You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 73: John Ruddick MLC - Defending Liberty, Property Rights, and Free Speech in Australia

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

My guest today is John Ruddick, a member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales (Australia) and the first representative of the Libertarian Party elected to Parliament. John is a fierce advocate for civil liberties, a staunch defender of free speech, and an unapologetic voice against government overreach. His journey from mortgage broker to politician is marked by his unwavering commitment to individual rights, decentralization, and liberty-first governance.From challenging Australia’s authoritarian COVID response to pushing for bold pro-Bitcoin legislation, John brings a radical yet refreshing perspective to modern politics. We dive into his banned maiden speech, his views on free speech and state power, and the philosophical roots of libertarianism. He breaks down why he believes government should shrink dramatically, how welfare could be radically reimagined through competition and compassion, and why Murray Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism is the north star.► If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow and support my work. Thank you!-- SPONSORS --►► Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn ►► Join me on June 19-21 at BTC Prague! Code EFRAT = 10% discount: https://pages.btcprague.com/ambassador-efrat-fenigson -- SPECIAL OFFERS –►► Watch “New Totalitarian Order” conference with Prof. Mattias Desmet & Efrat: https://efenigson.gumroad.com/l/desmet_efrat ►► Enjoy the Little HODLer products, learn about sound money while having fun! use code EFRAT for 10% off on non-sale items: https://thelittlehodler.com/ ►► 10% off on all books & accessories at the “Bitcoin Infinity Store” - use code EFRAT.►► Join me in any of these upcoming events: https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events -- LINKS –John’s Twitter: https://x.com/JohnRuddick2 John’s inaugural speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw1zPTDEVxA Efrat's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efenigsonEfrat's Telegram: https://t.me/efenigsonWatch/listen on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoiceSupport Efrat's work: ⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/efenigson   ⁠Support Efrat with Bitcoin: https://geyser.fund/project/efenigson-- CHAPTERS –00:00 Coming Up…01:30 Introduction to John02:24 Covid-19 and the Response in Australia07:09 John's Maiden Speech in Parliament - Why Was It Censored?12:15 Free Speech, Government Overreach & Libertarianism25:45 C19 Plandemic Aftermath & Jab Damages in Australia36:45 Foundations & History of Libertarianism, inc. Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Milton Fridman47:40 The Role of Government: A Debate on Anarcho-Capitalism53:50 Private Free Cities: A New Approach to Governance55:15 Libertarianism & Bitcoin: A Natural Alliance57:40 Libertarianism & Bitcoin in Australia - Separation of Money & State1:05:45 Macro View on the Australian Economy1:14:20 Australia's Political History: Lessons for the Future (from 1788 to 1898 to today)1:21:40 A Message of Hope from John

A really bad part of these hate speech laws is the chilling effect. A lot of people walk around thinking they know there's hate speech laws out there, they do not know the intricacies, but they just say, well, err on the side of caution, I will not speak my mind. This isn't good for society. Australia did not have income tax when we federated, when we had independence from Britain. But then a little thing came along called World War I,

and then the federal government said, well, look, we've got a world war on you, we just need to have temporary income tax. So, of course, the war comes and goes, but the income tax stays. If someone's got their head around the concept that money can exist separate to government, a currency can exist separate, if they've got to that point, if they've got the intellectual capacity to understand that, hello, you are a libertarian. But Australia has been in a per capita recession now for coming up to two years, which means technically we're not in a recession because, oh, the economy did grow. it's bigger than it was 12 months ago well that's true yeah well we've added a two percent of the

population or whatever so we're you know the people that are here their little piece of the pie got smaller okay and that and and it doesn't look like that's going to change and it's like our politicians don't even talk about economic growth anymore you know we're just bubbling along yeah we're not even bubbling along we're sort of sinking a little bit uh so and the government's getting you know government's getting bigger and bigger and bigger Hello and welcome to another episode of You're the Voice. I have the honor of sitting here, actually virtually, but in the same continent with John Ruddick. Hey, John.

Hello, Efren. Very nice to see you. I saw you at the Bitcoin Alive conference at New South Wales University a couple of Sundays ago, and I enjoyed your presentation, so it's nice to be chatting with you now. thank you so much for taking the time we didn't find the time face to face but we didn't miss on the opportunity to do it anyway so i really appreciate your time okay so john i have prepared quite a few questions for you i've been looking at your work i really like what you do in fact i've been following you before before this occasion so i've been seeing some of your work during COVID. I was very active during COVID, both in Israel, but also internationally.

And I also arranged, I'm just giving you some background just so you know, I've arranged a protest outside of the Australian embassy in Tel Aviv, because I have had a personal situation where my son and his father did not see each other for three years because his father was not allowed to leave Australia. I mean, he could leave Australia, but signed some really harsh documents that would not allow him to come back for at least six months, which means he would lose his business. So he couldn't come and see his son for three years. They didn't meet and I couldn't send my son to Australia. So we were trying to get the help of the embassy. There were exceptions in the law for it, but still they did not approve his father to come to Israel. So

I was following closely what was happening in Australia during COVID and I saw your actions and some other great politicians like Senator Roberts and Antic and some other ones that were really vocal about the violations of human rights and I wanted to personally thank you for that because I think there were not enough people speaking out during that time. Well, look, I knew you were highly intelligent when it came to Bitcoin, but I didn't know you were also a COVID protester. I'm very sorry to hear those dreadful circumstances with your family. But, look, it was five years ago today that I actually first spoke out against COVID. It was March 20, 2000.

2020. Sorry, it was 2020. and uh the funny thing was is that the all around the world spontaneously the only people who were protesting against covid in the very early days when it really took courage were the libertarians and it's not like there was a grand cabal of libertarians saying hey let's come out against this no we just did it organically spontaneously because we could see what was going on and but All those people like yourself, Efra, who did take a stand and do something, we all feel like we're family. All those people, you know, we were a persecuted minority there.

Yeah. So if you have, you know, I'm very pleased to be here. I'm even more pleased to be here since you took a stand. Great. Okay. So let me just do a quick intro for my audience that may not know who you are because I have international audience all around the world. So John is the member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, which is one of the states in Australia, since 2023. His maiden speech to Parliament was banned from YouTube after John questioned Australia's draconian response to COVID-19.

And that was the first time that it ever happened to an Australian politician that their content was banned from YouTube. You can find this speech, which is a very good speech, and we'll talk about it a bit more, pinned to John's ex-account. Prior to Parliament, John owned a mortgage-broking business. He's an avid reader, a student of history, and often contributes to Spectator Australia and Sky News Australia. John joined the Libertarian Party in April 2023, correct me if I'm wrong. No, it was mid-2021.

I was caught up with the Liberal Party over COVID response. Okay, sorry. Sorry about that. Right, and you left the Liberal Party, right, because of their overreach to COVID, overreaction, sorry, to COVID lockdowns and to COVID in general and the whole charade. This is my addition. John is the first member of the party to be elected

to the New South Wales Parliament. And I just want to add a tweet to your biography that I got today from one of your followers online. He wrote, John Riddick is hands down the most consistent non-career politician in the New South Wales Parliament. He is solidly pro-liberty as a principle,

not just when it suits. I wished and pray God sends more people into the halls of government with the same convictions. We desperately need a slash bureaucracy to slash bureaucracy as Australia is literally drowning in it and they don't even know it. Well, that sounds like I've created a fake account

to say nice things about myself, but no. Look, you mentioned the maiden speech. Yes. You know, most of these maiden speeches in Parliament, I'm not sure if you have it in the Knesset, but the tradition is in the Westminster system, not in the American system, but when you're a new member of Parliament, you are not allowed to speak until you give

your maiden speech. Now, of course, it's got the PC term, inaugural speech, but I prefer maiden speech. It's a bit of a traditionalist. And the convention is that you sort of tell the parliament about why you're there. Okay, now, and the rest of the parliament will all attend and remain silent.

Now, what happens, Efrat, with all those maiden speeches is that they go for typically 20, 30 minutes, and they spend the first 15 minutes thanking people, thanking their god thanking their mom and dad thanking their year four history teacher and then they talk about some crisis that happened in their life and then they got out of that crisis and they said i'm going to do something i'm going to i'm going to get into public life i'm going to be a politician because they you know and and then if they if they uh yeah sometimes if they're from the liberal party or the right side of politics they say you know i believe in small

government and self-initiative and if they're from the layup party so i believe in a strong social welfare than the others so pretend that that's what they were really and they're really boring okay uh so i thought to myself look there's a lot of people that i need to thank but you know we had an after party and i thanked them there but i thought look let's use this opportunity to make a ideological statement let's let's spell out where the libertarians are coming from uh so we got right now then what happened is after about 24 hours we put it up on youtube it was going okay i mean most of these speeches after a year most of these maiden speeches you know a year later there might be 300 views and those that'll be the politician re-watching

themselves you know 150 times and their grandmother and everybody else uh and after a day you know it was going okay but then we get out of the blue a little notification oh your your your speech has been banned for medical misinformation now all i did effort was i said it was outrageous that ivermectin was banned now do i know that ivermectin worked well i think increasingly the evidence is that it does okay but at the time i thought look i don't know whether it works or not okay however there was a psyop going on saying it was horse paste and i said look now well the guys that won it the japanese uh inventors scientists brilliant scientists won the nobel prize for medicine for inventing ivermectin and yes it's what it's used in animals and it's used between

four billion times in human beings never any side effects okay so i just said look it was outrageous it was ben so just the fact that i hadn't mentioned ivermectin youtube says you know we're taking your speech down so then what i i was actually going home over the sydney harvard bridges in a cabin uh one of my mates suggested i'll just take it down your speech and and at first i was a bit sort of disconcerting i was thinking you know this is i was a bit it sort of rattled by it and then I thought hang on hang on hang on this is a good opportunity let's tell the whole world that my speech has been banned by YouTube so me and my friend uh bought a case of beer sat in my home office till four o'clock that morning we just told

everybody hey look my speech has been banned it just went bang and just today Efra uh it hit a million views on on on the on the on the Twitter a million one million today oh my god yes but That's just on the Twitter and that's just on the official account. I reckon it's been seen three million times. So we're very pleased. You're the Voice is brought to you by Trezor, the original Bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets since 2013, empowering individuals with an open source device, enabling beginners and experts to easily and securely hold their coins. I find my Trezor super easy to use and recommend it to my friends and family.

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The event runs for three days with a developer's day, pitching contest, panels, presentations and parties. Ticket prices increase on the first of each month, so make sure to get your ticket now. Use my code AFLAT for a 10% discount and see you in Prague. You know, I just shared a meme yesterday that they wouldn't try to shut us down or silence us if we weren't telling the truth. Well, that's true. People don't try and silence people who believe that the earth is flat. And I used to think that no one believes it anymore. No, there are people out there.

There are people out there who genuinely believe the earth is flat. And I like to have it, you know, I've met three or four of them. It's interesting. It's harmless if they want to believe it. I hear them out. I don't believe it, of course. But the government doesn't try to censor them, even though it is utterly ridiculous. Right.

But they do want to censor the things that make the government, you know, embarrassed. Look bad. Yeah, so I've got questions to ask you about free speech, about the pandemic and about libertarianism, but let's start with free speech since we're on the topic. So you criticize the effort to put in place in New South Wales new anti-free speech laws these days, right? This is all happening as we speak. And you actually ask to repeal them, because now it's confirmed that a lot of the reasons why they are trying to bring about these new laws are based on bogus false flags. I've read the new article on Zero Hedge today, and I understand what's happening there with the criminals that have taken the actions that they've taken. But based on what has happened, Chris Minns and his people are trying to bring about those new laws, which is always the same playbook.

Let's create an emergency. And then based on that, we'll clamp down on people's liberties, right, whether it's free speech or others. And the funny thing was, when I looked at it, I saw that Chris Mintz, that's the governor of New South Wales, saying the quiet part out loud, saying, I recognize and I fully said from the beginning, we don't have the same freedom of speech laws that the US has. and the reason is because this is so funny because um we need to hold together a multicultural community and have people live in peace and because of that we have to silence some of their free speech right this is ridiculous and that's the thing people don't realize and what these politicians are doing is silencing and taking away your rights in some kind of half-truth claim to protect you because then you will be able to live peacefully with your

neighbors. But before you know it, you are not able to then freely interact in the world. And we're seeing what's happening now in the UK with the same kind of rules. We're seeing Israel has done very similar things now with the war that has started a year plus ago. Germany now has an office to deal with conspiracy thinking not even speaking thinking like this is insane this is going out of hand so what's your take here on free speech and and how do you see this topic one of the first things i did when i uh arrived in the parliament almost two years ago is i passed i i did not pass i wanted to pass i proposed an amendment to the new south wales constitution which was a cut and paste of the u.s first amendment uh which would guarantee it doesn't

actually guarantee free speech the first amendment it guarantees that the government will not dictate speech okay so people often get confused with these free speech matters now if i invite somebody to my home it's my property or my business so they're on my property and i say uh you know uh i don't want you to say this okay and if you i if you do say a b and c x y and z whatever i want should leave my property well that you're allowed to do that if you own a social media platform you're allowed to you're allowed to shut people down that's not free speech and we talk about free speech the free speech issue is should the government use its its monopoly on force to prevent people saying things what they want to say so that's what we libertarians very strongly

agree with that so now what what happened in sydney look look i do have some sympathy for the Premier, Premier, you called him a governor and you're correct, it's the equivalent of an American governor. Sorry, yes, you're right, I didn't use the right term. That's okay. Well, Premier, Governor, same thing. So there is some sympathy for Premier Minns, okay, because it was quite traumatic, particularly to Sydney's significant Jewish community, that over the summer, for about, I think about

two months, we would watch the six o'clock nightly news and there would be another vile anti-semitic attack now uh no one was harmed but they they were graffiti and burning uh synagogues okay very people were alarmed people were thinking and it was happening almost on a daily basis okay it had come out of the blue it just started happening so the media of course uh are saying well what are you going to do what are you going to do what are you going to do premier means so he says oh well we're going to introduce these what he called hate speech laws but what we call anti-free speech laws about protests about symbol displays yeah they they doubled the penalty for displaying a swastika in australia well look i'm 54 i've never seen a swastika i've never seen

anybody fly swastika at the front of their house okay so um but it was an easy thing that state governments in australia banned the display of the swastika i think three four years ago the only people who protested against it were the libertarians okay so i've got through because of course how can you argue against that okay people say oh what are you in favor of the swastika so no we're not in favor of the swastika we don't believe the government should be doing this now if someone is dumb enough to go and put a flagpole at the front of their house and follow the swastika libertarians say that's legal the government shouldn't stop them what will happen in reality is well the first thing they'll be very seriously socially ostracized their neighbors won't be real

happy because with that flag up there all the property prices have gone down 25 percent and they will be likely to uh get a brick through their window that's what's going to happen by their neighbors okay very well why not you know people are going to take great offense to it so this is why no one does it okay but then so min's brought in this suite of laws to you know which which was saying oh look we're taking a stand we're using the law to stop this spate of what appeared to be anti-semitic attacks now then what happened was about a week after they were passed oh no no sorry sorry no no the the culmination of these attacks was so this was what sort of triggered the legislation was that i think it was on the 29th of january this year we were all

very alarmed and i would happen to be in europe at the time that made european news that a caravan had been found on the outskirts of Sydney with genuine explosives in it, no detonator, we later found out, but lots of explosives, I won't fake, and a list of Jewish targets, synagogues, schools, probably. So everyone's thinking, oh, my God, this is unbelievable, this is terrible, okay. And then they passed these laws.

Now, then what happened about three days after the laws got passed three weeks ago, the Australian Federal Police, which is the equivalent, I suppose, of our FBI. It's not as simple as that, but the FBI and the New South Wales Police Court of Press Conference, they said, look, we've investigated this to some extent. The investigations are still ongoing, but what we believe actually happened here, and in fact, they didn't say, they weren't speculating.

They said, this is what happened. There was an Australian criminal, cocaine importer, who'd been found guilty and who had been sentenced to life in prison. He then escaped Australia, this is about two, three years ago, by boat. And I understand he's now in Turkey. And he was a mastermind, a criminal mastermind. And he thought, but he's got a family and young children here. I think he wants to return to Australia with a reduced sentence.

Rather than a life sentence, maybe 10 years. Anything? Okay. so what he's done is he has paid street criminals people with i'm guessing drug problems and other things but he's paid petty criminals who are not political who are they don't even know what anti-semitism i bet is i get i i guess he's paid them money and he said go and spray this you know go and do these things okay to freak people out and then at colman and then he organized this caravan which was designed to be found now now what he was planning to do was was to inform the police that yes there's this terrorist group operating in sydney but i'm going to help you

bust them that's what his plan was right so it was weird it was murky so then that's very very embarrassing then for the government in new south wales because they've passed these laws on the basis of what the Australian Federal Police say now was a criminal con job. That's what they're saying. Now then, as soon as this thing happened, as soon as the caravan plot was exposed as a hoax, those attacks, very good news, have completely stopped.

So it was all connected to this mastermind. It wasn't happening. It wasn't happening before. Look, I know anti-Semitism has been around for 2,000 years. I know that's a complicated matter. okay and so i'm not saying there was never anti-semitism in australia before but i think australia would probably you've you're an australian but we wouldn't say that we're an anti-semitic country we're a very tolerant liberal democracy and we've never in our history have we

had a strain of you know anti-semitism but of course there's always going to be a few little fruit loops out there okay but but so there was there was there was there was certainly no anti-semitic texts were making the news then there's this big block this big jump out of the blue and it stayed there and then it's just stopped okay so so what's happened is we have rushed through these laws and i gave a speech in the parliament a while ago said look what happens is the government sees a problem okay and then they exaggerate it and then they push new laws through that those new laws give the government more power okay and every time the government gets more power the people get have less power and less freedom so the libertarians are all around

the world are free speech maximists, absolutists. The really purest libertarians don't even believe in defamation law. They don't even believe in copyright law. They say if somebody invents something, let's say somebody invents some brilliant new machine, they then spend half their time and all their energy and creativity protecting the IP. Libertarians say, look, if someone's invented something brilliant, fabulous. Go and sell as much as you can as quickly as possible. And yes, other people are going to copy you, but they might make it better. They probably will. Okay. So that's another

discussion. I'm not here to promote, you know, the end of IP law. Okay. But that's where the libertarians are coming from. We believe in maximizing people's dynamism, innovation, creativity. And we believe if people, a really bad part of these hate speech laws is the chilling effect a lot of people walk around thinking they know there's hate speech laws out there they do not know the intricacies but they just say well err on the side of caution i will not speak my mind this isn't good for society wonderful great thank you for sharing a bit more of the context around this um and yeah i think there's always this delicate debate uh and delicate relationship between protecting people and maintaining some kind of a balanced environment,

social environment, but at the same time, still respecting people's liberties and allowing, you know, just like libertarianism is conveying the message of allowing the free market to do what it needs to do, just in your example here with the swastika, right? The free market will do what it needs to do to balance things. It's not like we're calling for chaos at all, but we're calling for just let things happen without an extra, a super strong involvement of the government. So I, yeah, I totally understand the stand. Okay. And I think we need more of those voices just to balance out what is happening these days where we see such an extreme clamping on our free speech in almost any manner, online and offline. So that's really important. Okay, can I ask you

quickly about the pandemic? I don't call it a pandemic. I call it the plandemic or just COVID. And then we can go back to libertarianism. So COVID fatality rate in New South Wales was 0.13%. And the lockdowns were out of proportions. It wasn't maybe as harsh as in Victoria, but it was definitely crazy in Australia in general. people have lost jobs and the vaccine vaccine jabs madness was was really harming people and i've been following a bit the work of some great australians such as professor ian bright hope and rebecca with dystopian down under her sub stack is amazing and others there are so many great Australians are trying to raise awareness to the post-COVID consequences. And recently, I've also seen the Port Hedland in WA, as well as other districts are trying to raise awareness to getting the COVID-19 jabs off the market and investigating into the possible contamination

found in vials used in Australia. So what can you share about the post-COVID response of Australia as well as if you can talk about this any any information you have about injuries disabilities or excess deaths um what happened was uh in 1998 for five months I was employed by Pfizer in government relations I had been working as a staffer for the federal member of the Parramatta Ross Cameron liberal and Pfizer's head office just happened to be in the electric and Pfizer you know were very very friendly to the office throwing money around you know turning up the thumbnails and I got to know them got along well they offered me a job pay rise now uh I only lasted five months because of chronic underperformance effort and there's no

hard feelings about Pfizer dismissing me because I then got it I became self-employed after that so they did me a big favor however the reason I tell this story is Pfizer taught me five uh they taught me two things two very important things they said to me on the first day they sat me down they said okay john here's your gold amex card i said okay but what do i do with that i said look john your job is this take regulators politicians staff and journalists out for breakfast lunch and dinner just talk to them about fires just talk to them about fires and he said look a lot of people in australia don't know who we are and we and i said okay cool what do i say he said well look we need government help because of two things he said when our

scientists in the lab come up with say 40 potential vaccines like a concept vaccine they said only one will get to market that's interesting why is that they said well unintended side effects i said oh that makes sense i said i'm pleased to hear that you're putting in a lot of effort to not have faulty vaccines and then they said and they said it'll also take for every one of those concept drugs that does get to market it's very often 10 years sometimes it's 15 years i said why is that unintended side effects yet again i said okay okay good to know so then we fast forward you know 20 to 22 years and we've got you know we've got the covid madness okay and then then i hear a few months into it oh we're working on warp speed vaccines and so i just

And I'm a history student, I mean, I don't know any, I don't know the difference between chemistry and physics, okay? I don't know. But I thought to myself, okay, so it's a warp speed vaccine and it's a hysteria, okay? And it was a left-wing political hysteria, okay? I think a big part of COVID was bringing down Trump and it was successful in doing that.

Anyway, it was good. Now Trump's come back with more authority than ever. But so when they said they're going to come out with a warp speed vaccine for a bad flu, wasn't that bad? OK, I mean, the Spanish flu 100 years ago did kill 50 million people and it was killing men in their prime. OK, well, that's a bad that's a bad version of the flu. This one was quite lethal. If you're on death's door, OK, now I'm sure that there are people out there who had relatives who they thought was quite a happy, you know, 83 year old grandmother. And she could have had another 10 years.

And she was killed by COVID. And that's sad. Every year around the world, one of the biggest causes of fatalities, particularly for old people, is the flu. It's just been happening since we lived in the caves. So anyway, so they come along with the old warp speed vaccine. And I just immediately said, well, I ain't taking it. And people say, well, why is that?

I said, Pfizer told me 20 years ago, don't take rushed vaccines. I said, and I never deviated from one. Now, I was lucky because I was self-employed. I didn't have an employment mandate, okay. I like to think I would have had the courage to be sacked, and a lot of good people did get sacked, and a lot of good people couldn't get sacked and had to take the vaccine because they've got kids and mortgages,

and a lot of people were very unhappy about taking the vaccine. And then, oh, look, not only was it a warp speed vaccine, it was mRNA. Oh, what's mRNA? Because a lot of people just thought it was the flu shot that was tweaked for COVID, just a little tweaky tweak. No, this is mRNA. What's mRNA? Oh, it's this whole brand new type of vaccine. It's amazing. Has it ever been tried before on humans? No, no, no, no, no. This is a first. Oh, that sounds great, doesn't it? So I just said, and look, I was lucky because, you know, a lot of marriages split up over this subject, okay, and they're terrible, you know, happy marriages.

Then one doesn't want to take the vax, the other one does want to take the vax, and then they've got kids. Are the kids going to get vaxed? I just can't believe people got their kids vaxed, but anyway, you know, for something that was clearly not a threat to the kids. But anyway, you know, my wife is born in China and her family to some extent suffered in the Cultural Revolution when the crazy communists went totally mad everyone in the world knows about the holocaust

um it sadly barely anybody outside of people with a reasonable interest in history knows about the cultural revolution in china about half as many about three million people died now they weren't dying through famine it was a bad famine in the 1950s caused by communism in china 30 million but the cultural revolution was like a pogrom it was like a pogrom against people who were whose grandpa might have owned a farm or a shop or anything, okay? They were getting people at one point just because they wore glasses. They thought, oh, you're part of the bourgeois class. You're wearing glasses.

And people who'd been overseas, oh, you know. And they didn't just kill them. They were throwing them out of buildings and torturing them. It was dreadful. Anyway, my wife's family, look, I think she had some uncles that were forced to go and work as farm labourers for several years and they were cut off from the family. Okay, so it's a lot of worse stories out there than that.

Okay, but anyway, I was lucky in that most of my friends thought I was mad. Most of them have apologised now. Lost some, which is not a problem. But so now, look, in my maiden speech, oh, look, look, just on, you know, the forced vaccines, you know, when it came in, you know, Scott Morris and our Prime Minister said, oh, it won't be forced, it won't be forced. Now it just went really crazy in Australia.

And 98% of people took the vaccine. That's the official figures, I believe. And, you know, and it didn't work. You know, and we were, I remember saying to myself, I said, I'll stay at home for five years. I'm not going to take this back. So if they want to lock me in my home for five years, I'll do that rather than take the vax.

Yes. You know, as a matter of principle, but also I didn't want to take the vax because I didn't think COVID was going to kill me. I also got COVID. Somehow I survived FRAC without the vax. and then um so but then when the vax when the vax program really got underway full swing of this you know i very quickly it was a big relief uh that they because i really thought they might knock on our door and try and take my kids away or something at some point that's how mad it was

yeah but then after two weeks of everyone taking the vaccine people said oh i took the vaccine i still got covid okay i said i'm just surprised the warp speed vaccine at best is not working Okay. Now, you mentioned Rebecca Barnett and her very, very, very good substack. And she's heroic. And she's really across the details. Now, in terms of the vaccine injuries, I think it's absolutely scandalous that the government has no interest in it. uh now look you know i i will be fair and balanced here there were vax skeptics good people during the height of the hysteria who were warning that there would be a huge surge in deaths and the good news is that that has not happened now there has been an increase in fatalities and i believe it is quite likely related to the vax but what would i know we should have a royal commission but the predictions of some that there was going to be you know hundreds of millions of deaths

hasn't happened and we're now four years on well that's good and i think that i know i do know people particularly fit young men yes young men that were fit for some reason this mrna the pfizer in the moderna gives them heart problems okay and mates of mine that are not in good shape they took it they said oh no i didn't feel anything weirdly this one was making people and there's a lot this is not anecdotal well it is anecdotal but there's also a ton of data young men young men with the mrna were having heart problems okay but let's hope and it's starting to look like this is the case it's washed through the system now and you know people you know hopefully they've got it out of their system now but you meet some of these people who've been

injured by the the covid vax it's absolutely heartbreaking and uh but look what i did say in my maiden speech i i said look a lot of people want to move on from covid and i said i don't i'm not going to move on from okay i'm going to keep agitating for a royal commission until we get okay and i just one of the most disappointing things about covid was that a lot of people woke up but most didn't most people when covid got over this okay let's just forget about that they don't want to think about it so so we'll just keep uh fighting for look at something that i just you know sometimes i have people supporters of mine politically they say maybe it's time to shut up about covid they say no not time to shut up about covid good on you really yeah that's amazing and

that's so important okay um taking you back to libertarianism uh in your speech you mentioned anarcho-capitalism and the Austrian economist Rothbard, which is amazing. You said you think that the chamber you sit in should be used as a museum. I loved it. Yes, yes, yes. And the reference was to the parliament, right? The government should be used as a museum. And I love that. I'd love to give just a few interesting points you gave. In that speech, You mentioned government today is about 50% of the GDP. You mentioned taking away middle-class welfare programs could potentially benefit the economy and benefit the country.

Privatizing police, privatizing courts, those are things that could be beneficial for society. You mentioned the poor would be probably more productive and less poor if we take away welfare the way we have it today in Australia. I'm saying we. It's funny doing my dual citizenship thing. And also what underpins the state is legalized coercion. And we did mention it before as well. You gave the example of a parking ticket, which will finally be resolved in threats and punishments or violent means that the government has the or the state has the mandate to actually use force in order to maintain in place the order, the law and order that it needs to have. And so all of these points that I'm mentioning, coming from an ideology of pro-liberty, pro-individualism, less collectivism, taking away some of those draconian powers that the state has today,

that make Australia and other countries' liberal democracies look the way they do. And so I want to dig a bit deeper with you into your ideology and libertarianism principles that you bring about so nicely in that speech and that you, I guess, use in your everyday job in the parliament to resist some of those rules and regulations that are coming about in Australia? So in the 1700s and the 1800s, the dominant sort of political outlook of the US and the UK was what we would today call classical liberalism,

which means let's have low taxes, low regulation, get the government out of the way, free trade, free speech. If we do these things, the people will prosper. and this is why the British Empire was so great and this is why the British colonies of North America became the United States and boomed like no country on earth ever has and those founding fathers today

we would say we would call them libertarians but at the time they were known as classical liberals now then what happened was in the modern era I would say mainstream libertarianism would be Milton Friedman who won the Nobel Prize for Economics and who was a brilliant economist and a brilliant communicator of libertarian ideas.

And if people, after they watch this show, if you've got a few minutes, I would encourage you to go to YouTube and type in Milton Friedman and Phil Donahue, I think it is. He used to go and it was like the Oprah Winfrey of the 1970s, Phil Donahue. Milton Friedman will go on there for an hour. He's just brilliant. And he really sort of laid the groundwork for the Reagan revolution

in free market economics. And so then Reagan and Thatcher didn't call themselves libertarians. They were really classical liberals. And the difference between the classical liberal and the libertarian is that the classical liberal says, look, government is still good. It just needs to be small. There is an optimal level of government. The libertarians say, well, that's good in theory,

but the government will always grow it'll find an excuse a war a financial crisis a pandemic so-called pandemic uh war on terror okay there'll always be an excuse now some of these some of these things do need a government response i suppose but there'll always be an excuse so what Well, Australia did not have income tax when we federated, when we had independence from Britain. Then a little thing came along called World War I, and then the federal government said, well, no, we've got a world war on. We just need to have temporary income tax.

Well, of course, the war comes and goes, but the income tax stays. It's not quite as simple as this, but the same thing happened in World War II. We didn't have company tax. I think it might have been state tax. The federal government says, oh, let's take over company tax just because there's a war on. The war ends, company tax stays. now this is what happens so the libertarians actually prefer in the american context they prefer 1776 over 1789 1776 was independence and they had a very loose government at that point

the states are really 13 different countries at first then they said oh well let's set up a little federal government a little thing called washington dc it'll just have very very very defined powers it'll just look after things like foreign policy and defense and immigration and You know, just only the things that the federal government, and there were people opposed to it at the time, people like Thomas Jefferson and others, the good guys, the anti-federalists. Now then, but they had, they built the federal government

and started off small and now look, you know, it's massive. So the, now the, another libertarian, I will get to Milton, sorry, Murray Rothbard in a moment. Now, Ayn Rand is what she really was my gateway to libertarianism. Now, she didn't call herself a libertarianist. Now, she is anti-government, but she does believe there should be a very small government, very small government, smaller than Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan and Mark Thatcher.

But Ayn Rand did two great services to the libertarian movement. But the first thing is she was sort of like the first to make a really big, bold statement in favour of, you know, anti-communism, very small government. And then she also very wisely put this not in a 1,200-page book which was about detailed economic history and analysis, which would have bored the socks off 99% of people. She wrote a novel with colourful characters in it

and a colourful storyline, a very great book, Outlaw Shrugged. And so she's very well known, okay, even amongst the general population, Ayn Rand. Now, Ayn Rand had a young, you know, protege called Murray Rothbard, who they ended up having a falling out with. Now, Murray Rothbard is not as well known as Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman, but he is sort of like the purest

of the pure libertarians. Well, you should know that in the Bitcoin community, he's very well known. Okay, good to know. Good to know. I have to hear that. So Ayn Rand says, with reluctance, she says the government does have three roles, defence, the courts, the police.

Okay. And she says, she's so anti-government, she says that those things, the government should be funded by voluntary contributions from citizens. Okay. but murray rothbard says look no we can actually over a period of time i say 50 years of my maiden speech some libertarians get upset with me that's a way too weak but they say that murray rothbard says we can phase the state out entirely he says the state

is actually a criminal agency and it always will be and they said what what this every state has its origin in an armed cabal establishing a taxation monopoly over a defined piece of geography. And he said that once they've got control of that geographic taxation monopoly, which is a more complicated way of saying the word nation, the state's got control of this area, they then set about to justify why they should be ruling. and so throughout history they've invented they've said god wants the state this this king this

emperor this whatever to to rule okay and then the state then pays intellectuals to shape thinking so he said he says so we so they they they create this class of people who encourage the population say yes yes yes we need the state we need the state now how does the state sustain itself will Well, it puts a gun at the head of productive people and says hand over a third of your income. That's what it does. And if you disobey the tax man, you end up in jail. So that's what the state is doing.

And so we end up with this, the state becomes this very powerful force and people then want to fight over who controls this force. And this is what wars are. This is what political disagreements are about. but it makes people hate each other, having this sort of big, powerful thing over above us. Murray Rothbard says we can have all humanity, we can have a much more dynamic future, less war, maybe no war,

a lot more innovation, not one Elon Musk, 10,000 Elon Musks, okay? And we can achieve everything we currently achieve through the government, through voluntary cooperation and contracts. so what do we then say about the poor well i believe in anarcho in anarcho-capitalist utopia that there will be a lot less poor people but there will always be some poor people and some people will fall between the cracks now what what do we do about that well the anarcho capitalist would say well what would happen in this situation is that which would be a permanent situation is going to be people that fall between the cracks they would say well good people would

come together with compassion and care and empathy and they would say they might be wealthy people and they would say i want to help these people i don't want to make money out of it but i want to help this deal so there would be private welfare agencies private welfare businesses maybe who would present to wealthy people and they'd say look we want to raise 50 million bucks and what are we going to do with that 50 million bucks and we've got this really innovative way of getting them back on their feet and they can be proud of their life again and then another private welfare agency will come along and say no no no we're better we've got an even better idea so there will be competition some people will get donations and then we'll see the results now some welfare

providers will be get fantastic results and when they get a fantastic result they'll get more donations some people will fail to get results and they won't get donations and so and now now what happens when the government doles out money welfare money they're just giving their money every two weeks and they say see let's see in two weeks they don't care if they go and you know shoot up meth okay they don't care if they make poor life decisions they just say here's your money i'm just ticking my bureaucratic box here's your money now if there was a private welfare situation they would say okay look we want to help you get back on your feet but we want to see some moral improvement we want to see some effort we want to help you get on the right track

and then that would be far more efficient. It means we can get these people back on their feet. Now, some of these private welfare businesses might say, look, we are a for-profit business. We've got the best executives. We've got the best field workers. We are the best at helping poor people. We've got an amazing result record of getting people back on their feet

and our CEO who's put this whole thing together, they want to get paid half a million bucks a year. Now, most people who are running a charity are probably only getting a fairly modest wage. They might say, I want a million dollars a year. And the donors will say, well, we'll give you a million dollars a year. I say, because I'm the best. I've got the best team around me and we are solving this serious social problem.

So this is how it would work. Now, where we say we'd phase it out, Ayn Rand is right. The last three things we would phase out, and this will be a very good problem to have, so this might be in 50 years. If we're talking about, look, we've got the government out of everything, out of health care, out of roads, out of education. But we've got the police, the court and the defence. And we can have a debate about that.

Now, maybe at that point, maybe Ayn Rand will be proven correct. Maybe we do need to have that. And maybe Murray Rothbard will be correct. But we can experiment. We can experiment and other countries can do different things and we can get there. Now, I do believe it is important because I love the world and i love humanity and i want the world to go i want humanity i think elon musk is on the right

track we've got to get off this planet and go and explore the universe my hunch is the universe is sterile i think we should look for life uh and it may well i may be once the hunch where may well if there's if there's one if there's another one other form of life in the universe so that probably means there's billions okay given how big the whole joint is but there's a reasonable chance i think that the whole thing is sterile and it's for us to go and explore and it's so exciting what mankind what mankind has achieved over the last 10 to 12 000 years since we started building farms and etc etc and on balance humans i believe are good and bad things happen but most people are pretty good um we've got enormous potential i feel like we're just at the beginning

but we've got this big problem called nuclear bombs we've got these things we've got the we've got these nuclear bombs that can blow us all back to the stone age in fact it'll be worse than the because everything will be so toxic okay if we have a nuclear war so who's going to cause the war big government's going to cause the war little little countries i know there's exceptions okay but generally little countries like switzerland and lichtenstein denmark they basically sort of take to themselves it's big countries that get involved in big wars okay germany germany germany you know i think the worst thing that germany used to be about 50 little principalities and kingdoms and duchies and all those little things and they said oh well we all speak the same

language let's become a one big country which they did in 1870 and they had there was a they started off with a big war against the french in the 1870s and war one war two so was that a good idea and i think germany would be a lot happier if it was like what it was before the unification it could be 50 little switzerland's and dynamic peaceful happy and if the taxes are too high in one one little country they can go to the next country next door they'll be competitive downward pressure on these things so so murray rothbard is the is the sort of is the father of anarcho-capitalism and i do encourage people to read him and the very best introduction is murray rothbard anatomy of the state it's it's a book but it's really an essay if you can read it in two or three hours

it's very good he goes through what the state actually is that's what's called the anatomy the state and and it's just sort of so radical when you tell people well you know that some libertarians believe there should be no government and everyone's just got government in their head from the time they were two years old and i just i just think it's just like absurd how could we have life without government that's what they really think okay uh and that's why murray rothbard in my view is a um a radical radical thinker and i think he's on the right track Amazing, John. This is just simply amazing. Thank you for laying it out like this. I had a beautiful conversation with Mr. Titus Gebel when I was in Prague for a conference called the Free Cities Foundation Conference. And he has actually written a book about private free cities and the concept of libertarianism implemented in free private cities, cities where the constituents or the citizens would actually privatize governments and they would pay a service fee for a government to exactly what you said.

hold the positions of security, defense, and provide services to the people. And the people have a contract with the government, and they could sue the government if it didn't adhere to their contract. And they're starting to implement the principles of free private cities in special economic zones around the world. So very interesting movement that is taking shape. I will also send you the link to that discussion that I had with Titus. I think you will find a lot of commonalities with him and with his principles.

So that is super awesome. That also leads me to your connection or the Libertarian Party in Australia's connection to private property rights and Bitcoin. And that's why I told you that a lot of Bitcoiners are big fans of Austrian economy and libertarianism principles, because there is such a correlation between the values of liberty and free property rights to what Bitcoin stands for, which is giving you sovereignty over your own property, which is your money. So Bitcoin held in self-custody is basically private property that no one can confiscate from you. And so I loved the fact that your two colleagues from the party went on stage at the Bitcoin Alive conference and spoke about their suggestion for a new policy that they want to put together for Bitcoin in the parliament, which could be really amazing. I mean, looking at the U.S. and what it's bringing into reality right now with the Bitcoin reserve in the U.S., that is definitely a move that is going to pioneer a way, one way, like you mentioned experimentation, right? To experiment with how can we possibly tackle the huge debts and deficits that democracies have today and try and take this down by introducing Bitcoin, which is a sound money, similarly to gold, into their reserves to try and offset some of that balance, some of that debt, sorry, and create a better balance in countries. Obviously, that's going to take a while and it's a gradual process, but I think that that is a very, speaking of entrepreneurship, I think that is a very innovative way of looking at how governments and how states can try and be less harsh towards their citizens with taxes and with inflation,

but rather try to offload some of that debt from the small person and put that back in the hands of a free market economy, which is what Bitcoin is all about. So, you know, I was very pleased. I didn't know that you guys were working on something like that when I came to the conference. So I was pleased to see that. Is that something that is on the table for the Libertarian Party in Australia today?

yes well uh all libertarians love bitcoin and all bitcoiners are libertarians even if they don't know it i have to if if someone's got their head around it's a concept that money can exist separate to government a currency can exist separate if they've got to that point if they've got the intellectual capacity to understand that hello you are a libertarian if you understand of money, the most important issue, and you're going to be a libertarian on everything else. So we do want to work very closely. There's a lot of Bitcoiners in our party, and we have just released our,

can you see that clearly, our 21-page white paper, which I would encourage people with an interest in Bitcoin to read. We really want to make Australia the, we want to overtake El Salvador. We want to become the most pro-Bitcoin country in the world. Now, we're not at the moment, okay? We are hoping that the Libertarian Party has had a very good track record in proposing policy ideas. Now, we haven't had that many people elected,

but we haven't been around for 25 years. We propose policy ideas, and then in an election or two, the other major parties start to embrace them. So now one of the major parties now embraced a nuclear power industry. So we are hoping to go out loud and proud and make the case for a pro-Bitcoin Australian federal government policy. Now, you're right, one of the things that we've announced is that we're going to have a, if we form government,

we would be like Trump, we'd set up a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Okay, now, you know, look, I'm 50-50 about what Trump's done. okay oh look it's it's on balance it's great that he's pro bitcoin he's got people around him who are pro bitcoin and that's really good having the best now the thing i'm a bit uncomfortable about is that trump has gone in and confiscated uh bitcoins off people who were not criminals but who the biden administration found criminals because they don't like bitcoin because they don't because bitcoin means the government loses control they lose visibility on what people are doing and the government hates that so of course the biden administration

and I had a Bitcoin, and they confiscated Bitcoin off people. And now Trump, who I really like and who I've actually liked since the 1980s, I've just always liked him, and I agree with most of him politically, and I think he's a great man, okay, but he's using this, look, I'm sure there's some others, but basically using unrightly confiscated Bitcoin, and they're going to call that the Federal Reserve.

So if I owned one of those Bitcoins, I wouldn't be real happy about it. But we want to – it's worth for the hardcore Bitcoiners. The good news is, John, that in the policy that they're putting together, they have left room for the Ministry of Commerce to be creative with how else they can acquire Bitcoin long term. They left a little bit of an opening there. For example, they could, since they're talking about a strategic stockpile of other cryptocurrencies as well, so they could, for example, try to make profit out of that stockpile and then transfer that profit into Bitcoin to add to the strategic reserve. So just for example, so they could find other ways to acquire Bitcoin. The wording of the legislation is a little bit vague, I think, on purpose so that it leaves room for some creativity and innovation in the future.

So it's interesting to just watch and see what's going to happen. But I fully agree with you about the confiscated pile. Yeah. That's interesting. Thank you. Thank you. So, look, we think that if the government can have an attitude that Bitcoin is good, and then what do we want the government to do?

Basically get out of the way, okay? More than anything else, we want them to get out of the way. Now, at the moment, what's happening is in Australia, if you buy a share for $1 and you sell it two years later for $3, well, you've got to pay capital gains tax, okay? And we're paying capital gains tax on Bitcoin transactions. Now, that's not fair because Bitcoin is really a currency. So if I trade the Australian dollar versus Swiss franc,

I don't pay capital gains tax. It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's roughly the case. So it should be. So that would certainly be when we say we want the government to get out of the way. One of the ways to get the government out of the way is no capital gains tax on Bitcoin. Now, another thing that Australia. And that trend, by the way, sorry for interrupting you, that trend is happening in many countries now around the world in Switzerland.

in Spain, even in Germany, after you hold Bitcoin for a certain amount of time, you don't have to pay capital gains tax on it, and obviously in El Salvador, and now in Czech Republic as well. So more and more, after one year, so more and more countries are going that direction, which is really encouraging. Okay, so what's happening, I do meet Bitcoiners who tell me that they feel like their banks are harassing them when they see lots of Bitcoin transactions. Now, why would they be doing that?

Well, the banks are so regulated, particularly post the subprime crisis, and the government, the bureaucrats are really, they've got this army of bureaucrats out there, and they're really piling on the regulations, and they've got to be seen to be complying. They've got to be seen to be doing something. When the government brings in an anti-money laundering thing or, you know, an anti-scam thing, the government's going to come to them

and say, you know, how are you going with all that, you know? And what they're doing is they're harassing Bitcoin people, okay? So that's because the government's got a negative attitude towards Bitcoin. And we want to very much get that out of the way as well. Now, of course, we're against things like digital ID use, okay? Now, I understand that there's barely any Bitcoin mining in Australia because our electricity price is being very, very high, which has just become completely absurd because Australia really should be

famous all around the world for having the lowest energy because we've got like about 1,000 years of proven coal. We've got one-third of the world's uranium. And the weird thing is we haven't even been looking for the uranium because we can barely dig it up. Now, there's some export going on. But, I mean, if you're a miner out there and you come across, you know, a big massive wall body of uranium, say, oh, God, that's a waste.

You know, I can't do much with it, right? Now, we should be having a, we should be, look, the libertarian view on electricity is, look, just get the gut, no subsidies and no bans. Let the free market flourish. Then we'll have really cheap electricity and then we could become a Bitcoin mining, you know. For sure.

That would be a very, very good thing. So we think that there's a big, one of the roles of minor parties is just to sort of put good, fresh, fresh, innovative ideas on the table, hopefully get a few people elected, and hopefully get a public discussion happening so we can actually bring about change. Awesome. I'm going to definitely link you up with Gen3,

which is a company that helps, consulting company with the Prince of Serbia is one of their executives and Samson Mao. And they've been doing great work with other governments around the world or other politicians around the world to help them take top-down policies of Bitcoin in their respective countries.

So I think it would be great to put you in touch with them. um okay the last if do you have another few minutes or do you yes yes yeah okay so i wanted to um just run this by you i i saw this uh great tweet by um a guy called rational aussie uh he's a bitcoiner i think and uh he was talking about the australian economy and what is happening right now in australia and kind of a macro view and just to run this by you and get your perspective so the australian government intentionally destroyed the middle class by printing billions of dollar dollars out of thin air during the pandemic and then ramping up immigration to record levels they treat you with utter contempt politicians only i know this

is a bit radical right but politicians only exist because we allow them to they've now just become a class onto themselves, stealing our money and funneling into bullshit ventures that enrich themselves, like building dog boxes around train stations, which happen to be in electorates favorable to them, boost government tax revenue, and appease big businesses through artificially inflated GDP. The entire Australian economy is a Ponzi scheme destined for hyperinflation. So I'd love to get your macro view about the shape of Australian economy these days. I hear about the housing crisis.

There are huge debts that have never been seen before in Australia. There's a lot of fuss around, you know, climate, health. And so it doesn't feel like the situation is too good these days in Australia. What is your take on this? well look i largely agree with what rational aussie has said but i do with respect disagree with his conclusion okay so australia is still a fantastic country okay and you've won the lotto of life if you're an australian citizen there's just no doubt about it okay we're very we've always called ourselves

the lucky country and we are still the lucky country now i'm just talking about the macro we're a whole continent so a nation in history been a whole continent uh and we've got a relatively small population it's a harmonious society largely um and you know we're obviously a european country but we're in asia a long way away from europe a long way away from the united states uh now when i was born in 1970 europe was awash in war okay well we're talking about the cultural revolution in vietnam korea had just finished but yeah still sort of going on india and Pakistan were at war, big, big, big communist insurgencies in Indonesia and Laos and Cambodia and Malaysia.

So Australians used to be scared of Asia, and it wasn't irrational because the Japanese did bomb us in 1941, 1942. Okay, so we were sitting thinking, look, there's a small population here of Europeans, and there's like 2 billion Asians just for the north of us. Now, that was at the beginning of my lifetime. Well, now we can say, gee, our geography is fantastic because all those wars are largely over.

Asia is booming, which is terrific to see. Stock markets are going up. People are buying Mercedes-Benz. There's still a lot of poverty in Asia, still a lot of poverty. But their long-term trend is very, very encouraging, and that's a good thing. And the richer they get, the more they want our stuff. So we've had bad government in this country for a long time.

But even with idiots running the show, we're still a fantastic country, but we still can go off the rail. If we are on the track, Rational Aussie is sort of if we keep on this track, well, we could become Argentina II, the old Argentina, not the new Argentina. Okay, so we used to typically have in the Australian economy three, four, five years of good growth, 3% to 4% economic growth. then we'd have a recession and everyone would panic recessions can be good okay it means if

you're in the wrong job you know you're not happy there well you might get unemployed but then you will find a more suitable job okay you might be a business you might be in the wrong industry you might be not good at that business but you might be better in another business so it's like you know it's like evolution you know we sort of up and down up in the seasons summer and winter okay now now that's what used to happen and we were dynamic okay since the gf subprime crisis what's happened growth is gone in the whole western world thank you thank you for all those clowns that got us into so much debt okay so it's just been now under the first trump administration i suspect under the second trump administration there will be some economic growth

which is good but australia is has been in a per capita recession now for coming up to two years which means technically we're not in a recession because oh the economy did grow it's bigger than it was 12 months ago well that's true yeah well we've added a two percent of the population or whatever so we're you know the people that are here their little piece of the pie got smaller okay and that and and it doesn't look like that's going to change and it's like our politicians don't even talk about economic growth anymore you know we're just bubbling along yeah we're not even bubbling along we're sort of sinking a little bit uh so and the government's getting The government's getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

A massive part of our budget these days is this thing called the NDIS, which was we've always been a very generous country to people with disabilities. Like every Western country, every liberal democracy is nice. They don't have people with disabilities living in homeless situations. But we had a Labor government 10 years ago, then the Liberals agreed with it. Oh, we're going to bring in the world's Rolls-Royce disability scheme.

okay it's going to cost us four billion dollars a year okay well that's up to 40 billion dollars a year it just keeps going through the roof okay this is the federal government spends 700 billion dollars a year to put that in context and it's just going up because people are scamming it okay there's so much money on offer and so that's just and then we've got the global warming nonsense we went completely bad on that okay so yeah what what this country and we used to be able to depend upon the Liberal Party for reasonably good government. This is why Australia has still got a very good foundation because for most of the time since Federation, the right side of

politics, the Liberal Party and its forebears have dominated federal government. People my age think, oh, it's been 50-50 between Liberal and Labor. That's because we grew up with a 13-year Labor government under Hawke and Keating which was, in retrospect, pretty good government when it comes to free market reforms uh but that was very much an outlier and the hawk and keating won five elections big deal uh but no other labor governments won more than two in a row since federation labor governments federally are almost always bad failure so but what's happened now is the liberal party used to really believe

like they didn't just talk about smaller government and cutting taxes they'd do it and they were really pro-business and they were you know pro-free speech but that's all gone there's few people in the Liberal Party who hold on to those principles now they're not as bad as Labour but they're sort of like Margaret Thatcher wrote in a memoir she says after World War II or before she became the Prime Minister

she said the Labour Party would come in and ratchet up socialism the Conservatives would always say vote for us and we will reverse the socialism but she said then they'd get in there and they'd just sort of camp on the long march towards socialism

They wouldn't retreat. They wouldn't go forward. Then the Labor would come in and boost it up again, and it just kept ratcheting up. Well, that's sort of what we are now. There's still lots of good people in the Liberal Party, and I hope the party can turn around. But, I mean, the signs are not encouraging.

I understand. You were saying quite similar things to what Peter Dunworth from the Bitcoin Advisor said when I spoke to him in Sydney about the country being in recession for the past, actually, he said three years, without the government and the media actually telling the people the truth. They're gaslighting them, telling them that everything's hunky-dory, everything's okay, and the economy is fine, but we have been in a recession for the past three years. That's the truth of the matter.

Okay, so what is something the world should be aware of about Australia and is not today? Oh, that's a cool question. My favourite subject is Australian political history. What should the world know? Oh, well, look, I suppose, you know, so we became a country in 1901. Well, the British arrived here in 1788. And it was originally a, most people around the world know, it was a convict colony.

and so it started off as basically a military, very much a big state military camp, so people were a lot of convicts. But then what happened is the word got back to England, Scotland, Wales, et cetera, how cool Australia was and how much wonderful farmland and potential there was here. The word would get back and people would come out here and they would sort of just go out there and build the country.

Now, they were originally told that they weren't allowed to go more than, I think, 100 miles from Sydney. It was like a radius around Sydney. But people would just go over there and they would build towns and bridges and farms and everything else. And so Australia became a big success in the 18th century. And then we get to the 1890s and we come to the view, we had the same population at that stage as the United States had

when it got its independence from Britain in 1776. So we had the same population. So we had our colonial leaders. We were six British colonies. In fact, we were seven if you include New Zealand. And we were all friendly and we said, look, you know, the time has come for us to be independent of Mother England. And Mother England said at the time, well, look,

we learned our lesson the hard way with the Americans. So if you want to be independent, we would like to cooperate with you. No hard feelings, you know. We could still be friends, which is what Canada did in the 1860s. We copied what Canada did. That's what happened. A very peaceful, happy, you know, and we retained the monarchy. We retained the British monarchy because we got goodwill towards them.

Now, but the debate was, okay, we need to be independent from Britain. Okay, but then what does that look like? So there's two options. Number one, we can be seven independent countries, happy countries, friendly countries, free trade, blah, blah, blah. That will be seven independent countries. Or it can be one big country with a federal government. So we started having these constitutional conventions

and other things in the 1890s. No one said we should remain part of Britain. But the question was, should we be an independent country? Now, New South Wales, the mother colony, was against Federation. Victoria was very much in favour of Federation. New South Wales was famous amongst the colonies for being the low-tax, pro-business, free-trade state, whereas Victoria and Tasmania, South Australia,

loved their tariffs. And so we had a vote in 1898 on whether we should adopt this federal constitution, and the people got to vote. Unlike in America, where just the congressmen got to vote, but in Australia, everyone got to vote. And New South Wales voted no. I think Victoria voted about 90%. Yes, New South Wales voted no on the first case.

Well, they just failed to get a... It may not have been quite no, but they had to get a certain majority and very few people voted. That's what it was like. But there was a lot and a lot of people in the building I'm sitting in right now where the leaders are saying, hey, look, let's be our own countries. If we...

A big government, it will grow and grow and grow and grow and grow. and the colony of New Zealand was participating in these colonial discussions at the beginning and halfway through they said, oh, look, good luck, boys and girls, but we're just going to have, we're going to be our own little country and everyone said, okay, no problem. Now, I have a feeling, Efrat, that we'd all be happier off if we followed New Zealand and we'll become six separate happy countries.

We can have a mutual defence pact. So if you invade one of us, we're all at war, just like NATO. Mm-hmm. And we can have free trade. We could probably have free people movements, but we can have our own taxation rates. We can have our own Bitcoin policies and our own education policies and health policies, and we can learn and experiment and compete,

and there will be downward pressure on these things. So you think it needs to be defederated? Yes. Now that's radical. I love it. We're a long way away. Well, we believe the United States should defederate. Yeah. We believe America

would be happy with being 50 separate countries. So, look, the common law... Hold on, you were muted in the last sentence. Say it again. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay. The

state governments were originally, they were very powerful when we first left Britain. and the federal government was very small. It only got its revenue from new custom duties, and it was probably taking 1% or 2% of the GDP.

Now it's all supreme. Australia's a very big place. Tasmania's very different to northwest Western Australia, and North Queensland's very different to South Australia. So we've got this little country town called Canberra with enormous power, and it's sort of like putting one-size-fits-all for this big continent, very big place. Australia's as big as the United States.

So we think, yes, we think that we can probably still have a united Australian Olympic team and sporting team, but maybe people will be prouder. Let's say you're a Tasmanian and a Tasmanian wins the gold medal, okay? Now, Tasmania's a small population. It's not going to happen that often, but, gee, they're going to be thrilled in Tasmania. But, I mean, sport is not important.

Sport's just recreational stuff. So we don't want to make, but anyway, that's what we would do. I love it. No, that's awesome. I need to stress, Efrain, it's not Libertarian Party policy, but there is an element in the party that is very much inclined towards that, and I'm certainly one of them. I love it.

I'm all for decentralization, and that's another way of decentralizing power. So, yeah, absolutely. Wow, I love it. Great answer. Okay, John, there is one more thing I will recommend for you and send you after this talk, which is a brilliant half an hour movie by a friend of mine in London who made just a brilliant illustration of what's the problem of money. So the monopoly

of the state is indeed violence, but the fact that they also have monopoly of the creation of money is a big part of a problem, the fiat system. So he created a beautiful animated film called what's the problem and it's the big red button and the fact that the government has the ability to just press the big red button whenever they need more money is a big part of the problem so i'll send you that too i think it will be a great yeah to give to bitcoiners and people who appreciate sound money uh in australia and my last last question is where do you draw hope from what what is a message of hope we can end with well i do believe that uh you know i believe uh you know that this planet came into existence four billion years ago and life started soon after that and

we've been on this we've been rising up ever since from the swamp to the stars okay so bad things happen in every generation there's no doubt about that sometimes really bad things happen amongst humans but the storyline the trajectory is upwards and uh and i do i believe that we will one day colonize the stars so we just need to make we need to bring peace on earth so we can get focused on the real the real purpose of being here which is getting off this place one day beautiful thank you so much for taking the time john i really appreciate you and all your work and obviously your views i think they're refreshing to say the least being in a government so thank you so much i think your ideas will resonate a lot with a lot of my audiences

so um they can follow you where on twitter uh well twitter yes twitter is my main thing but We're Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram. Wow, you've got people doing your TikTok as well. I'm envious. Well done. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. I hope to speak to you again soon.

I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. Please take a minute to give this episode a like, a comment, and subscribe or follow. And please share it with your friends so they can also get value and choose to take some positive action in their lives. Till next time.