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When I wrote, recently, about the Albanese government’s deceitful rigging of the game against our Afghanistan veterans, a reader asked, “Why do you think the government is putting these men on trial?” As I replied, I wish I knew.
The simple, but paranoid, answer would be ‘They’re doing China’s bidding’ or, ‘It’s all part of the globalist plot’. But even with a government as dire as the Albanese mob, I couldn’t imagine consciously betraying their country so obviously. Still, even history’s villains had to sleep at night and no doubt concocted all manner of justifications. They probably even believed some of them.
But I doubt the answer is so simple. Or, to put it simply: ‘it’s the vibe’.
The Long March through the Institutions has been stunningly successful, not because they have a central committee issuing orders and proclamations, but because they so carefully sowed the well-manured fields of the lefts’ minds with the memetic weeds that, however long they took to sprout, eventually overran the whole garden. The military is, to use their jargon, one of the most powerful ‘repressive state apparatus’, so, it seems, their almost instinctive motivation is to take to it with the ideological Roundup.
More pragmatically, there’s more votes in the mosques of Western Sydney than the RSLs of middle Australia.
Whatever the reason, though, it’s clear that the Albanese government has chosen its side: it’s ISIS brides first, veterans last.
Part of what’s driving the rise of One Nation and similar parties around the world is a sense from ordinary citizens that what they love about their country is under assault.
It is a strange phenomenon. Modern parties of the left are full of self-loathing and, in Australia, nothing exemplifies this more than the Albanese government’s disdain for our flag, our values, our borders, and the custodians of our freedom – our veterans.
In one particularly egregious example, it emerged last week that the same minister who spent $361,000 on his own travel and accommodation between January and March this year alone denied the parents of a soldier who died earning the Victoria Cross a measly $5000 stipend to attend RSL and community events in honour of their son.
But if you thought this was an isolated example of a minister who just doesn’t get it, think again. Across the board, veterans have been hit hard in this budget, and it rankles me enormously that when the Albanese government needs to bolster its credentials, they head to their nearest military base and stand in front of a uniformed crowd. Yet when it comes to real support for the men and women who defend our values, they go missing.
The same Labor government that showers billions on dodgy NDIS providers in Western Sydney has capped the amount of primary and allied health services allowed for veterans to just $5000 per individual. This is funding that, quite literally, has kept former service personnel alive and their families intact. But not any more.
Still, it gets worse. Not only are veterans hit in this budget, but Labor have gone after those in their grave with cuts to commemorative service grants and funding for war graves related to World War I.
As I revealed last week, the government is also shamefully stacking the deck against the Afghanistan veterans it’s so vindictively pursuing, by sneakily and retrospectively watering down the definition of a ‘war crime’.
And this anti-soldier mindset continued again on Wednesday with confirmation that “unauthorised disclosures” to the media made prior to the arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith have now been referred to the national anti-corruption commission. Add to this, again revelations uncovered by [Michaelia Cash], that Attorney-General Michelle Rowland’s decision to sign off on the prosecution of Ben Roberts-Smith was considered in just over a day. That’s in contrast with the three weeks she spent mulling over the decision to proceed with slavery and terrorism charges against recently returned Islamic State women.
Nothing more clearly demonstrates the Albanese government’s position on radical Islam than the radically different treatment of these 34 individuals connected to the Islamic State and our soldiers. By their own admission, these women left our country to join the Islamic State and breed the terrorists of the future. The “cubs of the caliphate”, they were called. Ben Roberts-Smith left our country to fight the Islamic State.
Former AFP detective superintendent David Craig did not mince his words:
I noticed that after the Bondi shooting, [Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett] made that statement that it was not an ideologically based attack, not based on religion, despite it being radical Islamists shooting Jewish people at a Jewish religious festival… This is appalling leadership. However, when it comes to Ben Roberts-Smith, when it’s something that won’t upset the Muslim vote, then suddenly she’s happy to sit up there and make a press conference.
The Albanese government can stand in front of uniformed crowds at military bases when it suits them. But when the bills come due for the men and women who actually defended this country, they go missing. ISIS brides get the red carpet and three weeks of careful consideration. Our veterans get retrospective law changes, slashed health caps and the cold shoulder. Ordinary Australians can see it. They can feel it. And they are accordingly turning in droves to One Nation.
The Long March has turned the military into just another institution to be purged. The only question left is how much more damage Labor will do before the bill for all this self-loathing finally comes due.
