I’m normally beavering away, sharing my opinions with you.
Today, though, you’re in the driver’s seat. I’d like to hear from you.
Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro exploring their philosophical differences.
So this is what we’re going to do together …
I’ll give you a short video to watch. It’s only 1:54 minutes long;
You watch it. It’s a discussion between Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro. They talk about the impact of technology on jobs, taking two very different approaches;
I’ll ask you a question about it;
You then answer that question in the poll below; and
Next week, I’ll let you know what your answer says about your political philosophy.
Just when you shudder at the Treasurer’s blueprint for ‘redesigning capitalism’ and the limp response from the Coalition we have come to expect, along comes Senator Ralph Babet (UAP, Vic).
Classical liberals everywhere, take heart. There is hope that, finally, we have an advocate for our principles, and one uncaptured by the Coalition.
Straight from the Senate floor on 8 February 2023, in a speech titled Government Intervention Makes Things Worse …
Anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows that handing-out large sums of money will destablise and manipulate the market.
Common sense, right?
Then, warming to the opportunity to let them have it, without a care how the parliamentary-careerists might react, he openly chastises the Liberal Party and National Party who took us down the wrong path …
“Never again can our country run-up such an irresponsible amount of debt like the former Government did.”
Just in case that didn’t sit you upright and start cheering, these gems then flowed-freely in a kind of declaration of intent …
“Less stimulus. Lower taxes. If government removes financial barriers, the market will naturally provide adequate supply at a price acceptable to consumers.”
Well, bravo Senator. Bravo!
Now in full flight and infusing the red chamber with his particular brand of optimism, long-missed plain-speaking and unequivocal classical liberal rhetoric …
“For too long, the focus has been on government incentivising the demand-side of the equation with taxpayer money. It’s time to focus on the supply-side.”
If he keeps this up, the Senator will be mercilessly attacked.
That, of course, will be the sign he is threatening the cosy status-quo.
As Ralph Babet emerges as a first-time senator, it will be interesting to witness how he handles his philosophical opponents.
However, one thing is clear. Do not underestimate the good Senator from Victoria.
By crikey, I’m a little bothered we’re always at sea politically.
The Left is pounding us with wave after relentless policy wave.
The Liberal Party has drowned, its body face-down, bobbing and drifting. We libertarians, classical liberals and the otherwise centre-right are in danger of the rip sweeping us to sea.
Things are perilous. Just look at the eddies and currents fatiguing us:
Familiar places and landmarks being renamed in costly rebranding programs
Activists undermining joyful time spent on Australia Day
If we continue only to oppose these ideas, as is the conservative instinct, but not counter with our own, we’ll soon lose more freedoms than is already the case.
We need bold classical liberals and pugnacious libertarians to fiercely propose striking new policies.
Take the Voice To Parliament as an example.
… classical liberals cannot support systemic racism.
But first, here’s a quick primer for our international subscribers. The Voice To Parliament is a government body proposed by referendum to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution. It’s stated purpose is to recognise Indigenous people as the first inhabitants of Australia and to act as an advisory board for any bills coming through the Federal Parliament which impact Indigenous people. The body would be comprised exclusively of ethnically Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The motivation for the Voice To Parliament is that Indigenous people suffer poorer life chances and that this is the result of British colonial invasion and ongoing occupation. The Voice to Parliament is said to be just one step in a process of Reconciliation, the duration and shape of which is unspecified.
In short, what’s being proposed is a new third-chamber of the Australian Parliament with a racial-eligibility criterion to participate.
Yes, it’s as bad as that sounds.
Think Apartheid.
Predictably, the Labor Government along with the socialist Australian Greens will vote “Yes.”
The feckless Liberals are confused and unable to take a view. Their paralysis is painful to witness.
Their Coalition partner, The Nationals, are deeply-rooted and sure in saying “No” and have weathered the storm of a confused defector.
Primer over.
So what do we do?
First, we vote “No.” We do so because we as classical liberals cannot support systemic racism.
Good so far but now we must plan to seize the initiative.
Second, we ask ourselves, “By what power or mechanism can the Labor Government even legislate something as abhorrent as systemic racism?”
The answer is in the Australian Constitution. Like the United States Constitution, Australia’s has an enumerated list of areas in which a Commonwealth government can legislate.
It’s section 51.
Run your finger down that list and you’ll discover subsection 26 furtively trying its best not to draw attention to itself …
Section 51 (xxvi) “The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws”
Yes, you read that correctly. The Constitution anticipates that a Federal government may legislate on the basis of race.
I don’t know about you but I find this abhorrent. What happened to equality before the law? What happened to judging not by the colour of one’s skin but by the content of one’s character? I’m thinking of 1933 Germany, 1970 South Africa, of Rwanda at its most bleak. Why look at people from a racial perspective at all? If we must have legislation, let’s not discriminate by the amount of melanin in the skin!
So, here’s the front-foot classical liberal in me …
At the very next electoral opportunity, let’s put a referendum of our own to the people. Let’s rescind section 51(xxvi) from the Constitution!
In one fell swoop, no Commonwealth Government will ever again be allowed to make laws with respect to race.
The benefits are:
No elevating one ethnic group at the expense of the other
No targeting one ethnic group for the purpose of disadvantaging them
No costly Department of Indigenous Affairs and the countless agencies which grift off it
The Federal Government has one less legislative jurisdiction, has its wings slightly clipped
With the money saved, we can repay at least some of the suffocating debt
Indigenous communities will be treated like all others and so weaned off the teat of the state. Same opportunities. Same laws.
Indigenous communities stuck in a cycle of inter-generational welfare receipt will learn self-reliance quickly.
It has a lot to recommend it.
So rather than simply react to a Leftist proposal and not respond in kind, let’s advocate a bolder, muscular kind of original liberalism, of classical liberalism, of libertarianism.
This month, there were reports of a Chinese ‘spy balloon’ flying over the airspace of the United States.
Back home, we next had an announcement from Senator James Paterson (Liberal, Victoria) that there were more than 900 CCP surveillance cameras installed in various Commonwealth departments, including Defence and Foreign Affairs offices.
It’s unnerving to discover Beijing’s surveillance of democratic nations, its governments and individual citizens.
However, in the midst of these concerns, Liberty Itch found a quiet moment to chuckle on receiving an image with the following message:
ALERT! Is it a UFO? No. Is it a Chinese spy balloon? No. It’s … what we think of CCP denials!
The First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, has given notice of her resignation.
Foremost among her political objectives and that of her party, the Scottish National Party, was to gain independence from the United Kingdom!
Nicola Sturgeon. Resigned as Scotland’s First Minister.
Scotland and England have been in Union since 1707, by personal union of the Crown as far back as 1603. So aspiration was high, clear-headed thinkers might say unrealistically so, for a population the size of Sydney or Boston.
Her predecessor, Alex Salmond, won handsomely in the 2011 election, a result sufficient to pressure Westminster for a referendum on independence in 2014.
The YES Campaign of that referendum was led by Ms. Sturgeon and resulted in a majority of Scottish residents rejecting a breakaway from the United Kingdom.
Damaged by the implications of that result, it was Mr. Salmond who ended his decade-long leadership of the Scottish National Party and the lacklustre performer, Ms. Sturgeon, was elevated to the top job.
This past performance should have been the harbinger of her subsequent eight year premiership.
Her failure to replicate Mr. Salmond’s 2011 result meant securing a second referendum was always going to be fraught. It didn’t help that her predecessor left the Scottish National Party to lead another pro-independence party, Alba, in 2021.
Now in coalition with the Scottish Greens, she had the Scottish Parliament declare a referendum date after political maneuverings and repeated petitions to Westminster failed. The brazen, ultra vires move was struck down by the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court as recently as November 2022 and Ms. Sturgeon was grasping for want of a workable strategy thereafter.
In pursuit of her pet project to regress to a Middle Ages scale state, much was neglected in Scotland.
When she inherited the role of First Minister in 2014, educational performance was second to none in all Europe. Today, Scottish educational authorities have long-ago ceased participating in most international standards, and the one they still do clearly shows a regression in STEM performance compared with England.
The Scottish Enlightenment of Robert Burns, David Hume and Adam Smith, all achieved within the United Kingdom, seems a proud historical footnote for a country now in decay.
Signs of the malaise are everywhere under Ms. Sturgeon.
Stagnant company formations in a land known for its astute business people and rampant job losses are another two glaring markers of failure. The prolonged, nationwide covid-lockdowns only reinforced the government-is-the-solution errors.
What we can say about Ms. Sturgeon is that she had a vision for Scotland as an independent nation. Achieving that was always going to be remarkable. It is not surprising she has lost her political energy. In this, at least, one can understand her plight in contrast with recently resigned New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who coupled an expressive froth and bubble veneer with authoritarian tendencies.
In the end though, like many who believe in the collective power of government, Ms. Sturgeon’s fitful dream turned into an everyday, dreary reality of decline.
Maybe soon, Scotland can start the journey back to its former glory. The secret to achieving that is for its government to step out of the way!
This interview is hard for sun-soaked Australians to comprehend.
It’s a topic most of our politicians avoid. It’s too troubling. It opens a Pandora’s Box of questions, about humanity, ethics, complex interconnections, human rights, our future, and sickening expediency beyond our imagination.
So, before the interview, Liberty Itch will step you through a quick, summarising primer.
There is credible evidence that Australia’s #1 trading partner, the People’s Republic of China, runs the world’s largest forced organ harvesting business.
Australia doesn’t simply buy electronics, steel and machinery from China but, critics assert, the Communist Chinese Party does a roaring trade in human hearts, lungs and kidneys, treated as commodities like any other. It’s a lucrative, bloody business.
The China Tribunal, a London-based non-government tribunal which investigated claims of forced human organ harvesting chaired by former lead prosecutor of the Slobodan Milošević trial, Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, has made some shocking findings.
Its damning final judgment claimed there are over 1.5 million people currently detained in Chinese prison camps, many of them are being brutally killed or operated on, alive, to provide organs for the $1 billion transplant industry.
$1 billion! That’s the size of Australia’s wine exports to China, when the communists aren’t interfering with free trade. This is the scale of the ghoulish business.
If you think the issue of Beijing’s organ trafficking is a far-away problem overseas, you are mistaken. It’s on our doorstep. It’s here.
The China Tribunal discovered a few Australians in the medical profession linked to a Sydney hospital were denying organs were sourced through coercion and human rights abuses.
Further, the Australian reported contentious, CCP-propagandist white-washing of forced harvesting by a former Griffith University academic, Campbell Fraser, who had a history of cooperative association with CCP mouthpiece, China Daily.
Campbell Fraser. Griffith University barred him from trips to China.
Further again, Australia’s SBS reported a complicated fracas between medical practitioners at Westmead Hospital. In that report, Dr Chapman, a staunch defender of Chinese Communist Party organ harvesting practices, had in earlier years reported another physician allegedly being told by a patient of Chinese origin, “I cannot come in for dialysis tomorrow. I have to fly tonight because they are shooting my donor tomorrow.”
Though obviously the Australian and SBS are reputable sources, Liberty Itch wanted to speak directly with other investigators with expertise in China’s organ harvesting practices.
The following interview is with David Matas CM.
David Matas CM is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is co-author with David Kilgour, a former Canadian Secretary of State and Deputy Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, of Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for their Organs, 2009 and co-editor with Torsten Trey of State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China, 2012. David is a co-founder with David Kilgour and Ethan Gutmann of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, and a member of the Order of Canada.
David Matas CM. International human rights lawyer, author, researcher and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize nominee.
<Interview starts>
LI: Can you give Liberty Itch subscribers a brief overview of the Chinese state’s organ harvesting business? How is it done?
DM: Prisoners of conscience in arbitrary indefinite detention are systematically blood tested and organ examined. The lists of prisoners with blood types and tissue types are circulated to nearby health practitioners and hospitals. When a patient arrives needing a transplant, the blood and tissue typing is matched with that of a prisoner. The matching prisoner is, in detention, injected with anti-coagulants and immobilisers and then taken to a nearby van where organs are extracted. The extraction kills the prisoner. His or her body is cremated on site. The organ or organs are taken by the van to a nearby hospital or to an airport for transport elsewhere in China.
LI: What is the scale? Who are the victims and who are the ‘clients’?
DM: About 100,000 organs a year. The victims are primarily practitioners of the spiritually based set of exercises Falun Gong, also Uyghurs in large numbers, Tibetans and House Christians, mostly Eastern Lightning, in smaller numbers. The clients are transplant tourists, and wealthy or well-connected Chinese.
LI: Who benefits from the Chinese State’s organ harvesting business?
DM: The health system benefits financially. The Communist Party benefits through elimination of those it sees as insufficiently Communist.
LI: You recently visited Australia, late last year, and have gone to Canberra to present the issue of Beijing’s Illegal Organ Trafficking to our elected representatives in the Federal Parliament. What was the response?
DM: There has been significant concern in the Parliament of Australia about organ transplant abuse in China. There have been many petitions in the Parliament of Australia, both in the House of Representatives and the Senate, addressing Falun Gong and organ harvesting, starting in 2006 when the report that I wrote with David Kilgour first came out and continuing to this year. The Parliament, it is safe to say, is well-informed of the abuse and has showed considerable concern about the abuse.
However, the response from the individual elected representatives varied, depending on the representative with whom I met. I would suggest contacting these representatives directly for their response.
LI: What more should the Australian Government do to tackle this crime?
DM: These are 5 suggestions to the Australian government in summary.
1) Improve the Australian Senate procedures. There are several Parliaments around the world which have, through motions or resolutions, condemned the mass killing in China of prisoners of conscience for their organs and called for Government action to avoid complicity in those killings. Australia should follow suit.
2) Adopt mandatory reporting whereby medical professionals have an obligation to report, to an appropriate registry or authority, any knowledge or reasonable suspicion that a person under their care has received a commercial transplant or one sourced from a non-consenting donor, be that in Australia or overseas;
3) Implement extraterritorial legislation. The current Australia’s Criminal Code does not explicitly prohibit organ trafficking. The government has accepted the recommendation to amend it but no amendments have been proposed in reality. As an alternative, private Members and Senators could introduce amendments to prohibit organ trafficking;
4) Become a state party to the Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights and join other nations in a collective effort to combat foreign organ transplant abuse;
5) One last suggestion I would make is the constitution of a friends of Falun Gong Parliamentary group. Australian Parliamentarians, through the many petitions they have presented to Parliament, as well as through the Sub Committee report, and statements they have made outside Parliament, have shown an understanding of the issue of the mass killing.
Liberty Itch urges the Albanese Government to take leadership to protect the most vulnerable members of our community. It was promised to us that Australia will ‘cooperate where we can, disagree where we must’ with China.
This is an area that we ‘disagree where we must’ and immediate actions need to be taken.
There’s more you can do:
The International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) has an Australian chapter that works on a range of initiatives. Apart from legislation change, there is also a need for Australian universities, hospitals and transplant associated organisations to undertake due diligence in their interactions with China in the areas of transplant medicine, research and training.
It’s important that our medical professionals and academics are not unknowingly aiding and abetting China in its illegal organ trafficking practices.
If you believe in free markets and freedom, and are not familiar with the work of Thomas Sowell, then drop everything now, and Google his name.
And if you have time, watch some YouTube videos of him. I guarantee that you will not be disappointed.
If you have more time, read one of his books. My personal favourite is A Conflict of Visions.
Thomas Sowell, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Very quickly, Sowell is an economist and social commentator. He was born in 1930 to a very poor family in North Carolina in the US. When he was quite young, his father died and he was sent to live with family in Harlem, New York. A smart and precious youth, he saw the metaphorical light when he was introduced to the public library.
Moving forward, Sowell had a stint in the US military during the Korean war. And because of this, he was a late starter at university – in his mid-20s. But he did his Bachelors at Harvard, then his Masters at Columbia and finally his Doctorate at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman.
All along the way, Sowell was a self-declared Marxist. This was true even while working with George Stigler and Milton Friedman. And then it all changed.
He became a titan of free markets and liberty.
What happened?
He went to work for the government!
When asked in an interview what changed his mind, Sowell replied: “Facts”. See for yourself here.
I bring up Sowell because one of his most important observations was that “Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
Which brings me to Australia.
While the Albanese government is getting much of the blame for our current inflation and interest rate ills, they are not entirely at fault. They aren’t helping matters, but they aren’t entirely at fault.
Much of the fault lies at the feet of the Liberal-National Coalition Government of Scott Morrison. They could not have timed their election eviction any better.
Decades of economic history have shown that private property, rule of law, free and competitive markets, and limited government drive prosperity anywhere and everywhere.
And anywhere and everywhere includes Australia.
Nowhere has a nation improved its lot through expanded government. You can’t tax, spend or regulate a country into prosperity, much as the Morrison Government tried really, really hard. When it came to increasing taxes, increasing government spending, and increasing regulation, the Morrison Government was Whitlamesque.
Our current inflation ills are a problem of supply, of constricted supply. Constricted by too much government spending, too much taxation and too much regulation. We won’t spend or save our way out of this.
What is required is a supply side revolution to get the foot of government off the throat of Australians.
How many more sales can a business owner make if he did not need to fill in the ATO, ABS, Austrac, ASIC, and other forms designed by people to keep themselves busy? Who do you think is paying for Scott Morrison’s bank tax? Certainly not the bank shareholders. How much would your cost of living pressures ease if your groceries were cheaper because your supermarket did not need to employ a battalion of compliance officers.
Yes. Some of our inflation problems are imported. Much of them are home grown.
The inflation of the 1980s and 1990s was not just vanquished through high interest rates. Governments all around the world, from Ronald Reagan in the US to Margaret Thatcher in the UK to Bob Hawke in Australia all led major economic programs to deregulate, to liberate, to reform. This is the opposite of what the last 20 years of Australian government has done. To regulate, to subjugate, to deform.
Ronald Reagan. Margaret Thatcher. Bob Hawke.
As Zhuangzi wrote in 369 BC: “Good economic order results spontaneously when things are left alone”.
We will not escape from our economic problems with business as usual. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has a window of opportunity to redirect the national economy. But he must change direction, because otherwise we will end up where we are headed … Venezuela … where everyone is a trillionaire. But a trillionaire who still can’t afford to feed themselves or their family.
For an example of how libertarians philosophically wrestle, behold this exchange between the Arizona Libertarians and Australian Brett Lombardi:
It is eloquent in its brevity:...
