WA Liberal Leader Scurries Out The Back Exit
It’s Lunar New Year this week. The term Lunar New Year is more accurate than Chinese New Year. The spring festival is not exclusively Chinese but celebrated throughout China, Hong Kong, Tibet, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and, yes, here in Australia among communities sharing this heritage. Liberty Itch strives for accuracy, an appreciation of all cultures which observe...
A Centre-Right National Strategy
In The Shrinking Forest, I outlined the problem, the cause of the problem and denounced the rent-seekers who cash-in on the problem. Then in ‘All Great Change Begins at the Dinner Table’, I emphasized the role of family, faith and free speech, and in How Christianity Informs Classical Liberalism, the connection between Christianity and liberty. This fourth and concluding instalment...
Know Thy Opponent
John Stuart Mill, in his 100 page essay On Liberty, offered this advice: “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not...
FREEDOM! The Daughter of Davos Resigns.
Two extraordinary things happened yesterday. First, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced her resignation effective, at the latest, early in February 2023. (Yes, New Zealanders need to endure her for a few weeks more!) Second, I put out this short tweet yesterday together with a video of the Prime Minister, and it went viral. In a mere 180 minutes, it...
BREAKING: Violent CCP thug convicted in NSW
This week, a pro-Beijing self-described ‘spontaneous patriot’ was successfully convicted in a Sydney court of criminal intimidation. Last August 2022, prominent pro-democracy activist and former Hong-Kong Legislative Councillor, Ted Hui, suffered a politically driven assault and intimidation in Sydney. Chinese Communist Party supporter, Billy Kwok, influenced by the Chinese government’s propagandist apps WeChat and Weibo, was not happy with Mr. Hui’s...
How Christianity Informs Classical Liberalism
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...
The Tree of Liberty
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...
China’s Covert Australian Ops
The Chinese Communist Party’s public diplomacy programs in Australia look innocent enough. From the delightful Wang Wang and Funi Event at the Adelaide Zoo, to the partially CCP-subsidised OzAsia Festival, from the more recent Chinese Music Performance at the Adelaide Town Hall to the 'Chinese Singing Competition' held at a South Australian university campus. Chinese culture is on display. This is...
‘All Great Change Begins at the Dinner Table’
Last week, I commented on how spooky George Orwell’s predictions in his dystopian novel 1984 have become – a growing state, growing authoritarianism, the rise of rent-seekers and how our fellow citizens are being manipulated. So, let’s talk more about our fellow citizens, what’s happening with them, and how we can help them to fight back. Most people do not follow...
Just Another Day Battling A Government Agency
I live on a farm. I’m water self-sufficient. Call me libertarian. So I wasn’t happy when I discovered that some sparrows had been flushed through my water catchment pipes to the top hatch of a rainwater tank. The overflow on this tank is set too high so that, when the water level is highest, the water laps through the hatch. Bottom-line? My...
