Patrick Sedgley

One Nation's 5% interest mortgage plan from a People's Bank won't cost hundreds of billions. This is how the media twists the story and lies about One Nation policies. Malcolm Roberts explained the proposal in full. It involves taking the $11.5 billion assigned to Labor's useless Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) and issuing government-backed mortgages instead. That money has already been spent in the budget, it was just a reallocation. The Australian Financial Review (AFR's) claim this would cost hundreds of billions is made up. It's capped at the $11.5 billion that's already been taken out of the budget - that's all that One Nation would have re-allocated.

@CharlesFLehman The emergence of a black market reduces the benefits and increases the costs of prohibition. Whether there are net benefits after accounting for black market effects will vary case by case.

Got sick of people going "but black markets!!!" as a reply to me, so I wrote a long post about why that's a bad argument. Link 👇

@StefanFSchubert Chinese and Vietnamese diasporas do much better economically than those subject to the economic models operating in their home countries.

Both follow a model that’s shockingly easy to summarise: full-blown socialism leading to low GDP, which gives room for a lot of catch-up growth as soon as you start becoming a bit less socialist

@CharlesFLehman In Australia a black market emerged after large increases in tobacco excise (quasi-prohibition). The result was lower excise revenue, higher nicotine consumption, higher black market related violence and higher enforcement costs.

@David_McMahon75 The "lock-in" effect of CGT is a reason for capital gains to be taxed at a discounted rate.

If your response to this is “great, people should trade less anyway” then you are missing the point. Portfolio rebalancing is just a part of investing. Selling winners. Taking losses. The CGT changes punish this type of sensible behaviour.

@Steve_Sailer @cremieuxrecueil Rhode Islanders should provide a tip equal to the value they get from a cashier over and above that of a self-checkout.

@cremieuxrecueil Rhode Island has a lot of old people and it's hard for old dogs to learn new tricks. It seems silly to make a law about it, but the sentiment is not silly.

This is a great reminder that there are people who long for endless toil and drudgery, who hate progress in all its forms, who would rather you ride a horse than drive a car or fly on a plane. And we cannot let them win.

@cremieuxrecueil They are right about the gas tax.

People like gas tax holidays, sugar protections, ethanol mandates, farm subsidies, "Buy American" rules for procurement, the mortgage-interest deduction, they want to block new housing as their neighborhoods become dilapidated... "The people are retarded."

Rent control is a stunning policy. The literature, the experts, and the repeated experience of reality all stand undivided in saying it's bad. But the public loves it. It's insanely popular. It's basically a 75:25 issue and voters want more of it.

@Mark_Graph The boom in NDIS service providers ---> all good.

data centres could exacerbate capacity pressures and skills shortages in other parts of the economy —> inflation plus higher electricity prices. afr.com/policy/economy…

@dpinsen The Brazilian no 3 was close enough to contest the header, but was no match for Haaland in the contest.

Looks like the Brazilians were all ball-watching, and no one was marking (i.e., guarding) Haaland.

@MsMelChen The bartender looked at them and said "why the long face"?

An Irish man, Welsh man & Scottish man all walk in to a pub… there's usually an English man but he's still at the World Cup 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

@cremieuxrecueil Europeans refuse to accept that the rules-based order is over.

The European mindset is so distorted that they think this red card even makes sense and they don't realize that it taints the game. Sorry, reversed!

@Steve_Sailer I would have thought that the penalty taker would be more anxious than the goalie. No one blames a goalie for not stopping a penalty kick.

"'The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick' is a 1970 novella by Austrian Nobel laureate Peter Handke, following a former soccer goalie, Josef Bloch, who commits a senseless murder and wanders aimlessly, experiencing a breakdown of reality and language. The spare, detached prose mirrors Bloch's alienation and explores themes of absurdity, the inadequacy of language, and the disintegration of the self, drawing comparisons to Camus' The Stranger. It was adapted into a 1972 film by Wim Wenders. Key aspects of the novel: Protagonist: Josef Bloch, a former famous goalkeeper who becomes a construction worker, is fired, and then commits a murder, leading to a disoriented journey. Plot: The narrative lacks traditional plot, focusing instead on Bloch's internal state as he drifts through mundane activities, fixates on details, and grapples with a world that seems increasingly unreal. Style: Written in a deliberately plain, almost report-like style with minimal dialogue, reflecting Bloch's disconnect and the breakdown of meaning. Themes: Explores alienation, the absurdity of existence, the crisis of language, and the feeling of living in a movie. Connections: Shares thematic and stylistic similarities with existentialist works like Albert Camus' The Stranger and Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea. Film Adaptation: A 1972 film adaptation directed by Wim Wenders captures the book's atmosphere.

@toy59496 The Australian Democrats party was created by ex-Liberal Don Chipp as a centrist party, but its membership took it to the left to the point that it was indistinguishable from the Greens.

Robert Conquest's Three 3 Laws 1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best. 2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing. 3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. Probably better thought of as propositions rather than laws. But I see what you're saying, and we have certainly seen that transition with the Liberals.

Mein Diktator: The One Nation Constitution I attended a branch meeting of One Nation recently and left because of the almost obsequious adulation of Pauline Hanson. I didn't go for adulation I went to see if she had solutions. She does not. Troubled by the experience I searched out the founding principles of One Nation. While there is certainly no moral equivalence, my mind kept going back to my readings of another far right party, the Nazis. And this is the danger for any right-leaning party, even one with the best intentions, which is that the road to fascism seems distant but may well be short. People forget that Hitler was democratically elected, and then organised the machinery of power with himself at the top: one leader at the apex, authority flowing downward, internal democracy neutralised, and succession controlled by the leader. That machinery has a name: Führerprinzip. Leader principle. Now look at One Nation. The public state constitution looks democratic. Members meet. Members vote. A 75% conference vote can amend the rules. Then the machinery reveals itself. The National Executive can overrule the state. It can issue binding instructions. It has an absolute veto over amendments. The member vote exists, but only inside a cage built by the centre. So the member vote is real in the same way a child’s plastic steering wheel in the back seat is real. It moves. But it controls nothing. And the real power sits in the federal constitution: Pauline Hanson is president with no term limit (potentially for life) with the power to appoint her own successor. That is not member democracy. That is leader rule in constitutional form. Different scale. Same operating principle. The national constitution unlike the state constitutions is difficult to find, so difficult that I have to request it from the AEC. I'm not surprised about that... And this is the genius of authoritarian design: it does not always break the rules. Sometimes it writes them. And bizarrely it is not illegal to do so. In my view it should be...and if One Nation wants more broad-based support it should unilaterally democratise them, because both Labor and Liberals will identify that as a weak point come the election. Sometimes if you want power you have to share power with those that you claim to represent. @AlboMP @AngusTaylorMP @PaulineHansonOz

@Steve_Sailer @JamesSurowiecki Weren't all the James Bond movies about the battle between the evil Russians and the suave, clever British?

@JamesSurowiecki Most Cold War movies had messages like: let's get together with the Soviets and not blow up the world in a nuclear war. There were a handful of Reagan era anti-Communist movies that made a ton of money because they were so rare.

Dr. Zhivago is one of the highest-grossing films of all time. The Manchurian Candidate is about a conspiracy of Soviet and Chinese Communists working together to subvert American democracy.

@timritchie @ajamesbragg Including new residential property. How does that help housing supply?

@ajamesbragg No, the Australian government is not banning SMSFs from investing in new homes, but it has recently banned SMSFs from taking out new loans (borrowing) to buy residential property.

Why is the government banning investors from building new homes?

@RealMarkLatham Passenger vehicles cause a negligable amount of road damage. Fuel excise should be abolished. Road user charges on heavy vehicles (including heavy EVs) should fund road maintenance.

HOW CAN ELECTRIC VEHICLE OWNERS PULL THEIR WEIGHT IN PAYING FOR ROAD MAINTENANCE? I’m part of a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into this difficult question. Australia has the highest rate of rooftop solar in the world but the lowest rate of EV take-up, with just 9% of new car sales in NSW. The Minns Government has abandoned its target of a 50% take-up rate by 2030 as unachievable. Generally wealthier people own EVs and at the moment, obviously they don’t pay fuel excise, plus they get their government provided charging stations for free. This is a massive inequity compared to low income earners paying the fuel tax every time fill up at a petrol station. The wealthy are contributing nothing to the money used for road maintenance. The situation has been complicated by a High Court decision knocking out Victoria’s road user charge on EVs as unconstitutional (as only the Federal Government can levy customs and excise charges on consumption). Further, a per kilometre charge on EVs has integrity risks (people turning back their odometers) and privacy risks (if governments start tracking where the EVs have been). What is the best policy answer?

From 1 July, Coles and Woolworths will be on notice: price gouging is illegal. If prices go beyond the cost of supply plus a reasonable margin, the competition watchdog can act. Labor is backing families at the checkout. Transcript: andrewleigh.com/price_goug #auspol

@john_macgowan @clairlemon "If I don't like your business model you shouldn't get to set your own prices"

Both supermarkets low profit margins are a consequence of them owning other non performing businesses, in Coles case, liquor, which is in a death spiral for everyone. Woolies actually does double Coles margin on groceries but they're saddled with even more dumb shit like fintech and "e-commerce" plays dragging their numbers down. Every heard of Cartology? Wpay? Quantium? No one has, but they're eating Woolies net margins. No one should get a free pass for bad business models.

They'll confiscate 47% of your salary, while describing a business operating on a 2% profit margin as "price gouging." x.com/ALeighMP/statu…

@AlecStapp Growth has continued, but at a slower rate.

Degrowthers are trying to force developed countries to choose the environment over the economy. But in the last 20 years, we’ve had more growth and less environmental impact. Taking care of the environment is a luxury good that countries buy more of as they get richer.