This recent election was the first election I have observed close up since my return to Australia in 2020. My wife and I haven’t voted for 47 years. The last time was in 1975 when we voted for the Workers Party, which, if you don’t know, was very libertarian in spite of their provocative name (I have put their Platform online here. Since then we have escaped fines and other harassment for not voting, which we do not think should be compulsory. [The current fine for not voting is $55 – see here for details “What Happens If I Didn’t Vote”, NSW Electoral Commission.]

In many ways it was discouraging for someone in the liberty movement to watch the events of the past few weeks unfold with barely a mention of issues which are most dear to me. In my own electorate of Mackellar (Sydney, Northern Beaches), held by a “moderate” liberal Jason Falinski (i.e., he is a LINO – “liberal in name only”) in what had been a very safe Liberal seat, there was a massive swing, via preferences, to one of the “Teal” independents who won handily. [On LINOs see “The Success of Liberal Ideas has led to the Decline of Radical Liberal Parties” (6 Sept. 2021) here.]

On the other hand, my spirits rose when I began thinking about all those who didn’t vote for our new rulers (more on this below). In order to get this election into some kind of perspective I looked at the data on the Australian Electoral Commission website [for the 2022 election results; for the 2019 election results] and found some interesting nuggets which have not been reported by the mainstream media. Here is what I found.

The low voter turnout

I was surprised at how many people did not even show up to vote on election day this year which suggests that there is large section of the voting public who are disillusioned with or disengaged from politics and the major parties. Since there is compulsory voting in Australia I had thought there would be 90-95% turnout (or “compliance” with a government order backed up with a fine). This was the case in previous elections. For example, in the 2019 election there were 16,419,543 eligible voters who had been enrolled. Of these 15,088,616 (91.89%) voted, either “formally” (14,253,393) (i.e. government approved votes) or “informally” (835,223) (i.e. government non-approved votes) and there were 1,330,927 (8.11%) who did not show up to vote on the day.

When you add the number who did not vote at all to those who voted “informally” (and whose vote thus “did not count”) we have a total of 2,166,159 voters who make up what I have termed the “block of disillusioned or disengaged voters” which in 2019 was 13.19% of all eligible voters.

Contrast this with the precipitous decline in voting in the May 2022 election. In May 2022 there were a total of 17,228,900 eligible voters of whom 12,822,068 voted (made up of 12,177,265 “formal” votes and 644,803 “informal” votes) which was 75.07% of the eligible voters. There were also 4,406,832 people who did not vote at all in the election for a number of reasons, comprising 24.93% of all eligible voters. This means that there were in 2022 4,947,233 (28.71% of all eligible voters) members of my “block of disillusioned or disengaged voters”, which was a massive increase of 2,781,074 over the 2019 election – an increase of 128.34%

At this level of voter participation one can now form a government with less than a quarter of all all eligible voters or barely a third of the primary vote before preferences have been distributed. In 2022, the Labor Party can form a government with 3.9 million votes or 22.86% of all eligible voters which converts to 32.34% of the formal vote before preferences are distributed. This of course means that 77% of the eligible voters did NOT vote for the new governing party. It also means that 76% did NOT vote for a “liberal” party, even in its ideologically gutted and illiberal form known as the Liberal Party (16.85% of all eligible voters and 23.84% of the formal vote). The Liberal Democrats, which should be seen as the Australia’s version of a Libertarian Party and the heir of the old Workers Party, got 204,827 votes which translates as 1.19% of all eligible votes and 1.68% of all formal votes. This was a very large increase over its results in 2019, although it came from of very low base figure. (See below for more details).

“Informal” and other protest votes

In my seat of Mackellar the list of candidates for the House of Reps was pretty dismal (both in terms of the character of the party they represented and their ideological positions) so I decided to vote “informal” as a way of protesting the limited selection of candidates and the way in which elections are seen as a “mandate” for ruling the country by whomever “wins” the election. The word “informal” is a derogatory term and carries the suggestion that the voter is stupid, uniformed, or careless for not being able to vote “properly” and thus has “wasted” their vote. I don’t think I am any of these things. I took a Sharpie pen with me and carefully drew a box at the bottom, labelled it “None of the Above”, and put a 1 in the box. I think this is a “thoughtful and considered vote” not a “wasted vote” as the mainstream press regards it. As a libertarian my dream is that one day a clear majority of the voters (if they bother to vote at all) will choose “None of the Above” and the seat will remain vacant. This is my version of the anti-war saying “what if they held a war and nobody came”, viz. “what if they held an election and nobody voted”. Where would their much vaunted “mandate” to rule be then? The Labor Party’s 23% of all eligible voters is a pretty feeble “mandate” in my view.

The collapse in the vote for the major parties

[Tacoma Bridge Collapse 7 Nov. 1940]

This collapse I believe is another indication of the increasing disillusionment of the voters with the political system as represented by the “major parties”, such as Labor, Liberal, and National. This must be added to the corresponding increase in the vote for “Independents” of various “colors” (“Teal in 2022 in particular) and for the group of disillusioned “non-voters” as discussed above. In what follows I compare the national results for the major parties between the 2019 and 2022 elections. The list below is in order of the size of the collapse (or increase) in the primary vote nationwide (% is of all eligible voters):

Liberal:

• drop in vote – from 3,989,404 in 2019 (24.29%) to 2,959,255 in 2022 (17.18%); a drop in absolute votes of 1,030,149 or 25.82% of the 2019 figure

Nationals:

• drop in vote – from 642,233 in 2019 (3.91%) to 486,796 in 2022 (2.83%)); a drop in absolute votes of 155,437or 24.20% of the 2019 figure

Liberal National:

• drop in vote – from 1,236,401 in 2019 ( 7.53%) to 970,901 in 2022 (5.64%); a drop in absolute votes of 265,500 or 21.47% of the 2019 figure

Labor:

• drop in vote – from 4,752,160 in 2019 (28.94%) to 4,046,234 in 2022 ( 23.48%); a drop in absolute votes of 705,926 or 14.85% of the 2019 figure

Greens:

• drop in vote – from 1,482,923 in 2019 (9.03%) to 1,450,874 in 2022 (8.42%); a drop in absolute votes of 32,049 or 2.16% of the 2019 figure

Parties/groups which saw an increase in their vote (or not voting):

Liberal Democrats:

• increase in vote – from 34,666 in 2019 (0.21%) to 207,903 in 2022 (1.21%); an increase in absolute votes of 173,237 or 499.73% of the 2019 figure

My “Block of Disillusioned or Disengaged Voters”:

• an increase from 2,166,159 in 2019 (13.19%) to 4,947,233 in 2022 (28.71%); an increase in absolute votes of 2,781,074 or 128.39% of the 2019 figure

Independents:

• increase in vote – from 479,836 in 2019 (2.92%) to 676,517 in 2022 (3.93%); an increase in absolute votes of 196,681 or 40.99% of the 2019 figure

One Nation:

• increase in vote – from 438,587 in 2019 (2.67%) to 599,438 in 2022 (3.48%); an increase in absolute votes of 160,851 or 36.67% of the 2019 figure

United Australia Party:

• increase in vote – from 488,817 in 2019 (2.98%) to 506,576 in 2022 (2.94%); an increase in absolute votes of 17,759 or 3.63% of the 2019 figure

In my own electorate of Mackellar these factors can be seen playing out as follows:

• the Liberal vote collapsed from 52,088 in 2019 to 37,082 in 2022 – i.e. 15,006 or 28.81%
• the Labor vote collapsed from 16,648 in 2019 to 6,859 in 2022 – i.e. 9,789 or 58.80%
• the Green vote collapsed from 11,283 in 2019 to 4,980 in 2022 – i.e. 6,303 or 55.86%
• the Independent candidate (not Teal) vote rose from 11,975 in 2019 to 34,516 in 2022 (Teal) – i.e. 22,541 or 188.23%
• my block of disillusioned/disengaged voters rose from 17,412 in 2019 to 25,924 in 2022 – i.e. 8,512 or 48.89%

It would be interesting to look at a previously safe Labor seat which changed hands to see how these factors played out there. I haven’t had the time to do that.

Conclusion

My conclusion from all this is that on the whole the Australian electorates is unhappy with the current state of politics and the behaviour of the major political parties. Thus, they either chose not to vote at all (up 49%), not to vote for one of the major parties (Liberals down 26%; Labor down 15%), to shift their “Green” vote from the “dark” green, hard-core Green Party (down 2% nationally) to a “light” green (Teal) independent candidate (all Independents up 41%), or to vote for an alternative party like One Nation (up 37%) or the Liberal Democrats (up 500% from a very small base).

How real classical liberals should react to this is up for discussion.

The Advertiser of Monday, 31 March, 1997 had a front page article
on an “ANZAC Day School Pack” which has been devloped by the Federal
government and the Australian Army for use in schools on the eve of ANZAC
Day 1997. A key part of the pack is an “ABC” of key words designed
to “encourage young people to remember and appreciate the sacrifice
of veterans”. As a counter to the patriotic, uncritical and even absurd
government-sponsored list I have prepared my own list (which is NOT to be
recited in class but read and reflected upon in private).

The government’s list was modelled on the original 1916 ANZAC Book which I have online and on which I wrote an “illustrated essay” a short while ago. The soldiers who published that book drew up the original “ANZAC Alphabet” in two different versions, one by Henderson and one by “Ubique” (see below for the image of these lists). As I wrote in my illustrated essay on this <Art/WarArt/AnzacBook/index.html>:

An ANZAC Alphabet” by Henderson is one of the best loved illustrations in the ANZAC Book (pp. 115-18). It is a 4 page rhyming poem based upon the letters of the alphabet with rather crude illustrations of each letter of the alphabet along with a two line poem which illustrates various aspects of the soldiers’ life at Gallipoli. This was not the only ANZAC alphabet which appeared in the ANZAC Book. A second one “Another Attempt at an ANZAC Alphabet” (by “Ubique” [Latin for “everywhere”])  appeared a few pages later (pp. 146-47) but it was not illustrated and is less well known. It takes a roughly chronological approach to relating his experiences at Gallipoli and focuses more on the everyday hardships and fear faced by the soldiers.

Nico Maloberti and I were part of a small group of Fellows within Liberty Fund who understood and agreed with the original strategic vision of its Founder Pierre F. Goodrich (PFG), which was to promote the ideal of a fully free society which would be comprised of “free and responsible individuals” interacting with each other in a purely voluntary manner by means of free markets, the rule of law, limited government, and free institutions of all kinds.

Note: see my “reconstruction” of Goodrich’s goals and strategies to achieve those goals, “Pierre F. Goodrich’s Goals and Strategy for the Liberty Fund: A Reconstruction”, which I wrote and circulated in 2018-19 and which Nico read , commented upon, and agreed with. And also my statement of how the OLL was designed to adhere to these principles and further PFG’s goals.

The counterpart to this study of liberty was the study of its direct opposite, namely the use of arbitrary power and coercion by the state and other organised groups, and the corrupting influence the use of power had on both the societies and the individuals on which it was exercised, as well the individuals who wielded that power. To paraphrase Lord Acton, whom PFG liked to quote, “liberty ennobles, while power corrupts”.

The method for achieving this goal, according to PFG, was not to engage in current policy debates or criticism, or party political activity, or journalism, but much more general, longer term educational and academic activity which would focus on the long history of thinking about liberty and power which stretched back over two and a half thousand years. This approach could be summarized as the study and appreciation of the ideas which lay behind current politics and political practices by a close reading of “the great books of liberty” which PFG had spent so much time and energy in identifying during the 1950s.

We had come to realize that LF had been drifting away from this original vision for some years under the leadership of a Board and Senior Management most of whom were not educators or academics, or even intellectuals (broadly understood) who were well-read in the classic texts of liberty as identified by the Founder. As Board members who had personally known the Founder or were educators and academics by training, retired or died, they were not replaced by similar like-minded individuals but by businessmen and lawyers who were more dilettantes in the world of ideas in which PFG liked to move. This “strategic drift” had become quite clear in 2010 when LF celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding, and again more sharply in 2018 when a new Chairman and President organised an awkwardly termed and poorly carried out “strategic refresh,” along with an overhaul of operational procedures within LF which was promised but which never eventuated.

During the so-called “strategic refresh”, attempts by the Fellows, who were “originalists” in their understanding of what LF’s goals and strategies should be, to organise a rereading and open discussion of LF’s founding documents in which PFG made his ideas reasonably clear, were repeatedly rebuffed. So this discussion never took place and the activities in which LF now engaged which had diverged from the Founder’s original intent were not put under the microscope and re-evaluated for their adherence to the basic goals of the organisation. Thus the “strategic refresh” turned into a “flushing out” of what remained of the Founder’s original intent, and, if one were cynical, a means of identifying those who opposed the new direction in which LF was being taken in order for them to be removed or “flushed out” as well.

This was quite ironic given the millions of dollars which were spent on designing and building a new headquarters for the organisation, on the exterior of which were emblazoned the names of the 100 or so authors of “the great books of liberty” which PFG had spent much time, effort, and money on drawing up and promoting. In the newly “refreshed” LF the discussion of the great books and authors had now been and would continue to be downplayed and replaced by much more discussion of current economic policies, party political matters, and who got appointed to what high political office. One way to interpret this symbolically was that the core and the external skin of the organisation had been reversed: what once had been the core of LF’s activities had now been relegated to the veneer of the building, while other more contemporary political matters became the new “core” of activities of the new LF.

It should also be pointed out that PFG’s original plan for listing and arranging the names on the sandstone walls of the Goodrich Seminar Room at the Lilly Library at Wabash College, Indiana, had as the end point or culmination of the progression of names the American Declaration of Independence, and not as one might have expected the American Constitution. The Declaration was the document which started the war of American independence from the British Empire and the subsequent Revolution. PFG thought that this Revolution, while noble in its aims, had only achieved a partial victory for liberty and thus much more needed to be achieved in a future “revolution” or “reformation” which he hoped to inspire by creating the Liberty Fund. (“Personally, it does not seem possible to think of any beneficial revolution with the possible exception of the American Revolution”, IGSR, p.21.)

Again, if one were interested in interpreting why the Board and Senior Management of LF decided to locate the name of the “Declaration of Independence” on the exterior of the building around the corner at the very bottom of a panel, hidden from view and obscured by another room jutting out from the main building, one might argue that they had absolutely no understanding of PFG’s thinking about its core significance, its relationship to the other authors of the great books of liberty (it built upon what had been written before), or the fact that it was the culmination of the first stage in the history on mankind’s striving for liberty against power. Its ridiculous position on the wall says volumes about the new LF and those who lead it.

[The facade of LF’s new building in Indianapolis, IN.]

For the “Websites Committee” to which Nico and I belonged we agreed upon the wording of a statement which we presented for discussion by the members of the Committee and which we wanted to be applied to all LF’s websites. It was based upon the long and detailed discussions Nico and I had during the course of 2018-19 on PFG’s goals and strategies (which are summarised here. Our statement was ultimately ignored by the Committee and it was soon dissolved. It stated that:

(W)e should never mention by name any sitting politician or political party, any piece of legislation which is currently before Congress, or any other policy matter currently under discussion. If we want to talk about, for example, “free trade” or “peace” we should do so historically (by referring to past historical debates about free trade vs. protectionism) and theoretically (by referring to classic texts like Adam Smith’s *Wealth of Nations*). That way we can be true to PFG’s “founder’s intent” and our tax exempt status as an educational foundation.

Nico and I also wanted the Websites Committee, as well as each of the other departments within LF (such as the Conference Program, and Publishing) to draw up a mission statement in which it would be declared explicitly and in detail how that department’s activities pursued the ultimate goal of the organisation using the methods recommended by PFG. As I had done for the OLL website.

In his detailed and very thorough critique of the appropriateness of many scores of posts to some of LF’s more political websites which he presented to the Board, Nico used the above principle as the main criteria for his selection of examples. Another criterion was the tone of the pieces as many departed from the more measured, scholarly, and reasonable forms of speech which had been part of LF’s practice for decades, and were we thought inappropriate for an educational and academic organisation.

Nico and I failed in our efforts to defend the original intent of LF’s founder. I was summarily sacked in September 2019 and Nico expected to follow soon after. He survived for another 20 months and then was sacked in May 2021. He took his own life a few weeks later on June 22.

This morning I received an email from “Cathy” who describes herself as a LinkedIn News Editor , asking for my response to a recent story published in the ABC news website on “International student arrivals to quarantine at Parafield Airport facility under new SA plan”. Why she asked me I do not know (perhaps because I once taught at the University of Adelaide). I wrote a reply but my response was “too long” and cut short when I posed it. Here is her request and my reply in full (with images added since my first attempt).

Request

David, can student-only quarantine hubs help universities recover?

My name is Cathy Anderson , and I’m a LinkedIn News editor. We often reach out to LinkedIn members who can add an informed perspective on today’s news and trends.

As Australia’s tertiary education sector continues to reel from border closures, South Australia has announced a plan to repurpose buildings at Adelaide’s Parafield Airport to create a student-only quarantine centre.

Two apartment blocks in Sydney are also being considered as the first student quarantine hub in NSW.

We’d love to hear your perspective on this issue. How do you think the tertiary sector is faring? Could these plans kickstart the return of international students?

My Reply

I think this is utter madness which ignores the fundamental issues about the spread and the deadliness of Covid19 to different age groups in the population. Isolated housing for students in a vain attempt at “quarantining” is impractical, pointless, and profoundly immoral in my view.

Here are some points to consider:

1.) before March 2020, the accepted “Science” (“The Science” if you will) was that only the sick and infectious would be quarantined, the most vulnerable among the population would be protected as best one could (and vaccinated if a safe one was available), and the rest of the population allowed to go about their lives with minimal and voluntary measures taken (like staying away from work if one was sick, washing one’s hands, and coughing into a handkerchief. This is broadly the policy advocated but in the Great Barrington Declaration which I support and signed the week it came out.

2.) it has been clear from the very beginning that the disease affects different age groups in radically different ways. Children and young adults (like university students) have a very, very low infection death rate which is statistically insignificant and which is much, much lower than other death and injury risks (like car accidents and the annual flu). The death rates increase as the population group get older, with people aged in the late 50s and early 60s suffering death rates which are similar for a bad flu season, up to those in their 70s and above for which the death rate becomes quite serious. The statistics show that the vast majority of deaths have occurred in this age cohort (median age of death in Australia is 82 years) and they also had other serious “co-morbidities” (like Alzheimers, diabetes, heart disease, obesity) which would have killed them sooner or later anyway. From this data it is clear that the elderly are most at risk and should be protected, while the young are virtually risk free and should be left alone and lot locked up in so-called “quarantine centers”.

[Australian Deaths by Age Group]
[see also Ufuk Parildar, Rafael Perara, Jason Oke, “Excess Mortality across Countries in 2020” The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (3 March, 2021) here and the graphing website “Weekly Excess Mortality in 2020”

Australian Dept. of Health “Coronavirus (COVID-19) at a glance”

3.) Again, the statistics show that most deaths (40+% in the US and 75% in Australia – mostly in Victoria (96% of all aged care home deaths or 72% of all covid deaths in Aust.)) have occurred in nursing homes. In fact, being in any confined space for lengthy periods of times increases the risk of infection (the viral load factor) and death many times. This kind of “confinement” occurs in hospitals as well as domestic homes which suggests that “lockdowns” and isolation are the exact opposite of what a good health policy should be. Creating “student-only quarantine centers” would just be another example of this.

See “Studies on Covid-19 Lethality – Swiss Policy Research”

4.) The current focus on “cases” is completely misplaced as this ignores the error rate in the process (testing for fragments of DNA which may or not be from an active covid virus), the age group in which the person tested as “positive” lies (are they low risk or high risk), whether or not they actually have the disease and show symptoms, and whether or not the disease is serious enough to treated by a doctor or in a hospital. This essential information is not provided by the press in its daily bulletins which allows the government and their medical advisors to grossly exaggerate the threat and to take the appropriate steps (if necessary) to remedy the situation.

5.) I believe the panic about Covid has led to education policies (school closures) which have been a disaster, especially for secondary school children. For low risk tertiary students the disruption to their education has also been very significant, which range from them still being charged high fees for sub-standard online teaching (via Zoom), preventing them from having the complete learning experience of being on campus and meeting with their peers and their professors on a regular basis.

Thus, in conclusion, I completely oppose the creation “student-only quarantine centers”. This only perpetuates the useless policy of quarantining the very, very low risk young adult, student population and adds to the economic and social disruption of our society, which I believe is both unnecessary and immoral.

For further information I suggest the following websites:

• Facts about Covid-19 – Swiss Policy Research
• Lockdown Sceptics in particular its summary of the data here: Will Jones, “COVID-19: Just the Facts” Lockdown Sceptics (9 May 2021) here