As the saying goes: socialism is the notion that some ideas are so great that everyone has to be forced into adopting them. Similarly, socialists are invariably people of such staggering talent that taxpayers have to be forced to support them. “A government-supported artist,” the great Robert Heinlein wrote, “is an incompetent whore!”
Jacinda Ardern isn’t an artist, unless bullshit-artistry counts, but she is a… socialist.
And Australians are being forced to pay to keep her in the lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed.
Australia’s top government agencies including intelligence, defence and the tax office have spent more than $80,000 on tickets to send their staff to a women’s leadership summit headlined by former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
Notices updated on AusTender, the government database for contracts and procurements, show five agencies have paid between $10,000 and $28,000 each on tickets for the Women Unlimited Leadership Summit on August 18–21.
Did anyone not on the taxpayer dime bother to show up to watch this dog’n’pony show?
Passes retail for up to $4499, almost triple the price of Taylor Swift’s VIP Australian tickets, and the spend comes just months after Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher asked departments to cut down on costs as spending hit a 40-year high.
It’s a cosy little lobster pot and we’re paying for it.
The event, staged across six capital cities, featured Ardern in a cosy fireside chat about “discovering, cultivating, and unleashing a different kind of power”. Other speakers included Bill Shorten dispensing wisdom on “challenging the status quo” and various top bureaucrats talking to their own subordinates. Networking bingo and “power pauses” were thrown in for good measure. No wonder the non-taxpayer-funded weren’t exactly hammering on the ticket-seller’s door.
The AusTender contract notes the Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security spent $13,371 to send its staff members to the summit for “education and training” purposes.
Less than two weeks later, the Department of Defence’s “Military Strategic Commitments Division” also bought $13,371 worth of tickets from a company with the same Australian Business Number.
In May, the Department of Climate, Change, Energy, the Environment and Water splashed $15,835 on tickets, while the Australian Taxation Office paid more than $10,000 to send three staff members who are responsible for “inclusion and gender equity outcomes”.
The Australian Signals Directorate, the government’s specialist cyber-intelligence agency, forked out $28,975 for tickets, which it listed as “training services”.
I suspect Ardern’s vacuous witterings would very much fit the description of ‘counter-intelligence’.
This is the same Jacinda whose economic genius helped tip New Zealand into recession, distanced the country from the Five Eyes alliance to appease Beijing, and presided over policies that tanked her popularity before she bailed for a Sydney sinecure, a damehood, and gigs with Prince William’s Earthshot Prize. Now Australian taxpayers subsidise her victory lap.
Oddly enough, Ardern is notably not on the speaker list for the New Zealand leg of this fatuous gab-fest. Presumably the Marriott didn’t want to foot the bill to pick up the rotten tomatoes and steam-clean the spittle-flecked curtains afterwards.
Heinlein was right. When talent is absent, taxpayers are forced to subsidise the second-rate.
