I came to Australia from India in December 2000 where I had been a senior civil servant fighting socialist politics and chronic government corruption. Australia was, by comparison, a model of good policy-making. And since I was happy with the main Australian parties largely following sensible policies, there was no reason for me to consider politics.
But in March 2020, Australia went from model to totalitarianism, with society-wide lockdowns, border closures (including a ‘steel ring’ around Melbourne) and masks mandatory in open parks. A full-fledged police state was unleashed.
Like millions of Australians, some of whom later took to the streets, I was appalled. Migrants from former communist nations in Eastern Europe who spoke to me after I resigned from the Victorian Treasury in September 2020, told me that these policies were similar to those they had fled: “Papers, s ‘please’ – except this time the paperwork was electronic in the form of QR codes and vaccine certificates.
Western civilization rests on two main pillars: government must not interfere in the lives of citizens without a solid justification, and public policy must be based on evidence, not on the arbitrary whim or imagination of government. . As a result, Australia had a strict regime of risk-based regulation and a requirement for cost-benefit analysis, two issues on which I advised Victorian governments for 15 years as a senior economist. Both of these principles were thrown out the window in 2020.
It should be noted that Western civilization had already been in retreat with policies like the “precautionary principle” – a direct antithesis of reason. The precautionary principle first infiltrated environmental regulations, then health regulations. Both the Labor and Liberal parties gave bipartisan support to this attack on the Enlightenment. There is a difference, however: although applying the precautionary principle to environmental policy may waste taxpayers’ money, it does not limit fundamental freedoms. But the application of the precautionary principle to public health in March 2020 saw even the most basic freedoms taken away. Major parties have used this principle of “politics” to implement irrational, misdirected, and brutal policies pulled straight from the CCP’s playbook.
On April 5, 2022, epidemiologist Catherine Bennett explained:
“At the onset of a pandemic, where the consequences of inaction are deemed to outweigh the risks associated with the interventions themselves, we apply the ‘precautionary principle’ and implement reasonable public health measures without waiting for the evidence to back them up.”
But this approach is wrong. Evidence on the distribution of Covid risk had been available since mid-February 2020. By mid-March 2020 we had a much clearer picture that this was a relatively small pandemic. Moreover, the “counterfactual consequences of inaction” that Bennett cites would never have existed, since the government was required to act proportionately by Australian pandemic laws and plans. The government would have taken many risk-based actions had it not copied the CCP. Finally, a government’s actions should never directly harm anyone, but the CCP-motivated totalitarian lockdowns and mandatory masks did. None of these policies are in the October 2019 WHO pandemic guidelines or Australia’s pandemic plans.
One of the most disturbing failures of Australian governance has been the inability of its bureaucracy to provide frank and fearless advice. Victoria’s Treasury senior executives have abdicated political responsibility and refused to heed economists like me who have called for a cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns. The “new public management” model – of a highly paid contract bureaucracy modeled on the private sector – has failed.
After my resignation, I tried to influence Australian politicians to change their policies through television appearances, articles, a book and other writings. But no one wanted to listen. Given the colossal failure of the Liberal and Labor parties to even admit that their policies have harmed Australia, I was forced to create a new political party, the Australian Representatives. But after completing the 500-member audit with the AEC, this new party was sabotaged by the major parties colluding to raise this requirement to 1,500 members. Peter Harris of Australian Reps (he was the founder of Family First) didn’t give up. He merged the party with the Australian Federation Party (AFP) and on 24 March 2022 the AEC agreed that the AFP was complying with the new laws.
I am taking part in the 21st May 2022 General Election from my local seat in Menzies – named after Robert Menzies, the founder of the Australian Liberal Party. I am a big fan of Menzies and pledge to AFP to follow in his footsteps, to become the true Liberal Party of Australia. If Menzies were alive, he would have rejected his own misguided Liberal Party. His apparatchiks supported Morrison’s deception: his blatantly false comparison of Covid with the Spanish flu to justify his CCP-imitation policy and his claim that he saved 30,000 lives. The world’s most cited epidemiologist, John Ioannidis, recently confirmed to me via email that covid is 50 to 500 times less deadly as the Spanish flu. I am currently assisting Professor Gigi Foster in preparing a draft cost-benefit analysis (CBA) which details the enormous damage caused by the policies of the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. Morrison didn’t save 30,000 lives – let’s hope the ABC is available before the election.
Australia is no longer the country it used to be. As a citizen of Indian descent who takes freedom very seriously, I was compelled to take on the task of giving us back the country we were once proud of.
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