Who watches the watchmen?

“”Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” – George Orwell in “1984”.

Papua New Guinea is Australia’s closest neighbour and is often belittled by the Australian media and many of its politicians as a failed state riddled with corruption. Agent Orange in the United States even referred to many of these developing nations as shit hole countries.

The World Economics Corruptions Perception Index ranks Papua New Guinea with an index of 23.4 against a global average of 48.4. Australia is enigmatically classified as good as it gets with an impressive rating of 83.1. These rankings merely offer a perception of corruption using qualitative categorical data but are only descriptive and not inferential statistics. There is a preponderance of colourful evidence covering the dishonest and fraudulent performance of our elected representatives aboard the Australian neoliberal gravy train, which indicates the perception index differential may be much narrower than the Torres Strait.

Most aristocratic neoliberals maintain the Australian Labor Party’s economic credentials are deplorable and the Liberal Party of Australia was born to rule. Several decades of unabashed free market fundamentalism with laissez faire economics suggests otherwise and reveals the landed gentry are just born to rort. The Liberal-National coalition has merely replicated the organised spivvery of the United Kingdom’s Tory party under the egregious leadership of David (Flashman) Cameron and Boris Johnson with his Secret Life of Walter Mitty crusade.

Way back in 1948 during a speech in Manchester, Nye Bevan declared a deep burning hatred towards the UK Tory party and proclaimed they were lower than vermin. Substantial evidence indicates the words resonate much more today than they did over seven decades ago.

During the neoliberal crusade in Australia a recurring theme or modus operandi emerges following any crisis, which is underpinned by a domineering belief that the underclass are a goldmine. The strategy always focuses on turning any adversity into a lucrative opportunity. Legislation is then drafted or reconfigured to ensure the framework becomes much more expansive and favours corporate and state interests. This typically entraps the minnows but allows the aristocracy to crash through and prosper. Profit is privatised and loss is socialised, which creates a brutal dichotomy of private opulence and public squalor.

A royal commission or other official inquiry will only be established provided the incumbent government or any of its enigmatic benefactors are not besmirched by the outcome. This is often choreographed by carefully constructed terms of reference and assisted by many submissions from useful idiots. An embellished and sanitised report offers numerous otiose non-binding recommendations. These are typically agreed to in principle and the document eventually ossifies in a data cemetery. It is not a judicial inquiry or trial and merely enables the government to estimate the magnitude of the crisis and discover where most of the bodies are buried.

Under the helm of a preferred apparatchik, an arms-length body or quango is established to transfer any residual risk. The appointment is typically an ambitious female sociopath who regurgitates a masculinist methodology with a primary responsibility of securing the fiefdom and protecting state assets. This simultaneously assuages pseudo-feminists and maintains gender quotas under a rubric of righteousness.

Manufacturing Consent

Manufacturing consent is accomplished by relentless propaganda and sloganeering and any skerrick of dissent is smashed accordingly. A simple but distinctive ritual develops involving the creation and embellishment of a false narrative to induce panic, disorientation, hatred or fear. Distinguishing between lies and truth or fact from fiction becomes increasingly enigmatic and represents an existential threat to an already diaphanous or defective democracy, which creates a fertile environment for totalitarian despots.

Whistleblowers are silenced, persecuted or even imprisoned although whistleblowing only occurs when those who should be leading duck or weave and fail to fulfil their allocated responsibilities. Several courageous Australian informants include Simone Marsh who unveiled the Queensland government’s devious coal seam gas environmental approval processes. Back in 2013, Jeff Morris blew the whistle on the Commonwealth Bank’s untrustworthy wealth management team. More recently, the true horror of Afghanistan war crimes was disclosed by David McBride and Richard Boyle exposed the ruthless debt collection activities of the Australian Tax Office.

Controversial official inquiries are often protracted using habitual delay, deny and die legal tactics. This conveniently camouflages traditionally exorbitant legal fees, which are amortised over a prolonged period but unlike the accrued wealth in trickle-down economics the cost inevitably and gradually cascades onto the beleaguered taxpayer. After the crisis diminishes and ceases to attract significant media attention the appointed apparatchik is bestowed with a graded order of chivalry that is inversely proportional to the emotional intelligence of the recipient.

Meanwhile, Australia’s gross debt nudges towards $1 trillion and the global economy is nothing more than a gigantic festering Ponzi scheme. However, cults never die and the former US supreme court justice, Thurgood Marshall once proclaimed that the Ku Klux Klan had not gone away. Its members just stopped wearing the white robes and capirotes because the material became too expensive.

The Australian representatives on the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship advisory board indicates plenty of unflushable turds remain on board the neoliberal gravy train and with proselytes or evangelists like this lurking around, who needs terrorists.

Following a federal election in Canada some years ago, an elected representative confessed he spent the first few months of his inchoate political career wondering how he reached such dizzy heights. During the remainder of his four-year stretch, he was left utterly bewildered by how many of his parliamentary colleagues achieved the same status.

Albanese’s Australia

After the last Australian federal election, the Australian Labor Party holds 94 lower house seats and in the upper chamber with some assistance from the Greens it becomes easier to gazette legislation. There is no requirement for additional support from other cross benchers although countless regulations on the statute eventually generates disrespect for the rule of law. Cicero, the renowned Roman stoic once proclaimed more law delivered less justice and was subsequently beheaded for his activism.

Following the 2025 federal election, the tatterdemalion shadow cabinet was reminiscent of an emaciated unkempt pack of gypsy’s lurchers. The role of opposition leader was a poisoned chalice and it was only a matter of time before Joan Jett was sent to the gallows and replaced by Angus (Mister Ed) Taylor who detests fart-arsing around.

This urbane show pony was a former partner with McKinsey & Co, another renowned narcoterrorist that turbocharged Oxycontin sales across the United States amidst an opioid abuse crisis. The predatory corporate recidivist often circumvents ethical decisions through its entrepreneurial mantra – We don’t do policy, we do execution. This certainly reflects and aligns with our opposition leader’s bull in a china shop and philistine worldview.

Egregious opposition inevitably begets bad government and the LNP coalition’s internal decay is exacerbated by relentless internecine bickering. It has left Australia without an effective opposition. In the current geopolitical environment, scrutiny, meaningful dialogue and accountability are increasingly essential and the consequences extend far beyond a fractured and malfunctional opposition cabinet. This undermines democracy and creates a fertile environment for totalitarian despots like Vladimir Putin or bloviating demagogues such as Agent Orange.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it and our current prime minister has since reshuffled his cabinet, which must acknowledge that an economy is not a society. Productive dialogue between our federal and state government leaders must focus on the successful and often extravagant bids for major global sporting pageants. This frequently involves construction of superfluous multimillion dollar arenas with additional infrastructure. It is typically sportswashing with bread and circuses for the masses but who are the winners and losers when the carnival is over?

Irrespective of the social consequences, the relentless neoliberal gravy train with its sophisms of trickle-down economics and a rising tide lifts all boats thunders along but nobody asks the following question: Did Brisbane get the 2032 Olympic Games or did the International Olympic Committee capture Queensland’s corporatised state government?

Amidst an existential crisis of widespread vagrancy and homelessness, inflated and coercive defence contracts confirm there are ample economic resources available. If we can find money to kill people, we can secure funding to help them. However, governments are not moral agents and the political stripes are often irrelevant. Indeed, a healthy, educated and confident nation is much harder to govern, which is the primary role of any incumbent government. Meanwhile, the following hallowed thoughts from the renowned anarchist Emma Goldman are far more relevant today than when they were initially published just before the First World War:

“Men and women do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have? It is a machine that crushes you to sustain the ruling class, your masters. Like naïve children you put your trust in your political leaders. You make it possible for them to creep into your confidence, only to have them betray you to the first bidder. But even where there is no direct betrayal, the labour politicians make common cause with your enemies to keep you on a leash, to prevent your direct action. The State is the pillar of capitalism, and it is ridiculous to expect any redress from it.”

The Australian Labor Party was not elected solely to manage capitalism and has a duty to transform society and define its finer values. It must involve participative and representative democracy and requires inserting the “you” back into Labour. Most of the caucus knows what to do but many are sleeping with one eye open and are more concerned about getting re-elected following their actions and securing a lucrative parliamentary pension.

Tackling this neoliberal malaise demands extremely courageous leadership with painful ethical decision making. It will require radical surgery to moderate the totalitarian ganglions of free market fundamentalism and the dismal science of laissez faire economics with its self-regulatory invisible hand. The Friedman doctrine with its deification of shareholder theory and aggressive lobbying that enables regulatory or policy capture needs experienced judicious analysis and radical restrictions to attenuate the corresponding and escalating malfeasance.

The reshuffled Albanese cabinet must also address the social impacts of many other ubiquitous malignant tumours. These include artificial intelligence, suprasurveillance, sousveillance, big data, predictive analytics, the gig economy, health and aged care, inequity in the education system, climate change and a cashless society.

Additional ethical concerns have emerged surrounding genome editing technology and hard and soft eugenics. Indeed, the return of eugenics, is the rattling skeleton in the closet of Fabian socialists and other determinists. Moreover, the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues must acknowledge that a healthy loyalty is not passive and complacent but active and critical and should never forget the late Tony Benn’s infamous five democratic questions:

• What power have you got?
• Where did you get it from?
• In whose interests do you exercise it?
• To whom are you accountable?
• How do we get rid of you?

Any apparatchik or panjandrum who is unable to answer the final question does not live in a democratic system and the Australian electorate will be watching you watching us watching you. Indeed, who controls the past controls the future and who controls the present controls the past, which begs an additional intriguing question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?