Those who work the land, build small businesses, accumulate self-funded retirement nest eggs – or pay into private health cover – represent far more than an ideological irritation.

They demonstrate what socialist orthodoxy can never concede: self-reliance does work, whereas State-administered monopolies perpetually buckle under their own weight.

IMPULSE

This ideological impulse extends beyond economics.

Just as Canberra instinctively punishes self-reliant citizens who refuse total dependence on the State, it actively appeases vocal, radicalised activist voting blocs at the expense of national cohesion.

Whether stripping private health benefits from thrifty retirees, turning a blind eye to militant antisemitism on university campuses, or letting in Islamists to retain marginal inner-city electorates, the underlying playbook is identical.

Core Australian values of individual duty, thrift and tolerance are sacrificed to ideological convenience.

Nowhere is that vindictive mindset clearer than in the Albanese Government’s push to gut private health rebates for older Australians.

Under the deceitfully named Private Health Insurance Amendment (Modernising the Private Health Insurance Rebate) Bill, 2026, Canberra moved to strip away the means-tested and age-based rebate tier for Australians over 65 years.

Albanese’s aim is to slash support from roughly 28 and 32 per cent down to the base rate of 24 per cent.

A government addicted to waste claimed this was “designed” to pocket $3b over four years to fund aged care.

The human cost, however, falls squarely on 1.2 to 1.5 million targeted pensioners and retirees.

These are Australians who have scrimped for decades to maintain private cover specifically to avoid burdening the public hospital queue.

The Government’s bill fell to a decisive 38:23 Senate ambush, uniting the Coalition, independent crossbenchers (and even The Greens) against the measure – discharging the bill from the notice paper.

But the Government has refused to accept the verdict. Instead of abandoning their toxic measure, Health Minister Mark Butler immediately sought to revive the cuts in the House, determined to squeeze $3b from elderly thrift.

The claim that Canberra must squeeze pensioners to balance the books may well satisfy naive commentators who swallow the arguments of politicians notorious for not telling the truth. It is an insult to taxpayers.

This government has a staggering catalogue of squandered public wealth.

Examples include more than $10b committed to the collapsed fantasy of being a “green hydrogen superpower”, $940m handed to a US start-up under closed-door non-disclosure agreements, and an estimated $40b blow-out on Snowy 2.0.

Add to this the hundreds of millions wasted on the apartheid-model Voice referendum, unchecked billions leaking through an escalating $50b NDIS, runaway private consultancy contracts, the most lavish travel expenses for what should have been Zoom meetings and brazen pork-barrelling to benefit the Prime PM’s electorate golf club.

The arithmetic is as damning as it is cruel: the $3b Canberra seeks to claw back from 1.2m pensioners over four years equates to roughly $750m annually – an amount virtually identical to the taxpayer handout given to US start-up, PsiQuantum.

LARGESSE

Halting just a fraction of this corporate welfare, ideological vanity, consultant largesse and just plain waste would have preserved senior rebates several times over.

Adding insult to injury is the bureaucratic complacency exposed when public funds are actively pillaged.

While Canberra penny-pinches from law-abiding retirees, recent revelations show Labor’s much-vaunted anti-fraud task force allowed an alleged $1.89m Sydney NDIS invoicing scam to run unchecked for 14 straight months before intervening.

When government waste is treated with indulgence and pensioner savings are targeted with zeal, the administration’s true priorities are laid bare.

This punitive economic posture matches a broader failure of core governance.

While Canberra lectures households on belt-tightening, the International Monetary Fund has warned that uncontrolled public expenditure in Australia continues to fuel sticky domestic inflation, unlike in other wealthy economies.

Uniquely among federations, Australia suffers an acute vertical fiscal imbalance: Canberra siphons roughly 80 per cent of total national taxation, drip-feeding funds back to sovereign States through centralising, conditional grants that smother State autonomy.

Meanwhile, living standards stagnate.

Despite vast mineral resources, Australia’s real national income per capita lags non-resource economies such as Switzerland and Singapore, choked off by regulatory red tape, soaring energy costs driven by reckless renewable rewiring over prime agricultural land, and indiscriminate immigration targets that overload urban housing and hospital networks in Sydney, Melbourne and SE Queensland.

Worse still is the moral rot of institutional appeasement. For years, Jewish Australians have warned about systemic complacency toward antisemitism, and been forced to privately fund security cordons around synagogues, day schools, even kindergartens.

At the same time, sectarian vitriol surges across federally funded university campuses as well as suburban streets.

Despite bitter warnings, taxpayer funding has repeatedly filtered toward organisations promoting incendiary antisemitic rhetoric.

When confronted with demands for accountability, the Albanese Government adamantly resisted establishing a royal commission into antisemitism.