The political class offers no salvation, with the Coalition even rejoicing with a standing ovation for a Treasurer who had just announced a trillion-dollar debt.

Up to $230b is wasted on Canberra trying to do what is intended to be constitutionally reserved to the States. That is not once; it is every year. And it is only the beginning.

LIMITED

Just about every way the politicians splurge your money involves massive waste which any good farmer or small businessman would instinctively avoid.

The golden rule for economic success is limited constitutional government alongside maximum competitive free enterprise.

Remember that the greater part of the current deficit comes from unnecessarily locking down small business while exempting the non-frontline bureaucracy. Never forget that Australia escaped the worst of the Wuhan virus not because of politicians, but because, like Fiji, we are remote islands.

Like the basis of Roman Law, the Twelve Tables, mismanagement by the political class is today based on the Ten Myths.

First, ignoring every post-war referendum vote, most problems can be solved by a Canberra-designed program funded endlessly and increasingly by your taxes. Is there one which has not been a disaster? Take that Gillard government thought-bubble the Coalition foolishly took up, the NDIS. Out of control, it will cost almost as much as defence in three years, $40 billion. Then there is the NBN, deceitfully disguised as an “off-budget investment”. This was only so that the eventual massive losses you have funded can be played down.

Or take that “key allocation” to aged care of $17.7 billion. The waiting list for home care will continue and despite the royal commission, there will not be a 24-hour nurse in aged care homes. A Canberra solution too often comes with two gold-plated guarantees: it will fail and taxpayers will pay a fortune.

Second, politicians are wiser and better qualified. In fact, they are often the very ones who could not see what was obvious. With their foolish free trade agreement, they pushed us into trade dependency on that always sinister, hostile and law-averse power, communist China, even allowing them a wide range of our premium and strategic assets.

POWERBROKERS

Three, where business involvement is needed, award it to crony capitalists and/or through powerbrokers. This process has involved the NSW government awarding a $60m bus contract to a powerbroker’s client without going to tender, while Canberra paid $30m for land worth $3m, justified by saying that, in time, it will be seen as a “bargain”.

Four, with inflation conquered and reserve banks endlessly printing money, out-of-control government debt is of no concern. The warning is, however, on the horizon. The US annualised inflation rate has just shot up to 4.2 per cent.

Five, it is of no concern that our investment rate is projected to rise to a high of only 10 per cent, about one half of many Asian economies. Australians are on track to becoming the poor cousins who wait on them and amuse them on their holidays down under.

Six, only the total and not the per capita gross domestic product is important. The total GDP is artificially pushed up by bringing in more immigrants proportionately than any Western country, with cities overcrowded and Australian families getting poorer and the ability to buy a house increasingly beyond the young.

But a mention of our total GDP on an inside page in The Wall Street Journal will have politicians and Treasury bureaucrats purring. Surely that is worth your suffering.

DRUGS

Seven, the more people are dependent on government the better for them and for the politicians for whom they will vote. It matters not that the harvest cannot be brought in and jobs not filled, as long as the healthy indolent are happy watching daytime TV, taking drugs and worse.

Eight, Acton, Locke and Montesquieu are no longer relevant. Forget about corruption, power rewards. Checks and balances on the political class only slow down and block efficient government.

The Wuhan virus lockdowns of small business, weddings, funerals and beaches demonstrated that this democratic fuss is just nonsense. Our senators were as wise to abandon their power to disallow regulations as US Supreme Court judges were to abandon the enforcement of constitutional electoral law to ensure Biden won.

Nine, the principal policy drivers for government in the modern world are global warming and critical theory.

Both have strong Marxist origins and support, except of course in those countries already enjoying Marxist rule in perpetuity.

Global warming being today’s greatest moral issue, denial should be a criminal offence. Disregard the fact that the leading warmist believer, Bjorn Lomborg, says that even if the Paris Agreement were universally honoured, warming will at best be reduced by 0.04 per cent. Lomborg does not include any impact of the sun’s potential to impose, without notice, a mini-ice age.