John Roskam from the Institute of Public Affairs highlights the failures of the fourth estate to hold our politicians (and other institutions) to account.
I found myself agreeing with a Greens politician today.
And not just any green politician, I’m actually agreeing with the most objectionable, unreasonable and irrational one. From my perspective she’s the worst of a very bad bunch.
Her name is Lydia Thorpe and she seems to hate Australia and our way of life.
Actually she claims not to even identify as Australian but I bet she’s got an Aussie passport….and she swore allegiance to the Queen so she could collect her 20K Aussie taxpayers funded salary every month.
Principle only goes so far after all!
Of course I disagree with her on all of that and the other bile she sprouts but she made a reasonable point in Senate Estimates recently when she questioned why taxpayers are funding multinational corporations to employ Aboriginal Australians.
At least $91 million has been allocated to 10 of Australia's biggest companies – including Crown, Wesfarmers, Woolworths and Fortescue Metals, under a scheme called the employment parity initiative.
In return, each company agreed to place indigenous employees and retain them in jobs for at least 26 weeks.
During Senate estimates recently, Thorpe asked a reasonable question.
Given that they have billions and billions of dollars in revenue, why do they need money from the Indigenous advancement strategy?
Billion-dollar companies don’t need government funds, taxpayers funds, to employ Aboriginal people.
That’s the bit where I agree with her. From there in we part ways.
She wants the money thrown directly into Aboriginal communities….as if there wasn’t enough tossed that way already – something like $30 billion per year and that’s just Federal money!
You see, the Aboriginal industry that has emerged in this country has almost everyone looking for a hand out – politicians, corporates, individuals and communities.
While Thorpe is right to question subsidising multi-billion dollar companies, we (the taxpayers) continue to subsidise Aboriginal groups and councils that also have assets measured in the billions.
The money grab runs through almost every element of our society.
Local councils are being asked to pay to use Aboriginal words as street or building names -I’ve been told the going rate is $500 per word, per year.
Every official event has a welcome to country or smoking ceremony or the like. I was told today that each one in parliament house can cost as much as $5000.
Refusing to participate in this gouging can result in accusations of racism, as can almost any other perceived slight.
We saw as much today when a Neighbours Actor Shareena Clanton claimed her ‘woke, virtue signalling workplace’ was a ‘culturally unsafe place’ and calling out the language and behaviour she encountered on the show ‘often left me ostracised and further marginalised’.
It’s good she has gone public with these claims ( which Neighbours deny) at the conclusion of her six week contract but in a devastating attack, Ms Clanton accused the show’s producers of ‘virtue signalling without action’
Oh the horror. Imagine that. An individual or organisation virtue signalling without action. How humiliating it must be to suffer that accusation.
Surely Ms Clanton could level that accusation at almost every virtue signalling major corporate CEO, or the pathetic keyboard warriors on Twitter.
There must be thousands of organisations, including a lot of Aboriginal organisations, who posture in public while doing very little, if anything, unless someone else is paying for it.
While we're at it, what about the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at Aboriginal communities to ‘close the gap’ with nothing to show for it?
Is that virtue signalling without action?
Many of these communities are rife with drugs, domestic violence, sexual abuse, child rape and other crime.
Some of the virtue signallers – especially in political parties like the greens– conveniently ignore these inconvenient truths while persistently peddling false narratives.
A few brave souls are prepared to challenge this zeitgeist, including a chap named Anthony Dillon who wrote a column in the Age newspaper today.
Dillon called out the virtue signalling Thorpe, who makes claims of a deeply racist system being responsible for Aboriginal deaths in custody.
He points out she provides no evidence for her claims but wrote:
I guess that’s the cool thing about making accusations of racism, the burden of proof lies with the accused and never the claimant.
One deaths in custody researcher, Davis Biles, provided evidence to the deaths in custody royal commission which proved unequivocally that Aboriginal people were slightly less likely to die in prison or police custody than non-Aboriginal people.
That truth has never been uttered from the lips of many Aboriginal activists let alone Thorpe herself. That would interfere with the virtue signalling
You see, virtue signalling without action is rife in our nation.
It’s more prevalent than racism, misogyny, islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia or any other slur the radical left will hurl your way. They have no interest in fixing the ills they claim burden our society.
It’s just their way of keeping the business of being perpetually outraged, funded at your expense.
Cory Bernardi is the author of seven books and has been a member of the Australian rowing team, a publican, an investment portfolio manager and spent nearly 14 years as an Australian Senator.
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