The Australian election result had virtually nothing to do with Covid policy and everything to do with climate change

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My post on the election was put up on Powerline: Feel Bad Story of the Day. This is the entire post which I was very pleased to see discussed.

Our friend Steve Kates writes from down under to comment on the defeat of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison by opposition leader Anthony Albanese. Yesterday we posted a link to the Israel-oriented story at the Times of Israel. Steve writes: “Saw you had a brief note on our election from the Times of Israel…There is no sense of what a disaster this election has been from that article and I think there needs to be a broader alert about just how disastrous the election result has been for conservatives.”

Steve draws our attention to two posts. First, his own post this morning with a headline that says it all: “The election result in Australia was just about as bad as it could have been.” And then to Peter Smith’s Pipeline post “‘Greenslide’ in Oz Dumps Scott Morrison.”

Steve comments: “This will be a far-far left government that is either part of a trend or part of the highwater mark this madness will reach….I don’t think anyone in the US really gets it, in part, no doubt, because your media see nothing to complain about. But this is now part of the Biden-Trudeau-Ardern axis that is reaching further outwards. We live in such dark times and they are getting darker.”

There was obviously little coverage of the Australian election in the US, but what really astonished me was the assumption that the outcome had been the result of the Government’s approach to dealing with Covid and so they deserved what they got. If you go to our posts, but especially Peter’s, it should be evident that the major issue was the Government’s refusal to go all in on climate.

However, these were the three “best” (ie most agreed with) comments on the Powerline thread:

Based on their authoritarian approach to the Wuhan Flu, I assumed Australia already had a left wing government.

Morrison did it to himself by going full blown crazy over covid. I know, someone will say it was their state governments that did it, but he could’ve stopped them from having the cops arrest pregnant women for speaking against covid tyranny, sending out the ninja turtles to bust up crowds exercising basic rights, and sending people to concentration camps. No, he did it to himself. There is a lesson there to be learned. Never compromise with the fascists.

I am never happy to see the Left win, but the Liberal (i.e. conservative) government went all in on lockdowns which at least to this American’s eyes does not seem very conservative. I mean, they wrecked the economy, right? How could that NOT cause en electoral disaster.

Others tried to correct these views. These were replies provided to these comments.

Wrong. The lock downs were not at the national level but imposed at the state level.

He could NOT have stopped the Labor Victorian Government from arresting a pregnant women. Internally, Australia is a federation. The States have the real power – we have just discovered. Regardless, vaccination was supported by all people – across the board. Anti-vaxxers are regarded as nutcases across the board. The election was won by the Climate Changers. The whole country has been brainwashed by “education” and the media. Covid – apart from the constant mud slinging by the media against the former Government – which was “wrong” whatever it did, was irrelevant.

There was then this at the Canadian blog Small Dead Animals under the heading, Missing Information which linked to a story in Canada’s National Post.  The “missing information” was supposedly that the paper had not discussed the role of Covid in the outcome. Here is the blog entry:

Judging by the what is unmentioned in this story, you would think that Morrison’s defeat in the Australian election had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with implementing the second most draconian pandemic policies in the world.

Dealing the Covid is a state issue, not national. The actual issue that made the difference was global warming, which is what did the Government in. Not that it matters now that the election is done and gone. The Government was around 55-45 global warming skeptics. The next crew is about 10-90, if it is even as high as 10. It is the warmist cult that will bring about the decline and fall of the West. That is the lesson from our election.  

The election result in Australia was just about as bad as it could have been

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“Give the people what they want, good and hard”. It’s a philosophy, I suppose, but not so good for those who didn’t want whatever it is that actually gets served up. So now Australia joins the Biden-Trudeau-Adern club of Mencken’s worst nightmare societies.

I am still a bit shell shocked from the outcome, not that I am all that surprised, so rather than say what I think, I will take a pair of comments from a previous post and then go read the papers – or at least do the crossword puzzle. First from Another Ian who quotes from JoNova.

“My daughter just finished a class in college about the alchemists. Before some of you rant about how useless this class was, it’s not It teaches us about the past and is a guide to the future. The alchemists did produce some useful discoveries. But they are most known for some of their absurd attempts to turn lead into gold and other nonsensical endeavors.

“Climate science is really the new alchemy. It is using regression analysis to figure out what level of CO2 will endanger the planet. But it makes no more sense than what the alchemists were doing. We don’t really have quality information on worldwide temperatures for past years. It’s questionable whether we have information on it for present years. We don’t know all of the variables that impact temperature. So the new alchemists are trying to predict future weather by generating computer models that are absolute garbage because they don’t take into account natural variability, urban heat zones, etc. They don’t know the variables and just fudge the numbers to get the programs to make it look like they work. But of course, how did they predict the Little Ice and the Roman Warm Period. These models can’t even accurately predict the past. And we are spending billions of dollars supporting this new alchemy and possibly trillions of dollars, endangering the health and welfare of our citizens because of this elitist nonsense.”

And then this from Bruce of Newcastle.

Unfortunately to some extent both parties are channeling the insanity of the voters. I was reflecting last night that I’ve been opposing the climate craze for nearly 15 years now, and in that time it has just gotten worse and worse. There’s still nothing much happening in the real world – no actual global warming, none of the dire prognostications. Yet this election is a choice between the totally bonkers Libs and the beyond insane Labor Party. Both are falling over themselves to destroy our country for a myth.

That’s because the voters demand this stupidity. The MSM demands it. The whole of the nation is stuck in a lemming-like race to disaster which only a literal disaster will crack the people out of.

The Covid arc illustrates this. You had guys like McGowan immensely popular for converting his entire state into a prison camp to save the people from a virus so innocuous that people often don’t know they have it. It took two years of disaster – closed businesses, lost jobs, lockdowns, vaccine injuries, masking and elderly parents dying alone for the people to suddenly, overnight, get over it. Now the pollies don’t mention the virus and it’s like it never existed.

The people haven’t yet gotten to this point on the climate scam, but they will once the pain really amps up. Which it is just starting to, particularly electricity and fuel prices. But with the elites all Believing like religious fanatics even that’s not going to be enough. Saving the world syndrome is a very powerful hubristic drug. It may take a full-on political apocalypse to stop these people saving us from an apocalypse which isn’t happening.

You know, there may have been people even during the height of the witch-burning phase of our own past history who understood it was all insane. Meanwhile, we are about to live through years of serious idiocy.

The truth of the matter is that everyone lives through “interesting times” as the Chinese like to say. It’s not a curse, it’s just the way it is.

It would be a madness to allow Labor to govern if it is at all possible to prevent it

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There is a view I sometimes come across that argues that The Coalition should willingly lose the election since things are certain to crater over the next year or so and therefore, Labor will be blamed for everything. That way, The Coalition will be able to win in three years with an even more solid majority.

Even more fantastic is the belief that being in opposition will allow the Libs/Nationals to sort things out so that when they return in 2025 they will be able to govern from strength based on the newfound wisdom they will have generated.

There is a lot of crazy around at the moment, but that is up there with the worst of them.

Witness the United States under Joe Biden. The Democrats are perfectly aware that there is a large possibility that they will lose the presidency in 2024 along with Congress. They therefore are going about doing everything to fulfil their insane agenda right now. They also believe they will also likely be able to again cheat their way back in, but are hurrying things along just in case they might really lose.

So for Australia. Labor is not a party of sense and moderation with a slightly socialist bent. They are out and out full-on Marxists who will do as much damage as they possibly can. They will wreck the economy, they will open our borders, they will demolish the private sector, they will further subvert the education system, they will socialise every aspect of society they are able.

These are not moderates. Albanese is from the Socialist Left and he means every stupidity he says, plus all of the others that he now keeps to himself.

It would be a madness to allow Labor to govern if it is at all possible to prevent it by not electing them in the first place.

“One of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history”

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A must-read on the Covid pandemic if you are already sceptical about what has been taking place or even if you are not: COVID UPDATE: What is the truth? Here are the opening paras:

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream led by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media, and international agencies. We have witnessed a long list of unprecedented intrusions into medical practice, including attacks on medical experts, destruction of medical careers among doctors refusing to participate in killing their patients and a massive regimentation of health care, led by non-qualified individuals with enormous wealth, power and influence.

For the first time in American history a president, governors, mayors, hospital administrators and federal bureaucrats are determining medical treatments based not on accurate scientifically based or even experience based information, but rather to force the acceptance of special forms of care and “prevention”—including remdesivir, use of respirators and ultimately a series of essentially untested messenger RNA vaccines. For the first time in history medical treatment, protocols are not being formulated based on the experience of the physicians treating the largest number of patients successfully, but rather individuals and bureaucracies that have never treated a single patient—including Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, EcoHealth Alliance, the CDC, WHO, state public health officers and hospital administrators.

The media (TV, newspapers, magazines, etc), medical societies, state medical boards and the owners of social media have appointed themselves to be the sole source of information concerning this so-called “pandemic”. Websites have been removed, highly credentialed and experienced clinical doctors and scientific experts in the field of infectious diseases have been demonized, careers have been destroyed and all dissenting information has been labeled “misinformation” and “dangerous lies”, even when sourced from top experts in the fields of virology, infectious diseases, pulmonary critical care, and epidemiology. These blackouts of truth occur even when this information is backed by extensive scientific citations from some of the most qualified medical specialists in the world. Incredibly, even individuals, such as Dr. Michael Yeadon, a retired ex-Chief Scientist, and vice-president for the science division of Pfizer Pharmaceutical company in the UK, who charged the company with making an extremely dangerous vaccine, is ignored and demonized. Further, he, along with other highly qualified scientists have stated that no one should take this vaccine.

For the rest go to the link. A long and detailed article that never lets up. This is the final para:

Upon release of the vaccines, women were told the vaccines were safe during all states of pregnancy, only to find out no studies had been done on safety during pregnancy during the “safety tests” prior to release of the vaccine. We were told that careful testing on volunteers before the EUA approval for public use demonstrated extreme safety of the vaccines, only to learn that these unfortunate subjects were not followed, medical complications caused by the vaccines were not paid for and the media covered this all up. We also learned that the pharmaceutical makers of the vaccines were told by the FDA that further animal testing was unnecessary (the general public would be the Guinea pigs.) Incredibly, we were told that the Pfizer’s new mRNA vaccines had been approved by the FDA, which was a clever deception, in that another vaccine had approval (comirnaty) and not the one being used, the BioNTech vaccine. The approved comirnaty vaccine was not available in the United States. The national media told the public that the Pfizer vaccine had been approved and was no longer classed as experimental, a blatant lie. These deadly lies continue. It is time to stop this insanity and bring these people to justice.

It’s about the US but discusses what is a world-wide phenomenon.

Do men still read fiction?

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I used to read a lot of fiction but almost every book I see on the shelves of the bookshops I frequent today provide near zero interest. My wife reads continuously but almost none of what interests her interests me (and vice versa I might add). Very little that is published seems to be written by men writing for other men about men doing the kinds of adventurous things men have always done. Anyway, I bring this up in response to a post at Instapundit that reprints this article: WHY WON’T MEN READ MY PREACHY LITERATI BULLSHIT? It’s a fisking of some female author who asks where have all the male book-readers gone? But what specially interested me were the comments on the article at Instapundit. These capture much of my own present frustration:

“So many books, so little time” is a meme I ponder as I look at the shortness of my life remaining and much of the absolute dreck being published these days. I will read most any genre if ‘I’ find it well written. If it makes me think, wonderful, if it just entertains, cool, if I think it’s a real page turner I’m in heaven, and I don’t really care who or what about the writer unless I was enthralled enough to seek out other works by the same author.

I’m not sure how they even gather the statistics she cites. I buy a lot of e-books and audiobooks. I don’t recall ever being asked if I was a guy or a ‘chick’ when I bought a book online. So how do they know who is reading what?
Furthermore, the last few times I went into an actual ‘new books’ bookstore, the latest selections in the scifi and mystery sections were wöke crap. So if I go into an actual bookstore, it’s likely that it’s a ‘used’ bookstore. I doubt that used bookstores report such data, and I doubt that publishers gather that data.

There are a number of excellent female authors. It’s entertaining if you are prepared ahead of time by knowing it’s all ‘manners and morals’ about money, marriage, and feminine intrigue, and mostly set indoors. Like listening to your favorite aunt tell funny family stories; pleasant Sunday afternoon conversation.

It seems to me – based on all the professional NYT reviews, NY Review of Books, the TImes LTS, etc. – that women’s fiction is being pushed hard (based on what reviewers’ bother to review). Everywhere it’s 90% women’s books that are being headlined…. Even in my favorite genres, male authors prefer female heroes. It’s all about female space captains, women warlords, girl magicians, and sultry female assassins.

Same with the movies.

A non-paid political advertisement for our current government

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This is from Terry Barnes at The Spectator: Tezza’s how-to-vote card.

On Saturday, I’ll be voting Liberal, but out of loyalty rather than conviction. The party is no longer that of Menzies, Howard, or Abbott, and instead is riven with power-hungry egos and factional warlords.

The Liberal Party needs reform. It needs to rediscover its roots. It needs to be a party of the mainstream centre-right and to stop being so desperate in trying to appease affluent progressives on issues like ‘climate action’ and public health, even while knowing they’ll never vote for it….

I believe the only way necessary change will happen is from the heights of federal government, because the country can’t afford the Left-Labor alternative. Incumbency brings purpose and demands at least nominal discipline. Opposition would bring nothing but an open invitation for Liberals to eat each other alive, unleash ferocious factional wars, and set federal and state organisations against each other.

It’s a recipe for long-term opposition and unelectability, not a quick return to government….

As a Victorian, I also know that the shock of losing office to an inferior opposition can lead – not to a brief spell in the paddock – but decades in the unelectable wilderness….

If you’re a disillusioned Coalition voter, the Liberals’ need to retain your support gives you lasting influence and leverage over the Liberal Party’s (in a wordplay readers under 40 won’t get) future directions. You are their true base. Your preferences matter. Please use them wisely.

I only differ from this in giving the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt since on most issues I think he sees things in an entirely conservative way (but who knows?). With the world filled with climate and covid zombies whose votes also matter, and who are found in large numbers even amongst those who vote for The Coalition, there is no way to remain a purist. 

Labor will follow Joe Biden on every issue. We will have open borders, massive deficits and a weakening of our national defence. Lockdowns and Covid restrictions will not come to an end.

Three years is a very long time in politics, specially if it stretches out to six years or even more. 

What would a modern economist know about economic theory?

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I keep pointing out that the last person you should listen to about economic policy is anyone who has had a modern education in economic theory. Here is a bit of proof, from today’s Oz: Dismay at RBA as wages growth goes backwards. Here is the opening line of the article:

The person most disappointed with Wednesday’s sluggish wages growth figure is surely the Reserve Bank Governor. Real wages are now going backwards at 2.7 per cent.

How would it even have been possible for real wages to rise while the country has been in lockdown, our future sources of energy are under threat, government spending has risen at every turn, and while real interest rates are in negative territory?

Real wages can only grow if the flow of goods and services that wage earners can buy is rising. This can, of course, only happen if the private sector is expanding. 

It is the proliferation of all these Keynesians who believe that increases in public sector spending on useless junk will somehow “stimulate demand” and therefore lead to a higher level of productive enterprise.

That is, these people believe that if governments waste our available resources and capital on unproductive projects of their choosing that when their overpaid virtually entirely unproductive public servants spend the wages they receive that this will propel the economy forward.

It does sicken me to watch all this in action since I can see how not only almost everyone else but also I too will have to experience a fall in my real level of income because of all this.

That central banks around the world seem to believe that negative real rates of interest are a stimulus to growth is just how it is. If you would like to be cured of this absurdity, the only place I can think to send you is to Chapter 17 of the third edition of my Free Market Economics: An Introduction for the General Reader which is titled, “Saving and the Financial System”. There are other books as well, but virtually all of them were written at least a century ago.

It is maddening to watch our economy trashed by such ignorance, but there you have it.

FROM THE COMMENTS on the same post at New Catallaxy: I try not to do this, and hardly do it at all, but this was the sole comment which to me really demands a response since I think  it is so instructive. From Hubris:

I read these tirades. Do you essentially advocate a return to industrial protection and supply? It seems like you just don’t like markets.

I know I am beating my head against a brick wall, but massive levels of public spending, enormous unfunded fiscal deficits and adjustment of market rates of interest by central banks are not in any sense leaving things to the market. Why is that not utterly obvious? 

“Nothing matters very much and most things don’t matter at all”

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It’s a quote from Arthur Balfour which always comes to mind at moments when the direction of politics changes in directions I happen not to be fond of at the time. He apparently also said these, which really do need to be kept in mind.

I never forgive, but I always forget.

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

And this is his version of what George Polites, my old boss at CAI, always used to say. His version was, “It will all be the same in a thousand years”. This is Balfour’s version:

“We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. ‘Imperishable monuments’ and ‘immortal deeds,’ death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that is be better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect.”

All very nice, but the reality is that whilst we are still living, we care a very great deal about the events that surround us. No point looking forward to how I might look at things when I finally depart this life.