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Features Australia

Drain Burley Griffin

26 November 2016

9:00 AM

26 November 2016

9:00 AM

The reason so many know-alls have had to scrape the lashings of egg from their faces is that once again, instead of reporting the news, they have indulged in campaign journalism, just as they did in the republic referendum and just as they did in undermining both John Howard and Tony Abbott. It’s no excuse to say the polls were wrong; the daily national tracking polls indicated a tight vote. It’s no excuse to say Mrs Clinton led the national vote; Trump didn’t campaign for that but to win federally as the Constitution requires. In any event, her ‘lead’ is within the margin of fraud. On that, it is a truth universally acknowledged that those most opposed to such electoral rigour as identification are the most proficient practitioners of fraud.

It’s also no excuse to say voters should have been swayed by those meticulously released character attacks on Trump. The voters were too smart, being far more interested in the real policy choice he offered, just as Brexit voters were in regaining control of the UK’s borders and of her destiny.

Trump triumphed because so many rank-and-file Americans saw that they’d been disgracefully abandoned by both major parties, as many Australians also believe. They’d been appalled to see America subjected to Marxist-inspired social change, de-industrialisation, de-agriculturalisation and de-militarisation while the elites, assorted cronies and various alien dictatorships profited. For many patriots it was especially unforgiveable that the Senate, even with a Republican majority, abandoned its undoubted constitutional power to reject Obama’s deal releasing $150 billion dollars to those major supporters of terrorism and enemies of the West, the Iranian Mullahs, while unleashing their quest for nuclear weapons and the ICBMs to deliver them.

Of crucial significance to a large number of voters was Trump’s commitment to end the reign of unelected activist judges, who brazenly declare the Constitution means what the Left want it to mean and not what is clearly says. While their greatest outrage to date had been their invention of a constitutional right to abort, activist judges were lining up to hand down some invented constitutional justification for each new fashionable left wing belief, thus ensuring change would be beyond legislative repeal.


With Troy Bramston revealing that Paul Keating sought to appoint High Court Judges who would expand Commonwealth power, Prime Minister Abbott (the Mark II version) should follow Trump and have ready a list of sound constitutionalists likely to restore our Constitution to what the people intended. The violation of the principle that only the people can change their Constitution is illustrated by the fact that while they have sensibly refused almost all of Canberra’s demands for additional powers, the Judges have gradually awarded Canberra each one of these. Another example is how the Judges made worthless the constitutionally entrenched right of farmers (included in the term ‘residents’) to the reasonable use of the waters in our rivers. This was included in the Constitution after long debate, but almost alone Senator Hanson has long called for the restoration of the farmer’s constitutional right to achieve what most politicians only talk about, Australia becoming the food bowl of Asia. And while Canberra was only ever intended to enjoy very limited powers, the men in black, now with some ladies, have unconstitutionally converted it into a monster, a wasteful and incompetent leviathan soaking up about 80 per cent of taxation, churning much of this through armies of bureaucrats to selected mendicants and to the undeserving, more often than not to buy votes and support.

In addition to restoring constitutional principle and significantly lifting the related taxation and regulatory burden, the President-elect says he will drain the swamp that is Washington, signalling new restrictions on lobbyists. Australians will inevitably ask, as their media should, what about the quagmire of Canberra (and Sydney)? Just how many political decisions are taken at the behest and vast profit of the lobbyists and in favour of political cronies?

President Trump will also defend the borders, and administer immigration in the best interests of the nation, reversing the Fraser-style negligence in this area. He will no doubt apply some of the lessons taught by the Howard and Abbott governments who, with respect to the borders, have created ‘best international practice’. And when it comes to defence, he will expect any free-loading allies to pull their weight. Will this extend to calling on our major parties to stop their practice of diverting billions from defence to shore up politicians’ seats?

President Trump will reverse the blind obedience most politicians render to the religion of global warming, requiring as it does the transfer of American (and Australian) industry to the third world. This is another illustration of the Chesterton factor; that when men stop believing in God, a mandatory requirement for membership of the elites, it is not that they believe in nothing, but that they will then believe in anything. And as they are now preselected from the narrowest group conceivable, Australian politicians are especially prone to this religiosity. Accordingly, the Turnbull government, weeping crocodile tears over the closure of the Hazelwood Power Station, ratified the Paris Climate Agreement on the very day Donald Trump prevailed. With disregard for this religion, reduced regulation, low taxation and incentives to bring back profits subject to double taxation, America will re-industrialise just as Australia under similar governance can.

Another example of the Chesterton factor is our politicians blindly repeating over and over the ‘free trade’ mantra. They consequently enter into agreements under which we open Australia to the goods and services of other countries who then reject or reduce ours in precisely those areas where we have some comparative advantage. As one wise observer said, these agreements have nothing to do with free trading and everything to do with horse trading. And that is horse trading at which our politicians are too often taken for a ride.

The post Drain Burley Griffin appeared first on The Spectator.

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