By Viv Forbes
Colonial Australians voted for Federation for four key reasons – Defence, Foreign Affairs, Quarantine and the maintenance of Free Trade between States.
Our Federation is failing in all four areas.
In Defence we send our soldiers into un-winnable foreign wars, and then spurn and short-change the veterans who come back. The media and some top brass have smeared all soldiers because a few have been accused of war crimes (probably while attempting to stay alive themselves). And while the Indo-Pacific prepares for war, we play gender games and climate games instead of war games, and waste zillions on inferior submarines and fighter aircraft.
Our mis-management of Foreign Affairs has given China (our biggest foreign customer) an excuse for a bullying, costly trade war. And our cavalier signing of several UN “agreements” on climate and environment surrenders our sovereignty to unelected foreign bureaucrats, and exports our jobs and industries.
Our futile attempts to lock out viruses that may be able to hitch-hike on migratory birds, bats, traders and tourists have just slowed the normal process of adapting to these pests. Summer warmth may have done more to curb Covid in northern Australia than all the lockdowns.
State Premiers, drunk on Covid-power, have made a mockery of Section 92 of our Constitution (“trade, and commerce… among the states, shall be absolutely free.”) They have driven thousands into bankruptcy, leaving the feds to pick up the tab. With workers kept in paid idleness by state lockdowns and federal handouts, there is no labour for farm harvests.
We should be free to lock or unlock our own homes or businesses. But politicians shut state borders with little warning, even creating locked-down mini-states. Police who should be fighting real crime are checking face masks and patrolling Covid prisons, while soldiers prepare for war against tourists and traders instead of focussing on our capacity to respond to threats in our region.
Our Federation is being destroyed by Centralism, state irresponsibility and green vandalism. The bloated federal and state bureaucracies are far larger and more costly than were ever imagined by the Fathers of Federation. Almost every state function is now duplicated by Canberra. A recent invention, the unconstitutional “National Cabinet”, is a harbinger of yet more centralisation and globalism as the Great Covid Reset merges with the Green Revolution.
We must restore the dreams of federation by:
- restoring free trade with no bureaucratic locked gates.
- restoring our industrial capability, based on cheap reliable coal, gas, hydro or nuclear power.
- repealing all green energy subsidies, mandates tax breaks and emissions targets and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement.
- ensuring emergency supplies of gas and liquid fuels.
- building a credible defence force and good alliances.
Related Readings:
Australia’s Great Lamb Wall:
https://catallaxyfiles.com/2021/01/12/australia-on-the-lamb-2021/
Afghanistan: The Fevered Imaginations of the REMFs:
https://wentworthreport.com/afghanistan-the-fevered-imaginations-of-the-remfs/
The F-35 Just Keeps Getting Worse:
https://wentworthreport.com/the-f-35-just-keeps-getting-worse/
https://wentworthreport.com/the-raaf-hornets-why-the-indecent-haste/
Australia’s looming submarine Disaster:
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/10/australias-looming-submarine-disaster/
Dangerous Elites planning the great reset:
https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/10/dangerous-elites-planning-the-great-reset/
Make Australia Great Again:
https://www.spectator.com.au/2017/01/make-australia-great-again-2/
The New Federalism, 2013:
https://economics.org.au/2013/06/the-new-federalism/
“Diseases from Space ”- 1979 – Sir Fred Hoyle & Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe. Sphere Books Ltd , 1981
Viv Forbes has science qualifications, industrial and pastoral experience and a long history of observing and participating in Australian politics.