Paying to Have Our Own Throats Cut

If a government-supported artist is an incompetent whore (to quote Robert Heinlein), then what is a government-supported activist? About the furthest thing from incompetent it’s possible to imagine. It’s just that what they’re competent at is the worst thing possible: destroying an entire civilisation.

Whatever else we may say about them, it can’t be denied that the Long March through the Institutions has been one of the most stunningly successful ideological campaigns in history. In less than half a century, the Marxists have captured every institutional power in the West. Not just the schools, but even the churches, police, big business and the machinery of government. The institutional capture has been so complete that they’ve even got us to pay them to cut our civilisational throats – and we don’t even notice it.

What else can you call it when millions of taxpayer dollars flow into activist groups like the Environmental Defenders Office? Explain it in plain language and it beggars belief that they’re allowed to get away with it: taxpayers’ money being used to fund groups whose only purpose is to stop anything that pays taxes.

The Institute of Public Affairs has now put a number on the racket. Over five years, state and federal governments quietly funnelled $2.24 billion into 100 selected activist groups, charities and peak bodies. Those same organisations then turned around and lobbied government for more of the same. Annual grants rose 60 per cent, accelerating after Labor took Canberra. Researchers could not find a single dollar given to an organisation backing a conservative cause.

“Advocacy groups receiving substantial public money have in effect become government-funded professional lobbyists talking back to government,” [IPA’s Morgan Begg] said.

The Multicult hoovered up the nearly half of the lot. In between showering millions on jihadis preaching ‘kill Jews’ in the mosques and madrassas of suburban Sydney, Multicultural Australia alone received $178.1 million. The Refugee Council used its taxpayer-funded status to demand we hand wave in more than double the swivel-eyed jihadis and stabby African rapists we already inflict on ourselves.

A hefty slab also went to the finger-wagging troughers who got a medical degree, but not the basic humanity to run a general practice, so they built a taxpayer-funded bureaucratic empire instead. Public-health groups collected $622 million: the cancer councils took $373.7 million between them and used it to fund their Fun Police – campaigning for higher alcohol taxes, advertising bans and government powers to censor ‘misinformation’ (meaning: facts that don’t suit their Nanny State narrative).

The groomers have also got their hands in our pockets: the pseudo-medical perverts playing pocket billiards over the Target kids catalogue are making bank at Australian parents’ expense. Transcend Australia received $2.2 million in public money, then joined the campaign against Queensland’s pause on puberty blockers for minors.

The Environmental Defenders Office collected $11.9 million while suing to stop projects the federal environment minister had already approved. The IPA says the EDO has claimed responsibility for the ban on native logging in Western Australia and the rejection of the Galilee coal project in Queensland. The Nature Conservation Council of NSW took $4.7 million while campaigning against any new or expanded coal mine and for legally binding emissions targets.

None of these campaigns support the government of the day. They pressure it from the left, whether Labor in Canberra or the LNP in Brisbane. Both sides of politics built the machine – Labor simply stepped on the accelerator.

The IPA’s solution is blunt: end all government funding for organisations that engage in political lobbying. Policy questions should be decided by voters, not a state-funded chorus.

“This spending is not waste. It is deliberate and intended to achieve a particular objective of stacking the deck of public debate,” [researcher Jordan Abou-Zeid] said […]

When confronted with over two billion dollars in receipts, the Albanese government failed to challenge a single figure. Unable to disprove the maths, the government immediately resorted to political deflection. A spokesperson rattled off standard talking points on tax cuts, paid parental leave, and cheaper medicines, before writing off the entire research report as divisive nonsense.

No, the divisive nonsense is the bile, blatherskite and soapboxing from the activist class we’re all being forced to fund.