, and now more a half-thwarted version of our true selves.
Sir Douglas Mawson OBE FRS. 1882-1958. First to climb Mount Erebus and reach South Magnetic Pole.
Authority has taken over Liberty as the primary force in Australia. We accommodate too much. We fund too much. We have power-hungry, entrenched legislators. Our fellow Australians are too prone to expect government to manage all the risks of the world.
PARLIAMENTARY INCENTIVES
Fourth, we aren’t giving our parliamentarians the right incentives to stop.
Our politicians, specifically the ones housed in the seat-holding incumbency parties of Labour, Greens, Liberals and Nationals, often spend ten to twenty years working towards preselection. They aren’t going to rock-the-boat once in power after that investment of time.
We need term limits. We also need the hard work within party preselection processes to turnover long-time incumbents.
Another issue is that we, as a people, are simply unpractised to tell a politician ‘no’! We advocate for spending on our pet projects and our politicians say ‘yes’ to everyone. It’s unsustainable. And when we argue for cuts, we are vulnerable to the ‘what government program are you going to end?’ We need a coherent, well-practised push-back to this. Citizens can’t keep acting like toddlers asking for more and politicians need to be disciplined in saying ‘no’.
We are terrible at applying constant pressure on our representatives between elections. They rarely hear from us after a poll. We need to visit them, form relationships with them, lobby them, guide them and, yes if necessary, threaten them with electoral backlash.
In fifty-four years, I’ve not seen one protest outside an electorate office by citizens angry about the MPs big spending tendencies. Not one.
We aren’t giving them the right incentives to correct.
AN URGENT ACTION PLAN
So, here’s what you need to do.
For Liberal and National members:
Action 1: Gather fellow members and advocate for a three-term limit. Make clear to an MP in his or her third term that this is it. Say it’s not personal, it’s a systemic position about renewal. Encourage challenges if the MP won’t budge.
Action 2: Make clear at State Council that you demand budget reductions in government. Educate MPs on the importance of reducing budgets. Ask for their game plan to achieve this. Embarrass elected officials who lack the courage to reduce the size of government. Normalise talk of smaller government. As a group or faction, make clear you will be targeting MPs who don’t work towards this.
Action 3: Gather fellow members and internally advocate for policy not tactical preferencing. Discourage tricky tactics which ultimately splinter the centre-right. Shame and seek the removal of any state director or parliamentary leader who supports tactical preferencing to Labor or the Greens ahead of the more Liberty-friendly emerging parties.
For members of the Liberal Democrats, the United Australia Party, One Nation, the Nationals outside coalition, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers and the Democratic Labor Party:
Action 4: Write to the local MP. Meet and lobby the MP. Educate the MP. Make clear that you want the next budget to be less than the current one. Make clear you want government expenditure as a percentage of GDP to be 40%, then 35%, then 30% and so forth year by year
Action 5: Advocate for a formal coalition and joint tickets. Joint tickets are important. They plug the preference leaking so prevalent on the centre-right. Work towards agreement that each emerging party gets to lead one upper house race. This is a near-guaranteed strategy for a bloc of six senators.
Action 6: Organise in vulnerable Labor lower-house seats to perform what I call the Purple Flip. This is Teal but in reverse. Identify and draft well-known local leaders to run as independents, perhaps tradies or sports figures, who project their working-class background but, due to their success, lean centre-right for its aspirational, social mobility message. Publicly appeal to aspirational voters in these Labor electorates, say they’ve been forgotten by Labor, and privately convince the die-hard but never electorally successful Liberals and Nationals in the seat to vote tactically for the independent.
The simple truth is that, if you don’t take these actions in concert with like-minded centre-right people, that big government trendline will continue to 50%, 57%, 63% and so on.
In democracy, you have to fight for the right balance between Liberty and Authority. Liberty is losing the battle for dominance. We are fast heading to an Authoritarian Australia. Covid overreach surely taught us that. Looming issues of digital passports, facial recognition systems and digital currency are facing Liberty-lovers right now.
You must act. The alternative is that you live, as Tocqueville pointedly wrote, as a ‘timid and industrious animal’ or we just continue to scratch-around in the political wilderness.
We can do better. Let’s steel ourselves now for the battle ahead.
An entrepreneur who has employed 1,470+ people, Kenelm was admitted to the BRW Fast 100 three times with businesses in Australia, NZ, Singapore and New York, where he lived for 12 years. Kenelm’s investment firm performs mid-market leveraged roll-ups. He was a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review. Kenelm is the Founder of Liberty Itch.
On Saturday, before the polls closed, I correctly predicted the Victorian election result.
My forecast wasn’t genius.
I’ve just been around politics a long, long time and see the perennial rules of the game.
Knowing the result is the easy part.
Discerning ‘why’, well, that’s another level of understanding again.
TV, newspaper and social media pundits are already misconstruing the ‘why’. Even the Victorian Liberal Deputy Leader, David Southwick MP, continues to misunderstand. “Labor dirty tricks”, he blurted wide-eyed on Sky Saturday night.
It was like looking into the eyes of a shocked and hapless kangaroo being ploughed dead in a political road-kill.
I’m going to say it until I’m blue in the face.
Parties lose elections when they have no philosophical framework. From the philosophy come the policies. The policies then improve people’s lives.
To put it another way, philosophy is the rationale. Policies are practical applications of that rationale.
The Liberal Party of Australia has lost its philosophical bearings. It is adrift in the political sea, allowing itself to be washed aimlessly by the currents and tides of its enemies. It’s tried to mollify the Extinction Rebellion. It’s preferenced the socialist Greens #2 on how-to-votes. It’s participated in wokery. It’s succumbed to populist fiscal ill-discipline. It’s appealed to proto-fascist Australia One.
Who is the Liberal Party anymore?
Philosophy matters.
So, let’s do a short, sharp review of basic philosophy regularly. We’ll call it Philosophy Monday and we’ll know why it’s vital to have a weekly dose.
We can start with my favourite guy, John Stuart Mill.
In the wake of Saturday’s disastrous result when it seems Victorians are turning their back on freedom, here’s what JSM (personal aside: he only allows friends to call him JSM *smile*) says in his famous hundred-page essay, On Liberty:
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities.
Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression.
Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by OTHER MEANS than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.
But though this proposition is not likely to be contested in general terms, the practical question, where to place the limit – how to make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social control – is a subject on which nearly everything remains to be done.
As a movement of good people, we need to define the limit and enforce it.
First, we need to be crystal clear on our philosophical base.
It’s liberalism. You were born and live in liberal democracy. You’re a liberal, even if you don’t release it. Declare it. Proclaim it with muscular vigour. You’re a modern-day Whig, free-spirited independent or sleeper agent amidst Tories who can be convinced. Own your philosophy, now in it’s fourth century of application. It transformed the world. And if, like me, you’re a Christian too, rejoice! Our 2,022 year old Faith best flourishes in the freedom liberalism provides. They are a hand-in-glove as far as I’m concerned. Our free will is God’s gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to God.
Don’t retreat coddled and forlorn into that thumb-sucking emotional safe-space called ‘conservatism’. Do you honestly want to ‘conserve’ the vast apparatus of government long now installed by Labor, Liberal, National and Greens, marshalled to impinge your life, take your hard-earned money and close your churches? It needs an overhaul, a stripping back.
You need to be radical now, a buster of the collectivist status-quo, an agent provocateur: a forceful Thatcher, an illuminated Wilberforce.
No more tired Tories endlessly pessimistic about today and the future. We are in the fight of our lives and we need change!
Second, we need to work hard now on bold, innovative policies which give life to our philosophy. Where there is a friendly MP or two, we need to work together to organise.
Third, since we liberals control not one parliament currently, we must use “other means than civil penalties”. We need social tactics of our own to move the cultural needle.
To which “other means”, to what social tactics is Mill hinting?
Subscribe now and share Liberty Itch to discover what that means shortly and join the call-to-arms. Tell your friends. Spread the word. There is no time to lose.
An entrepreneur who has employed 1,470+ people, Kenelm was admitted to the BRW Fast 100 three times with businesses in Australia, NZ, Singapore and New York, where he lived for 12 years. Kenelm’s investment firm performs mid-market leveraged roll-ups. He was a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review. Kenelm is the Founder of Liberty Itch.
First, free enterprise in a competitive market does 95% better in servicing the needs and desires of citizens than government. Better efficiency, better service delivery, better products, better time-frames, more innovation and less waste.
Second, the free markets aren’t perfect. Businesses with whom you trade may become insolvent. Sometimes fraud occurs. At the very least, customers can sometimes be dissatisfied. It can take time, often not long, for the markets to self-correct. More efficient companies replace the defunct, reputation self-check fraud, and word-of-mouth handles companies with bad service or defective products.
Third, the remaining 5% for government – and in my view its only role – is to adjudicate and protect fair dealings in the market. Government should be an umpire to maintain the free-wheeling clearing-house that is the aggregation of buyers and sellers. That’s it. Not a participant. An umpire.
Fourth, the more of your hard-earned money the government taxes, the bigger government becomes by definition and the more it encroaches beyond the role of umpire. With ever larger budgets, government starts to become a player, even a team of players, as well as the referee! Your money, or more accurately your acquiescence to government taking it, provides the means for that encroachment, the loss of our original concept of government in a liberal democracy and, ultimately, the loss of liberal democracy itself.
And fifth, there is a kind of sliding scale between 100% free market, laissez faire and, its opposite, 100% socialism. That large undefined region between these two poles has been called a ‘mixed economy’ in the West, starting with the introduction of ‘Keynesian economics’, the ‘welfare state’ and, later, the ‘central banking system’ which untethered our money from assets backing it.
With me so far?
Now the term ‘mixed economy’ gives our leaders a wide berth. An economy comprised of 95% private buyers and sellers with 5% government money to act as a referee to maintain the market is mixed of a sort. It’s like a drop of salt water in a fresh-water lake. But what happens if our leaders use your money to put their thumb of the scale? Let’s say, 90% private and 10% government. What about 75% private and 25% government? Take it further. What does an economy start to feel like at 51% private and 49% government? This is a mixed economy too. Now what was a pristine fresh-water lake is now brackish. Every second transaction has all the inefficiency of a government department. Now imagine 25% private and 75% government. Three out of four transactions in the economy start to look and feel like you’re in a call-centre queue with the Australian Taxation Office or, in America, the IRS. Then they really stand on the scales: 5% private, just enough to sell a tentative surplus from your backyard vegetable garden, if lawlessness hasn’t destroyed it because those without a garden are starving.
We cede far too much ground accepting a Keynesian ‘mixed economy’.
The territory is too vast, ranging from one notch past efficient laissez faire to one notch short of Yugoslavia in 1981.
You and I need a scorecard, in business-speak a key performance indicator, to judge where we are on this vast sliding-scale.
And I have it.
It’s called Government Expenditure as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product.
To put it another way, it’s that part of the entire economy which is not sourced from free enterprise, the percent not generated by the efficient free-exchange of private buyers and sellers satisfying their own needs and desires. It’s the proportion of the economy in which government intrudes, displacing private transactions which would naturally and otherwise occur between you and me.
It’s the economic cancer which ultimately kills a lively, flourishing society!
So, let’s have a look at the statistic.
And to make things interesting, let’s look at it over a long period, say since Australian Federation in 1901, and to really spice things up, let’s take the measurement at the end of each of the major ‘liberal’ governments. Once you see the figures, you’ll understand why I query their ‘liberal’ credentials.
(Before I share this with you, understand it took 5 hours of research. These figures aren’t handed to you by government on a platter!)
· Alfred Deakin (end of his third government): 5%
· Robert Menzies (end of his second government): 17%
· Malcolm Fraser: 26%
· John Howard: 37%
· Scott Morrison: 45%.
You read that correctly.
We’re all sitting in a saucepan of the slow-boil, simmering-ever-closer-to-socialism kind.
A couple of thoughts. Alfred Deakin’s 5% was sufficient to build Australia’s navy, from nothing to formidable middle-power in two years. That’s Deakin doing the work of the umpire, protecting a free society from external threat. All good! Contrast that with today’s procurement bungles.
Alfred Deakin. 2nd, 5th and 7th Prime Minister of Australia
Further, the Whitlam, Hawke and Gillard governments must certainly have contributed a lot to this creep with general expansionism, Medicare and NDIS respectively.
Liberty Itch will find out with year-on-year figures, so hold on to your subscription!
In a sense though, it doesn’t matter.
Had the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments wanted to reverse Labor overreach and get back to the Howard days of 37%, they could have. Had team Howard-Costello wanted to reverse possible Hawke-Keating expansion to return to 26% Fraser days, they could have. So on and so forth.
The timeline is too long and the trend all in one direction to excuse any of them.
All governments have been complicit.
I’ll therefore make this bold and daring prediction. You can hold me accountable for it.
By the time this Labor administration concludes, private will be less than government in our ‘mixed economy.’ We’ll be over the tipping point. Unless you and I pressure MPs, we’ll have 49% private and 51% government, or 45% private and 55% government.
Should this trend continue, Australia will look like a 1970s dank Wilson-Callaghan economy which Thatcher had to revitalise. We’ll have more in common with a 1970s centralised State Dockyard economy of NSW Wran which Greiner had to unchain. We’ll feel more like 2020 than 1950 Detroit.
There’s Australia’s KPI. We’re 45% socialist.
You and I can at least agree that this is a worrying prospect deserving action.
An entrepreneur who has employed 1,470+ people, Kenelm was admitted to the BRW Fast 100 three times with businesses in Australia, NZ, Singapore and New York, where he lived for 12 years. Kenelm’s investment firm performs mid-market leveraged roll-ups. He was a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review. Kenelm is the Founder of Liberty Itch.
I’m a liberal in the 18th and 19th Century British sense of the word.
I believe in free enterprise, laissez-faire economics, democracy, free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free movement, the individual, human rights and freedom to live life as the individual sees fits as long as another individual isn’t harmed in the process.
As with people like Ron Paul, my mind cannot fathom a universe without God. I’m hard-wired that way. And I believe God gave Man free will to act and be judged when God so chooses. See, freedom at every turn, as God intended.
I believe there is a role for government insofar as it protects – as Locke put it – the right to life, liberty and property. That it should be strictly confined to the bare essentials of parliament, a small executive, the judiciary, the police and a strong military to protect it all. Beyond that, you’d have to make a compelling case for more government as far as I’m concerned.
This is what a liberal believes.
In the 1980s, that’s what we called someone with this outlook in life. In the 1960s too. And the 1940s, 1920s, turn of the 20th Century and … back through the Enlightenment … and, because historians can see a clear movement in the West of unleashing human flourishing as we emerged from the Middle Ages, we’ve come to identify the birth of liberalism as 1689 with John Locke.
As a Western philosophy, its inextricably linked to our Christian roots. Liberalism thrives best when Christianity is in its full flourish, when citizens are practicing Christians AND liberals, side by side, the first informing the second.
Not conservatism. I’ve never described myself as a conservative.
Why?
Conservatives seek to conserve. At the same time, if you listen carefully to conservatives, there’s a tendency towards pessimism, a kind of bemoaning at things lost. Well, to this I say, if we have lost the schools, lost the universities, lost the boardrooms, lost the public service, lost the media, lost the churches, lost the very institutions of society and even the culture, what’s left to conserve? You can’t conserve something that’s lost!
So, as far as politics goes, I’m an unabashed ‘liberal’ and I claim the word because it describes my politics. Freedom. For me, it’s personal. It’s mine. I’m not giving it up.
I’m not budging even though American social democrats at the time of the New Deal skewed its meaning, twisting it into the opposite, something more like big government, centralised control and social welfare. In my weak moments, I’ll helpfully say ‘classical liberal’ for an American but I see the word classical as redundant.
Liberal. That’s it.
I’m not shifting from this policy even though Australia’s very own Liberal Party of Australia has long ago ceased to embody the philosophy. Despite it’s name, the Liberal Party of Australia is now illiberal in their actions and policies. I concede, at the present time, they’ve tainted the word.
I ran a Twitter poll recently, asking people what words they use for the beliefs of a liberal. The results were:
Liberal – 10% Classical Liberal – 17% Libertarian – 73%
Liberal Party of Australia, a pox be on you!
Still I persist. Liberal, with a small l.
I’m not relinquishing the word because young Australians watch too much US television and YouTube clips, thinking that ‘liberal’ means what Americans say it means.
No.
And I’m definitely not giving-up the word in favour of an alternative. Sure, I relent sometimes – like here in Liberty Itch – and call myself a ‘libertarian’ to avert misunderstandings by Americans, young Australians and those quick to judge me a member of the Liberal Party.
So, yes, I sometimes allow myself to be described ‘classical liberal’ and ‘libertarian’ unchallenged.
Before either of those two terms came about, a person with my beliefs was called a ‘liberal.’
So that’s what I am and perhaps you are too.
A liberal.
Own it. Say it aloud unashamedly. Reclaim our language. Use the word without qualification.
An entrepreneur who has employed 1,470+ people, Kenelm was admitted to the BRW Fast 100 three times with businesses in Australia, NZ, Singapore and New York, where he lived for 12 years. Kenelm’s investment firm performs mid-market leveraged roll-ups. He was a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review. Kenelm is the Founder of Liberty Itch.
