ACT government flirts hard with socialism

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The socialist ACT Government prioritises central government planning over individual rights.

The ACT government has passed new laws that remove third-party appeals for public and community housing projects, a move designed to speed up construction by eliminating community input on development approvals. This decision strips residents of their ability to challenge government-backed housing initiatives through the usual legal channels, placing full control in the hands of the state.

Such a policy is socialist in intent because it prioritises central government planning over individual rights and local concerns. In a socialist system, the state dictates resource allocation without regard for private property interests or community objections, and this ban mirrors that approach by silencing dissent against state-directed housing.The ACT government’s action treats residents as obstacles to be removed rather than stakeholders to be consulted.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, ACT government flirts hard with socialism.

Will Albo’s crocodile diplomacy discourage China’s flotillas?

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Mr Albanese appears to be feeding the crocodile and hoping it eats us last.

It was the Labor Party that spent a decade mocking the idea that China could ever be a threat, dismissing concerns about foreign interference as ‘anti-Chinese racism’, and attacking any politician who dared mention the words ‘strategic competition’. It was Labor’s punters who ridiculed the 2018 foreign interference laws, who whinged about the calling-out of Confucius Institutes, who sneered at the Coalition’s Pacific Step-Up as ‘climate denialism in disguise’.

And it is Albanese himself who, as Prime Minister, has gone out of his way to cosy up to Beijing by increasing defence expenditure somewhere in the distant future while simultaneously ignoring calls from Washington to protect, not restrict, freedom of speech.

My article in The Spectator Australia, Will Albo’s crocodile diplomacy discourage China’s flotillas? 

If this is Germany’s post-colonial democracy, bring back Bismarck

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Horrid graffiti consisting of zero artistic talent is all over the monument.

The Bismarck Monument stands high above the port and looks down the River Elbe towards the sea. Symbolically, the statue portrays Bismarck as the protector of the city and the German Empire’s maritime ‘gateway to the world’.

The monument was completed in 1906 with some funding provided by Hamburg’s merchants. It was opened by Kaiser Wilhelm II and remains the largest Bismarck monument in the world.

In 2024, a €13 million restoration project, funded by the City of Hamburg and the federal government, was completed to address structural issues caused largely by additional concrete added during the second world war to create an air raid bunker.

Barely a year later, the statue looks disgraceful.

In the Morning Double Shot newsletter, Terry Barnes wrote:

Michael de Percy is in Germany. He writes about the disgraceful vandalism of a Hamburg monument to Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor who united Germany and founded the Second Reich. Apparently German activists hate him like activists in Australia hate James Cook. Those ignorant bratwurst-eaters should bone up on Bismarck, and the consequences of Wilhelm II dropping him in 1890. Bismarck would have renewed the non-aggression ‘Reinsurance Treaty’ he had with Russia, would have kept Austria-Hungary in check, and would never have antagonised Britain with a naval arms race. Thus, there would have been no World war I, and therefore no Hitler, Nazism and World War II. The world would have been a much better place.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, If this is Germany’s post-colonial democracy, bring back Bismarck.

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