Beware the infiltration of ‘pocket socialism’

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Pockets of socialism are our individual responsibility and our liberal democratic heritage 

Have you ever noticed pockets of socialism appearing in our society? I refer to identity politics practices that infiltrate our liberal democracy in unremarkable yet profoundly disturbing ways as what I call ‘pocket socialism’. It is time to notice and act before these practices become embedded in our society forever.

Writing in Unfiltered newsletter, Alexandra Marshall had this to say:

And finally, I couldn’t believe it when I read Michael de Percy’s piece about ‘pocket socialism’ but more particularly, about the plan of two women to run on a single ticket to make Parliament ‘more inclusive’. FFS, if you can’t do the job and won’t commit to the hours, don’t put your hand up. It’s time people started telling these individuals ‘no’ instead of indulging their whims.

Writing in the Morning Double Shot newsletter, Terry Barnes had this to say:

Germany had pocket battleships. According to Michael de Percy, Australia has pocket socialism: those many but disjointed points in our society and economy where identity politics and left-wing claptrap hold sway. It’s up to conservatives to sink pocket socialism just as the Royal Navy sank the German pocket battleship Graf Spee in 1939: ships of inferior firepower outwitting their bigger-gunned enemy by smart thinking, teamwork, and strong leadership.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Beware the infiltration of ‘pocket socialism’.

Profile: Captain Michael de Percy, GPO/FO 101 Fd Bty 1996-7

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About to call in F/A-18 close air support training missions airborne in the Pilatus PC-9, 1996.

I was asked to write my profile for the 101st Battery Royal Australian Artillery Association September newsletter. The exercise was quite cathartic. WNGO: may contain military acronyms.

Profile: Dr Michael de Percy FRSA FCILT MRSN  (Captain, GPO/FO 101 Fd Bty 1996-7)

I served in the Australian Army for just shy of 15 years from 1990 until 2005. I resigned my commission when I became an academic. I began studying in 1995 while serving as GPO 105 Fd Bty. I was studying the Bachelor of Arts majoring in Strategic Studies at Deakin University, the only undergraduate qualification at the time in what is now referred to as security studies. I left the ARA in 1997 to finish my degree and changed my major to political science. 

Since 2005, I have been a political scientist at the University of Canberra, and I completed my PhD at the Australian National University in 2013. It was a long, hard slog to start all over again from the bottom rung as an academic. For the first few years, I was earning less than I was as a subbie in the ARA. The change was worth it.

But it was strange after all the rivalry between the Tigers and the Hammers that in 1996 I was pulled out of RHQ the day before the Comd Div Arty’s assessment of 1 Fd Regt began. With the Ready Reserve gunners, we were able to put 18 guns in the field that year. The previous GPO had been sacked and I had to walk into the 101 Fd Bty CP and take over a team who regarded me as a competitor rather than one of them. 

We survived only to find that the rules had changed. The end-ex pallets of beer went unopened. Later that year the BG and I were charged for firing a mistake under the dodgiest of circumstances. I’d lost all faith in my commanders and to this day I wish I’d chosen a court-martial.

The following year I became an FO with 101 Fd Bty after topping the IG Phase 1 course as a lieutenant. But I wasn’t happy and tried to transfer to Intelligence Corps. My CO at the time refused to let me go. He had also refused to let me do the Langs course in Indonesian and prevented me from becoming the Bde Comd’s LO. I transferred to the Inactive Reserve disheartened after not seeing the world but instead having travelled to Shoalwater Bay and back about 100 times.

As a boy, I grew up in Penrith just up the road from 133 Sig Sqn at Kingswood and then in Cairns during my teens. I finished high school on 20 November 1987 and started as a chainman with GHD on 23 November. We conducted the site selection surveys for RAAF Scherger near Weipa during the wet season. For the first trip we lived in the slaughterhouse at Sudley Station and then at Billy’s Lagoon Station for the second trip. 

Let’s just say I was pretty fit and I had a pocket full of personality when I got back to Cairns. I was keen on this girl Eliza but for whatever reason it didn’t materialise. After working as a chainman, I completed a traineeship in warehousing and began working in hydraulics and pneumatics spare parts before moving to SKF Bearings. I hated my life.

My military service began with 51FNQR. I woke up one day at age 19 and decided I would either live the life I wanted, or I would end it then and there. I went to work and quit that day. Long story short, I had always wanted to be a fighter pilot, so I started studying Maths 1 and Physics by correspondence. I tried to join the Airforce Cadets as an instructor, but a bloke there said I would be better off joining the Army Reserve. I never did become a fighter pilot, but I qualified as an ACO and got to call in F/A-18 CAIRS training missions while airborne in the back of a PC-9. I still can’t believe they paid me to do that.

From 1990 to 1992 I did every course I could at 51FNQR. I became LCPL Patrol 2IC and PMC of the OR’s Mess and then I learnt about Duntroon. Our patrol scout and I worked part-time with our Patrol Comd who had a floor sanding business. But otherwise, we were doing up to 200 days per year with 51FNQR including live patrols on Cape York Peninsula.

The intake for Duntroon was cancelled in early 1992 and I had to find work to fund my wedding. As I went off to Duntroon, my flame Eliza went off to the UK. My then wife later came to Canberra and our first child was born the day before First Class at RMC. It was a blur, but I ended up receiving the RAA prize, placing ninth out of 189 graduates.

After leaving the ARA and focusing on my degree, the former QM at 1 Fd Regt called me and said to join the Pay Corps. I was studying accounting as part of a double degree, so it made sense. I ended up working as the SO3 Finance and Resources at RMC-D while completing my honours year. Further, I became the inaugural Det Comd of Army Financial Services Unit Canberra Det.

In 2000, now LTGEN(R) Greg Bilton AO CSC organised then Deputy Chief of Army LTGEN(R) Peter Leahy AC to present my Instrument of Promotion to captain at Army HQ. I am fortunate that Peter is now a colleague in my school at the University of Canberra and we have collaborated on a research project with the Australian Civil-Military Centre.

One thing I gained from the Army was social capital. It allowed me to see and experience things that I could never imagine. From a humble upbringing and with the guidance of some very good people, I escaped Cairns and life as a labourer to land upon the dizzying heights of academia.

But because I was so late to the academic party and I have a penchant for speaking my mind, I have become the equivalent of a passed-over major. Eventually I will have to leave the academy if I want to have a greater impact than the institution will allow.

To that end, I was appointed to the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts in 2022, and in 2023 I commenced a weekly column with The Spectator Australia, and I now have a fortnightly spot on Spectator Australia TV as a political commentator.

After discovering that I was eligible for hearing aids, I have since returned to the fold and I am the Gunning Chapter Representative of the Yass Sub-branch of the RSL. Regrettably, the 105 Bty Association folded so I now try to support my remaining associations and became a life member of the 101 Bty Association this year.

My service was not as glorious as others who have been profiled in this newsletter, but I am one of four generations of my family who served, and I am immensely proud that I wore our country’s uniform. I owe much of my good fortune to the Australian Army.

But the good news is that after some 36 years, Eliza and I finally got together, and we live in a federation cottage on a quarter acre block in the village of Gunning on the Southern Tablelands north of Canberra. We have dogs and cats and chickens and a rooster and we grow some of the best-tasting tomatoes and other fruit and veges whenever we are not travelling overseas. 

And in the end, I got the girl. 

Ubique.

Labor’s recession we didn’t have to have

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Cost of living crisis is worse than headline inflation suggests [Depositphotos: stokkete]

Federal spending is set to increase to its highest level since the mid-1980s, pandemic spending aside, at 26.6 per cent of GDP. The states and previous governments share some of the blame, but Labor’s federal fiscal strategy is prolonging the cost-of-living crisis with no relief in sight.

Terry Barnes had this to say in the Morning Double Shot newsletter:

Michael de Percy makes a very true point about the Albanese government. It is the fiscally profligate and socially radical descendant of the Whitlam government, not the economically reformist and socially moderate Hawke-Keating Labor regime. The polls are encouraging for the Coalition, but not yet good enough to get them over the line. What will happen if we have a minority Labor government propped up by the extremist Greens and zealot Teals? We shudder to think.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Labor’s recession we didn’t have to have.

My latest commentary on Spectator Australia TV

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On Spectator TV's The Week in 60 Minutes Australia on ADH TV, 14 August 2024

My latest commentary on Spectator Australia TV with Alexandra Marshall discussing the Digital ID, NSW Libs stuff up, Musk/Trump, and Douglas Murray.

‘Breaking’ news: our constitutional monarchy wins gold!

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Raygun's cringeworthy 'breaking' performance at the Woke Olympics

 The biggest challenge for the republican movement in Australia is what FitzSimons referred to as:

    …an apathetic public with an “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” mindset.

Hence, the Assistant Minister for the Republic has quietly disappeared along with ‘breaking’ as an Olympic event.

Alexandra Marshall in the Unfiltered newsletter:

And Michael de Percy is extremely cheerful today as he reflects on Labor’s official nixing of the Assistant Minister for a Republic (that doesn’t exist). It’s once bitten, twice shy for Albanese when it comes to asking the public what they want.

Terry Barnes in the Morning Double Shot newsletter:

Michael de Percy notes that, under cover of the Olympics, one aspect of the Albanese reshuffle escaped much detection: the portfolio of Assistant Minister for the Republic was quietly put to sleep. He then compared that disappearance to break-dancing being dropped from the next Olympics, and commented on the cringeworthy performance in Paris of Dr Rachel Gunn, aka Raygun, who proved white women can’t dance. Still on the topic of the constitutional monarchy going for gold, we totted up the Paris gold medals won by the countries of which Charles III, including Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, is King. Lo and behold, the King’s dominions can lay claim to 53 gold medals, well ahead of both China and the USA on 40 each, but those behemoths each having populations far bigger than all the Crown realms put together. David Flint will be delighted!

My latest in The Spectator Australia, ‘Breaking’ news: our constitutional monarchy wins gold!

Next time, the French Wokerati should fight their own wars

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Paul Giamatti to the tune of "I'm Blue", Big Fat Liar, 2002.

Satire is such a wonderful vehicle for addressing contemporary political issues. Like the Olympics, where sometimes it's about sport.

The mainstream media is shoving the Paris Olympics down our throats. But like many other Australians, I want nothing to do with it.

The French have done everything possible to Woke it up this year. A current meme that suggests Norway took all the gold and silver at the Paris Olympics in 845 A.D. has my vote.

France is a free country, but so is Australia, and I hope none of our young working class men harm themselves in defence of France ever again.

Writing in the Unfiltered newsletter, Online Editor Alexandra Marshall had this to say:

‘The French’ is a phrase long uttered by those of English descent with a certain tone. Even Australians do it out of habit. I’m sure you’ve heard it. There are different varieties including, ‘How French…’ where being ‘tiresome in a French way’ has become an expression. Britain and France have been sibling nations throughout history, so it is logical that they annoy each other, but when it came to the Paris Olympics, the French managed to annoy most of the world. No doubt a second course of aggravation waits for us at the closing ceremony – unless they are busy re-writing chunks of it to avoid another scandal. Mind you, they’re French, so the closing ceremony might just be some dudes dressed as women wearing gold medals to symbolise the conquest of inclusivity. Anyway, my point is that Michael de Percy has written a great article telling the French that next time they get themselves into political hot water, they can sort it out themselves. Australia isn’t shipping their young men over to fight.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Next time, the French Wokerati should fight their own wars.

Light Rail in Canberra

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Does Canberra's light rail solve the ACT's transport problem?

Recently, I presented on light rail, electric buses, and the transport problem in Canberra for the University of the Third Age at Goodwin Village, Farrer. My slides are available below.

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