Interest rates went up again today.

Of course they did.

This is Australia under Labor. You wake up, check the news, and discover your mortgage has been mugged again.

The Reserve Bank has lifted the cash rate to 4.35 per cent. Another 25 basis points. Another hit to the family budget. Another quiet disaster for Australians already counting every dollar at the supermarket, the petrol bowser and the kitchen table.

That makes fifteen interest rate rises since Labor took office.

FIFTEEN!!!

Remember when Anthony Albanese promised cheaper mortgages? Remember when Labor said they had a plan? Remember when the grown ups were supposedly back in charge?

Well, here we are.

Mortgages are up. Rents are up. Power bills are up. Groceries are up. Fuel is up. Insurance is up. Debt is up.

The only thing going down is the standard of living.

Jim Chalmers is the Treasurer. The man has a PhD, his thesis was on the prime ministership of Paul Keating.

No, that is not satire.

Apparently, studying Keating was meant to prepare him to manage the national economy. It seems to have prepared him mostly to use big words while ordinary Australians get poorer.

Labor lost control of inflation long before the latest overseas crisis. They can blame global events, oil prices, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Santa, the weather, or whatever appears in this week’s talking points.

Australians know the truth.

This government has spent too much, borrowed too much, taxed too much, regulated too much, and imported too many people into a country already short of houses, roads, hospitals, classrooms and common sense.

Now families are paying the price.

For many Australians, a mortgage is no longer a pathway to ownership. It is a monthly punishment. First home buyers are chasing the Australian dream from their childhood bedrooms and refreshing real estate apps like monks praying for rain.

Meanwhile, fuel is priced like champagne. Groceries like jewellery. Electricity like it is being hand delivered by Swiss watchmakers.

The national debt is racing towards a trillion dollars gross. Twenty years ago, Peter Costello MP (our former Treasurer) announced Australia had zero net debt.

Zero.

Today, we have enough debt to keep our children’s children’s children poor.

The once lucky country is being turned into the Argentina of the South Pacific.

The question is simple.

How much more pain will Australians endure before they finally decide enough is enough?

You must take a greater interest in politics, because the penalty for not doing so is being governed by your inferiors.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

• The claim that Australians were booing ANZACs or veterans is a lie. They were responding to the politicisation of a sacred national ceremony.

• Inserting a race based ritual into ANZAC Day undermines its core purpose of unity and shared remembrance.

• The contradiction of honouring those who fought for Australia while simultaneously suggesting their descendants are merely “visitors” who require permission to be here is not just absurd, it is an insult to their sacrifice.

• The real source of division is not the crowd’s reaction, but the deliberate introduction of identity politics into a unifying national event.

• ANZAC Day should transcend race and politics, reminding us that we are one people, united by sacrifice, not divided by ancestry.

The same crowd now clutching their pearls over booing at ANZAC Day ceremonies are, not coincidentally, the very people who have spent the past decade tearing down our national symbols and spraying graffiti on our memorials.

Victorian authorities (to my knowledge) have failed to arrest a single person for the destruction of our national monuments. Not one. Yet somehow, we’re told the real source of division is Australians who object to being treated like visitors in the country their forefathers fought and died to defend.

Let’s be honest about what actually happened.

People were not booing the ANZACs. They were not booing veterans. They were not even booing individuals.

They were reacting to the deliberate insertion of a political, race based ritual into what is supposed to be the most unifying day on the Australian calendar.

No one wakes before dawn, stands in the cold, and gathers in silence just to heckle servicemen and women. That claim is not just wrong, it’s wilfully dishonest.

What Australians were responding to was something else entirely.

A ceremony that by its own definition, is about granting “permission” for people to be on land they already belong to.

Think about that for a moment.

We send Australians overseas to fight, bleed, and die for this country. And then on the one day we honour them, we tell those same Australians and their descendants that they are visitors who require a welcome.

If you were designing a ritual to divide people by ancestry, you could hardly do better.

There is an irony here so thick you could spread it on toast. We are asked to unite in remembrance, only to be immediately separated into categories, those who can “welcome” and those who must be “welcomed.”

That is not unity. That is racial segmentation.

And it is deeply out of place on ANZAC Day.

We’re told the booing is “divisive.” That it “betrays the spirit” of the day.

No.

What betrays the spirit of ANZAC Day is turning it into a platform for identity politics.

What betrays the spirit of ANZAC Day is reframing a day of shared sacrifice into a lecture about historical hierarchy.

What betrays the spirit of ANZAC Day is inserting a ritual that implies some Australians are more native, more legitimate, or more entitled than others.

The boos didn’t create the division. They exposed it.

Even senior Defence figures understand this. The very freedoms being defended, freedom of speech and freedom of expression, include the right of Australians to reject political messaging, especially when it intrudes on something sacred.

But the political class doesn’t want to hear that.

Enter Premier Jacinta Allan who rushed to condemn the crowd, claiming the disruption was a betrayal of ANZAC values.

This is the same sleight of hand we’ve come to expect.

Redefine the problem. Blame the reaction. Ignore the cause.

She says ANZAC Day is “not a stage for division.”

On that point, she’s absolutely right.

But she’s directing her criticism at the wrong people. The division didn’t come from the crowd. It came from the microphone.

It came from a ceremony that had nothing to do with Gallipoli, nothing to do with Kokoda, nothing to do with sacrifice or service, and everything to do with modern race politics.

And here’s the deeper problem.

The very people who champion these ceremonies are the same people who insist on viewing Australia through the lens of race.

They divide us into groups. They rank us by ancestry. They tell some Australians they belong more than others.

And then astonishingly they accuse everyone else of being divisive.

If you genuinely wanted unity, the formula isn’t complicated. You don’t divide the audience by race. You don’t tell Australians they need permission to be here. And you certainly don’t do it on the one day that has always transcended politics.

On ANZAC Day, we are not hyphenated Australians. We are not categories. We are one people. Red, white and blue.

That used to be enough.

And if those in power continue to push these ceremonies knowing full well they provoke division, then let’s stop pretending this is about unity.

Because it isn’t. It’s all about division and it always was.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

• Big W has permitted the sale of rainbow/LGBTQIA2S+ themed clothing to children and babies on their marketplace website.

• I think that promoting sexual or gender ideology to children is inappropriate and amounts to indoctrination or exploitation. Simply, let kids be kids.

• Is this decision being driven by profit or ideology? Either way I think this is not appropriate for children.

• Children should not be used as tools for political or cultural movements and should be protected.

• Children should NOT be sexualised in anyway shape or form.

  

What in God’s name would lead a major department store to allow LGBTQIA2S+ apparel aimed at children to be sold on their website?

And yet, that is exactly what Big W is doing.

Today, I discovered rainbow flag T-shirts being marketed to children and even babies on the Big W marketplace website.

Pause for a moment and consider that.

What would possess a major retailer to do such a thing? And yes, I use that word deliberately.

Why market gender confusion and sexual ideology to children, let alone infants? What exactly is the agenda here?

If it is purely commercial, then shame on them. Imagine believing it is acceptable to profit from the sexualisation of children.

If instead the agenda is ideological, supporting those who insist that men and women are interchangeable despite the obvious biological reality, then shame on Big W for conscripting children into a social experiment.

Adults are free to express themselves however they wish. If someone wants to wear their beliefs on their sleeve that is their choice. It doesn’t mean we have to agree with it though.

But children are not billboards. They are not political statements. They are not tools for cultural movements.

So why is a major retailer helping adults project adult ideologies and fantasies onto infants?

Why would a department store promote homosexuality to children?

Why would a major retailer seek to normalise sexual identities for babies? A baby or a child has no sexuality, they are CHILDREN.

And why would Big W think it is acceptable to take the rainbow, a sign of God’s covenant with humanity, and repurpose it into a symbol of something entirely different…to be worn by children?

The Bible is not silent on these matters. They should not be promoting LGBTQIA2S+ ideology to children. The following passages come to mind.

Leviticus 18:22
Leviticus 20:13
Jude 1:7
Romans 1:26–28
1 Corinthians 6:9–10
1 Timothy 1:9–11

These are not ambiguous passages. They are clear. Direct. Uncompromising.

And they exist for a reason. Because lifestyles built on rejecting natural order and moral truth are not just personal choices, they have consequences for families, for children, and for society as a whole.

Which brings us back to the central question….Why are children being dragged into this?

Why are babies being used as vehicles for adult ideology?

And why does a major Australian retailer believe this is acceptable to be sold of their website?

These are questions Big W, and others following this path, should be forced to answer.

Because children deserve protection, not indoctrination.

They deserve innocence, not ideology.

And they certainly deserve better than this.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

There is something deeply wrong when the Australian government sends its bravest men into the fog of war, only to drag them back years later and judge them as though they had spent their time behind a desk in Canberra.

The relentless pursuit of Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated living war hero, has all the hallmarks of a political witch hunt dressed up as justice.

War is not an inner city woke desk job. It is chaos, ambiguity, and split-second decisions made under the constant threat of death.

The Islamist enemy Roberts-Smith bravely fought in Afghanistan did not wear uniforms, did not respect conventions, and did not hesitate to strap explosives to children in its bid to kill Australian soldiers.

In Afghanistan, Australian soldiers even faced betrayal from supposed allies, so-called “green-on-blue” attacks where infiltrators within the Afghan army turned their weapons on our troops.

And yet, from the comfort of peacetime Australia, woke bureaucrats and woke lawyers presume to second guess the life and death decisions our soldiers were forced to make.

More troubling still is the staggering cost. Over $300 million of taxpayer money has been spent pursuing allegations, reportedly including advertisements placed in Afghan newspapers fishing for “rumours.”

If wrongdoing were clear and undeniable, it would not require such an extraordinary and prolonged effort to prove.

At some point, the process itself begins to look less like justice and more like a mission to produce a guilty outcome.

This approach does not strengthen our nation, it weakens it.

At a time when global instability is rising, Australia should be reinforcing confidence in its armed forces, not undermining them.

Soldiers must know their country stands behind them, not that it will abandon them to years of legal jeopardy once the battle is over. Otherwise, who in their right might would ever agree to join up?

We ask extraordinary things of our military. The least we can do is show loyalty in return.

I stand with our military.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

• Australia does not have a constitutionally protected right to free speech, leaving it vulnerable to government restriction and legal interpretation.

• Recent laws, particularly “hate speech” and related legislation, are expanding state power and increasingly limiting what Australians can say publicly.

• Vague concepts like “hate”, “extremism”, and “harm” are subjective and can be redefined over time, creating a risk that legitimate opinions may be punished.

• This growing pressure is leading to self censorship, narrowing public debate and weakening democracy, as people fear legal or social consequences for expressing views.

• This is why I am proposing to amend the constitution to enshrine free speech in law.

  

‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they just don’t want to hear.’ Those are the words of George Orwell, and they are as true today as they were when he wrote them.

I stand here today in defence of something that many Australians assume they already possess but which in truth remains dangerously exposed in this country. I stand in here today in defence of the Australian people’s right to free speech.

Earlier this afternoon, I had intended to utilise my time to debate my bill, the Constitution Alteration (Right to Free Speech) Bill 2025. However, the government chose not to allow that debate to occur. I will talk about it anyway. The purpose of my bill is very simple, but it’s profoundly important. It’s to enshrine freedom of speech within the Australian Constitution so that no government, federal or state, can erode that freedom. Though the bill is not before us for debate today, the motion that I moved is modelled directly on the wording of the bill.

My proposal is quite straightforward. It would insert a new chapter, 3 (a), into the Australian Constitution, and a new section, 80 (a). That provision would state that the Commonwealth or a state must not make any law that limits freedom of speech, including freedom of the press and other media. In other words, it would do something that many Australians mistakenly believe that they already have and has already been done. It would constitutionally guarantee the right to speak freely.

This bill is urgently needed because freedom of speech in Australia rests on increasingly fragile ground. Most Australians assume they possess a fundamental right to express their opinions without any fear. That assumption is understandable, but it is also increasingly dangerous.

Unlike many other Western democracies, Australia does not have an explicit constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. Instead, we rely on a patchwork of legal interpretations and political restraint, both of which are now under great strain.

Over the past decade, we have seen the right of Australians to say what they think come under growing pressure. While parliaments across this country have made no meaningful effort to strengthen protections for speech, they have repeatedly passed laws, both state and federal, that restrict it.

We are now approaching a point where it is quite dangerous to openly say things most people might privately believe. It’s a brave person, for example, who states that men cannot become women. Think about that for a single moment, a simple biological observation, one that would have been considered self-evident since God created Adam and Eve, can now place a person at risk of being dragged before a tribunal, interrogated for their words and publicly condemned.

Is that the country we want to live in? A country where citizens must measure every sentence, weigh every opinion and censor their own thoughts out of fear that the state or one of its many administrative tribunals might come knocking at their door.

That is not a free society, and the problem is getting worse. Just look at the plethora of so-called ‘hate crimes legislation’ recently passed at state and federal levels. Whatever their stated intentions might have been, these fast-tracked laws represent a serious and dangerous expansion of state power at the direct expense of fundamental civil liberties. They form part of a worrying trend across state and federal parliaments, a steady encroachment on speech, association and dissent.

Piece by piece, law by law, our freedoms are being narrowed. The last thing this country needs is Canberra or the states giving themselves more power, especially when that power is built upon the wonderfully elastic and entirely subjective concept of hate.

Now, history teaches us something very simple. Laws drafted in moments of moral urgency often out-live the crisis that gave rise to them. When they do, vague wording and poorly defined concepts stop protecting people. What do they do instead? They start to police ideas.

The fatal flaw in these attacks on speech should have been obvious from the beginning. Who decides what ‘hate’ is? Who defines what ‘extremism’ is? Who defines what ‘harm’ is? These terms are fluid by their nature. What is labelled ‘mainstream’ today could be labelled ‘extreme’ tomorrow. What is condemned as hate in one political climate may be regarded as genuine political criticism in another.

Today extremist groups may be banned; tomorrow it may be any group that disagrees with the orthodoxy of the day. How long before holding a biblical worldview on sex, gender or marriage is deemed hateful? How long before opposing mass migration or questioning multiculturalism, criticising powerful foreign lobbies or challenging prevailing political narratives attracts scrutiny under these types of laws? Hate is subjective; freedom is not.

We are already seeing the consequences of this creeping authoritarianism. Federal senators have been threatened with legal action over words spoken in debates. Australians have been dragged through court for things they said at rallies. Some have been sent to prison for words alone. Let’s be clear on this one. There are many opinions expressed in this country that I may strongly disagree with, but disagreement is not the test.

Freedom of speech exists precisely to protect speech that we may not like. Having a bad opinion should never be enough to send someone to prison. Once Australians begin to fear that their opinions, their religious beliefs, their political arguments, their associations or their participation in protests could expose them to investigation or sanction, public debate will inevitably narrow. When debate narrows, democracy will start to wither.

Yet this place continually nibbles away at our freedoms like termites in a weatherboard cottage, while too many in this chamber applaud quietly from the shadows. Too many in this place like to sell the illusion of safety while quietly undermining liberty.

If we truly want to protect freedom in Australia, we must go further than repealing bad laws. We must entrench the principle itself - that is, the principle of free speech. That is precisely what my amendment seeks to do. It would provide Australians with a clear, unambiguous guarantee that governments cannot pass laws limiting freedom of speech or freedom of the press. It would bring Australia closer into line with other western democracies that recognise speech as a foundational liberty.

Consider, for example, the first amendment to the United States Constitution, which states ‘Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press’. That simple sentence has served a powerful shield for liberty for more than two centuries. Our Constitution already recognises the importance of protecting certain freedoms from government interference. For example, section 116 prohibits the Commonwealth from establishing a religion, imposing religious observance or prohibiting the free speech of religion.

In a similar way, my proposal would recognise something that Australians instinctively understand - that people must be free to express their thoughts without fear of government reprisal. Without speech there can be no true expression of thought. Without freedom of thought, there can be no meaningful freedom at all.

The enlightenment which lay the foundations of the modern democratic world was built on the simple but revolutionary idea that individuals should be allowed to challenge prevailing beliefs. Progress became possible because people were free to question authority. But if we begin to suppress speech again, if certain ideas become untouchable and beyond criticism, we risk sliding backwards into a new dark age of intellectual conformity, and that serves nobody. What good are all of our other freedoms if people are not free to think independently of the state and express those thoughts openly?

This is why my bill ultimately places the question where it belongs, in the hands of the Australian people. It would give Australians the opportunity to vote in a referendum and decide for themselves just how important freedom of speech is to them, and I have great confidence in the judgement of Australians. We may agree or disagree on many issues, but we also believe in a fair go. We believe in open debate, and we believe in the right of every citizen to voice their opinion without fear or favour.

There should not be a single senator in this chamber who would oppose free speech. There should not be a single senator here who would tell their constituents that they want to make it harder for Australians to express their opinions. We didn’t come to Canberra to oppress our constituents; we came here to defend their freedoms, and my proposal does exactly that. It is long overdue.

Senator Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

Australians will spend this long weekend in a thousand different ways - at the beach, relaxing at home or, if they can find the petrol and if they can afford it, maybe even on the road. That’s not that likely; let’s be honest.

But Easter remains something more than a break in the calendar. Easter is the moment that the West remembers the story that built it; sacrifice, forgiveness and the stubborn belief that death does not have the final word.

You don’t have to be a regular church-goer to benefit from the story of Easter. In fact, that’s precisely why it matters. Easter is not just a religious ritual; it is the cultural heartbeat of a civilisation that gave us human dignity, the rule of law and the idea that every life has value. Strip away the resurrection, and much of what we take for granted begins to look incredibly unconvincing.

In a world that feels increasingly fragmented and uncertain, Easter offers a rare pause to remind ourselves that renewal is possible no matter how dark the circumstances.

A wise man once said that even if we don’t believe Christianity to be true we should want it to be true, and he was right.

Christianity has been the moral architecture of the West for centuries. If that architecture is to endure, it needs more than vague appreciation; it needs participation.

Get yourself to church this weekend and take an hour out of your long weekend to hear again the story that built the West. You might just find that the story still speaks and it matters more than you thought.

Happy Easter to all.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

Christianity is not a lifestyle. It’s not a cultural accessory. It is a total claim on the human person, on the mind, on the conscience and on the soul. Here’s the reality that my critics refuse to admit, every single person in this chamber serves a doctrine of some sort. Some serve God, others serve Marxist ideology, some serve the state or maybe even public opinion, but no one is really neutral.

So, when I’m told to leave my faith behind, what I’m really being told is ‘Abandon your authority and submit to ours instead.’ No, I will not do that, I will not trade eternal truth for political convenience. I won’t bow to the false religion of relativism.

What we are really dealing with here is not the absence of religion but the rise of a new one. It’s a creed without God, a morality without foundation. It’s a system that demands obedience and calls it tolerance.

Let’s just be clear, the claim that religion has no place in politics is itself a dogma, an exclusive claim, a coercive claim. The question is not whether beliefs shape this place. They already do, we know that. The question is, which truth will govern us?

When God is pushed aside, it is not neutrality that replaces him; it is power. The most oppressive regimes in history did not honour Christ, they rejected Christ. What followed was not freedom. It was control, it was persecution and it was suffering on an industrial scale. Don’t tell me that taking God out of society makes it safer, it just makes it worse.

Let’s speak plainly about what Christianity actually claims. It claims that Jesus Christ is God, that he rose from the dead and that he established a charge of authority to teach truth in every single age. Just look at the king that we proclaim. He’s not a tyrant. He’s not a conqueror. He’s a King that was crowned with thorns, a King who went on to forgive his executioners, a King who laid down his life for his enemies. Do you know what? That is strength. That is power rightly ordered. That is the model that Christianity calls us to follow. It’s not weakness and it’s not chaos. It’s discipline, strength and order towards truth and the good.

Christianity also destroys the modern obsession with moral superiority, because no man earns salvation and no one stands above another. We are all in need of mercy and in need of grace, which means that there is no room for the smugness, the posturing and the endless virtue signalling that now dominate public life. From that humility comes order, from that order comes justice and from that justice comes peace.

I ask you again, what kind of society does that produce? It sounds remarkably like the one that we all claim to want. Let’s just be clear, again, I’m not going dilute my faith. I’m not going to pretend that truth is negotiable. I’m not going to speak as though Christ is optional. I serve a higher authority than this chamber, than this place, and that authority does not, and will never, change with the polls.

A nation that rejects Christ does not become freer. It simply finds a new master, that’s all. Some of you in this place don’t serve the right master. I won’t name names, but you know who you are.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

The Albanese government wants Australians to believe that we have fuel security, but we really do not. There’s no government owned reserve, there’s no safety net and there’s no plan that’s really worth its salt. There’s no secret stash of fuel waiting overseas to come and save us.

I’m sure we’ve all heard Minister Bowen talking about our strategic fuel reserve. That term might lead you to believe that we have a government backed stockpile funded, controlled and owned by us, but that is not entirely accurate.

When the minister talks about a strategic reserve, he’s actually referring to Australia’s minimum stockholding obligation which is, essentially, the fuel reserve held in the tanks of companies like Shell, Ampol, BP, Mobil, that type of thing. They usually hold around a month’s worth of fuel stocks in their tanks, well under our international obligation of 90 days.

When the government says that they’re going to release fuel, all they’re doing is asking these private companies to drain more of their tanks and hoping for the best. That’s not a strategy.

Fuel is not optional. Mums and dads need fuel to drive the kids to school. We need it to get to work. We need it to put food on the table. No fuel means no transport. No fuel means no food.

And yet what are we hearing from this government? What are we hearing? Crickets, in my opinion. It’s not good enough.

Now, some politicians are already floating the idea of COVID style stay at home orders to protect fuel supply. I’ve heard plans in the media to cap the amount of fuel we can buy to $40.

Think about that for a second. If the tankers stop coming, the government has no real plan, just slogans and spin in my opinion.

Fuel supply is a basic responsibility of government, and on that they have failed all Australians.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

Australians have always prided themselves on being a resourceful people. We can survive droughts, floods, fire and also Mr Kevin Rudd as the Prime Minister and then as a US ambassador, my goodness!

But apparently what we cannot survive is a government that thinks planning ahead is a form of colonial oppression.

Under the Prime Minister and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen, we’ve been treated to a masterclass in strategic napping.

While other nations have quietly stockpiled fuel like sensible adults preparing for winter, Australia has taken a more relaxed approach that is something between blind optimism and outright denial, in my opinion.

If a tap is turned off, we could be just weeks away from serious fuel disruption. And what’s the plan? Minister Bowen told the ABC recently that it might not hurt for people to stay home and work from home. What? Stay at home, like during the COVID era’s stay at home orders, come on Mr Bowen!

Our energy minister is a man so romantically committed to windmills and solar panels that it appears he might actually think that fuel is an optional extra.

In his world, the future is powered entirely by good intentions and a stiff breeze, which is wonderful, right up until the moment you recall that trucks, planes and most of the economy still runs on oil.

The truth is fuel security is not complicated. You store enough of it so your country doesn’t grind to a halt the moment things blow up in the Middle East or in the South China Sea. It’s not radical. It’s not controversial. It’s basic competence.

But when it comes to this Labor government, competence seems like it’s in shorter supply than diesel.

We all know what the solution is, and it’s a very simple one! Drill, baby, drill.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

The Liberal Party’s reaction to the smashing they received at the weekend in South Australia tells you everything you need to know about why they were smashed…and will continue being smashed.

After the electoral bruising in South Australia, the Liberal Party has comforted itself with a familiar bedtime story, that the surge for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is merely a protest vote.

Nothing to see here move along, voters are just having a little tantrum.

But voters don’t “decimate” a party by accident, they do it when they’ve had enough.

An opposition has one job, to oppose, to offer different ideas, different priorities and, dare I say it, a different vision.

Instead what have we seen? A political photocopier set permanently to “Labor Lite.”

And not even a crisp copy, more like a faded smudged version of the original.

Why would any voter choose a watered down imitation when they can have the real thing?

If you want Labor you vote Labor. If you want something else well apparently that option hasn’t been available for quite some time in South Australia…or in Victoria…or in NSW…or federally.

When was the last time the Liberals seriously cut taxes?

When did they take a clear stand on cultural issues rather than nervously checking the latest opinion poll?

When did they lead instead of follow?

Since John Howard left the stage the party has wandered, aimless, uncertain, and increasingly irrelevant.

And now instead of confronting their own failures, the Liberals sneer at Pauline Hanson and her voters.

It’s easier of course than admitting the truth.

The problem isn’t One Nation. And the problem isn’t protest votes. The problem is them.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

The far left like to imagine that they are on a moral crusade fighting all of the ills of the world, but in reality they are experiencing a crisis of self worth while using protest signs as props.

From climate catastrophists predicting doom every decade or so and LGBTQIAQS+ (just keep on adding letters) activists policing pronouns with the intensity of an air traffic controller to socialists who have never even run a lemonade stand, these movements look different, but I will argue that they share a common emotional core; grievance dressed up as virtue.

Consider the hypersensitivity to language, they claim that words must be changed so as to not offend various minorities and that entire dictionaries must be reissued annually lest someone feel a tremor of discomfort. Yet curiously, the people most outraged by words are typically well educated upper middle class Westerners who claim to be bravely defending minorities, rather than the minorities themselves. There are far more Western leftists rebranding Australia Day as Invasion Day than there are Aboriginal people in Alice Springs truly upset about the issue.

Then there’s the far left’s fixation on weakness. Progressive activism tends to orbit around groups defined primarily by vulnerability, and I argue that this is not accidental. Identification with the oppressed offers instant moral elevation. You don’t have to build anything; you just align yourself with perceived fragility and, by association, inherent righteousness. This is the easiest way of compensating for their own perceived weakness.

So called progressives hate displays of strength, merit and competition, which are viewed with deep suspicion. They love the collective because the group enables them to hide from inconveniences like personal responsibility, and they ultimately come to hate truth itself. The problem with truth is that it ultimately creates a bar of measurement, and that is uncomfortable for people who never want their ideas to be tested or their worldview to be evaluated. If outcomes differ, the system’s broken. If facts contradict ideology, the facts are just problematic.

At the bottom of all of this is envy. This movement is empowered by not confidence but resentment. It’s resentment of strength, success and standards.

When a socialist sees somebody doing well in business and succeeding in life, instead of praising and emulating the actions of that person they yell, ‘Tax the rich,’ and try to tear them down. When they see a mother staying home and raising her children, doing the school drop offs and building a family, they just call it oppression instead of recognising it as one of the most meaningful and valuable roles a woman can have. When a socialist government sees an individual working hard and doing well in life, it does not say ‘good for them’ and it does not ask, ‘How can I make this person’s life easier?’ It asks instead: ‘How can we milk this person? How can we make their life harder?’

The far left cannot tolerate success because success exposes failure. It cannot tolerate strength, because strength exposes weakness. It cannot tolerate truth, because truth exposes ideology. So, instead of improving themselves, they tend to rewrite reality. But reality does not bend to slogans and certainly doesn’t care about your many silly pronouns. In the end, their movement doesn’t elevate society; it doesn’t bring it up. It simply drags it down to the level of their own resentment, and resentment has never once built a civilisation. It only seeks to tear it down.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

The biggest lie you’ve ever been told is that you’re free.

In the old days, slavery was at least honest. You could see the chains, and you knew who owned you.

Today slavery is just as real but disguised, so that most don’t even know they’re in chains.

The World Economic Forum famously promised us the future:

“You will own nothing and be happy.”

Look around, it’s already here. Think about it.

The next generation won’t own homes, they’ll rent forever.

You don’t own your car, you lease it.

You don’t own the movies or music you consume, you rent access through subscriptions.

You don’t own your money, it’s digital credit that can vanish with a policy change.

You don’t own your phone, you’re on a contract.

You don’t own your software, it’s all cloud based, licensed, never yours.

You don’t own your social media accounts, one algorithmic strike and you’re gone.

You don’t even own your privacy, it’s traded for convenience and so-called “free” services.

You don’t own ANYTHING. And YOU ARE HAPPY.

Ownership was once freedom now everything is leased, licensed, streamed and revoked at the click of a corporate mouse.

And here’s the genius of it, step out of line and the system doesn’t need to jail you, it just switches you off.

Instead of iron shackles, we wear invisible ones and debt is the modern overseer.

Whereas once the plantation owner once fed and clothed his slaves, now we must do that ourselves, and thank the system for the privilege.

Slavery never went away.

It was just modernised.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

Leave a comment

• Higher taxes are inevitable.

• Spending per person has grown about twice as fast as tax collected per person

• Australia has shifted from independence to dependency.

• Australia once had no net debt, but today we are all on the hook for tens of thousands.

• Future generations will pay the price.

Let me make a prediction so blindingly obvious that it barely qualifies as one, higher taxes are coming.

You don’t spend months floating “conversations” about revenue, fairness and “structural pressures” unless you’re preparing the patient for the needle. Governments don’t soften the ground unless they’re about to dig.

The problem is arithmetic, that most offensive of political realities for this Labor Government.

For the better part of two decades government spending per person has grown at roughly twice the pace of tax collected per person, that gap does not close itself, it widens. And when it widens far enough, it swallows you.

We are spending like a country with a mining boom and taxing like a country in denial.

The result?

A population increasingly dependent on government cheques, subsidies and services, while at the same time less able to stand on its own two feet.

Independence shrinks as the state expands and productivity takes a dive.

Two decades ago, we had no net debt.

Today, every man, woman and child effectively carries a public debt burden of tens of thousands of dollars.

Our Commonwealth’s net worth has evaporated.

And who inherits the tab? Not the politicians cutting ribbons today, it’s the young, the ones told endlessly that they are the future while we quietly mortgage it.

When the government spends someone else eventually pays.

The fix will not be glamorous, it requires restraint, discipline and the unfashionable art of saying no.

But sadly this Government prefers to tout for short term applause rather than do the hard work of long term repair.

In short, stop spending money like a drunken sailor!

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

• The conflict with Iran is framed publicly as a fight for freedom and democracy, but in reality it is also about oil, power and control of the global economic order.

• The US dollar’s dominance in global oil trade underpins American financial strength, even amid massive national debt.

• BRICS nations have been working to undermine the petrodollar system by trading energy in alternative currencies and purchasing sanctioned oil through shadow tanker networks.

• Trump’s actions against Venezuela and Iran not only target hostile regimes but strategically disrupt this alternative oil trade and weaken BRICS energy independence.

• While regime change in Iran may produce moral benefits, the deeper outcome is geopolitical, strengthening the US dollar and reinforcing American economic power.

Of course the war in Iran is about freedom. It’s always about freedom. Freedom and democracy and puppies and nuclear non proliferation.

But let’s not kid ourselves.

Trump’s strike on Iran isn’t just about liberating long suffering Iranians from a theocratic regime.

It’s also about oil. And power. And who gets to write the rules of the global economy.

By the way, that doesn’t make it wrong. If someone is going to sit at the head of the geopolitical table carving up influence, I’d rather it be Washington than Beijing. Call me old fashioned.

Still, we should be adult enough to admit what’s happening.

The Middle East has always been about two things, theology and oil. The theology gets the headlines, oil pays the bills.

The US dollar dominates global oil trade. That little arrangement keeps the greenback strong, even while America runs debts large enough to make the Jacinta Allan Government look fiscally responsible.

As long as the world needs dollars to buy oil, the dollar stays king.

Enter BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. A club of nations with a shared hobby, trading energy in anything but US dollars.

The BRICS nations have been experimenting with alternative currencies and, more provocatively, buying oil from sanctioned states like Iran and Venezuela.

Because nothing says “multipolar world” like a discounted barrel of embargoed crude.

To pull this off, they’ve relied on what’s politely called a “shadow tanker fleet.” Ships meet at sea. Oil gets blended. Venezuelan heavy shakes hands with Iranian light. Add a splash of Russian for flavour. Suddenly the chemical signature is murky enough to pass as plausible deniability.

Presto. Sanctioned oil becomes “mysterious origin” oil.

India and China get cheap energy. Sanctioned regimes get cash. The US dollar gets quietly undermined.

Trump’s actions in Venezuela and now Iran hit that system squarely between the eyes.

Yes, removing a brutal regime is good.

Yes, the Islamic Republic has been a global exporter of misery.

But crippling Iran also disrupts the alternative oil trade that was slowly detaching from the US dollar.

That’s not a side effect. That’s strategy.

Trump’s action against Iran weakens BRICS energy independence while reinforcing the petrodollar.

So yes, the Iranian people may well benefit if the regime collapses. That would be a moral win.

But let’s not pretend this is a Marvel movie.

It’s geopolitics. It’s oil. It’s power.

And in this particular contest, the outcome strengthens the US dollar and weakens its rivals.

On balance?

That’s not a bad day’s work.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

• The Danger of Overreach - His jail sentence signals a shift from policing actions to auditing thoughts and words.

• Selective Enforcement - Why one man is jailed while politicians and other activists using similar rhetoric remain free.

• Subjectivity as a Weapon - “Hate speech” is defined by shifting “vibes” rather than clear laws, making it easy to weaponise against any dissenting opinion.

• Criticism Over Incarceration - In a free society, “ugly” or “moronic” speech should be met with public debate, not a prison cell.

The jailing of Brandan Koschel for mouthing off in a 40 second speech at a rally is being hailed as a triumph of virtue. In reality, it’s Exhibit A in the case for scrapping hate speech laws altogether.

Because once the state starts policing words don’t be surprised when it begins auditing your thoughts.

Brandan has been sentenced to a year in prison for declaring to a Sydney crowd that Jews are “the greatest enemy.” It was ugly, the sort of thing usually confined to the darker corners of the internet. Was it distasteful? Sure.

Should it be illegal? That’s a far more dangerous question.

If Brandan goes to jail for declaring Jews the enemy, then consistency demands we start measuring everyone else’s rhetorical excesses with the same ruler. Does Pauline Hanson get a cell for suggesting there are no good Muslims? Do I start packing a toothbrush for suggesting Islam has ideological problems? Should half of social media be marched off in cuffs before lunchtime?

You cannot empower the state to jail people for “hate” and then act shocked when the definition of hate turns out to be elastic, political, and exquisitely selective.

Hate speech law isn’t a scalpel it’s a vibe. What counts as “harm”? Who decides? Today it’s an individual shouting nonsense into a microphone, tomorrow it’s someone questioning gender ideology or climate science.

And what about Grace Tame leading chants of “From Gadigal to Gaza, globalise the intifada”?

Or Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi declaring, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”?

Why are they free to walk around while Brandan is not?

This isn’t a defence of Brandan he sounds like a fool. But in a free society fools are not sent to prison. We should let foolish people say foolish things, and then criticise them mercilessly.

The real danger isn’t that a moron said something moronic, it’s that the state now claims the authority to decide which morons are permissible and which are prosecutable.

Once you hand the government power to criminalise speech, don’t be surprised when the category of “criminal speech” expands with remarkable creativity.

Democracy requires free speech, especially the kind that makes you uncomfortable. If you won’t defend that principle now, don’t be shocked when the law turns on you later.

These hate speech laws must all be repealed.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

Edit: It has also been brought to my attention that a pedophile in Melbourne who was in possession of videos of children as young as 10 being violently raped was given a 3 months prison sentence. Make it make sense. You can’t. Read that article here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15571813/Outrage-weak-sentence-school-principal-paedophile-sick-messages-exposed.html

• Angus Taylor’s leadership speech confirmed my fears, plenty of words, but no substance.

• I heard clichés and safe platitudes, not a bold plan to fix Australia’s problems.

• We need clarity and courage on immigration, spending, tax, Net Zero and civil liberties, not managerial drift.

• His record shows he is no reformer, having backed damaging climate targets and failed to defend freedoms during COVID.

• This is not renewal, Australia deserves stronger, more principled leadership.

Watching Angus Taylor address the nation as the new leader of the Liberal Party of Australia confirmed my worst fears. The man has mastered the ancient art of saying absolutely nothing in a great many words.

The speech was a banquet of motherhood statements. Families are important. Small businesses matter. Australians are doing it tough. The future must be stronger. The middle must be supported. You know, that sort of thing.

If clichés were currency, we’d have paid off the national debt by dinner time.

Those who backed Angus Taylor as the alternative are not offering renewal. They are offering continuity, more of the same drift, more of the same managerial politics.

In his speech, Mr Taylor was very specific about what Anthony Albanese and Labor are doing wrong, energy policy, cost of living, housing, immigration, a forensic catalogue of failure. But none of that is news, we knew that already.

Oppositions that merely describe the problem are like doctors who solemnly inform you that you are very sick and then wander off for sushi. Helpful, but only in the sense that now you’re depressed as well as dying.

What he should have done but did not was outline precisely how he intends to make things better.

Here is a list I drafted on my phone in under two minutes:

1. Cut immigration to net zero. One in, one out.

2. Deport those who reject Australian Western values.

3. Slash the bloated public service.

4. Reform the NDIS to serve those who genuinely need it and prosecute the rorters.

5. Cut government spending across the board.

6. Reform the tax system, scrap some excises, cut income tax massively and raise the tax free threshold.

7. Introduce income splitting for families to support stay at home parents (income splitting lets married couples share their income for tax, so families with one main earner pay less)

8. Reward married couples raising children with lower taxation.

9. Properly fund the military.

10. Drop Net Zero and exit the Paris Climate Accord.

11. Tell the UN and WHO to take a hike.

12. Repeal every last hate speech law.

That is what clarity looks like. Instead, we got vibes.

On Net Zero, Angus Taylor is not a reformer. As Energy Minister, he bound Australia to targets that are driving up power prices and undermining industry. The Liberals know Net Zero is damaging, yet they are too afraid of hostile headlines from the ABC to scrap it outright. So they manage it instead.

They promise to administer decline more competently.

During COVID, Mr Taylor stood alongside Scott Morrison as lockdowns were endorsed. He was no voice of resistance and he was not a defender of civil liberties. For Australians who lost livelihoods and freedoms, silence still matters.

He did not speak plainly when his party worked with Labor to pass so called “anti free speech” laws either.

On immigration, he talks about percentage reductions rather than firm caps. In trying not to offend anyone, the Liberals convince no one.

As economic spokesman, he failed to articulate a bold alternative while families buckled under cost of living pressures. According to some within his own party, his nickname is “TACO” Taylor Always Chickens Out.

Jane Hume as deputy offers no course correction. In 2024 she voted against my urgency motion stating that babies born alive after a failed abortion deserve care.

This is not renewal, this is not courage. Australia does not need more reviews, frameworks and committees. It needs strength.

The Liberal Party today is bereft of people with courage and full of people who believe in nothing. They are worse than Labor, like a ship drifting at sea without a rudder, hoping the currents of public opinion will carry them somewhere safe.

Angus Taylor has spent his life preparing for this moment, only to bore the nation with platitudes.

If this is the grand renewal of the conservative movement, someone has misplaced the movement. For goodness sake, stand for something. Or close up shop and let someone else have a go.

The Liberal party cannot be saved. It is rotten from the inside out.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

The problem with the Liberal Party is not that it doesn’t have enough women, it’s that it has lost its masculinity.

The once great conservative party has become so timid over the past decade that even its senior men sound unsure of themselves. While the country faces serious challenges, they are busy adjusting the optics.

The modern Liberal Party is cautious to the point of paralysis. It hesitates when it should decide, it consults when it should lead.

Take the latest leadership speculation around Angus Taylor.

Yesterday he told journalists the moment requires courage. Yet he could not bring himself to formally announce a leadership challenge. He resigned from the shadow cabinet, hinted at ambition, circled the question, but would not state plainly what he intended to do.

That is the problem, nothing is ever said clearly, nothing is ever done decisively. Positions are floated, softened, tested, and reworded until they mean almost nothing at all.

Spend time around Liberal MPs and Senators and you will see plenty of activity, meetings, reviews, working groups, consultations. Everyone looks busy, yet very little changes.

The Liberal Party does not lead anymore, it manages perceptions. It does not act, it convenes.

Real leadership requires someone to point to true north and say, “This is the direction, follow me.” In today’s Liberal Party, leadership is treated like a rumour, discussed quietly, never demonstrated boldly.

The only thing modern Liberals seem to value more than principle is approval from people who couldn’t care less about them and who will never support them.

They know Net Zero is damaging this country, they know it drives up power prices and undermines industry, but they are terrified of being called “climate deniers”. So instead of scrapping it outright they keep it as a “target” while quietly downgrading it as a commitment.

It is politics designed to avoid criticism, not to solve the very real problems we have.

On immigration, they sometimes speak of reductions but refuse to state firm numbers, they zig and zag to avoid being labelled harsh or unfriendly. In trying not to offend anyone, they end up convincing no one.

The result? Election losses and growing contempt from the centre right.

They may not win government, but at least they avoid being unpopular in polite company.

Modern Liberals adore process, they love reviews, consultations, frameworks and stakeholder engagement. They review the review. They establish committees to examine committees.

Meanwhile the country burns. Australia does not need more process. It needs strength.

It needs leadership that identifies what is right and proceeds to do it regardless of hostile headlines from the ABC. It needs leaders who care more about the nation’s future than about being liked by left wing soy latte sipping radical Leftists from the inner city.

Masculinity is in short supply inside the Liberal Party. And until it returns, they will remain exactly where they are, busy, cautious, and in opposition.

This party cannot be saved.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

• Most people think Tesla is just a car company but it’s really an AI and robotics company.

• What Elon Musk is doing isn’t random or eccentric, all of his projects connect into one bigger vision of building the future.

• The Boring Company isn’t some tunnel gimmick, it is the infrastructure you’d actually need if humanity is serious about living on Mars.

• Starlink and SpaceX aren’t hobbies either, they’re about communications, and making space exploration real again through engineering, not bureaucracy.

• Neuralink fits into the same story, it’s about human survival and advancement.

Most people mistakenly think Tesla is a car company. That’s what happens when you glance at a logo, nod politely, and stop thinking. In reality Tesla is an artificial intelligence and robotics company masquerading as a car brand, much like Shakespeare masqueraded as a playwright instead of a civilisation defining mind.

The cars are incidental. The AI is the point. Tesla is not about getting you from Point A to Point B. It’s about autonomy. It’s about machines that see, interpret, decide, and act in the real world. The vehicle is simply the training ground, the rolling laboratory for something much larger, intelligence embedded into physical reality.

And this is the pattern with Elon Musk. People keep treating his projects as eccentric billionaire hobbies because they are incapable of recognising coherence and competence when it stares them in the face.

We live in a culture that no longer builds so when someone does we don’t know what to make of it.

The Boring Company isn’t about novelty tunnels for bored elites. It’s not a gimmick, it’s not a vanity project, it is groundwork for another world. Because if you are serious about making humanity multi planetary you don’t just need rockets you need infrastructure, you need transport systems, you need shelter. You need cities that can survive radiation, dust storms, and a hostile surface.

And what is the most obvious solution on Mars? You build underground, you tunnel, you carve out protected arteries beneath an alien planet, the foundations of a future civilisation.

The modern bureaucratic mind sees a tunnel and thinks traffic management, Musk sees a tunnel and thinks MARS! Earth is the testing ground, Mars is the destination.

Starlink meanwhile isn’t a quirky satellite hobby, it is a global communications grid that works over oceans, in war zones, in disasters and crucially, beyond Earth. It is sovereignty in orbit. A decentralised nervous system for civilisation, beyond the reach of petty regulators and ideological commissars.

And SpaceX? SpaceX isn’t a “private space company.” It is the only organisation on Earth reliably sending rockets into orbit and landing them back on the ground like something out of science fiction, that alone should have ended the conversation.

NASA became a museum, space became a Power Point presentation and governments turned the frontier into a diversity seminar but Musk turned it back into engineering, back into industry, back into destiny. He has been explicit about the goal, making humanity an interplanetary species.

Not as a branding exercise, as a civilisational insurance policy, because a species confined to one planet is a species living on a single point of failure.

One asteroid. One catastrophe. One collapse.

And this is where Neuralink enters the story, the project that reliably sends social media into conniptions. The usual hysteria follows, dystopian fantasies, mind control, “Black Mirror” slogans from people whose entire relationship with technology begins and ends with scrolling. But Neuralink is not about tyranny, it is about survival because becoming a spacefaring civilisation is not just a question of rockets and tunnels.

It is a question of the human body itself. How do you restore movement to the paralysed? How do you restore sight to the blind? How do you extend cognition, communication, and capability in environments where the margin for error is zero?

Technology itself is not evil, it is not some moral contaminant that automatically leads to dystopia. The internet has connected billions of people, mobile phones have saved lives and democratised information, modern medicine has turned once fatal conditions into inconveniences. These are tools, powerful, world shaping tools. And like every tool in human history, what matters is not their existence but their use, a hammer can build a home or crack a skull. The question has never been whether technology is dangerous, the question is whether civilisation is wise enough to wield it well.

The printing press once terrified the authorities, electricity was once considered unnatural, anaesthesia was called immoral, every leap forward is first greeted as heresy by those whose entire identity is invested in keeping the world small.

None of this is random, none of it is disconnected, Musk is not going from one shiny object to another, he is building the future.

Energy. Transport. Communications. AI. Cognition. Space. The pieces interlock, the vision is coherent. Whether you like him is irrelevant, whether you understand what he represents is the point.

And yet log onto X and you will find an endless supply of people calling him an idiot, this is one of the great spectacles of modern Western life, critics using a platform he bought for billions to sneer at his intelligence between retweets and profile picture activism.

It’s like heckling Michelangelo from the scaffolding of the Sistine Chapel. It’s like mocking Edison by candlelight. It is resentment dressed up as sophistication.

Every company Musk has touched has become a world changing enterprise. Not a podcast, not a consultancy, not a taxpayer funded NGO producing “awareness.”

Actual companies that build things, employ people, and shift the trajectory of civilisation. Meanwhile, his loudest critics have built precisely nothing, except perhaps a following devoted to explaining why ambition is suspicious and greatness is “problematic.”

This is the modern Western reflex, mock the builder, mistrust the visionary but worship the bureaucrat that has never achieved a thing of value for anyone. EVER.

We have reached the point where imagining the future is considered arrogance and attempting to build it is grounds for moral indictment. Safer, apparently, to stagnate politely than to risk greatness loudly. Safer to issue press releases than to pour concrete. Safer to regulate than to innovate. Safer to sneer than to strive.

Civilisations do not collapse because they lack critics, they collapse because they lose their nerve, because they forget how to do great things, because they replace courage with compliance, aspiration with administration, frontiers with feelings.

You don’t have to like Elon Musk, you don’t have to agree with him on everything, but if you cannot recognise a once in a generation visionary when one is openly, messily, relentlessly building the future in front of you then problem isn’t Musk. It’s you!!!

It’s time people stopped booing from the cheap seats, it’s time they stopped worshipping safety as the highest virtue, it’s time they remembered that civilisation is not built by the timid.

The future does not belong to the sneering, it belongs to those still brave enough to aim for the stars.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

Do me a favour and if you’re not already, subscribe to my YouTube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/@senatorbabet

• Australia no longer has a real two party contest, Labor and the Liberals just copy each other.

• A true two party system needs genuine ideological differences, but the major parties now mimic and collude instead.

• Voters are abandoning both parties as they recognise the political class has become interchangeable and insulated.

• Labor and Liberal have united on hate speech laws, electoral reforms, and deference to global bodies like the WHO, UN, and WEF.

• The duopoly must be torn down through grassroots political involvement, voting alone isn’t enough.

  

Australia likes to think it has a two party system but in reality what we’ve got is a political photocopier. Labor presses the button and the Liberals take the copy, sometimes they change the letterhead but that’s about it.

A two party system only works when there is a genuine contest of ideas, strong principled values, and competing visions for the country.

Socialism versus capitalism, big government versus small, control vs Freedom, War vs Peace. You know…principled differences.

But when both major parties not only mimic each other but quietly collude, the system collapses. And that’s exactly what we now see happening in real time.

The proof is in the polls.

Voters are abandoning the major parties because they can see the game.

The Labor and Liberal parties came together on hate speech laws that criminalise ordinary Australians for saying the wrong thing.

They came together on electoral “reforms” designed to keep new entrants out and lock themselves in.

And how many times have we seen them nod along together with the World Health Organisation, United Nations and the World Economic Forum, like junior managers desperate not to upset head office.

Our political class has become interchangeable, insulated, and largely uninterested in the people they claim to represent.

So people are now pledging to put their vote somewhere else at the next election, and so they should.

The two party system has failed this country and must now be torn down.

But everyone reading my article needs to do more than vote against the two party system. Voting alone will not rescue this country. We need people to get involved in politics at a grassroots level.

Join a political party, give them your effort and energy, participate in pre selection of candidates, and put your hand up to run. This is how we break up the duopoly.

Ordinary people must get involved, demand and support candidates of substance, and reject the careerists whose sole ambition is to toe the party line and preserve their careers.

The two party system hasn’t failed because it exists, it failed because the two parties are almost identical.

And unless citizens step up and participate, it will keep failing.

I think everyone in Canberra knows that the jig is up, it scares the hell out of the Liberal and Labor Parties, but it should excite all of those who genuinely care about the future of our country.

For as long as I am in Canberra I will continue to fight for all of us.

Senator Ralph Babet, Senator for Victoria, United Australia Party.

Do me a favour and if you’re not already, subscribe to my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@senatorbabet

Australia Marches is bringing Australia’s largest Australia Day rally to the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens, and you’re invited.

Live music and a free BBQ. Politicians, high profile commentators and everyday Australians will come together for a family friendly and patriotic celebration. We’ll wave our flag high! 🇦🇺

🎤 SPEAKERS INCLUDE:

* Senator Pauline Hanson

* Croc Turnbull

* Senator Malcolm Roberts

* Robbie Katter MP

* Sam Bamford (2 Worlds Collide Podcast)

* Big Chocky (Australia’s Controversial Coach)

* Harry Richardson (British-Australian Community)

* Ed Schuller (Teachers Professional Association Australia)

* Steve Dickson (former QLD MP)

* Lachlan Lade (The Australian Lobby Group)

* Ben Adams (The Australian Lobby Group)

* Scott Challen (Australia Marches)

📍 EVENT DETAILS

🗓 Monday, 26 January 2026

⏰ 12pm-3pm

📍 Brisbane City Botanic Gardens

💥 FREE ENTRY

Bring your family. Bring your mates.