Who Is Compulsory Super Benefitting: Ordinary Australians Or The Top End Of Town?

Mainstream Australians are being failed by the political class as the gap between two Australias continues to widen.  This failure is exemplified by a superannuation system that siphons money to the financial sector and political class and actively prevents mainstream Australians from achieving the Australian way of life.

The legislated increase of forced super contributions from the current rate of 9.5% to 12% of wages will in many cases work against the financial interests of Australians, both now and in retirement.  Forced super contributions come directly at the expense of savings outside of super that can be put towards a house deposit or used to reduce debt.  Increasing the compulsory rate will only put the aspiration of homeownership and financial security further out of reach of an increasing proportion of the population.

Homeownership fell from 71% to 66% of households between 1995 and 2018, and is set to get worse if trends among younger generations continue.  In the 1980s, 68% of Australians owned their own home in their early 30s.  Of those currently in their early 30s, the rate is just 50%.

A 2019 survey by Core Data found that nearly 70% of first home buyers did not fund 100% of their deposit from their personal savings, with a majority relying on family assistance in the form of gifts, guarantees, and loans.  Further diminishing the ability to save outside of super will remove the aspiration of homeownership from those unable to rely on family wealth.

As made clear by the recently released Retirement Income Review, those retiring without owning their own home are significantly disadvantaged with retirement income having to cover rental housing and without the option of drawing additional income from their home asset.

Not only is the current system damaging mainstream Australians, but it also fails to make sense from a public finance perspective.  According to the review, by 2047 the revenue forgone through superannuation tax concessions will exceed the total cost of the age pension.

Despite the significant failures of superannuation, the current system along with the legislated increase of compulsory contributions to 12% of workers' wages continues to be pushed by special interests.  An artificially inflated financial sector and the political class benefit from the gravy train created by $30 billion of annual superannuation fees.  As my research released last week shows, the financial sector's share of national income has continued to grow following a rapid expansion that coincided with the introduction of superannuation in 1992.  Before superannuation the financial sector was 2.4% of national income and has since increased to 6.5%.

The wealth transfer from hard-working Australians to the financial sector and political class generated by the superannuation system is part of a broader divide across Australian society.  Australia is increasingly being divided into two Australias.

One Australia tends to be employed in the public sector or in white-collar jobs offered by big corporations that find fertile soil in a bloated financial sector.  The other Australia is made up of mainstream Australians who own their own businesses or are employed in the private productive economy by small and medium-sized businesses.

It is mainstream Australians that are under stress due to a plethora of failed public policy that undermines the businesses they own and work in and creates barriers to obtaining key parts of the Australian way of life such as homeownership.

Public sector wages continue to rise, funded by taxes from workers with stagnating real wages.  Big business continues its takeover of the Australian economy, while small businesses are strangled by red tape, onerous labour laws, and now lockdown and social distancing restrictions that disproportionately harm small business.  And those who own their home enjoy increased equity with rising house prices, while an increasing proportion of Australians are priced out of the market due to a failure of public policy on development, taxation, superannuation, and immigration.

If trends continue, the gap between the two Australias will only widened.  Public policy must be made to benefit the broader country and not become a tool of the political class that is tightly organised to promote their special interests at the expense of mainstream Australia.

Reforming superannuation towards a system of voluntary contributions would return control to Australians to make financial decisions in their own best interest given their individual circumstances and block off the siphoning that is enriching the political class at the expense of mainstream Australia.

Warts And All Memorial

As its name makes clear, the Australian War Memorial exists to memorialise the service and sacrifice of Australians in war, as a reflection of our shared commitment to our country and each other.  It does not exist to denigrate our national character nor to pander to the worst kinds of elite self-hatred so lamentably prominent across our national institutions.  Yet there is a danger now that this place of honour might be turned to these subversive ends.

In the wake of the Brereton report on alleged war crimes committed by Australian SAS troops in Afghanistan, there have been calls for the War Memorial to immediately reflect the allegations in its exhibitions.  Memorial director Matt Anderson has suggested that curators will indeed do just that.  Similarly, former Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Chris Barrie has suggested that the SAS exhibit be removed altogether.  The prime minister has responded meekly, saying only that all such changes will need to be approved by the War Memorial's board.

But it should be clear that it would not fit the purpose of the War Memorial to foreground the bad acts of a few soldiers.  Of course, wherever criminality is proved, it should be punished to the fullest extent, and if this comes to pass, no one would suggest that it be whitewashed from the history of Australia's war in Afghanistan.  Yet it would not be, and should not be presented as, the sum total, or even the most important part, of that history.  Nor should the war in Afghanistan, despite its unprecedented length, be allowed to overshadow Australia's larger military history.

The War Memorial's curators are charged with telling the full story of Australians at war.  That story is overwhelmingly a story of courage, discipline, loyalty and other virtues, demonstrated in defence of our home, our values and our traditional liberties.  Australians have fought honourably from the Sommes to Kokoda to Long Tan and beyond, including in Afghanistan.

This is the truth to which the War Memorial is dedicated.  Undue emphasis on the bad acts of a few at the expense of this larger story would not be truthful.  It would, in fact, be deeply misleading.

Getting this larger story wrong is unfair to service members and veterans and their families.  Tens of thousands of Australians have served in Afghanistan.  Hundreds of thousands have served our country.  They should not be tarred with guilt by association.

Moreover, allowing these allegations to overshadow the true story of Australia's military history is unfair to civilians as well.  The story that the War Memorial and its curators exist to tell, they hold in trust for the Australian people, as a source of strength and meaning for all of us.  The pride and fellow feeling engendered by contemplating the sacrifices of men and women down the generations is integral to our identity and democracy.

It has been claimed that notice can be given to these allegations in a way that avoids denigrating the longer tradition.  Perhaps.  But Admiral Barrie's suggestion that a significant piece of Australia's military history simply be erased does not inspire confidence.  More broadly, we should be suspicious given the turn taken by so many of our other cultural bodies.  Because just as the War Memorial is now implying that in the telling of our military history, "warts and all" means mostly warts, the truth about our country is now regularly and widely misrepresented

Australia's cultural bodies now routinely see it as their mission to subject our nation, history and traditions to relentless critique.  The ABC, the universities and the bureaucracy all now insist that Australia must atone for its various sins, which together constitute, we are told, historic and systemic injustice.  The institutions of Australia, and the customs that support them, are held in contempt and this contempt has been forcefully injected into mainstream culture.

This is why every national event, from Australia Day to sporting matches, is accompanied by some attempt to demoralise us.  Not even the national anthem is safe.  The point is to wear us down and prepare us for revolution.

Meanwhile, the real story of Australia is left untold or is actively suppressed.

The truth is this:  Australia is a great democracy that has provided peace and prosperity for people from all over the world.  More so than perhaps any other nation, Australia was founded on the idea that our rules and institutions should be dedicated to improving the lives of the common people, not to shoring up the fortunes of a few or implementing some grand ideological project.  In this task, we have been astonishingly successful and Australians have generally enjoyed a standard of living unimaginable to our various ancestors.  Our history is not, of course, an unbroken string of successes.  But our failures are recognisable only as exceptions, and the proper way to think about resolving them is by drawing on our past, not by abandoning it.

Instead of celebrating our way of life, a small, self-appointed, unaccountable and heavily-subsidised cultural elite is making a concerted effort to disestablish Australian values ― to separate our every institution, ranging from the smallest custom to the apparatus of state itself, from our traditional notions of the good, the true and the right and to rebuild them in the image of an ideology that is foreign to our nation and its history.  The central question is which values should rule;  those of this social justice ideology or those of mainstream Australians?  The values that make us weak or those that have made us strong?

For a long time, the Australian military has managed to avoid being dragged into this culture war.  Given the importance of Anzac and our military history to the nation, it would be an unthinkable loss were the War Memorial to become just another Australian institution alienated from mainstream values and undermining its own mission.  To put it bluntly, it must not be allowed to happen.

Why Is The Coalition Planning To Give More Money To The ABC?

Given the spite and the scorn with which many at the national broadcaster view the Coalition and mainstream Australians, one would think that the last thing that a Coalition government worth its salt would want to do is give more money to the ABC.

But this is exactly what they've done.  Last week the Guardian ran an exclusive that Treasurer Josh Frydenberg plans to add public broadcasters the ABC and SBS to the revenue sharing arrangements as part of the proposed mandatory news code, which means they will receive payments from Google and Facebook for using their content.

It is frankly bizarre that a Coalition government is considering a new financial windfall for the ABC, on top of its annual $1.2 billion in public funding.

While the commercial media has been smashed as a result of the COVID pandemic, the ABC has remained untouched.

Last month, ABC staff rejected a plea from the Federal Government to freeze their pay for six months, to show some shared sacrifice with their colleagues in the commercial media.  Instead, they voted overwhelmingly to give themselves a pay rise.

In doing so, the employees of our national broadcaster considered themselves morally superior and more worthy of a 2% pay rise than staff at Services Australia, Centrelink, the Department of Health and the Department of Social Services, who have all been on the front line of the response to this pandemic and have all taken a six-month pay freeze. 

The ABC has continued to show its hostility towards the Coalition throughout the pandemic and its distain for commercial media.

The ABC has been a loud cheerleader for former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's petition for a "Murdoch Royal Commission".

In just over one month since the petition was launched, the ABC across all its platforms has mentioned "Murdoch" and the petition over 3,000 times, highlighting its ideological obsession with its perceived enemies.

Defenders of the ABC constantly gloat that the ABC is "free from commercial influence or interests", making its news editorial stances fiercely independent.

They will not be able to use that defence anymore now that a key revenue stream for the ABC will be dependent on the commercial success of Google and Facebook.

Indeed one of the ABC's key editorial standards is to "Ensure that editorial decisions are not improperly influenced by political, sectional, commercial or personal interests".  The ABC grovelling for this new source of funding puts it at conflict with its own editorial standards.

The idea that the ABC, which is entirely funded by the government, would be a beneficiary of this scheme puts a lie to the idea that the mandatory media code is about levelling the playing field between news media businesses and digital platforms due to a loss in advertising revenue.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was correct in pointing this out only a few months ago in the Australian:

Importantly, the bargaining arrangements relating to the payment of remuneration will not be available to public broadcasters as they are principally funded by the government and not through advertising revenue.  Public broadcasters will, however, benefit for the minimum standards for non-remuneration matters set out in the draft mandatory code.

The ABC is a taxpayer-funded behemoth with guaranteed funding of over $1.1 billion per year.  Therefore, it has not lost any money through the existence of Google or Facebook eating up advertising revenue.

Indeed, it is the other way around.  The ABC's 2019-2020 annual report reveals an advertising spend of $5.5 million, which is a significant increase from a $2.7 million advertising spend reported from 2018-19.

Much of this is buying up Google advertising to increase ABC websites' positions in news searches.

So, the ABC will be giving money to Google with your tax dollars, only to receive it in return.  The relationship between big tech and big public broadcaster will inch that bit closer in a cosy deal that puts mainstream Australians last.

Surely a better outcome both for the ABC, and taxpayers, would be to reform the ABC into a subscription service like is being proposed for the BBC in the UK, privatise it completely, or at the very least, allow the ABC to air commercials since they are so keen on a slice of advertising revenue in the first place.

The ABC wants the perception of being independent from commercial interests while cashing in on revenue from commercial organisations like a seagull to a chip.

Daniel Andrews Arrogantly Bungled Coronavirus ― And Is Doing The Same To Economic Recovery

Yesterday's Victorian budget was on-form for the Andrews' government:  it mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and now it is mishandling the economic recovery from the deepest recession in 100 years.  And the contempt for democratic norms the Victorian government has shown throughout the coronavirus crisis has made its way into the budget.

It was the Andrews' government's incompetence in managing hotel quarantine, along with an inadequate contact tracing system, which kept Victorians under lockdown longer than almost any other place in the world.  The utopian elimination strategy, which has been pursued across Australia, has forced hundreds of thousands of employees out of work, with these job losses being concentrated in small businesses in the private sector.

An obsession with case numbers over and above all other economic, social, or medical indicators has meant that, since March, almost no consideration has been given to the humanitarian tragedy caused by keeping children out of school, forcing parents out of work, and driving young people to the brink with higher rates of depression and anxiety.  In the unforgiving words of Daniel Andrews on October 10:  "The only numbers I'm focused on is [COVID-19] case numbers."

But the 2020-21 Victorian budget provides a new set of numbers which reveal a striking similarity between the Andrews government's COVID management and its financial management ― suppress the numbers, be they coronavirus cases, employment figures, or economic growth, and suppress any mechanism for transparency, be it justifications for lockdown measures, or budget papers with key government spending information.

While the messaging in the budget is slick, it lacks policy substance.  For example, the new jobs tax credit, which will provide a payroll tax credit to businesses that hire new employees, will not restore the jobs destroyed by lockdown measures.

The budget provides an example of a company which hires two new employees and increases its overall taxable wages bill by $100,000.  As a result, it could reduce its payroll tax liability from $21,825 to $11,825.  This sounds good in theory, but there are two key issues.  Firstly, the government's virus elimination strategy creates uncertainty for business owners, many of whom will not hire new staff when they could be forced back into lockdown with the re-emergence of coronavirus.  Secondly, much more bold policy is required to re-create jobs and restore confidence.  If the Victorian government had abolished payroll tax the same business would save the total $21,825, allowing it to make up for income lost during lockdown.

Maintaining payroll tax is an elimination strategy for new cases of potential job creation.

Much like the Premier and Ministers' avoidance of transparency when asked who made the decision to implement the controversial and likely unlawful nightly curfew, the budget is another attempt to obfuscate the truth.  According to page 83 of Budget Paper 2, "In 2020-21 there is no separate budget paper on the state capital program."  The state capital program usually provides an overview of investments that departments and government-controlled entities will make in the coming year, along with updates to currently underway projects.  This allows for year-to-year comparisons to see how much various projects are costing taxpayers as they progress, an important way of holding the government accountable for cost-overruns.

For example, in the 2018-19 state capital program Victorian taxpayers were informed that the initial Level Crossings Removal Program would see $6.7 billion of their money spent on removing 50 level crossings.  In the 2019-20 state capital program, Victorians were informed that just under $4 billion had been spent on the project so far, and that the Andrews government would remove an additional 25 level crossings at an additional cost of $6.6 billion.

Victorians searching for an update on this project in the 2020-21 budget will find nothing other than the reassurance that "43 level crossings have been removed" on page 97 of Budget Paper 2.  There is no record of how much the government has spent on level crossings removals in the 2019-20 financial year, nor any indication of how much will be spent this financial year, or if the total cost of the project has increased.

The lack of a state capital program in this year's budget is undemocratic, but also unsurprising.  It is a continuation of the disdainful attitude the Andrews government has shown to mainstream Victorians throughout the coronavirus crisis.

Disregard for cabinet government and a lack of transparency led to the tragic death of almost 800 Victorians while millions more were placed under a harsh second lockdown.  The 2020-21 budget confirms that the Andrews government will not make up for its blunders — and that this anti-democratic approach to governing is the new normal.

Quarantine Diary

I am now halfway into my 14-day internment in the Howard Springs Quarantine Facility, located in the Top End, a mere 25km from Darwin.  The complex, complete with pool, theatre, tavern, and tennis courts, was built by a Japanese energy company in 2012.  After it completed the $55 billion gas plant on Darwin Harbour in 2018, it simply shut the gates, handed the keys to the NT government, and disappeared back to Japan with not so much as a sayonara.  Since then, the compound has become a very costly millstone around the government's neck.  That is, until the arrival of Coronavirus and the ensuing border closures.  Someone sitting at a desk in Darwin twigged that the mining camp could be reborn as a quarantine facility for displaced Australians.  Fifteen minutes into the journey from Darwin Airport to Howard Springs aboard a rustic bus which brought back happy memories of school excursions, we received the following text message:  "Dear Resident.  Please be aware that there has been an increase of snake sightings.  Take note of your surroundings."  Since having arrived here, I have heeded this warning, taking great note of my surroundings at all times.  Rather disappointingly, I am yet to sight a snake.  I have however, sighted a number of skinks, a pair of biblically-proportioned grasshoppers getting up to no good on the hot footpath and a large, screeching owl, which just after dusk, swooped down the middle of the road on the other side of the fence.  I am interned in the Orange Zone, cellblock L5 with my mother and two friends.  We each have our own room with a single bed, air-conditioning which cuts through the 40-degree heat and bright orange cupboards in which to store our few possessions.  The showers are extremely powerful, presumably designed to remove the grease from very dirty miners after a long day on the job.  Police patrol the area a few times a day with a hello and a friendly wave.  What a contrast to Victoria that is.  The law here dictates that as long as you are on your veranda, you can be gloriously muzzle free.  All other times require the wearing of mask, otherwise you are slapped with a whopping $5,000 fine.  We are officially permitted 40 minutes of "yard" time per day, but this is not altogether adhered to.  If you complete a full circuit of the Orange Zone's footpaths which loop around the cabins, you can cover a good 2kms.

Time "inside" is turning out to be considerably easier than expected.  Having spent the last nine months in Melbourne, I am used to a complete loss of freedom, mandatory mask wearing and oppressive police enforcement, neatly topped off with disproportionate fines.  I suppose that this conditioning is one thing I can thank Dan Andrews for.  Mealtimes are sometimes a highlight, but most often a lowlight.  A furtive knock on the door, or sound of a large trolley rumbling by, indicates that our food has arrived, and we emerge from our rooms to snatch up the morning's offerings.  The same routine for lunch, which usually arrives while we are still recovering from the assaults of the breakfast baked beans, omelette, and sausage.  Dinner is anybody's guess, and we are becoming very adept at keeping edible lunch salads for when the kitchen staff have decided to resort to inedible meat loaf or grey slices of lamb for the evening meal.  We have been so very fortunate with our neighbours.  On Day Two, we discovered that the cabins next to ours are inhabited by musicians Joe Camilleri and Claude Carranza.  They are members of the Australian band The Black Sorrows and are on their way to tour New South Wales and South Australiaa.  It took a while to coax them out of their rooms to practise on their veranda within earshot of others, but after a few nights, they came alive again after months of being isolated from each other.  Soon, practice turned into a full show complete with banter for a highly appreciative, and in the truest sense of the word, captive audience.  Their music filled the camp with joy.  Gradually, the nightly concerts began to attract more and more residents of the Orange Zone, until one night, the set went on just a little bit too long and the crowd became just a little bit too big.  The police shut the whole thing down.  Joe told us afterwards that they had not really wanted to, but that they had a job to do.  Such is life.

Unsurprisingly, most people here are refugees from Victoria.  After swapping stories, I realised to my horror that we had only just made it out.  At Tullamarine airport, the government had recruited a number of officious-looking women, given them hi-vis jackets, clipboards, pens and seemingly untrammelled power.  They were waiting for us at airport security, doing their utmost to prevent anyone from leaving.  Some passengers were given formal cautions but allowed through, trembling at the treatment they had received on the way.  Others were unable to produce the correct documentation and were summarily sent back home.  One or two made it onto the plane, only to be exposed as non-compliant, and were forcibly disembarked, along with their luggage.  Thankfully we managed to talk our way through without having to show any paperwork.  We didn't even know that it would be required.  Everyone I have chatted with could not stand another minute of Dan Andrews' dictatorship, the police state he has created and the economic and social devastation he has wrought on the place.  The distrust and loathing are palpable.  A great many families have packed up their belongings and are seeking a new life in other states.  The atmosphere, however, is one of relief offset by cheerfulness and optimism because we are once again masters of our own destiny.  Everyone has decided to take back control of their lives from unelected bureaucrats, "experts" and government overreach.  Many say that they will only return once Andrews is no longer in power because they have no faith that he will not hesitate to lock them up again as soon as there is a resurgence of the virus.  It will be very interesting to see the migration statistics when they are released in December.  I suspect that this is just the beginning of the exodus from Victoria.

Will The Australian Way Of Life Be A Long-Term Coronavirus Victim?

COVID-19 has consumed the public's attention for almost six months, but the economic crisis caused by devastating lockdowns has started to shed light on a nefarious threat to the Australian way of life.

Across a number of measures, from home ownership to employment, young Australians have seen a decline to their economic and social wellbeing in recent decades.  These declines have been compounded by the government-imposed lockdowns introduced in response to the coronavirus, which have disproportionately impacted young Australians.

As we look towards the economic recovery, there is a risk that a generation of young people will be the propertyless serfs of our feudal future.

This threat has been gaining traction for decades and addressing it must be a priority of policymakers.  There are several deep economic, social, and moral issues posed by the emergence of a class of propertyless serfs.  From a moral perspective, there is a growing number of Australians who have been excluded from the way of life that has made this country so great, namely access to the dignity of work, reward for effort, homeownership, and the ability to start and run a business.  From a practical economic perspective, a gaping hole in employment opportunities, upwards mobility, and wealth creation will emerge from the simple fact that it is near impossible for the small businesses of the future to be started when their potential owners do not own any assets.

Asset ownership is central to the Australian way of life and to the economic prosperity and stable democracy that Australians have traditionally enjoyed.  Business ownership provides an egalitarian ladder to economic prosperity;  regardless of education or wealth, Australians can start a small café or become a carpenter.  Additionally, small businesses provide owners and employees with a tangible stake in the economy and their local community, which in turn lead to an interest in seeing that community and economy governed in a sensible, democratic manner.  The same is true of homeownership, which in addition to providing a place to live and financial security throughout life and into retirement provides a sense of community and place.

Australia has historically been a nation of homeowners.  Homeownership underpins the Australian way of life by providing a stake in our system of capitalist, liberal democracy.  By giving people a tangible interest in that system, homeownership provides stability and prosperity.  As former prime minister Robert Menzies explained in his 'Forgotten People' speech, "the home is the foundation of sanity and sobriety;  it is the indispensable condition of continuity;  its health determines the health of society as a whole."

Similarly, Sir Albert Arthur Dunstan, the 33rd premier of Victoria, explained in 1943 that homeownership is a "symbol of achievement, purpose, industry and thrift", and that the homeowner "has a stake in the country, and that he has something worth working for, living for, fighting for".

However, while a full 54% of Australians born in 1947-51 were homeowners by between the ages of 25 and 29 years old, today only 37% of those born between 1987 and 1991 became homeowners upon reaching the same age bracket.

And within the portion of households that own a household, a concerning divide is emerging.  In 2013-14, 67% of households owned the home they lived in.  This was comprised of 53% who owned only the house they lived in, and 13% who owned multiple houses.  By 2017-18, these figures were 50% and 16%, respectively, meaning that while the portion of households that owns one house is declining, the portion that owns multiple houses is increasing.

This is a dangerous trend which gets to the heart of how the structure of the Australian economy has changed over the past 40 years or so.  While mainstream Australians of old could afford to buy a house, start a family, and start a business, the chances that young Australians today will ever have these opportunities are growing slim.

The political class that has overseen this structural shift must pay attention.  A generation of propertyless serfs who do not own anything will not support a system based on property rights and ownership.  This can be understood as a lack of 'skin in the game', to use Nassim Nicholas Taleb's thesis:  young Australians are being denied the opportunity to develop some 'skin' in the 'game' of our robust, capitalist liberal democracy.

This poses a serious moral issue in that we are at risk of having a generation of disenfranchised renters that undermine the health of society.  Additionally, it risks entrenching intergenerational wealth inequality and creating a structurally inegalitarian economy, as this generation will have no equity to draw on when starting the businesses of the future.  Small business ownership is another institution central to the Australian way of life which provides a means for upwards mobility.

Some may argue that businesses of the future will be less capital-intensive and that a generation of renters will still be able to establish businesses and move up the income and wealth ladders.  Following the thesis set out by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake in Capitalism without Capital, they may argue that the costs of establishing a technology start-up are often miniscule, requiring only the ingenuity of the founder and a laptop.

While appealing, this will not be the case.  Australia rode the sheep's back and now rides in the bed of a Caterpillar 797F.  It will always be essential that entrepreneurial Australians can draw on a stock of assets to start a new business, and if recent history is anything to go by, capital intensive businesses in the resources industry, along with those that support it, will be essential.

Besides, the alternative is a return to the feudalism of the past where only an entrenched oligarchy has the means to start businesses.  Ensuring widespread asset ownership is essential to preventing the reordering of Australian society along the highly structured order of the feudal pyramid, where there is no room for a prosperous middle class, but plenty for destitute serfs.

A generation of Australians are at risk of never obtaining this stake in their country, of never obtaining this culmination of achievement, purpose, industry and thrift.  Without the home to live, to work and to fight for, what will this generation of serfs have?

How Leftists Are Gaslighting Australia With Their Murdoch Madness

Kevin Rudd's claim that the Murdoch media is a "cancer on democracy" is gaslighting the Australian people.

Last week a Rudd-initiated petition was submitted to the House of Representatives calling for a Royal Commission into "the strength and diversity of Australian news media".  In case anyone was in any doubt over what that meant, Rudd called the Murdoch media a "cancer on democracy" when announcing the petition on Twitter last month.  The petition had over 500,000 signatures including Malcolm Turnbull's.

Rupert Murdoch owns a lot of real estate in the real world, but surely not as much as he occupies in the heads of the Australian left.  In keeping with many on the left's preference for character smear over debate, anyone straying remotely from the orthodoxy on climate change, the economy, or COVID-19 policy is accused of being an agent of the #Murdochcracy.

Of course, Rudd's beef with Murdoch isn't about democracy at all.  Rudd's toys have come out of the cot because large swathes of the Australian population still stubbornly refuse to sign up to many of the modern left's ideological mutations.

Many don't seem to think climate change warrants impoverishing their children.  Or they quite like the idea that people be judged on their merits rather than their gender or race.  It seems to not have occurred to Rudd and Turnbull that people may have legitimate reasons for these positions that have nothing to do with a New York almost-nonagenarian playing underwater 8D backgammon with our democracy.

But having seen the city I love destroyed by the Andrews government in the last eight months, what stands out about Rudd's claim is its stunning audacity.  Because we may never know the full depths of the corruption, incompetence and lies of the Andrews government in 2020, but we wouldn't have got within a bull's roar without the News Corp journalists.

Maybe it's just my Murdoch-addled brain speaking here, but as the Andrews government catastrophically mishandled almost every aspect of the pandemic ― and attempted to victim-blame the Victorian people ― it's been the likes of Rachel Baxendale, Gabriella Power, and Andrea Crothers that have held them to account.

And of course, in about five minutes the peerless Peta Credlin uncovered more malfeasance than the Coate Inquiry into hotel quarantine was able to over a period of months.

At a time when simultaneously the government was making possibly the worst public policy mistakes in Australian history, wielding unprecedented power, and parliament was greatly restricted, a handful of journalists in Andrews' press conferences provided one of the few accountability checks the Victorian government faced.

The fact that even this was characterised by many as a Murdoch plot is extraordinary ― as if a political leader having to answer questions they'd rather not is some kind of assault on democracy (as opposed to being the opposite).

Besides, if Andrews was that worried about the News Corp journalists being mean to him, perhaps he could've reconsidered the necessity of daily Castro-length press conferences throughout a crisis that for all its horror has at this point, fortunately, claimed fewer lives than Australia's annual road toll.

The performance of the News Corp journalists in these press conferences meant something.  Politics is not a spectator sport for Victorians anymore.  In the dark winter months as despair settled over Melbourne, it meant something that some journalists were able to extract a measure of accountability over what the government was doing to us.

I say "some journalists" because of the government-funded elephant in the room.  Too often the ABC shamefully ran interference for the government as the bodies piled up, businesses were sent to the wall and families were stretched to breaking point.

Victorians should never forget their betrayal.

And to make the most painfully obvious of points, Rudd and Turnbull may not like the Murdoch media, but they don't have to pay for it.  A poll commissioned in February found that only 32% of people thought the ABC represented the views of ordinary Australians.  The rest of us have to pay for the ABC so that they can tell us how terrible we are.

In short, Rudd thinks an independent media organisation that people can decide for themselves if they wish to consume is "a cancer on democracy".  But the state media organisation that we are forced to pay for, covered for a tyrannical government in Victoria, and uses the power of the state to tell us how wrong most of us are, is hailed as independent, objective, and balanced.

I think this is what the signatories of the anti-Murdoch petition would call gaslighting.

What The ACT Election Results Tell Us About Our Rulers In The Bubble

Last weekend's ACT election results have again revealed how out of touch our nation's capital city is with mainstream Australians.  While it is tempting to write off the ACT Legislative Assembly as little more than a glorified city council, ACT elections are one of the clearest indicators of elite opinion that we have ― and the results are alarming.

ACT Labor will continue to govern, as it has done since 2001, but the big winners were the Greens, who have more than doubled there representation.  The 25 seat ACT Assembly will have ten Labor members (down from 12), nine Liberals (down from 11), and six Greens (up from two).  The Greens already have a seat in cabinet, in exchange for propping up the minority Labor government, and will now be even more influential.  The radical Greens are a party of government in the ACT.

Overall, the ACT electorate is markedly out of step with the country.  Labor, the Greens, and minor left-wing parties received more than 58 per cent of the first preference vote ― a tally even exceeding the left's primary lower house vote in Victoria's landslide 2018 election (approximately 56 per cent).

Of course, this pattern diverges wildly from that seen in more conservative states.  At the 2019 New South Wales election, left-wing parties received only 44 per cent of the first preference vote (in the lower house), and at the 2017 Queensland election, the figure was 45 per cent.

Many Canberrans are transplants who have moved to the city to work in the federal bureaucracy, so the political differences are quite striking.  Canberra, it seems, both attracts a certain type of person and instils in people a certain set of beliefs and attitudes.  These sorting mechanisms have gradually separated the capital from the country over which it rules, encasing it in a bubble of ideology.

The left's stranglehold on Canberra poses two big problems for the rest of the country.

The first is that the residents of the Canberra bubble make policy for all of us.  Their detachment from the preferences and values of mainstream Australia has led to a range of policy disasters.

Perhaps most seriously, economic policy in this country increasingly favours the public sector and the corporate bureaucracies that oversee the enforcement of government regulation.

As my research has demonstrated, the COVID recession has made this trend worse.  Our country increasingly has a K-shaped economy, in which bureaucrats thrive even as the productive economy that sustains them is hobbled.

At the height of the recession, public sector wages in the ACT increased by 6.5 per cent.  The average wage in the ACT is $102,000, far exceeding other states and territories.  While the country has seen 600,000 private sector jobs lost this year, the ACT has largely been insulated from the fallout.

We also seem to be developing a K-shaped culture.  Consider, for example, the obscene and embarrassing fiasco that is national arts funding.  The ruling class amuses itself with deranged art, obscure research projects, and the self-flattery of the ABC, while traditional and elevating cultural pursuits are shunned and shuttered.

The second problem emerges from the unavoidable fact that the ACT electorate is highly educated.  The Canberra bubble represents, to a worrying extent, the best that our systems of education and moral instruction can produce, and they are turning against the values of the rest of the country.

This is one way that Canberra is similar to the rest of Australia: educated people are radicalising.  Just as we have seen in some wealthy parts of Sydney and Melbourne, the Greens in Canberra picked up votes mostly from the Liberal Party.  Our inner suburbs are filled with spiritual Canberrans.

Somehow, we have created a system that selects for these kinds of beliefs, or that fills the heads of many of our brightest people with bad ideas.  Maybe both.

The elite, the attitudes of which are made plain at ACT polling booths, is the main reason that elections in this country never seem to change anything ― a reminder that democracy means more than just elections.  If we want a democratic country in which policy aligns with mainstream values, our highest priority should be ending the miseducation of our ruling class.

The Reserve Bank's Great Gamble On Interest Rates

The fiscal path outlined in the federal budget will constrain monetary policy and undermine the stability of the Australian economy.  The Reserve Bank of Australia will be forced to pursue expansionary monetary policy that will leave it impotent in the event of future economic headwinds.

The RBA's decade-long experiment with record low interest rates has created an economy that is dependent on low borrowing costs and has emboldened the Federal government to dramatically blow the government debt out to $1.7 trillion over the next decade.

High levels of government and private debt has committed the RBA to a policy of continual monetary expansion that will trap it between a rock and a hard place should price inflation set in.

The dramatic expansion in deficit spending will require the RBA to increase money creation to purchase government debt if it is to maintain low interest rates.  The RBA has already doubled its balance sheet since January to over $300 billion which has contributed to record growth in the money base.  The money base measure, which includes currency held by the private sector and bank deposits with the RBA, is up 48% on this time last year.

In the event that continual growth in the money supply flows through to price inflation, the RBA will be forced to either allow inflation to wreak economic havoc or fight inflation by restraining monetary growth and allowing interest rates to rise.

Increased borrowing costs would reveal the instability of the Australian economy.  Government interest payments would shoot to the top of the budget expenditure list, and Australian households, which have the second highest household debt to GDP ratio in the world behind Switzerland, would quickly go underwater with mortgage defaults causing a housing market decline that could undermine the balance sheets of Australian banks.

The expansion of government debt combined with the RBA's mandates has severely constrained the central bank.  The Reserve Bank Act (1959) charges the RBA with conducting monetary policy to best contribute to "the stability of the currency", "the maintenance of full employment", and "the economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia".

For the foreseeable future, the economic prosperity and welfare of Australians depends on low borrowing costs, but achieving this will require continual monetary expansion that risks undermining the stability of the currency.  Given the RBA's charter, it has little option but to attempt to hold the line with low interest rates, hope for modest inflation to assist the indebted economy, and pray that inflation doesn't get out of control.

This shows that the RBA is independent in name only.  For all intents and purposes, its decisions are constrained by the need to accommodate fiscal policy and the rapid expansion of government debt.

However, the RBA's current predicament also reflects a long-term failure of its own monetary policy.  In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis the RBA slashed the cash rate from 7.25% to 3%.  In November 2011, after an attempt to normalise rates, the RBA began a rate cutting cycle that culminated in March this year with the cash rate target being set at 0.25%.  Never before have we had a decade-long period of record low interest rates.  This has facilitated a record level of household debt and enticed governments into deficit spending.  Instead of having a stimulating effect, myopic monetary policy has severely undermined the stability of the Australian economy.

Low interest rates cannot be assumed in the long-term as debt is repaid.  The timeline of repaying the national debt has shifted out decades with my estimating that it could take until 2080 before gross debt is repaid with favourable conditions.  A host of not unlikely scenarios over the next half a century ― including rising interest rates, increased price inflation, and future economic shocks ― could see the Australian economy enter a deep and debilitating depression.

This is not a position of strength to leave to our children and grandchildren.  Pursuing the status quo will not improve Australia's economic resilience.  Governments must recommit to reducing debt by implementing pro-growth reforms, such as cutting red tape and inefficient taxes, reducing the size of government and restraining government spending.

You’re Only Focused On Case Numbers, Dan? Here Are The Shocking Stats Showing Why Lockdown Must End Now

On 10 October, during his daily press conference, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said, "The only numbers I'm focused on is [COVID-19] case numbers."

We knew this already.  That's why Victoria has been subject to the cruel and indefinite lockdown measures that have crippled the economy, caused countless businesses to close for good, and kept school children from seeing their friends for months on end.

What Andrews' admission does not explain, however, is why there has been no nuance in the policy response to the legitimate public health threat posed by COVID-19.  Back in March when very little was known about the new disease, governments responded by implementing blanket lockdown measures to halt the spread of the virus.  The idea was to "flatten the curve" to buy time to ensure that adequate healthcare and contact tracing personnel and infrastructure were in place to deal with community transmission.

Much more is now known about COVID-19, including how it spreads and which population groups are most at risk after contracting it, which treatments are more effective than others, and that over the longer term effective contact tracing systems are far more important than blunt tools such as lockdown measures.

However, the Andrews government has refused to implement a more sophisticated approach to dealing with coronavirus.  It has pursued an unrealistic elimination strategy which was never going to be achievable.

Daniel Andrews' refusal to consider anything other than confirmed case numbers is a concerning admission.  No politician or policymaker should ever advocate policies based on a single consideration.  Since the beginning of the lockdown in late March, I have been highlighting the limitations of such an approach by drawing attention to the social, economic, psychological, and mental and psychical health impacts of lockdown measures.

Here are some other numbers I think Dan Andrews should be aware of.

Lockdowns have thrown 696,000 Victorians out of work, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

Since March, 135,400 young Victorians (aged 15-19 years old) have lost their job, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

In the June quarter alone private sector wages declined by $1.9 billion while public sector wages increased by $88 million, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics data.

Victorian government and public sector debt is approaching $150 billion, or $22,600 per Victorian, according to my analysis of Victorian Budget figures.

Between September and October alone, more than 350,000 Victorians sought access to Medicare-funded GPs, psychiatrists, psychologists and counselling treatments, according to The Australian.

Calls to the support lines of Beyond Blue are 77 per cent higher in Victoria than across the rest of the country.

The number of people hospitalised after attempting suicide is currently up 6% on last year.  For those aged 17 and under, the number is up 31.3%, according to The Australian.

Of Victoria's 79 local government areas, 51 currently have no active cases.  Only one LGA has more than 20 active cases.

There is not a single patient with COVID-19 in intensive care in all of Victoria.

Daniel Andrews' reckless elimination strategy has destroyed Victorian jobs, businesses, and livelihoods.  Zero COVID-19 cases mean zero hope for Victorians.

It's time to end the lockdowns and let Victorians live.

A Day At The ABC

The following is a sneak peek into a day in the life of an intern at the ABC, based on content that has been published either by the ABC or the media about ABC staff.

Congratulations!  You have just started an internship at Australia's public broadcaster, the ABC.

At 9:00am you are ushered into your manager's office, who sits you down to run you through the ABC's editorial guidelines that all staff must follow.

You're asked to acquaint yourself with the updated editorial guidelines which were introduced late last year under the banner of "Hate speech, terrorism and mass killings".  It reads "It is important to avoid language that alienates religious or ethnic groups, therefore, do not speak of 'us' and 'our values' in ways that exclude minorities."

You question this, saying "What?  I thought we were all equal.  Isn't it unifying to include everyone in our portrayal of Australia?"  Your manager chuckles sarcastically and continues to read from the guidelines.  "Racism is now routinely applied to prejudice or discrimination based on a wide range of differences:  ethnicity, skin colour, religion, language, etc."

At 10:30 am you're given your first task, which is to assist with the ABC Radio National program.  This is a big current affairs program, so you're very excited to get started on it.

Your job is to book guests, which should be easy.  You decide that you will stick to the ABC's charter and try to balance out guests from the left and right to ensure impartiality.  But you find that your task is bogged down in red tape.

You are handed a "content tracker" which is part of the ABC's Diversity & Inclusion Plan.  "The ABC must look and sound like modern Australia, and include all Australians in what we do."  Thinking that seems pretty straight forward and without reading any further, you go to book Mark Latham, an elected member of the NSW parliament, on the program.

Within minutes however, you're tapped on the shoulder by your manager, who asks "Didn't you read the content tracker?  We don't mean diversity of opinion.  The content tracker allows you to see how you are including groups which might be under-represented in our content, including women, Indigenous and Torres Strait Islanders, people from CALD backgrounds, LGTBI people, and people with disabilities."

"Isn't it dehumanising and undignified for the ABC to be making important editorial decisions based on someone's skin colour or superficial attribute rather than on their merit, hard work and journalistic integrity?" you ask.

Your manager points you to the following paragraph in the ABC's Editorial Guidelines:  "Electoral success does confer some legitimacy in a democracy ― it is hard to argue that support sufficient to elect politicians to federal parliament does not represent a 'significant perspective in the community'.  However, it does not exempt politicians from being vigorously challenged, nor does it oblige the ABC to broadcast hate speech.  However, fringe political players should not be elevated simply because they create controversy."

"This is why we cannot invite Mark Latham onto the program," he says.

At midday, the Community and Public Sector Union delegate addresses staff, calling on them to reject the six-month pay freeze that the rest of the public service has taken in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.  "You deserve the $5 million worth of pay rises.  It doesn't matter that the rest of the media has shed jobs at a great pace.  We are part of the cultural fabric of Australia, and it doesn't matter that 606,000 Australians have lost their jobs in the private sector.  We can keep saying 'we are all in this together' while taking a 2 per cent pay rise, because you deserve it!"

At 3:00 pm you get sent back to the main office and you take a seat next to Barbara Heggen, a radio producer who has started the "Climate Crisis Advisory Group".  Barbara takes you along to a working group meeting.  Armed with a notepad and pen you get ready to note down healthy discussion about the science and challenging of orthodox views.  Barbara introduces the group's aim, which is to:  "Gather together the brains trust of ABC staffers to develop ways to report on and inform Australians about the climate crisis using a solutions journalism approach.  To report back to ABC Management our ideas and strategies for responding to the climate crisis both internally and externally."

The first item on the agenda is what ABC staff members can do around the office to make a more climate friendly workplace.  Hands go up and voices start bemoaning the lack of solar panels in the Melbourne Southbank studios.  One staff member states, "There are so many other things that should be happening but aren't in this building ... We should be encouraging the café on site to charge much more for coffees in takeaway containers and a bigger discount for keep cups."  Another staff member from Hobart pipes in on the teleconference, "We have a large surface area of roofing, perfect for solar panels."  At this juncture, you decide to ask a question.  "Isn't Tasmania 100 per cent Hydro?  Why would we need solar panels if its 100 per cent renewable anyway?"  The group stares at you for a moment and moves on.

Another voice asks from Brisbane, "Sometimes when I'm on the late shift in Brisbane I go around and try to find remotes to turn the TVs off.  They're everywhere and no one is watching them, often during the day ... Best to avoid hypocrisy where possible."  "But surely, it's the main job of staff at a news station to monitor what's on our channel?" you ask, but once again, you are ignored.

The staff move on to discuss their journalism on the topic of climate change.  Many speak glowingly of what is commonly referred to as an internal newsletter, the Guardian Australia, and their model of "advocacy journalism".  "We need a solutions-based journalism approach.  Why don't we get one of the ageing Chaser boys to do a documentary about how our pesky politicians have failed on climate?"  "Great idea!"  The room applauds.

You have had enough.  You stand up and object:  "How can we expect the ABC to cover very serious policy discussions like the cost of climate policies impartially, when so many of you hold an activist position on the topic?  Just last year we had what many journalists in this room described as 'the climate election'.  Voters have rejected divisive climate policies at election after election.  You are funded by taxpayers to be impartial, yet you are clearly seeking to push a narrative, that is against the ABC's charter."

The room erupts with laughter.

At 5:00pm you then decide the public broadcaster is not for you and quit.  It is clearly not your ABC, it's not even ours, it's theirs.

A Target Of Zero Cases Means Zero Jobs, Zero Freedom And Zero Hope. Here’s A Better Way

Australia needs a COVID-19 reset.

After seven hard months of social isolation, economic pain and despair about the future, the time has come to change course.

COVID-19 is not going anywhere.  It never was.

This virus cannot be eliminated;  there is no vaccine.

It will not be avoided;  global transmissions are surging.

What is clear is that the virus spreads faster than influenza and without a vaccine, it will kill more people than it.

These facts alone justify a unique response.  But that response must be proportionate to the risk.

Children should be educated, family must be cared for, and debt has to be serviced.

None of these things are possible under a never-ending lockdown.

Lockdowns do not work because they are a flawed solution to a complex problem.

They curtail personal freedom by ignoring demographic resistance.

They lack proportionality by outlawing activities which pose a minimal threat to public health.

And they polarise communities by divvying up exemptions based on employment and social status.

These realities are anathema to Australian society.  We have never lived this way and we can't be expected to any longer.

COVID-19 is already changing Australia for the worse.

As you read this, our people are further dividing into two Australias.

The first part comprises those Australians whose employment remains unaffected by the crisis ― predominantly public sector workers.  This group of Australians have kept their jobs, grown in number, and even enjoyed pay rises.

The second part are those Australians whose lives now lie in ruins.  They are young Australians, small business owners, the self-employed, and those otherwise employed in the productive, private part of the economy.

Twelve months ago, the later were the backbone of Australian prosperity.  Today, they are the victims of government decision-makers immune to adversity.

Embittering the public mood has been the uneven application of lockdown enforcement.

Again, two distinct Australias have emerged.

Celebrities like Shane Warne leave the nation to commentate on cricket in the UK, while regular Australians are refused travel for funerals or palliative care.

Black Lives Matter protestors take to the street in defiance of social distancing orders, yet mainstream Australians are the ones fined for holding picnics and BBQs.

And foreign students can easily traverse our country, but agricultural workers living along state borders cannot.

Sadly, all of this has been done in the pursuit of a goal which cannot be achieved ― virus elimination.

Without a proper debate or public approval, governments across the nation have dumped the goal of "flattening the curve" in favour of "virus elimination" ― an ambition which is unachievable without a vaccine or an end to global transmissions.

And as each government demands greater and greater sacrifice from the public in pursuit of this goal, the Australian community suffers ever more.

Intentionally or otherwise, Australia's COVID-19 response has placed the nation on a highway to nowhere without an off-ramp.

A target of zero cases means zero jobs, zero freedom, and zero hope.  And we have had enough.

Australia needs a plan to live with COVID-19 where the risks of infection are balanced against the risks long-term lockdowns impose on greater society.

Recently, I released my Medical Capacity:  An Alternative to Lockdowns report, offering a pathway for achieving that balance.

Medical Capacity confirms that the cost of a COVID-19 elimination strategy is over $319 billion.

This figure is the equivalent to 2.2 times the total annual value of Australia's entire Health Care and Social Assistance industry ($142.9 billion) and is equal to the 2018-19 Commonwealth Government expenditure on defence, education, health, and social security and welfare combined.

Medical Capacity charts a more reasonable course.

It acknowledges the risks posed by COVID-19 ― and manages them.

It recognises the human costs of lockdown ― and alleviates them.

Critically, it incorporates the latest learnings about the virus to ensure our risk management approach evolves alongside it.

The best COVID-19 response has always been about balance.

Governments should put in place measures to protect the elderly and vulnerable, implement high-quality contact tracing, continue with random community testing, and maintain international border control measures.

Equally, they must put an end to extreme lockdowns and relax social distancing measures so that economic, social, and recreational life can return to normal.

It is never too late to correct a mistake.  It is never too late to restore freedom.

A new approach is required to steer Australia through the next stage of this pandemic.

And that approach is ready right now.

We Know Daniel Andrews Has Maimed Melbourne. He’s Also Wreaking Ruin In The Regions

The implementation of Victoria's lockdown restrictions highlights the growing divide between Melbourne and regional Victoria.  The Melbourne centric Victorian government has ignored the issues faced by regional Victorians, failing to implement measures in proportion to the varying risk of coronavirus across the state.

To understand why many regional Victorians are frustrated with the restrictions one has only to look at the active cases map of Victoria.  There are 139 active cases in Melbourne but only five cases across regional Victoria, a landmass larger than most European countries.  These five cases are just beyond the border of metropolitan Melbourne.  Yet, the Andrews government has inexplicably tied any further easing of restrictions in regional Victoria to case numbers in Melbourne.

In the shire of Corangamite in south-west Victoria, there have only ever been three cases, there has been no community transmission, and there are zero active cases.  Yet the restrictions in place are still more severe in many respects than the restrictions imposed on the hardest hit councils in Melbourne between March and August.

The Andrews government's Melbourne-centric policy has failed to account for the lower risk of transmission in regional Victoria.  The Corangamite Shire, for example, has 0.04 people per hectare compared to Greater Melbourne's 5 people per hectare.  It doesn't take an expert in epidemiology to work out that the risk of viral disease is not uniform between regional Victoria and a city with 135 times the population density.

When questioned as to why it is mandatory to wear a mask outside when there is no one in the same square kilometre, Daniel Andrews dismissed the issue as an "esoteric debate".  It is hardly esoteric for the many Victorians who work in wide-open outdoor spaces, who may encounter 50 head of cattle for every human, and are far removed from the world of packed trains and office elevators.

Shutting down businesses and preventing social interaction in areas with zero cases of coronavirus is indefensible, especially when the government maintains that it is not pursuing an eradication strategy.  There is no science or rational risk assessment that supports making masks mandatory for those walking the streets of Mildura, a town more than five hours drive from the nearest known case.

Not being allowed to have people in your own home, visit loved ones, or operate your business to capacity when there are no cases of coronavirus in the district is an absurd restriction, and would not have been believed possible several months ago.

There is no reason why restrictions cannot be further eased in low-risk areas to minimise the cost to the social and economic wellbeing of Victorians while maintaining the mitigation of the spread of the virus.

The restrictions that have needlessly damaged the social and economic health of regional Victoria have been implemented by a government with no incentive to care about regional Victoria.  The Victorian Labor party can comfortably form government by controlling Melbourne electorates and the electorates between Bendigo, Ballarat, and Geelong.  Even with its landslide victory in 2018, Labor only won the one electorate outside of this corridor.  The concentration of political power into Victoria's cities has resulted in a blanket treatment of regional Victoria as a broad region that can be safely ignored.

Victorians are increasingly being divided into two, in more ways than one.  One Victoria can be categorised as regional and suburban, being employed in small productive-sector businesses, with higher rates of self-employment, and without political connections, while the other Victoria is centralised in the cities, employed in the public service, health or education, and politically connected.

The Victoria in the private sector experienced a 4.2% decline in wages in the June quarter in the wake of the current crisis while the other Victoria in the public sector has seen their wages increase by 0.7%.  This has been made possible by a Labor government that The Herald Sun's James Campbell describes as "simply a machine for shovelling money to public sector workers.  Nothing more, nothing less."

The Andrews government's Melbourne-centric approach has prevented vast segments of Victoria from reopening and returning to their normal way of life built on enjoying and caring for family, religious worship, the ability to run businesses and experience the dignity of work.  The restrictions have been implemented in a way that has caused needless damage and widened the gap between two Victorias.

REVEALED: Get Set For Debt Until 2080

Australia is unlikely to be debt-free until 2080 as a result of the lockdowns implemented in response to COVID-19.  The much anticipated 2020-21 Budget does not even attempt to highlight a path out of debt and deficits, leaving mainstream Australians with little hope that the bill for the largest public policy failure in the nation's history will be paid off in their children's lifetimes.

My modelling has estimated that it could take until 2045-46 for the Commonwealth government to deliver a budget surplus, with total debt expected to peak at $2.05 trillion and not be paid off until 2079-80.

This modelling is based on a scenario where nominal gross domestic product grows at an average rate of 3% per year, and where the federal government is committed to fiscal responsibility by pursuing Howard-era budget surpluses equivalent to about 1% of GDP.

In reality, there is little hope that any Australians alive today will be around to see the nation released from this debt burden.  And if there is another economic shock between now and 2080, which there almost certainly will be, the debt and deficit situation can only get worse.

All Australians will be paying for the lockdowns over their lifetimes.  From the young people who have disproportionately suffered and are at greatest risk from economic "scars", to small business owners who have lost everything, mainstream Australians are suffering.  Meanwhile, the public sector continues to grow, with about 20,000 new jobs added since March, while the productive, private economy has been hammered.  As the nation is plunged further into debt, senior bureaucrats and politicians who have no "skin in the game" are happy to maintain a fanciful strategy of elimination.  Not one of them has lost their job, and many have received pay rises.  It's no wonder they see little that is wrong with the lockdowns.

The only path out of this catastrophic debt situation is for the Morrison government to pursue real liberal reforms based on reducing the size of government and allowing the private sector to flourish.

Rather than subsidising companies that hire young people receiving JobSeeker, for example, the Morrison government should engage in structural reform of the industrial relations system.  Carving small businesses out of the Fair Work Act 2009 would be a far more efficient way to create jobs than by betting against the current policy settings.

The bloated public sector should be also reduced, and wages for senior public servants and politicians earning more than $150,000 should be frozen until the unemployment rate is back to around 5%.  According to a poll published in April, 74% of Australians want public servants and politicians earning over this amount to take a 20% pay cut to demonstrate that we are all in this together.

Structural reform and massive cuts to red tape are vital for getting the economy back on track.  This means reducing the $176 billion red tape burden, which robs Australians of job opportunities and pay rises each year, and permanently reducing the size and scope of the government.

One of the only positive features of the Budget was that Stage 2 personal income tax cuts were brought forward from July 2022 to July 2020, meaning that workers will receive an almost–immediate boost to their take-home pay.  While this was a welcome move, the Morrison government should have brought Stage 3 forward as well.  Stage 3 will be the most significant reform to the tax system in recent years, providing a significant step towards a more efficient and fair income tax arrangement.  The cuts were voted for at the 2019 election and have since been legislated, so it would make perfect sense to bring them forward in recognition of the fact that individuals and families know how to spend their own money better than government.

Commonwealth budgets are likely to remain in the doldrums for the next half a century.  The only way out is for the Morrison government to commit to liberal values, reduce the size of government, unleash the economy through industrial relations reform and red tape cuts, and to practice fiscal responsibility.

Identity Politics Will Destroy The Arts

When Australia's most generous musical theatre scholarship, the Rob Guest Endowment, recently published the names of thirty semi-finalists who were in the running to win a $50,000 scholarship, fellow actor and performer Hayden Tee seized upon the list, scrutinised the names and arrived at the conclusion that the line-up did not meet his expectations of racial diversity.  Mr Tee then took it upon himself to write an open letter to the selection committee in which he described its choice of nominees as a "whitewash".  Presumably, the pun was not intended.

Instead of sticking to its guns, the Rob Guest Endowment swiftly capitulated, issued a grovelling apology, vowed to do better and cancelled the scholarship for 2020.  So much for supporting the younger generation and "helping them achieve their dreams" as the endowment proudly purports to do.

Worse still, it was not only the Rob Guest Endowment that took heed of Mr Tee's objections.  In what can only be described as the ultimate display of virtue signalling, the semi-finalists who had spent months of blood, sweat and tears working towards the competition, resolved collectively that their overwhelming whiteness indeed rendered them unworthy of financial assistance in the form of a scholarship.

By way of interest, Mr Tee, who has had a glittering international career thus far treading the boards of productions such as Les Misérables, Matilda the Musical and My Fair Lady has also pledged to "create an anti-racist and decolonised Australian Theatre Industry" and "to be a lifelong ally".  Interestingly, he is yet to add to his list of pledges the promise that he will "Reject any future lucrative offers to appear on Broadway or in the West End".  It seems that Mr Tee would like to be woke, but not just quite yet.

This total surrender by both the Rob Guest Endowment and the nominees to the forces which seek to undermine the culture of Western civilisation, including musical theatre, is hardly surprising.  In this day and age, it takes an immense amount of courage to push back against this fanatical element of our society which is going about the business of denigrating, deconstructing and cancelling everything we have with a prodigious and terrifying energy.

In Australia, the arts world is replete with activists who have embarked upon a path of career suicide from which there is no return.  Last year for example, a group of musicians and composers penned a peculiarly entitled petition, "Opera and the doing of women", in which they claimed that they had had enough of "entrenched bias, the structural nature of sexism and other exclusionary forces that are reflected in many of the norms, expectations and practices of opera as an artform" and demanded that Opera Australia do something about it.  Thankfully, artistic director Lyndon Terracini roundly rejected the hysterical calls, saying in no uncertain terms that "it would be irresponsible of us to decide that some of the major works in the Western canon shouldn't be seen".

Unfortunately, the Rob Guest Endowment does not have a Lyndon Terracini on their books to point out how ludicrous this all is.  Neither, it seems, does the Australia Council of the Arts.  Since April, the Council has generously dished out over $7.6 million worth of taxpayers' money under an emergency "Resilience Fund" to a range of artists clearly obsessed with identity politics and whose works range from sitting in cubes in order to express their disdain for conservative ideologies;  to smashing the patriarchy by sending things into outer space;  to knitting giant blue scarves as a protest about coal mining.

But perhaps the most pernicious venture that the Australia Council for the Arts is funding in conjunction with the Victorian state government's Create Victoria, is an organisation called Creatives of Colour.  This group operates under the assumption that the Australian arts scene is so dangerously racist that non-white artists need "survival strategies" in order to safely make it through each day without being lynched by the mob.

Among the many pieces of advice proffered to minorities, it says "Align yourself with those who have lost the most and who have the most to lose from colonisation, i.e. First Nations and BIPOC.  If it is not safe for them, it will not be safe for you.  If a predominantly White space does not treat a First Nations person or a 'Blak' person as a full human being, they will not see you as a full human being either".  It also warns the following:  "It is very rare to meet a White Ally whose actions are not self-serving in some form or another (e.g. they do what they do to make themselves feel good, rather than actually understanding that they have a responsibility to 'pay back' some of the privilege that has helped them to coast through life, by 'doing' as an ally would)".  The language used by Creatives of Colour is offensive and bigoted and there is no place for it in Australian society.

It would not be at all surprising to find out that the folk at Creatives of Colour have been taking notes from a document called "White Supremacy Culture in Organisation".  Currently doing the rounds in Canada, this piece of critical race theory thinly disguised as a management guide is being hastily adopted by a great many arts organisations who are vowing to use it as a manual to completely remake their organisational structures in the coming years.

The upshot of the document is that white people need to acknowledge that attributes like hard work, perfectionism, meritocracy, the written word and individualism are trappings of "white privilege" and thus need to be expunged from any organisation.

If it were it to be adopted by the Australia Council for the Arts, for example, it would signal the death knell for the entire arts community.  This kind of dangerous and short-sighted identity politics does nothing but create division and resentment.  It diminishes the quality of the arts, creates a resistance of highly talented people who are missing out on opportunities and is an insult to the talented and hard-working people of other cultures.

Where Were You When Democracy Ended?

When future generations ask when did Australians gave up on democracy and freedom, the answer will be 18 September 2020;  the date when the Andrews government in Victoria passed laws which contain the most significant violation of human rights in Australia's history.

Or perhaps the answer will be in the weeks that followed, when barely a whimper was heard from federal Coalition government, the press gallery, the state broadcaster, civil liberty groups, university intellectuals, and the rest of the credentialled class who would rather stand with Dan than with freedom.

The only chance for redemption is for the Victorian Upper House to reject the Bill when it is due to next sit on 13 October.

The COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2020 empowers the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, who is an unelected bureaucrat, to appoint any Victorian to detain for an indefinite period of time any other Victorian, not on public health grounds, but on the vibe of it.

As eighteen bold, courageous, and eminent legal figures noted in their open letter published last Tuesday, "Authorising citizens to detain their fellow citizens on the basis of a belief that the detained person is unlikely to comply with emergency directions by the 'authorised' citizens is unprecedented, excessive and open to abuse."

The Bill says that a person can be detained where an "authorised officer" "reasonably believes" that a person is a high-risk person and is "likely" to refuse or fail to comply with the detention direction.

"Reasonably believes" and "likely" are entirely subjective assessments.

Under the suggestion of Daniel Andrews, for example, the Secretary of DHHS could classify a union official as an authorised officer who could use their powers to detain a small business owner who objects to the lockdown measures.

Labor Party apparatchiks could be empowered to prevent political opponents, such as the Liberal Party members, from gathering.

And powers could be given to certain "community leaders" based not on their health expertise, but on the colour of their skin.  Jill Hennessy, the Attorney-General of Victoria, admitted as much when she said that "leaders" of multicultural community organisations are intended to be the kinds of people that would be suitable for appointment as an authorised officer. 

Never before in Australia's history has a separate class of citizens been created on the basis of their ethnic origin.  This is like the Indigenous Voice to Parliament on steroids.

Worse, there is no provision in either the COVID Omnibus Bill or the Public Health and Wellbeing Act requiring a person who is detained to be brought before a magistrate.  This effectively abolishes the ancient right of habeas corpus, thereby removing a fundamental common law right dating back as early as the 12th century and codified in English legislation in 1640 AD.

This is just the latest in a long-line of unlawful behaviour by Andrews and his government, which I first identified in July when I obtained legal advice which found failure of the Victoria Police to enforce social distancing rules on Black Lives Matter protestors was potentially unlawful.

Also likely unlawful are the "stay at home" orders made under the Stage 4 restrictions because the Emergency Powers provisions under the PHW Act probably does not authorise directions of that kind.

And pregnant mother of two Zoe Buhler was put in handcuffs in front of her children and had her private possession confiscated for engaging in the lawful act of posting an opinion on social media.

Regardless, the "I Stand With Dan" crowd will go down with Daniel Andrews to the bitter end.  They have to.  Having rationalised every power grab, every lost job, every lost business, and every missed funeral, wedding, and birth as necessary to save lives, stepping back now would be an admission that perhaps six months of lockdowns was an over-reaction.

But ever since the Stage 4 restrictions came into effect in August, it became apparent that lockdowns had little to do with public health and everything to do with politics.

A total 696,000 Victorians, around 20% of Victoria's entire workforce, are likely to be put out of work by the lockdowns.

But these 696,000 jobs are being offered up to the gods of COVID elimination to save just one job, that of Daniel Andrews.

The Stage 4 restrictions were only ever based on salvaging the Labor government, attempting to clear the decks for 2021, and to have a clean run into the election not due until 2022.

Zero cases is the benchmark that has been set for success ― something no country has ever achieved, and few have contemplated.

No intervention is too draconian, no police enforcement too brutal, no dodged question too cynical, so as not to justify a third term of government.

The ABC Has Just Moved Further From The Mainstream

Perhaps the staff at the ABC voted themselves a pay rise so they could donate the extra money to the 606,000 Australians who have lost their job in the private sector since March because of the lockdowns the public broadcaster has been amongst the loudest in cheerleading.

Or perhaps ABC staff simply think they are better and more deserving of a pay rise than mainstream Australians who are self-employed or work for small businesses.

In April the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, the Hon Ben Morton asked the Australian Public Service Commissioner (APSC) to write to non-Australian Public Service agencies, informing them of the government's expectations that they implement a six-month deferral of pay increases.

That request has been largely agreed to by non-APS agencies, except for the tin-eared pay increases voted for by staff at ASIC and the Australian Deep Space Communication Complex.

This week, ABC staff voted to accept a 2% pay increase over sensibly freezing their pay for 6 months in line with the government's public service wage freeze policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Community and Public Sector Union called on ABC staff to reject the pay freeze, advising members they deserve the $5 million worth of pay rises.

This is further proof that the ABC, despite their insistence to the contrary, are not a part of Australia's cultural fabric but are completely removed from mainstream Australia.

My analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data found that jobs in the private sector decreased by 5% between 14 March and 5 September, while they increased by 2.4% in the public sector.  This represents around 606,000 jobs lost in the private sector and 19,700 gained in the public sector.

The ABC staffs decision to grant themselves a pay increase in defiance of government and APSC advice is further evidence of Australia's "K-shaped recession" where the private sector is languishing while the public sector and the ABC are shielded from the real-world impacts of the lockdowns and recession.

In May Communications Minister Paul Fletcher wrote to ABC Chair Ita Buttrose advising that he expects the ABC to comply with the six-month wage freeze, saying that it would be a "highly appropriate gesture of solidarity with journalists in the commercial media" who have been smashed by the COVID-19 pandemic.  He is right.

Paul Murphy, the Chief Executive of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, argued Minister Fletcher's intervention was an issue of ABC independence.

Given his apparent concern for independence, Paul Murphy will presumably be investigating the extent to which ABC journalistic integrity was compromised by payments it received from news site The New Daily which is funded by Industry Super.

One of the ABC's key editorial standards it to "Ensure that editorial decisions are not improperly influenced by political, sectional, commercial or personal interests".  ABC advocates often cite its complete independence from commercial interests as being vital for balanced journalism in the national interest.

Yet many journalists at the national broadcaster, along with those at The Guardian, have called for the ABC to get access to the Federal Government and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's planned digital platforms reform which would see advertising revenue from Google and Facebook syphoned off to commercial media.

If the ABC were to gain access to this questionable revenue stream, then a key part of the ABC balance sheet would be directly linked to the commercial success of Google and Facebook.  So much for independence from commercial interests.

Surely a better outcome both for the ABC, and taxpayers, would be privatisation, or at the very least, to allow the ABC to air commercials since they are so keen on a slice of advertising revenue in the first place.

Detachment from commercial interests causes independence issues too.  The ABC continues to run a pro-COVID elimination, pro-lockdown narrative, while it remains almost untouched by the pandemic.

While the rest of the media is being smashed as advertising revenue dries up, ABC staff have opted for an incredibly tone-deaf pay rise.

Staff members at our national broadcaster now consider themselves morally superior and more worthy of a 2% pay rise than staff at Services Australia, Centrelink, the Department of Health and the Department of Social Services, who have all been on the front line of the response to this pandemic and have all taken a six-month pay freeze.

This self-indulgent pay rise, though, is merely the consequence of a deliberate strategy of ABC staff to further remove the organisation from the mainstream.  Last November the ABC altered its editorial policies and asked staff to stop using unifying words such as "us" and "our values".

Not being all in this together is official ABC policy.

18C On Steroids

The idea that a sitting Tasmanian senator can be dragged before the state Anti-Discrimination Commissioner for her public comments shows the draconian reach of Australia's speech restricting anti-discrimination laws.  Claire Chandler, the Liberal Senator for Tasmania, revealed in federal parliament earlier this month that she had received a letter from the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, Sarah Bolt, summoning the senator to attend a conciliation conference to answer for comments she had made in an article in the Mercury in July about — ironically enough — free speech in Australia.

In the article, Senator Chandler bemoaned the rise of cancel culture and the way it silences people for their views about sensitive topics like sex and gender identification and commented that "you don't have to be a bigot to recognise the differences between the male and female sexes and understand why women's sports, single-sex change rooms and toilets are important".

A Tasmanian constituent emailed Chandler to ask whether the senator understood the difference between "sex" and "gender".  In response, Chandler said "I do understand the difference.  That is why I have made the point in the my article that women's sports, women's toilets and women's changerooms are designed for people of the female sex and should remain that way".

Chandler's comments about gender identity and what this means for women-only facilities may not be shared by all Tasmanians, but they are undoubtedly shared by many;  and those who share them deserve to have their views articulated by their representative in the Senate.  That is not to say that only parliamentarians should have free speech, but one of the lessons from this is that if a representative of an entire state doesn't have freedom of speech, then it spells a dangerous precedent for those they represent.

Under the Tasmanian anti-discrimination legislation it was open to the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner to reject the complaint for being frivolous or vexatious.  A complaint about the comments of a member of parliament as a part of a social and political debate in a public forum is the very definition of frivolous ― and yet the Commissioner has accepted the complaint in part, commenting that the Senator's comments were "problematic" and questioned whether people "should be subjected to material that is arguably offensive on the basis of gender identity and intersex variations of sex characteristics".

Senator Chandler had even posed in the Mercury article that perhaps "an open letter signed by 150 writers and academics in defence of free speech offers a glimmer of hope that we can put a stop to the anti-democratic so-called cancel culture that has taken root".  That glimmer of hope has perhaps been extinguished by institutionalised cancel culture itself, namely the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner and her Equal Opportunity agency.

If there is a cancel culture hierarchy, then anti-discrimination commissions must occupy one of the most senior positions.  Funded by taxpayers but completely independent of taxpayer accountability or control, these "independent" agencies have free reign to take discrimination complaints and pursue those who express thoughts that are out of step with modern, cosmopolitan orthodoxy backed up by a progressive elite who prefer censorship to debate.

This attack on free speech is allowed because of the chillingly broad provisions of Tasmania's anti-discrimination laws.  Everybody is familiar by now with the federal hate speech laws under s.18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which makes it unlawful for a person to offend or insult a person because of their race, colour, or ethnic or national origin.  Section 18C is an unacceptable violation of freedom of speech, but the Tasmanian laws go even further.  Section 17 of the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Act 1998 makes it unlawful for a person to engage in any conduct which offends, humiliates, insults, or ridicules another person because of one of 14 protected attributes they possess, including race, age, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Curiously the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commissioner rejected the complaint that related to the Mercury article, but accepted the part of the complaint that related to the correspondence about the article.  But there is no firm rule about why the Commissioner would say the complaint about the Mercury article is lacking in substance when a former Commissioner accepted a complaint only a few years ago that was of a very similar substance.  Back in September 2015 an anti-discrimination complaint was made by a Greens activist against the Catholic Archbishop of Hobart, Julian Porteous, for the publication of pamphlets which explained the church's position on the definition of marriage.  The complaint that the pamphlets were offensive on the basis of a person's sexual orientation was received and investigated by the Commission.  Then, as now, the content of the pamphlet was not directed towards the complainant but was considered to fall within the ambit of state anti-discrimination laws.  The decision whether to accept or reject a complaint is at the discretion of the Commissioner, which leaves freedom of speech for Tasmanians in a precarious state.

To be clear at this stage a complaint has been made and the complaint may eventually be rejected or fail at a tribunal hearing.  But the process is a part of the punishment under these kinds of laws.  The threat of compulsory conferences or mediations and tribunal hearings, and the public tarring of being associated with alleged breaches of hate speech laws, is used to scare people from speaking freely.  This is known as the law's chilling effect on free speech.

And there is nothing more chilling than seeing even elected politicians or mainstream religious leaders hauled before anti-discrimination agencies.  And that's the point — the comments made were a part of a genuine public debate, which is why they attract these complaints.  By silencing the loudest voices, anti-discrimination laws are being used to shape political debate itself.  And as long as they are on the statute books, the message is clear:  if they can get Senators and Archbishops, they can get you too.

Please Welcome Victoria's First Public Sector Gender Equality Commissioner

In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Victorian Government last week decided to announce the appointment of the first Public Sector Gender Equality Commissioner, Dr Niki Vincent, to head up a new unaccountable and powerful identity-politics-based bureaucracy which will divide and dehumanise Victorians. 

For the general public distracted by the ritual reading of the COVID-19 cases the appointment might have passed them by.  Just as in February when the law that created the position was up for debate the Victorian Coalition was fawning over the cash for containers scheme.  This radical law was rushed through parliament without opposition or comment, except for the singular valiant effort of David Limbrick and the Liberal Democrats.

The job of this new Commissioner is to enforce the Gender Equality Act.  This law socially engineers the bureaucracy by imposing a new duty to "promote gender equality".  Come next March, more than 300 public bodies from councils to universities will be compelled to compile a "Gender Equality Action Plan" detailing how they will achieve equal gender representation in the organisation.  The legislation even allows the Commissioner to publicly name and shame non-compliment organisations.

But what's worse is that the Gender Equality Act does not even deserve its name as it promotes neither gender, nor equality, but intersectional equity.

Intersectionality is defined in the Webster dictionary as the "cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect".  For example, intersectional theory would say that a woman is more oppressed than a man, but a black woman is more oppressed than a white woman.

The law introduces this concept by explaining that "gender inequality may be compounded by other forms of disadvantage".  The effect of this wording is that all Victorian public bodies must now review and amend their policies, programs and services not just for how they affect women but also consider "Aboriginality, age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, race, religion, sexual orientation and other attributes". 

Moreover, the law defines equality as "equality of rights, opportunities, responsibilities and outcomes between persons of different genders".   This is not equality but equity.

Equality requires that people are treated the same, and are given the same opportunities to use their talents and succeed.  Where equality of opportunity is afforded to people the outcomes are based on the aspirations and talents of individuals.

Equity, by contrast, requires that people are treated differently in order to achieve equal outcomes (this is also known as positive discrimination).  Practically this means proportionate gender representation in everything from schools to garbage collectors.

Positive discrimination often reflects poorly on the very group it is trying to advance.  It can result in people pushed into positions they are not yet prepared for, or, assumptions that people are only hired to fill a quota. 

More importantly, positive discrimination is dehumanising.  No one wants to be a quota or to be told they can't succeed without special treatment.

All this is the result of the deeper problem referred to as identity politics which is the formation of political alliances based on group characteristics rather than appeals to people as individuals.

Treating groups as monolithic is to deny individuality, qualities, experience, and freedom of choice.  It drives a wedge between different groups when there is far more to unite them as Australians, such as by drawing on shared culture, heritage, and values.

These divisive ideas and concepts will not be quarantined to the Victorian public service.  They will metastasize out of the bureaucracy and into every nook and cranny of society.  Engage Victoria (whose role is to conduct public consultations on legislation) excitedly describes the law as a "once in a generation reform opportunity to influence policy shifts, social norms, cultural expectations and attitudes across Victoria … Australia and internationally". 

The new Commissioner will be nothing less than the legal enforcer of radical and divisive identity politics.  Victorian public servants will become quotas and targets based on immutable characterises like sex and race, rather than individuals with different qualities, experience, and desires.

If the inept response to the coronavirus has shown anything, it is that Victorian's need a practical and capable public service.  The last thing they need is more ideological positions like a Public Sector Gender Equality Commissioner.