I remember as a teenager in Cairns going to school every day with long hair wearing my blue jeans, black t-shirt, and Akubra hat. I hated school. Routinely, I would be hauled up to the deputy principal’s office for not wearing the school uniform. I would get caned six times on each hand and off I’d go until the next time it happened. Corporal punishment in Queensland state schools wasn’t banned until 1995. When a new deputy principal arrived in about 1985, however, I was hauled up to his office where I offered my outstretched hand.

Something had changed. He didn’t bring out the cane. He said, ‘Come with me.’ Off we went to the quadrangle where he presented me with a stinky steel garbage bin. He supervised me for about an hour as I was forced to walk around the quadrangle picking up rubbish in full view of my laughing peers. Unlike the previous deputy, who I admired for giving me street cred for taking the punishment, I hated this new bloke with a burning passion. He’d taken away my dignity.

No doubt the World Health Organisation (WHO) would argue that caning me was some form of toxic masculinity that weakened my value of empathy. I argue it’s all stuff and nonsense. The latter took great glee in seeing my embarrassment. It wasn’t punishment, it was his personal victory over my desire not to conform. It stung more than any caning.

The new form of ‘empathy politics’, encapsulated in the Albanese government’s handouts and Jim Chalmers’ ‘values-based capitalism’, is just as sinister. It pretends to be nice while degrading our culture, our work ethic, and our dignity. It encourages a lack of discipline in our young people, and as a consequence, youth crime is out of control. Only David Crisafulli in Queensland has had the courage to fight back by pushing his ‘adult crime, adult time’ agenda.

However, Crisafulli’s hard line may be at cross-purposes with the Queensland Law Reform Commission’s review of Section 280 of the Criminal Code, which currently prevents parents from being charged with assault for ‘reasonable’ use of corporal punishment on their children.

To be sure, some parents go completely overboard, as did some teachers back in my day. Usually, it was emotionally driven outrage rather than measured discipline. In my opinion, how I discipline my children is my business (and Crisafulli agrees), but let’s just say I am glad I don’t have to raise children in today’s toxic socialist environment. However, I think there is a much bigger problem. Let me explain.

I know many conservatives won’t be big fans of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, but he made some salient points stemming from his major work, Discipline and Punish. Foucault looked at historical processes in the shift from public punishment (in front of audiences) to prisons (behind closed doors).

In essence, the shift from public punishment to prisons ‘shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner’s body to his soul’.

Jeremy Bentham of Utilitarian fame (someone probably more familiar to conservatives) proposed the Panopticon prison design in 1785. Fremantle Gaol has some elements of the Panopticon design and in 2014 archaeologists discovered the foundations of three Panopticons at Pentridge Prison where a teenage Ned Kelly likely spent some time. According to the ABC documentary’s host Adam Ford:

‘He went in to Pentridge a 16-year-old as a ratbag and came out as a hardened criminal with a big chip on his shoulder.’

Foucault used the Panopticon concept to describe how modern institutions such as schools, hospitals, and workplaces use surveillance to enforce conformity, challenging ideas about privacy and control.

Some scholars looked at the shift from physical to psychological control or from public to hidden punishment, whereas Foucault focused on the change from physical to institutional control. There is disagreement over whether the shifts have been sudden or gradual, but the shift is clearly philosophical and has become entrenched in all sorts of government policies.

For example, the Tax File Number did the same thing as Bob Hawke’s Australia Card proposal, and it’s not much of a stretch to see how myID could become the basis for a Digital ID for under 16s to access social media they will then take with them into adulthood. What people fought against 40 years ago has happened under our noses, facilitated by pandemic lockdowns and a public willing to trust the government.

While it is arguable that myID facilitates efficient and convenient access to government services, there are other elements of institutional control that are far more insidious than their benign appearance. Try accessing almost any government website or recorded educational content and you will be instructed about Aboriginal culture with an acknowledgement of country embedded in the introduction. You can’t even watch a game of footy or attend an online meeting without having to sit through one.

However, Labor’s ‘kinder capitalism’ adopts more of a psychological approach. Like the old saying about someone taking a leak in your pocket while telling you it’s raining, Labor makes out his redistribution of wealth is good for you. Energy policy is the same where your energy bill is made cheaper by reducing your bill with the money you’ve already paid in taxes.

As Albo said before the election, ‘kindness isn’t weakness’. Indeed, it’s psyops.

Labor’s ‘values-based capitalism’ and energy policy echo Klaus Schwab’s ‘stakeholder capitalism’ that asks big government and big business to implement Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks. ESG is on the nose and so is ‘nature positive’, but with the Uniparty’s other leader agreeing to whatever Labor says about environmental policy, we’ll get it, and we will love it.

Every new policy and political event push us closer to socialism. Like cancel culture, you cannot debate it because then you are toxic or unkind or some other wimpy label. When you get cancelled or sacked for disagreeing, it is all about ‘empathy’.

If we follow the money supporting renewables subsidies and fighting against nuclear, ‘empathy’ is the badge used to justify all sorts of crazy outcomes. With my own energy bill going up by 34 per cent on July 1, one lefty critic told me it was ‘misinformation’ to say that renewables weren’t cheaper. Indeed, the ‘objective’ reasons for energy price increases are ‘expensive gas and unreliable coal are driving up wholesale power prices’ and that ‘outages at coal-fired power stations also contribute to higher wholesale prices’.

What’s that in my pocket? Is it rain?

Socialism dressed in the politics of empathy is the most sinister thing the left have ever invented. Yet Australians voted for it in the absence of a credible government-in-waiting.

Something must change before the politics of empathy sends us broke. Regrettably, even if the Coalition stays united and they keep nuclear energy as a key policy, they won’t be getting any empathy from me.

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is The Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. All opinions in this article are the author’s own.