This is my truth, now tell me yours

“Soon, if we are not prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets.” – Aneurin Bevan

Aneurin (Nye) Bevan was the visionary architect behind Britain’s National Health Service, which was inspired by the Tredegar Medical Aid Society’s scheme and established immediately following the Second World War. It encountered some stubborn resistance from the British Medical Association even though it was a major piece of social reform that offered a free health service for UK citizens, irrespective of their socioeconomic status.

Indeed, Nye Bevan was a shrewd charismatic orator with a majestic Welsh accent and during parliamentary question time he never failed to empty the austere tea rooms. This often involved tormenting his many adversaries including Sir Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George with a unique brand of imaginative tolerance using Friedrich Nietzsche’s apophthegm……This is my truth, now tell me yours.

Many decades later amidst a maelstrom of rampant unfettered neoliberalism, relentless propaganda and authoritarian populism, the aphorism still resonates. Furthermore, most of the resultant elective dictatorships have degenerated into kleptocratic kakistocracies and speaking truth to power in an era of universal deception is considered a revolutionary act and tantamount to sedition. Indeed, when any society drifts from the truth, those who expose or speak it are far more likely to be vilified.

In many developing nations such as Papua New Guinea the egregious governance and systemic corruption is quite blatant and is implied by an inferior ranking in the World Economics 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index.

However, state malfeasance and corporate turpitude is also prevalent in most advanced western democracies including Australia. Moreover, it is cunningly disguised by a sinister web of bureaucracy, which is administered by enigmatic apparatchiks to protect the interests of the powerful at the expense of the powerless.

During the 1980s the concept of free market fundamentalism involved a transatlantic tryst between the illegitimate daughter of Satan and the Gipper with the merger of economic doctrines from the Austrian and Chicago schools. This was even embraced by the Australian Labor Party with the Hawke and Keating governments in Australia. It intensified exponentially following the election of a Liberal-National coalition government under its unflushable turd, John Winston Howard, back in 1996.

Irrespective of political stripes this maelstrom of neoliberal skulduggery, bastardry and organised spivvery has been unashamedly replicated across Australia and infiltrates every structural level of government.

The ideology promised freedom of choice under a paradox of there is no alternative but even the birds are chained to the sky. It is exacerbated by behavioural economics or nudge theory and artificial intelligence but as many indigenous Australians can testify, there is no need to be behind bars to feel incarcerated.

After its humiliating defeat at the last federal election in May 2025, the Liberal Party of Australia appointed the Hon. Pru Goward and the Hon. Nick Minchin to conduct an extensive review of their party’s egregious campaign strategy and performance. A draft report was eventually issued for internal review and comment but its inflammatory conclusions were considered defamatory by Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS) Harry (Snapper) Organs, the former opposition leader.

The Liberal party’s federal executive eventually decided the final report would never be made public. It was only released amongst its sectarian cult of free market fundamentalists although a leaked copy was recently obtained by Anthony Albanese, the incumbent prime minister and tabled in parliament.

The curious decision by the Liberal party and its federal executive was reminiscent of the enigmatic $1 million clandestine PwC report into the Robodebt scandal, which revealed the illegality of the income averaging mechanism and many other amoral anomalies and was subsequently suppressed.

Despite the numerous autopsies with an inordinate focus on its egregious election campaign strategy and organisation problems, the elephant in the room was never addressed or even mentioned. It involved the abject failure of free market fundamentalism with its deification of shareholder and regulatory or policy capture. This encouraged aggressive lobbying and is exacerbated by rampant corruption, malfeasance and bungling ineptitude amongst our elected representatives, senators and many more neoliberal acolytes.

This sinister malaise with its countless ganglions is underpinned by the neoliberal scorched earth slash and burn hendiatris of deregulation, diminution of trade unions and privatisation. It also involved major industrial relations reform with reconfiguration of employer and employee relationships under the sophism of WorkChoices. This was merely modern slavery and became the LNP government’s nemesis under John Howard.

During the 2007 federal election campaign, Maxine McKew, the ALP’s star recruit received an anonymous death threat. A neighbour also reported that four unidentified individuals were shining torches beneath the candidate’s parked vehicle outside her home on Sydney’s north shore. It prompted an investigation from the bomb squad and official intelligence services. This was described and nonchalantly dismissed as a rare situation in Australian politics by the New South Wales police minister.

John Howard, who was the member for Bennelong held the safe lower north shore seat for over three decades but on election night the neoliberal gravy train derailed and its unflushable turd suffered a humiliating defeat. Every polling booth in the electorate except one reported a swing towards the ALP. Meanwhile, the treacherous Milky Bar Kid seized the day and followed the yellow brick road to Canberra under the Kevin 07 charade.