by PAUL COLLITS – TO SUGGEST that our politicians are “low information” is an undeserved compliment. They are unknowing idiots who think it is we who are stupid.
So stupid as to fall for their weasel words, over and over again.
- But there is one matter which dwarfs them all.
- It poses by far the most immediate and existential challenge to our nation.
- Mass immigration.
Now, again, those of us who are silly enough to follow events on the election hustings day-by-day will have politician-lies and nonsense thrust at us at the speed of bullshit.
Having not read newspapers nor watched television news for a decade or so has its benefits.
RATBAGS
This all comes to mind seeing the 2024 words of Liberal Senator James Paterson, brought up by Australians v The Agenda: Senator James Paterson calls Australians who want to confront politicians about their concerns as “ratbag protesters” and a threat to parliamentarians.
He warns this will widen the gap between politicians and the public, but completely misses the irony that their dismissal of these concerns created the divide to begin with.
Not only is this a reminder of the stupidity of half-wit politicians who think we owe them a living, it is also a timely reminder of the uselessness of the Liberal Party.
Paterson’s comment was not a slip of the tongue. Politicians really do believe these things.
It is a reminder that politicians like Scott Morrison in 2021 ignored a million “ratbag protesters” on his doorstep in Canberra who were simply concerned about freedom.
Freedom was once a core value of the same Liberal Party of Senator Paterson.
Paterson, of course, once worked for the Institute of Public Affairs, itself once thought of as a bastion of liberty.
I suppose that Paterson also thinks that followers of Tommy Robinson in the UK protesting at the patently obvious link between uncontrolled, mass immigration and Muslim child rape gangs are “ratbags”.
That they should be locked up in solitary confinement. Paterson didn’t like Aussie Cossack either.
Paterson voted against having a Royal Commission into COVID 19 – a Senate proposal from One Nation – along with the now departed Simon Birmingham and the Liberal Party’s house-Leftie Sarah Henderson.
Clearly, the political establishment, of which Paterson is a proud member, doesn’t think that democracy is dead Down Under.
He probably believes that elections matter. He would scoff at the term “UniParty”. He sees Labor as the problem. No Senator, you are the problem.
His Party’s performance during COVID changed Australian politics and representative democracy forever.
There was already a disillusioned class of Australian voters worn down by decades of lies, broken promises, unmandated policies, fiscal incontinence and the outsourcing of policy to unelected bureaucrats, consultants and global bodies.
Huge amounts of taxpayer dollars were wasted on “solving” non-problems. Doing things we didn’t want and not doing things we did want.
That makes a voter pretty pissed off. Not inclined to be nice to politicians. It accounts for the fact that the major Parties now barely score two thirds of the primary vote – and informal voting continues to climb.
Simply not turning up to vote is now a thing. Many, many major Party voters do so only reluctantly.
Senator Paterson’s Party has always been the Party of business. Perhaps he might remember the old corporate adage, now more honoured in the breach, “the customer is always right”. Even when the customer is a “ratbag protester”.
Naturally, Senator Paterson rushed off to London in 2023 to attend the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) shindig.
(Take a look at Senator Paterson’s travel itinerary. Interesting reading. Revealing. Talk about performative, global conference attending).
WINE & CHEESE
ARC was attended by the great and the good. By what English author Dan Ryan has aptly called the Wine and Cheeseboard Right.
What should be the most important issue of the 2025 federal election in Australia?
Nuclear power? Whacking woke? The gender wars? Taxes and costs of living? Some new or existing foreign conflict in Europe, the Middle East, or Asia?
All worthy topics of discussion, no doubt. But there is one matter which dwarfs them all, as it poses by far the most immediate and existential challenge to our nation: mass immigration.
It is also a subject which, while not completely ignored, has still not been treated with the urgency and single-minded focus it deserves among our leaders.
This is the case not just in Australia, but a phenomenon across the West.
ARC is a new much-hyped organization which views itself as promoting new and big thinking for the Right-of-centre elite.
At its inaugural conference last year, the subject of mass immigration was barely mentioned. Listening to the speeches, I remember thinking how odd the whole spectacle was considering what was going on in their society outside.
CHANTS
At literally the same time lovely erudite Oxford Union-style lectures were being delivered, a couple of miles down the road there were major protests with the now drearily familiar chants of “Death to Israel”, “From the River to the Sea” and the like.
The on-going Pakistani grooming gang scandal was somehow not considered sufficiently important to fit on the three-day program. I doubt it is an issue that William Wilberforce, a name often invoked from the podium, would have ignored.
Instead of focusing on how immigration had caused these problems, the core message of ARC was that the West just needs a more positive narrative.
It is only by “telling a different story,” in their oft-repeated mantra, that we will supposedly solve our problems and shake ourselves out of our current malaise.
But how do they think that is meant to work exactly? Are more sparkling orations and clever op-eds really the answer?
While the Paterson class swans around the globe saying lovely things to one another in plush hotels and gobbling down canapes, struggle street looks for ever diminishing ways of getting its messages through to these contemptible gnomes.
COVID (of course) sealed the deal for Australian democracy. It ended the social contract between the government and the governed.
The legacy Parties all discovered their inner fascist. This showed us what a façade our rights are, what a joke political accountability is. And what a thin line there is between liberal democracy and tyranny.
It opened our eyes and made us realise just how little freedom means to both Labor and the Liberals.PC
