Recently, the creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams, became the subject of a furore where he encouraged people to not associate with black people on the basis of a poll run by Rasmussen Reports.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams says that Rasmussen poll showing high level of Black racial animosity against Whites is the first opinion poll that has ever caused him to change his behavior

Importantly, Mr. Adams said that this was the “first” poll that had caused him to change his behaviour.

The irony is, what was reported about the poll was entirely different to the responses given in it. The poll surveyed a thousand people across the United States of America. The pop-up in Mr. Adam’s podcast said “Rasmussen Reports BLACK AMERICANS ONLY: “It’s okay to be white” 53% agree, 26% disagree, 21% not sure.”

The pop-up was materially misleading. Rasmussen’s own data is below:

From this data you can see that, for a start, Black Americans were not the only people surveyed. In fact, Black Americans only made up 13% of the thousand people surveyed, proportionate to the American population overall. Further, the actual question that was asked was not whether it was “OK to be white”. The actual question asked was:

Do you agree or disagree with this statement: “It’s OK to be white”.

Now as someone trained in statistics, I can tell you that this question is terribly phrased because it gives rise to ambiguity. The ambiguity is that there is a considerable difference between being asked whether it is “OK” to go around saying “It’s OK to be white” versus whether people are whatever “OK” means if they have white skin.

Where does the phrase “It’s OK to be white” come from?

Like so many divisive things, it originated from a 4Chan troll and was designed to generate dissent and anxiety. Later, it was adopted by neo-Nazi groups as a response to “Black Lives Matter”.

So if I were asked that question, I’d answer ‘No’ because I would not be happy to be associated with neo-Nazis. I will not say “It’s ok to be white”, not because I don’t like white people or are prejudiced against people due to their ancestry or the level of melanin in their skin, but because I am conscious of the trolling origin of the phrase.

When statisticians craft surveys, it is done for one of two reasons:

• either we are trying to acquire data to understand the world around us; or
• we are trying to use the survey to “manufacture consent” as Noam Chomsky would say, that is, using the questions in the surveys to attempt to elicit a response to drive a narrative.

This particular Rasmussen Survey was poorly designed and because it bothered to ask the question in such ambiguous terms, it appears to have been intended to manufacture a narrative to the effect that Black Americans do not like White Americans. Ironically, it failed obtain the data to support that narrative.

How to interpret the Rasmussen statistics

You can see from the pop-up in Mr. Adam’s podcast combined with the lazy reporting of the survey that people were of the view that a thousand Black Americans were asked whether “it’s OK to be white”, but this is not the situation.

Looking at Table 1 (above), it is evident that only 13% were black of the thousand people surveyed.

Moreover, of those 13%, or 130 people, only 26% of them were of the view that it was NOT OK to say “it’s OK to be white” because 18% on the 5-point Likert scale opted for “strongly disagree” and 8% opted for “somewhat disagree” (totalling 26%).

So how many people does that amount to?

It turns-out around 34 people out of those 130 felt that the phrase was unacceptable.

It is statistically invalid to extrapolate from a mere 34 people to suggest that, across America, 26% of all black people think it is “not OK to be white” because even the sample size of 130 people is too low for the size of the population to draw that qualitative conclusion.

Another problem with the survey was that many people reading it incorrectly conflated the “not sure” response with suggesting that it was “not OK to be white” to reach “we’re not sure that it is OK to be white”.

In statistics, a “not sure” or “don’t know” response suggests that the respondent:

• doesn’t have an opinion on the matter either way;
• doesn’t understand the question; or
• finds the question ambiguous.

There’s no reason to conflate a “not sure” with the negative any more than there is to conflate it with the positive. The respondents answering “not sure” can’t be conflated with other groups. Interestingly, the “not sure” answer tracks well across all races, so it might suggest that the ambiguity of the question made them unsure about answering that question positively or negatively.

Survey Biases

So why would I not consider the survey result to suggest that black people think it is not OK to be white? Rasmussen did not say how it conducted the survey, whether by phone or online, so I will cover both options.

I have a problem with online and phone surveys generally because of how they get people to answer the questions. Firstly, in order to get someone to answer political surveys such as this, you need people to decide that they want to respond.

If the survey is online, then you are getting people who feel strongly enough about the survey to go and log in and participate.

If they are cold-called by telephone, then you need them to answer the phone and then listen to the spiel, hand over their demographics and then decide to answer the survey.

If they are from a set of people who have pre-agreed to answer surveys, then it is usually because they have been promised some form of benefit in response for answering, such as to go into a draw for a cruise. We don’t know what kind of survey it was because Rasmussen has not revealed that information to the public.

In statistics, we have a concept called “response bias”. The only people who tend to respond to surveys have strong feelings about the questions being asked one way or another.

If it were people cold-calling in a telephone survey, we aren’t told how many people refused to participate.

If it were a “log in here and tell us what you think” survey, then there’s always a question as to who is likely to respond and whether they are “genuine” respondents.

If it were a pre-agreed pool of people who were responding, then this might explain the relatively large number of respondents who answered “not sure”.

Genuine responses

How do readers know that the people who are responding that they are black (or white, or other) are from the background that they say they are? We don’t have access to the demographic questions or the means by which Rasmussen says that they were aware of the racial identity of the respondents.

Clearly a number of other questions were asked to ascertain demographics, but how, in fact, does Rasmussen know that these demographics are accurate?

Again, we have no data on that.

When newspapers do polls online, a real problem is that occasionally someone will decide that they wish to “stack” the survey and will write a script and respond multiple times. We don’t have any data as to how Rasmussen tries to deal with such issues for online surveys.

One other interesting factor is that we don’t know the educational attainment of the people responding. Generally, we test for educational level because we’d expect that there could be differences of attitude depending on the level of education that a respondent has attained.

It’s an area of the survey demographics that hasn’t been asked but which we would usually test to see whether it was an important variable because the received wisdom is that the higher the level of educational attainment, the lower the level of prejudice.

Whether this is true in any given set of people varies but, because it has been a variable in other cases, it is usually included as a variable to see whether there’s a “cause” other than blind prejudice.

So should the survey have persuaded any person that black people are of the opinion that it is not ok to be white?

If you are of the view that the opinion of 34 people across all of the US can represent the 47 million black people across the US, then you might be persuaded. Whereas 130 out of the thousand people represents the 13% of the US population that is black, it is a very small, self-selected population from which to draw ANY valid conclusion.

This is why, if a student had presented this survey to me as an assignment,
I would have given it a fail grade.

As an attempt to set white people against black people by “rage farming”, a new “word” apparently added to the dictionary in the USA, I fear that it has worked all too well.

One of the best ways to make a set of people hate each other is to say “those people over there are out to hurt you” or “those people disapprove of you or your lifestyle”.

Despite the fact that over 74% weren’t happy to disagree with the statement “it’s ok to be white”, the theme of the news reports arising out of it was that black people don’t think it’s OK to be white.

You should not trust news reports and podcasts that blindly accept statistics.

Sometimes, the purpose of those statistics is to manipulate you. This is why you should check the statistics behind any survey that has “inflammatory” conclusions or questions.

Gillian Dempsey

Barrister at Law, LLB PhD (economics and commerce) ANU. Logic is beautiful – it is the necessary condition of mathematics and vital for proper discussion and policy-making. Logic and number theory are good hobbies – they keep me off the streets.

We’re all familiar with the dictum, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” But Will Rogers also astutely observed, “Yes, and the only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time parliament sits!”

The first thing to say about taxation is that we need less of it, not more.

Last week’s budget made it clear the government does not have a revenue problem – soaring iron ore, coal and natural gas prices are set to add $58 billion to tax revenue over the next four years. However, it does have a spending problem, with deficits predicted from here to eternity.

To address this, economists, businesspeople and, of course, State treasurers, kicked off the debate by proposing to raise and/or broaden the GST. Economic considerations aside, why the Commonwealth would even consider such a proposal is laughable. The Federal Government would bear all the pain and the States would enjoy all the gain – which they would no doubt spend as extravagantly as they do with existing GST proceeds.

Aside from the political reason, there is the simple economic reason:  a lift in the GST rate, or a base-broadening change, would simply give State governments more of our money.

Treasury officials, economists and business people will of course respond by saying they are not looking to raise more revenue, they just want to raise more from the GST and then offset that by reducing other taxes. But as occurred when the GST was originally introduced, by the time you have compensated everybody who says they will be worse off, you are left with only a portion of what the GST increase will raise. The result, as it was in 2001, would be a higher level of expenditure, a higher level of taxation, and no reduction in other taxes. This has been the experience with consumption taxes around the world.

It goes without saying that attempts at tax reform in Australia in the past have been disappointing.  The introduction of the Goods and Services Tax in 2000 resulted in a big increase in tax revenue – it will generate $80bn this year – a sum that was beyond the wildest imagination of even its most enthusiastic proponents back then. Getting the States to abolish many of their taxes, as they had promised to do as part of the GST introduction package, has, to say the very least, been problematic.  

One of the main problems is the fact that 70% of local, State and Federal taxes are spent on salaries.  It’s no wonder we haven’t seen a new reservoir built in 50 years.  And of that 70%, less than half is spent on essential services like nurses, teachers and police. As we know, whenever cuts in government spending are called for, politicians respond with “well how many nurses, teachers and police would you like us to cut?” They rarely ask how many media advisers you would like them to cut.

Presently, the Commonwealth raises around 80% of all taxation revenue in Australia, leaving the States with just 20% to fund their responsibilities. That 20% is less than half the revenue needed to fund State Government services. The balance comes from Commonwealth grants, many of which have conditions attached.

Fairly obviously, federal fiscal arrangements are dysfunctional.

As for tax law, the sheer quantity and ever-changing content of tax legislation has undermined its credibility.

One leading tax barrister described Australia’s tax laws as ‘unintelligible’.

It is practically impossible to know what the law is and what it means., and the High Court now seldom grants leave to appeal in federal tax cases, virtually giving up hope of ensuring the tax system remains subject to legal principles and normal adjudication methods.

Before the First Uniform Tax Case in 1942 the legislation occupied just 81 pages. It is now over 10,000 pages, (20,000 if you include fringe benefits tax, capital gains tax and superannuation provisions). If that’s not a recipe for dysfunction, it’s hard to know what is.

Bob Day

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.

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity
is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
It is impossible.” 

Those were not the words of an Australian Commonwealth Treasurer but rather of Winston Churchill addressing the House of Commons in 1925 arguing against a proposed increase in taxes.

Almost 100 years after Churchill’s comment, Treasurer Chalmers presented his second Budget, in May 2023.  It showed yet another record amount of tax collected and sums spent.  For the coming 2024 financial year, the Government expects to collect $668 billion (25.9% of GDP) to fund $684 billion of spending (26.6% of GDP). 

Of course, spending is higher than revenue so yet again
there is a deficit to add to the national debt pile
for our children and grandchildren to pay.

Of the $684 billion of spending, it is estimated that $356 billion or around 52% will be spent on health and welfare.

And within the social security and welfare line is the following:

From a standing start around ten years ago, assistance to people with disabilities, ostensibly NDIS, is now the second largest Commonwealth government program.

Over the life of the budget (FY23 to FY27), the average annual increase in spending on the aged pension increases by 6.5%, but the average annual increase in spending on the NDIS is 7.9%.  Both increases are faster than economic growth and the average annual increase in receipts (3.7%).

Like much of the developed world, Australia is experiencing an ageing population. It could be reasonably expected that spending on aged pensions might increase, but so much for superannuation. 

Yet given the rapid growth of NDIS spending, one might conclude that
Australia is also experiencing a dramatic increase in disability. 

Maybe there is something in the water.  Or perhaps the education system.

Parked near the back of the budget papers is an analysis of real per-capita spending and taxing: per-capita to adjust for government activity increasing due to population increases; real to adjust for inflation over time.  And in these numbers, the true state of budget disrepair is evident.

On a real per-capita basis, in the 2024 financial year:

• Commonwealth receipts are expected to be $18,102;
• Commonwealth payments are expected to be $18,479; and
• Commonwealth net debt is expected to be $15,574.

Impressive.  From an average four-person household, the Commonwealth expects to extract $72,408.

But here is the interesting part.  Thirty years ago, in per-capital real dollars:

• Commonwealth receipts were $8,866;
• Commonwealth payments were $10,110; and
• Commonwealth net debt was $11,364.

So basically, in the space of 30 years, on a per-capita basis, we are paying double the amount of tax, the Commonwealth is spending almost twice as much, and debt is 4.5 times larger in real terms.  And 30 years ago was 1983-84, when Bob Hawke came in inheriting a national economic basket case.

It is worth noting that the inclusion of historical real per-capita data in the budget papers is owed to the negotiation efforts of former Senator David Leyonhjelm.  Such important government finance transparency highlights the value of a strong classical liberal voice in Australian parliaments.

During the 1980 US Presidential election debate, Ronald Reagan asked the (rhetorical) question: “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?” Here is a question for Australians.  Is Australian government better than it was 30 years ago?  Given the doubling of taxing and spending, are services better?  Is Australia safer?  Are we healthier or smarter?

Perhaps Churchill was only half right.  A nation can’t tax itself into prosperity, but Australia is trying to tax itself into welfare and disability.

Dimitri Burshtein

Dimitri Burshtein is a Principal at Eminency Advisory and a former government policy analyst. He is a contributor to The Australian newspaper, Spectator Australia magazine and various libertarian blogs. Dimitri has also appeared on SkyNews and 2GB radio.

“To these people, the war is simply a continuous calamity which sweeps to and fro over their bodies like a tidal wave.”
                                                                                                              1984. George Orwell.

We are at war.                                             

We shall prevail at all costs.

                                                                         (The reputations of many are on the line)

It’s time for you to shelter in place.

                                       Hunker down.

When the wild dogs of the night come pouncing on you; call the helpline. Y­­ou will feel less lonely. But be patient: they are busy and they are doing the best they can.

                                                                                                 (I’m sure you’ll understand)

You know this is the right thing to do. Surrender your wishes, your passions and your aspirations. Make sacrifices. Don’t complain (you selfish prick!). We are here for you. We look after you.

It will be over soon. A quick operation with military precision. The objectives are very clear. We are authorised to report that we are winning. The enemy will try to adapt but we will defeat it every time. Every. Single. Time.

This is the stuff heroes are made of.

We ask that you do what the Nation demands of you.

                                                                                                      Be a brave little trooper.

                                                                                                           (Soon to be forgotten)

Lionel Orellana

Lionel is an IT engineer with more than 20 years’ experience developing enterprise applications in the private and public sectors. He completed his computer science degree in Venezuela in 2001. Then in 2002, Lionel moved to Australia after obtaining an international internship in Canberra. He became an Australian citizen in 2008.

Reform of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has been in the headlines. The problem with the RBA however is not structural.  It is a failure by the members of the board to be able to adequately define “inflation”.

At the heart of all the angst is the statement made by the RBA Governor, Philip Lowe, in 2020 that he did not think interest rates would rise until 2024.  Interest rates have risen, of course, and mortgage payments have exploded as a consequence. It’s therefore not hard to see how this stokes anger in voter land.

The Governor was not alone in making such forecasts. Most of the chief economists at Australia’s big four banks were making the same predictions. However, anyone with a basic understanding of what the word “inflation” really means knew these predictions were nonsense.

Inflation is simply the expansion of the money supply as a consequence of government debt and money-printing deficit-spending.

Think of the money supply as a balloon. When you fill it with hot air, the balloon expands. That’s inflation.

The result for you and I? Higher prices! 

For example, interest rates – which is a fancy way of saying ‘the price of money’ – go up. So it becomes necessary for lenders to ensure the money they lend today and receive in the future does not lose its spending power along the way.

Why are higher prices an inevitable consequence of the expansion of the money supply? Because the money fabricated by the government bids-up prices by competing with the money earned through wages and profits in the private sector.

When there is more money in the system,
but not more goods and services,
prices inevitably go up. 

Consider the fish market for example. There is only so much fish at the market on any given day. If the government stands at the gate and hands $100 to everyone who enters the market, demand goes up, as people are willing to pay more with that extra cash in their hands.

During covid, the government stood at the gate dispensing money freshly minted for it by the RBA in exchange for government bonds. We’ll get to government bonds in a moment. 

So did the RBA board not know about the nexus between the expansion of the money supply, price inflation and higher interest rates?  Or did they simply lie about the future of interest rates?

Inflation is toxic because it distorts price signals in the otherwise free market, creates malinvestment, enables “crowding out” (a topic for another day) and destabilises the economy.

It’s a favourite party trick of mine to show people the graph below from the RBA’s monthly chart pack. Note the alarming expansion in government bonds (see the grey area on the graph) the RBA accumulated on its balance sheet when the government issued bonds like crazy to fund its reckless spending during covid. There’s your inflation right there, Governor. It’s in your own data!

Anyone with a simple grasp of basic economics takes one look at that chart and draws the obvious conclusion that higher prices were coming soon.

“Global supply chains”, “the war in the Ukraine”, “yadda yadda”.  No! It was all the reckless debt-funded spending. They inflated the money supply and should have known that higher prices (and by extension higher interest rates) were inevitable in the short term, not way off in the future.

And just by the way, unions demanding wage rises are no more to blame for inflation as “greedy companies price gouging”. Pinning inflation on unions or businesses misses the point entirely.

Restructuring the RBA board will not solve the problem of economic ignorance. De-program aspiring board members of ‘Modern Monetary Theory’, ‘Keynesian Economics’ and other such nonsense. School them in microeconomics and Austrian school economics. Then RBA governance would not be in the news at all.

Nicholas Samios

Nicholas Samios is a fund manager and small business investor with a wealth of experience spanning three decades in commercial finance and SME capital raising. In his spare time, he puts on his “Austrian School” economist hat and utilises his insights from the commercial
world to analyse the economic landscape for SMEs and entrepreneurs.

Libertarians hate to pay tax, especially at current rates. Many subscribe to the view that “taxation is theft”, although most also acknowledge the government has a legitimate role in limited circumstances for which it requires funds.

With that off our chests, let’s get practical and talk about how the government’s debt collection activities in relation to small businesses interfere with the free market and create moral hazards. 

One of the most active ways the government intervenes in the free market at the SME level is through its debt collection activities.

SMEs accrue significant tax obligations, regardless of their profitability, because they are required to pay not only their own tax, but “other peoples” tax which they withhold on behalf of the ATO (commonly referred to as ‘withholding taxes’).

These withholding taxes include ‘Pay As You Go’ income tax they deduct from their employees’ wages and salaries, as well as the GST their customers pay on their purchases.   

A business turning over a modest $1m per annum and simply breaking even
can easily have upwards of a hundred thousand dollars in ATO obligations
for these withholding taxes.

Problems begin when businesses retain these monies to use as working capital instead of passing them on to the ATO as they are supposed to.

And this is where the moral hazard begins.  How tough should the ATO be when it comes to collecting these taxes from small businesses? 

The pro-small business observer might say the ATO should support small business by being lenient. 

And the ATO is extremely lenient. In fact, it has been extraordinarily lenient through Covid. In its last annual report, the ATO reported some $44.8b owing in overdue and uncontested (“collectable”) withholding taxes from small business. It also reported 13,000 small business tax arrangements entered into in FY 2022.

In its 2022 Annual Report the ATO stated:

As the economy recovers, one of our key priorities is to address the collectable debt that has accrued over the past 3 years. This has increased from $26.5 billion at 30 June 2019 to $44.8 billion at 30 June 2022 – up $18.3 billion or 69%. The increased debt is a result of disrupted economic activity due to lockdowns and cash flow impacts on small businesses and households. During the early stages of COVID-19 we deliberately shifted our focus away from firmer debt collection action to assist businesses and the community experiencing challenges because of the pandemic.

To put this $44.8b in context, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia, as of April 2021 the total outstanding credit to small businesses in Australia was around $291b, including loans from all types of lenders, not just the banks. Suffice to say the ATO is not a small player when it comes to extending credit to SMEs in Australia.

The moral hazards are as follows:

• The ATO gives a competitive advantage to a business which is either unable or unwilling to remit its taxes, allowing it to undercut a business that diligently pays its taxes and prices its goods and services accordingly.
• Many businesses that fail to pay their taxes ultimately fail. When that occurs, they take with them money they owe their suppliers, employees and sub-contractors, who might otherwise not have been exposed to the failed business but for the ATO keeping it in business.
• $44.8b in uncollected taxes is $44.8b our profligate governments will seek to gouge out of the rest of us one way or another elsewhere.

The Austrian economic principle of ‘creative destruction’ refers to the natural process of innovation and market competition, whereby new and more efficient ways of producing goods and services replace older, less efficient ones, and well-run firms outcompete poorly run firms. It is a Darwinian process where resources are re-allocated from losers to winners.  Creative destruction is essential for a prosperous free market as it encourages businesses to constantly innovate and improve, leading to greater efficiency, lower prices, and higher-quality goods and services for consumers.

The moral hazard created by the ATO in the form of leniency towards debt collection and granting unfair advantages to businesses that do not pay their taxes, compromise the process of creative destruction by propping up inefficient and unproductive businesses, inhibiting market competition, and ultimately hindering economic growth.

To promote a truly free market and ensure long-term economic prosperity,
it is necessary to hold businesses accountable for their tax obligations
and to allow the natural process of ‘creative destruction’ to take its course.

While the catch cry “taxation is theft” may be contentious, the practical implications of the government’s debt collection activities for small businesses cannot be ignored.  For those who favour a genuinely free market and long-term economic prosperity, we must hold businesses accountable for their tax obligations and question the role of the ATO in hindering the natural process of market competition.

Nicholas Samios

Nicholas Samios is a fund manager and small business investor with a wealth of experience spanning three decades in commercial finance and SME capital raising. In his spare time, he puts on his “Austrian School” economist hat and utilises his insights from the commercial
world to analyse the economic landscape for SMEs and entrepreneurs.

Most Australians are proud of our public healthcare system. It faces virtually no opposition and any effort to shrink it is political suicide. Labor still runs scare campaigns claiming the Liberals plan to “scrap Medicare”, yet the Liberal Party would never even dream of it.

On face value, our public healthcare system does seem impressive: necessities are covered, you don’t need to be worried about a scary bill after a hospital visit, and you can be assured that life-saving care is always available.

But look below the surface and you will find many problems. Ambulance ramping is widespread across Australia. The cost of public healthcare is sending our country broke. And there is one issue that is never talked about: the weaponisation of public health.

THE WEAPONISATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Many saw this for the first time during COVID: the loyal foot-soldiers of public health were demanding that unvaccinated individuals should not have access to public healthcare. Those who failed to look after themselves should be given the lowest priority when they inevitably end up in the healthcare system due to COVID, or so proponents of vaccine mandates claimed. They were wrong, but they also promoted a dangerous idea: that public health should not be equally provided for everyone.

For those of us who have been following the erosion of our liberties under the guise of ‘public health’ for decades, we have seen this all play-out before. Smokers have been the canary in the coal mine. For decades, a public health war has been waged against smokers: endlessly raising taxes and pushing smokers further away from social settings. All of this has been justified by claiming that smokers are a burden on public health.

Forget the fact that tobacco tax covers the cost of smoking on the public purse over ten times and assume anti-smoking activists are correct. The fundamental basis of public health is that those who are generally healthy pay for the costs of those who generally are not, whether due to lifestyle choices or otherwise.

If we can justify taxing and ostracising smokers due to their over-representation in public hospitals, who else can we justify doing that too? Obese people? Motorcyclists? Consumers of alcohol? What about basing it on the suburb where you live? It is not hard to find out who lives in more unhealthy suburbs and extrapolate that to greater reliance on public health. Should we tax and ostracise them too? The revenue-raising and divisive possibilities are endless.

A WAR ON ALL FRONTS

Under the Rudd and Gillard Governments, we saw the cultural war machine push hard against smokers. Health Minister Nicola Roxon brought her own personal vendetta against smokers to her position. Roxon implemented annual tobacco tax increases, resulting in the price of a pack of cigarettes more than quadrupling from 2010 to 2020, and her pièce de rèsistance: plain packaging. Neither of these measures reduced the prevalence of smoking in Australia, but they disproportionately hurt low-income earners (the typical demographic of smokers) and fed a booming illicit tobacco market.

It seems the new Health Minister, Mark Butler, has picked up where Roxon left off – with a five per cent tobacco tax increase per year for four years. If we learnt anything from last time it will almost certainly go on longer than four years. On top of that there is a new war on vaping, a product 95 per cent safer than cigarettes.

As if the federal war on smoking was not enough, in South Australia, the Malinauskas Government wages its own, as do various local governments. Relegating smokers to outdoors is not enough – the SA Government wants to push smokers away from outdoor public settings. They also hope to prohibit cigarette vending machines, hurting an already struggling hospitality industry.

The boot will continue to press on our faces until there is nothing left.

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE TOBACCO SMOKE

This is not just about smoking. Smokers are the guinea pigs: fewer than one in seven Australian adults smoke and most already feel like junkies. Smokers are easy targets: taxes are increased and restrictions become more onerous with little public outcry.

Non-smokers should not only watch with concern but act! As Neil Gaiman said …

“If you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like,
when they come for the stuff you do like,
you’ve already lost.”

More than anything, this should serve as a warning of the dangers of socialised healthcare: it is a weapon ready to be fired at the latest dissident group. There is no such thing as a free lunch and the cost of this lunch not only threatens Australia’s back pocket. It threatens our individual liberties and, ultimately, our identity.

James Hol

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.

Prior to 2020 I was an extremely proud Victorian. But what I’ve come to realise is that our human rights in Victoria are being limited or bypassed at the hands of the Dan Andrews’ State Government and are no longer adequately protected. It was also disappointing to discover from the results of our recent State election that a substantial percentage of our voting population seems to be content to accept that fate for the right price. That is, as long as they were still getting their salary or a decent welfare handout from the government.

The CFMEU protests in late 2021 made Victoria’s political landscape abundantly clear: the Dan Andrews’ Labor government with its heavy-handed police force, overpaid union boss and his “colleagues”, and their allies in the Liberal Party, joined forces against the people. In the end we saw unarmed protesters shot by Victoria Police with rubber bullets.

Although IBAC inquiry after IBAC inquiry digs up “grey corruption”, Dan’s “I can’t recall” line deflects any responsibility. $7.7million of taxpayers’ money was squandered defending the Andrews government’s disastrous decision to have night club bouncers run hotel quarantine. $5million plus residents’ legal fees will be paid to public housing residents in Flemington after the Victorian Ombudsman found the State government breached their human rights by detaining them without the support of health advice, and residents claim they were threatened with physical harm if they tried to leave.

The Premiers’ personal life is not void of colourful scandals either, including his “wife’s” collision with a teenage bike rider and the more recent falling down the steps saga. Dan’s track record is far worse than across the border in NSW where you lose your job over a bottle of wine, yet he remains untouchable. 

Transparency, integrity and accountability would be a good place to start.

Andrews has shamelessly run our State into an alarming level of debt. There is a serious mental health crisis caused by his response to Covid, and our current cost of living pain is real. Despite this, entertaining drag queens while they read books to children in Parliament seems to be his priority.

What are the remedies to all this? Transparency, integrity and accountability would be a good place to start. My suggestions to improve our current situation are as follow:

1. A Royal Commission
   Any government found to breach citizen’s human rights by the Victorian Ombudsman or in the Supreme Court should automatically trigger a Royal Commission. A Royal Commission into the Andrews government and its response to Covid is essential.
2. A Bill of Rights
   We need our human rights entrenched in our constitution, to protect the values of Australia that I once knew including freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and freedom of speech.
3. Strengthening IBAC
   As recommended by former Court of Appeal judge Stephen Charles KC, IBAC should adopt the broader international definition of corruption, “the abuse of trusted powers for personal or political gain”. As with ICAC (NSW’s equivalent), it is in the public interest for IBAC hearings to be made public and for it to publicise findings of corruption.
4. Full Transparency
   Taxpayer money should not be used to oppose Freedom of Information requests. Meeting notes, documents, emails and information used in support of important decisions having a major impact on our lives should be made publicly available.
5. Cut the Victorian Government’s political staff by 75%
   Andrews’ staff doubled from March 2020 to March 2021, costing taxpayers $49.2 million. The number of bureaucrats on $350,000 plus has increased by 142% since 2019. Ideally, his expanded public service should also be cut while we’re at it – the bigger the government, the bigger the problem.
6. Repeal Victoria’s political donation laws
   As an independent candidate at our most recent State election, I experienced firsthand the effect of the dodgy donation laws that saw the regime maintain an uneven playing field, winning government with just 36.6% of the vote. Any registered political party or independent candidate should be able to receive unlimited donations. Currently MPs receive more than $20m in public funding to cover administrative costs plus a communication budget. This money should be excluded from funding any expenses related to political campaigns.
7. Stop public funding for the Government’s political polling and consultants, and social media
   If Andrews wants to make decisions based on popularity or to buy fake followers to stroke his ego, he should pay for it himself.
8. No banning media
   Our media was hamstrung during Covid. If you didn’t ask favourable questions at Andrews’ press conferences, you weren’t allowed back. Despite my values of freedom of choice, when it comes to taxpayers’ money and journalism, all media should be allowed at any political press conferences. They work for us and shouldn’t need to ban certain press if they have nothing to hide.

Caroline White

Caroline is a mother who owns children’s dance schools in Melbourne and Japan. Frustrated by the corruption in our political system and led by a desire to provide her community with trustworthy leadership, she began running as a candidate. Caroline’s most recent political foray was as an independent, where she placed third.

This month, there were reports of a Chinese ‘spy balloon’ flying over the airspace of the United States.

Back home, we next had an announcement from Senator James Paterson (Liberal, Victoria) that there were more than 900 CCP surveillance cameras installed in various Commonwealth departments, including Defence and Foreign Affairs offices.

It’s unnerving to discover Beijing’s surveillance of democratic nations, its governments and individual citizens.

However, in the midst of these concerns, Liberty Itch found a quiet moment to chuckle on receiving an image with the following message:

ALERT!
Is it a UFO? No.
Is it a Chinese spy balloon? No.
It’s … what we think of CCP denials!

Fiona Hui

Fiona is a higher education professional based in South Australia. Following the collapse of Hong Kong freedom, Fiona became deeply concerned about the threats imposed by China within Australia. Her research covers a range of topics, including China’s soft power, influence, infiltration, interference and human rights abuses.

Real interest rates are negative at the moment.  By keeping them this way, the RBA is encouraging spending, facilitating the transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers and causing malinvestment.

That may seem to be a lot to unpack – but economics isn’t hard.  Yes, there are people who are paid to make it look hard but let me step you through negative real interest rates, what that means for consumers and investors, and why it means further rate rises are inevitable.

The real interest rate is the nominal rate of interest (the one you see on your bank statement or in the paper) less the rate of inflation. 

Right now, the RBA’s nominal cash rate is 3.5%.  Deduct CPI at 7.0% and the result is a real official interest rate of negative 3.5%.

Let’s clarify the key terms in this equation.

The “nominal interest rate” is the interest rate that you pay – the price of your money reported by banks and discussed by media. 

For the purposes of discussion, let’s assume we are lending to the Australian government and so we will use the “Cash Target Rate” as published by the RBA – 3.5%.

Now let’s consider inflation. In a previous article I explained the Austrian School of Economics definition of inflation:  an expansion in the supply of money through money printing, government debt and deficit spending.  Higher prices are the eventual consequence of inflation.

The commonly accepted measure of inflation in Australia is the Consumer Price Index (CPI) – which is currently 7.0% as most recently published by the RBA. 

But let’s make this “real world” – Westpac is offering 4.25% on term deposits. So that’s a real interest rate for savers of minus 2.75%.  Westpac is also offering home loans at 4.9% – a real interest rate for borrowers of minus 2.1%.

If the bank is offering to pay you -2.75% on your savings, or lend you money at -2.1% – what do you do?

Why are these numbers important?  Lenders set interest rates so that when they get paid back at some point in the future, the money they receive back includes a reward for taking the risk to lend PLUS compensation for any loss of spending power courtesy of inflation.

If I lend you $100 for 12 months today, I need at least $107 back in in 12 months to have the same spending power at that time – assuming you believe price inflation is only the published 7% (who does?). 

$107 will not be enough though!  I also need to be rewarded with a premium for taking a risk on you.  How much this “risk premium” is will depend on the circumstances. Lending to the newly established cafe on an unsecured basis is riskier than lending to the owner of the café secured by a mortgage on his or her house, which is still riskier than lending to BHP, which is riskier than lending to the Federal Government, and so the risk premium increases for each of these accordingly.

Where does the rubber hit the road on this? There are three things you can do with money.  You can spend it, you can invest it, or you can save it.

Would you save money
if the money you save
is going to be worth less in 12 months time?

You deposit your money and receive 4.25%, you get your $104.25 back in 12 months time but you can buy less with it then than you can today.

Do you spend it today? If you believe your money is losing spending power, then maybe you will.  So now you see, that with rates as high as they are, the current interest rate settings are in fact stimulatory!  If the current real interest rates encourage spending and discourage saving, do you think they will work to control inflation or fuel it?

You could invest your money instead of saving or spending it.  However, to counteract inflation and preserve the value of savings, investors face the challenge of finding suitable investment avenues. This can lead to the pursuit of high-yield high-risk investments, fostering speculation and malinvestment.

Understanding what interest rates are supposed to do (compensate for lost spending power and risk), the current levels of real interest rates (being negative) make absolutely no sense at all.  They punish savers and reward borrowers, effectively transferring wealth from the former to the latter.  And they encourage investors to jeopardise their wealth by seeking risk.

Where are interest rates headed then? Take a look at the chart below.  Historically the Cash Rate Target tracks above the CPI – for the reasons explained above.   And real interest rates are historically positive.

When observing this chart, can we really believe interest rates have peaked? That the RBA won’t be lifting interest rates again – if not tomorrow then certainly in coming months. And again and again?

Nicholas Samios

Nicholas Samios is a fund manager and small business investor with a wealth of experience spanning three decades in commercial finance and SME capital raising. In his spare time, he puts on his “Austrian School” economist hat and utilises his insights from the commercial
world to analyse the economic landscape for SMEs and entrepreneurs.

If you believe in free markets and freedom, and are not familiar with the work of Thomas Sowell, then drop everything now, and Google his name. 

And if you have time, watch some YouTube videos of him. I guarantee that you will not be disappointed.

If you have more time, read one of his books.  My personal favourite is A Conflict of Visions.

Very quickly, Sowell is an economist and social commentator.  He was born in 1930 to a very poor family in North Carolina in the US.  When he was quite young, his father died and he was sent to live with family in Harlem, New York.  A smart and precious youth, he saw the metaphorical light when he was introduced to the public library.

Moving forward, Sowell had a stint in the US military during the Korean war.  And because of this, he was a late starter at university – in his mid-20s.  But he did his Bachelors at Harvard, then his Masters at Columbia and finally his Doctorate at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman.

All along the way, Sowell was a self-declared Marxist. This was true even while working with George Stigler and Milton Friedman. And then it all changed.

He became a titan of free markets and liberty.

What happened?

He went to work for the government! 

When asked in an interview what changed his mind, Sowell replied: “Facts”.  See for yourself here.

I bring up Sowell because one of his most important observations was that “Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”

Which brings me to Australia.

While the Albanese government is getting much of the blame for our current inflation and interest rate ills, they are not entirely at fault.  They aren’t helping matters, but they aren’t entirely at fault.

Much of the fault lies at the feet of the Liberal-National Coalition Government of Scott Morrison.  They could not have timed their election eviction any better.

As I recently wrote in The Australian newspaper:

Decades of economic history have shown that private property, rule of law, free and competitive markets, and limited government drive prosperity anywhere and everywhere.

And anywhere and everywhere includes Australia.

Nowhere has a nation improved its lot through expanded government. You can’t tax, spend or regulate a country into prosperity, much as the Morrison Government tried really, really hard.  When it came to increasing taxes, increasing government spending, and increasing regulation, the Morrison Government was Whitlamesque.

Our current inflation ills are a problem of supply, of constricted supply.  Constricted by too much government spending, too much taxation and too much regulation.  We won’t spend or save our way out of this.

What is required is a supply side revolution
to get the foot of government off the throat of Australians.

How many more sales can a business owner make if he did not need to fill in the ATO, ABS, Austrac, ASIC, and other forms designed by people to keep themselves busy?  Who do you think is paying for Scott Morrison’s bank tax?  Certainly not the bank shareholders.  How much would your cost of living pressures ease if your groceries were cheaper because your supermarket did not need to employ a battalion of compliance officers.

Yes.  Some of our inflation problems are imported.  Much of them are home grown.

The inflation of the 1980s and 1990s was not just vanquished through high interest rates.  Governments all around the world, from Ronald Reagan in the US to Margaret Thatcher in the UK to Bob Hawke in Australia all led major economic programs to deregulate, to liberate, to reform.  This is the opposite of what the last 20 years of Australian government has done.  To regulate, to subjugate, to deform.

As Zhuangzi wrote in 369 BC: “Good economic order results spontaneously when things are left alone”. 

We will not escape from our economic problems with business as usual.  Treasurer Jim Chalmers has a window of opportunity to redirect the national economy.  But he must change direction, because otherwise we will end up where we are headed … Venezuela … where everyone is a trillionaire.  But a trillionaire who still can’t afford to feed themselves or their family.

Dimitri Burshtein is a Principal at Eminence Advisory and a former government policy analyst.  He is also a periodic contributor to The Australian newspaper.

Dimitri Burshtein

Dimitri Burshtein is a Principal at Eminency Advisory and a former government policy analyst. He is a contributor to The Australian newspaper, Spectator Australia magazine and various libertarian blogs. Dimitri has also appeared on SkyNews and 2GB radio.

Frederick Douglass (1817–1895) is considered by many to be America’s greatest African American. Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King make up their top three.

Born into slavery, Douglass became a free man and rose through the ranks to eventually become the first African American to receive a vote for nomination for President of the United States. His final years were spent as Consul-General to the Republic of Haiti.

Following the American Civil War and the emancipation of America’s slaves, Douglass was asked, “What should be done for these (former) slaves?”

“Nothing!” he replied. “Leave us alone. By freeing us, you’ve done enough already.”

“If you leave us alone, we’ll work our way up. We will create pathways for others to follow.”

The value of getting one’s foot onto that first rung of the ladder cannot be overstated.

I mention this because a number of years ago an application was made to amend the Australian Fast Food Industry Award and dramatically increase the wages of junior employees.

It was unarguable that junior employees’ wages were very low at that time, but this had the significant benefit that many young people from lower socio-economic areas were able to get jobs and, to paraphrase Frederick Douglass, “work their way up.”

Appeals to reject the application fell on deaf ears and a substantial increase in the Award wage occurred.

This had the perverse effect that middle-class college students started applying for the jobs – and getting them. One franchise-owner said to me …

“Why wouldn’t I employ the college kids?
They’re smart, articulate, reliable, their parents drop them and pick them up in a BMW! The lower socio-economic kids were not as good, but hey, they were cheaper.”

No-one was sacked and replaced, but over time the poor kids were replaced by wealthier kids.

Let’s face it, some people don’t have a lot going for them. They come from dysfunctional families, aren’t blessed with particularly high IQs, and have other problems. The one thing they do have going for them, however, is their ability to compete with more fortunate young people on price.

They may not have been as articulate or refined as the wealthier kids, but they were prepared to work for less.

Not anymore. We have taken away from them that one last remaining labour market advantage they had over the rich.

This form of price-fixing is at the heart of labour market regulation. It’s called ‘centralised wage fixing.’ It is putting the power to dictate to someone what they can and cannot work for – regardless of what they want – into the hands of people completely remote from the ones whose lives they are about to ruin.

When people, young people in particular, are excluded from full participation in community and working life, the social costs are enormous – drug and alcohol abuse, crime, domestic violence, poor health, depression, frustration, boredom, bikie gang recruitment, civil disorder, teenage pregnancy, even suicide. This is what happens when young people don’t have a job. They are locked out of the labour market at exactly the time they are biologically ready to enter into relationships, get married and start a family.

Now no-one is arguing against a welfare safety net, but we have to allow people to get a foot on that first rung of the ladder.

The current political battle is not between Left and Right, rich and poor. It’s between freedom and authoritarianism. It’s between those who, like Douglass, want to help people become self-reliant by removing barriers to entry to things like jobs and housing, and those who see those without jobs and houses as political opportunities to get themselves elected. “It’s not your fault”, political opportunists say. “You are a victim. The system did this to you. That rich kid took your job. Vote for me and the government will look after you. I’ll remake that cruel and nasty free-market capitalist system.”

Not only is this economically stupid, it is morally reprehensible.

Bob Day

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 smuggling isn’t the world’s oldest profession, it’s likely a smuggler was one of its first customers. The moment a tax or restriction is imposed on any trade, an incentive for smuggling is created.

Smuggling has also influenced world affairs. Britain’s heavy-handed attempts to prevent its US colonies from trading with the Spanish empire, which were circumvented by smuggling, stirred the desire for independence.

The Chinese government’s efforts to stop opium smuggling in the 1840s led to the opium wars, two outcomes of which were Britain’s acquisition of Hong Kong and China’s distaste for foreigners. And of course, smuggling of alcohol in America during Prohibition gave a huge boost to organised crime and led to the creation of the FBI.

In the twentieth century, the prohibition of recreational drugs led to smuggling becoming a vast international industry, funding organised crime and corrupting entire countries.  Moreover, laws passed to suppress it were often fundamentally at odds with a free society.

Given this history you might expect the Australian government to be wary of creating another opportunity for smugglers. As the saying goes, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Yet that is exactly what Australia is doing; a large and growing smuggling industry has developed as a direct result of its massive increases in tobacco excise.

Tobacco excise is increased in March and September each year by average weekly ordinary time earnings (AWOTE) plus whatever the government decides. The big jumps began in 2010 under Labor with a 25% increase followed by yearly increases of 12.5%. This continued until 2020 under the Coalition.

In July 2006 tobacco excise was 23 cents per stick, or $291 per kg. By February 2023 it was $1.14 per stick or $1,629 per kg, an increase of 490% and 560% respectively. Over the same period the CPI increased by 152%.  In other words, tobacco excise increased about 3.5 times as fast as inflation.

Cigarettes in Australia are now the most expensive in the world at about $2 per stick at retail level. This has contributed significantly to government revenue: three or four years ago tobacco excise raised around $18 billion dollars a year. For reasons that will become obvious, it is now around $14 billion.  

With the price of an entire pack of cigarettes costing less than $2 in some countries, there is an enormous incentive to smuggle tobacco products into Australia. It is said that even if nine out of ten containers of illicit tobacco products are intercepted, the profits on the tenth are sufficient to not only cover the losses but also reward the smugglers handsomely.

Smokers, a large proportion of whom have low incomes, at first responded to the increase in excise by reducing consumption, prompting health bureaucrats and anti-tobacco activists to pat themselves on the back. But, unlike in the rest of the world, the decline virtually ceased a few years ago. Many just switched to smuggled cigarettes and tobacco.

The periodic survey of tobacco consumption by KPMG found illicit tobacco increased from 14% of the market in 2018 to over 20% in 2019. A total of 3.1 million kilograms of tobacco, loose and packaged, was smuggled into the country, avoiding $3.4 billion in excise. 

The response of the federal government has been to boost deterrence and interdiction efforts. Penalties have been increased and, in 2018, it established an Illicit Tobacco Taskforce to “proactively detect, disrupt and dismantle serious organised crime syndicates that deal in illicit tobacco”.

The Australian Tax Office, which is responsible for stopping local tobacco production, also ramped up its efforts. It uses satellite surveillance to detect crops based on their biological signature, the same technology used to identify cannabis, and boasts loudly whenever it detects and destroys a tobacco crop.  

The availability of smuggled cigarettes and loose tobacco has not faltered.

To some extent this is of no great concern to anyone except the federal government. Cheap smokes are no more dangerous than the legal kind and the smugglers are merely evading taxes, not something most of us would seriously criticise.  The smokers who consume illicit tobacco products can hardly be blamed for wanting to save money.

The real problem is that the people smuggling tobacco are also smuggling other things. They are organised, sophisticated, dangerous criminals. Profits from tobacco smuggling are funding these other activities, including human trafficking. According to the US Department of State, traffickers are denying nearly 25 million people “their fundamental right to freedom, forcing them to live enslaved and toil for their exploiter’s profit.”

Whether the government should even expect to make a difference, given smuggling’s history, is a good question.

You would have to search long and hard to find where
smuggling has been substantially suppressed through law enforcement,
particularly in a country that respects legal rights and due process.

If the enormous resources devoted to the control of drugs have failed to limit their availability, why should it succeed with tobacco?The alternative of removing the incentive to smuggle tobacco into Australia by reducing the excise is never considered. Yet smokers would gladly buy their favourite legal brands if they were cheaper, legitimate tobacco suppliers and retailers would not be competing against illicit suppliers, and much less money would be spent on law enforcement.

The simple fact is there is no prospect of controlling the illicit tobacco market through enforcement, just as it was not possible to enforce alcohol prohibition in America or prohibition of drugs anywhere in the world. As the police would say, this is not a problem you can arrest your way out of.

David Leyonhjelm

David Leyonhjelm was an Australian Senator from 2014 to 2019 representing New South Wales for the Liberal Democratic Party. Notable for his libertarian consistency, David’s work in Senate Estimates attracted acclaim worldwide for its forensic examination of government
waste. Professionally, he is a veterinarian and agribusiness consultant.

The 1999 Venezuelan Constitution, sponsored by the late Hugo Chávez as the foundation for his nascent revolution, has been described as “the non-sexist Magna Carta.”

The writers of the document went to great lengths to use the Spanish masculine and feminine forms throughout the text. For example, presidente and presidenta are both used in quick succession to refer to the role of president, even though it is grammatically correct to use the masculine form to refer to both genders. This unnecessary repetition makes for a very cumbersome read. Chávez himself spoke like this, occasionally making up absurd gender-neutral words.

The National Institute for Women was established in October 1999. Then in 2009, the Institute became part of the newly formed Popular Ministry for Women and Gender Equality.

“Our main political program is mainstreaming gender into every sphere of Venezuelan public and political life. Within all government programs — health, education — we want everyone to know about and think about gender issues.”

Corina Fumero, National Institute for Women. Green Left Weekly.

8 February 2006. 

Was Hugo Chávez simply a man ahead of his time, a true visionary, a prophet for a new progressive movement that was about to take over the world?

Today, of course, progressives try to distance themselves from him, knowing as we know now the devastating results of his revolution, in a country with enough resources to be another Dubai. But make no mistake, everything that Australian progressives stand for today was put into practice by Hugo Chávez more than two decades ago.

You only needed to hear Hugo Chávez speak to understand how the concept of
class struggle and anti-capitalism was expanded to include
gender, race and colonialism.

A group of bad people always oppress a group of good people. The entire history of humanity is explained by this cartoonish good-guy versus bad-guy categorisation.

Group membership is what determines your moral value. The oppressed, as a group and regardless of their individual actions, are entitled not to equal treatment but to indefinite retribution. The oppressors, also as a group and regardless of their individual actions, are forever guilty and beyond salvation.

This is, for example, how official large-scale seizures of land, property and businesses are justified while sectors of the population are actively encouraged to take back what is ‘rightfully theirs’. Your legal claim to property can be overridden by fuzzy claims of oppression.

Climate change is of course an anti-capitalist dream and Hugo Chávez was an outspoken campaigner for climate action.

Many in the West today might be surprised to learn how much they have in common with the father of 21st century socialism. If they are being honest, they would admit to finding his speech at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 riveting and forward-looking.

“Let’s not change the climate, let’s change the system! And consequently, we will begin to save the planet. Socialism, this is the direction, this is the path to save the planet, I don’t have the least doubt. Capitalism is the road to hell, to the destruction of the world.”

A few short months after that crowd-pleaser of a speech, Chávez was back home trying to make people use less power.

Equity and climate change are the high moral ground from where an undeterred expansion of government control is presented as a solution. The virtuous ends that unequivocally justify all means.

This is the vindictive culture that tore Venezuela apart. These are the teachings of Hugo Chávez. And too many well-intentioned Aussies are listening.

C.S. Lewis said it best when he wrote:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

Lionel Orellana

Lionel is an IT engineer with more than 20 years’ experience developing enterprise applications in the private and public sectors. He completed his computer science degree in Venezuela in 2001. Then in 2002, Lionel moved to Australia after obtaining an international internship in Canberra. He became an Australian citizen in 2008.

In his famous 1964 “A Time for Choosing” speech, Ronald Regan recounted a story:

“Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”

I was brought back to this speech and this story when I opened my email this morning to an alert from Visual Capitalist, a wonderful website that produces graphics of important data sets.  This morning’s alert was to show the richest and poorest nations in the world based on per capita income.

The top 3 richest are in Europe: Luxembourg, Ireland, and Switzerland.  The 3 poorest are in Africa: Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Malawi.  Europe versus Africa. 

Looking at these charts should make one wonder.  But in a world of diversity, there will always be rich and poor, but the important questions are why are the rich rich and the poor poor. 

The social justice intelligentsia would have people believe that poor are poor because the rich are rich.  As if the rich took wealth from the poor.  They would also have people believe that poverty is a function of resources.  Yet the poorest nations are in Africa where resources are ample, and the richest nations are in Europe where resources are sparse.

If recent history has shown anything, the drivers of longer term economic and social prosperity are not geography or resources.  It is not climate or race.  The difference is the software that these countries run.

It has been seen, time and time again, anywhere and everywhere, that the key ingredients, the five magic apps for prosperity are:

1. the rule of law;
2. limited government;
3. low taxes;
4. property rights; and
5. competitive markets.

Evidence?  Sure.  Look at North Korea vs South Korea, East Germany vs West Germany.  Look even at North America and South America.

You will note that democracy is not on that list because these are the apps for economic and not political freedom.  China has proven that you can increase a nation’s wealth by running these economic magic apps.  But China has also shown that economic freedom creates pressures for political freedom which is why it is starting to delete these apps, and watching its economic prosperity slowly erode.

What is the lesson here?  Well, these wealthy nations, including Australia, that have become wealthy and prosperous by running these five magic apps, by having the rule of law, limited government, low taxes, property rights and competitive markets are, slowly deleting these apps.  And wealth and prosperity is slowly being deleted in parallel.  The first sign of the economic atrophy is inflation.  Next will come recession/depression.  What comes next?  Have a look at the nations that don’t run these magic 5 apps.

After economic freedom disappears, then political freedom will disappear.

As Ronald Regan said: “If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to”.

Dimitri Burshtein

Dimitri Burshtein is a Principal at Eminency Advisory and a former government policy analyst. He is a contributor to The Australian newspaper, Spectator Australia magazine and various libertarian blogs. Dimitri has also appeared on SkyNews and 2GB radio.

Australia is implementing tangible measures to counter the security threats imposed by Communist China.

The AUKUS security pact has turned out to be a robust, bipartisan commitment and our PM has recently sealed the deal with India to strengthen the two countries’ trade and defence cooperation.

These actions are loud and clear: Australia no longer wants to put all its eggs in one big communist basket. The resulting key trading-partner risk threatens our democracy and sovereignty.

Despite the fast-changing political landscape, the Director of the Australia China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Professor James Laurenceson, continues to advocate for maintaining our dependence on Communist China and suggests, in his piece for the Guardian on 18 March 2023, that the AUKUS alliance must be accompanied by “reassurance to Beijing”, in that Australia should have no intention of impeding China’s economic growth or changing its One China policy.

While we acknowledge that Prof. Laurenceson is entitled to his view, Liberty Itch does not believe it is necessary to placate Beijing like we would a child with a dummy.

It is concerning that a UTS professor calls for Australia to sooth Beijing,
ignoring security threats imposed by the human rights crushing Chinese state.

In fact, if any reassurance is required, it should be given by Beijing that they won’t invade or annex Taiwan, given the record-breaking increase in Chinese military activity towards the self-ruled democracy.

Liberty Itch isn’t in the habit of citing anti free market activists and former political candidates for the Australian Greens. However, even from that end of the political spectrum, Australian scholar Professor Clive Hamilton, in his book Silent Invasion, suggests that the ACRI served as a means of promoting China’s interests in Australia. He further suggested that the ACRI sought to influence Australian public opinion in favour of closer ties with China, despite concerns about China’s human rights record and its global domination agenda.

The Conversation has also reported on 5 June 2017 that the ACRI was founded with a donation of AUD$2.8 million from two affluent Chinese immigrants. The founding chairman of ACRI was billionaire political donor, Huang Xiangmo, who The Guardian reported on 6 February 2019 had his Australian permanent residency revoked and was deported in 2019 due to his deep links with the communist regime’s top ruling class.

Bob Carr, a CCP enthusiast and former Foreign Minister, was ACRI’s founding Director and succeeded by Prof. Laurenceson. Interestingly, both are advocating for ‘reassurance to Beijing’. They also share the same grievances towards the pro-democracy Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in Canberra.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/xlp5V8bkJTE?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Rather out of touch in the above video, Mr. Carr keeps talking about the old time, old strategy in dealing with China. His inability to accept the current geopolitical situation in relation to the CCP’s aggression towards Taiwan and the Chinese state’s new alliance with other autocratic countries in the Middle East is, to put in mildly, concerning.

Although Mr. Carr had to distance himself from the ACRI due to the above controversy and public outcry, Prof. Laurenceson continues to encourage Australia to align with Communist China, rather than with other democratic nations.

“If any country is a drag on Australia’s economy, it’s the United States rather than China”, said Prof. Laurenceson.

Such an argument aligns with the goal of the CCP, which aims to divert people’s attention towards economic and financial benefits rather than universal principles and values. Such a position has the potential to weaken Australia’s democratic partnerships and persuade its citizens to support China’s authoritarian, communist ideologies under the guise of economic advancement.

Most importantly, the ACRI routinely leaves out the severity and extensiveness of the Chinese state’s human rights abuses, nor does it discuss the depth and aggressiveness of CCP interference in Australia. The ACRI does not discuss how these issues negatively impact the Australia-China relationship.

Liberty Itch calls for more transparency from the UTS
to reveal ACRI’s past and present funding sources,
including all staff trips to China funded by the CCP.

The ACRI is supposedly an ‘independent, nonpartisan, research institute’. The head of this Institute, who claims to be on the payroll of a publicly-funded university, should not be ‘singing duo’ with Bob Carr and together acting like ‘relationship brokers’ between Australia and the Chinese Communist Party.

Fiona Hui

Fiona is a higher education professional based in South Australia. Following the collapse of Hong Kong freedom, Fiona became deeply concerned about the threats imposed by China within Australia. Her research covers a range of topics, including China’s soft power, influence, infiltration, interference and human rights abuses.