The Nation is in Free Fall

Almost every major economic indicator points to a nation in decline.

Inflation has eroded living standards. GDP per capita has gone backward. Productivity is stagnating. Real wages have fallen behind the cost of living. Business investment is weak, and unemployment pressures are growing. At the same time, social cohesion has rarely been more fragile. Our nation's history and traditions, the Australian Flag, our national anthem, and even Anzac Day are under constant attack from radical activists determined to remake Australia in their own image.

But the most disturbing decline under the Albanese regime is not economic. It is the decline of Australian democracy itself.

First came the electoral manipulation. Albanese imported more than one million new migrants during the first two years of his government's first term; all of whom will become eligible to vote at the next election and permanently reshape Australia's electoral landscape.

Then came the transformation of the ACT Senate vote. By expanding the Canberra bureaucracy with more than 20,000 additional Commonwealth public servants, the Albanese government has entrenched the left's electoral dominance in the ACT. A territory that traditionally split its two Senate seats between Labor and Liberal now appears increasingly likely to indefinitely return two senators from the political left, making it far more difficult for the centre-right ever to secure the balance of power in the Senate needed to reverse Labor's toxic agenda.

But the final coup de grâce is the Albanese government's Orwellian-sounding "Journalism Assistance Fund."

George Christensen covered this abomination earlier last week

Labor Is Now Part-Paying the Press

The Albanese Government is helping pay journalists across 184 private newsrooms, raising serious questions about disclosure, independence and who really holds power to account.

Confidential DailyGeorge Christensen

A free and independent media is the cornerstone of any functioning democracy. Without it, governments cease to be properly scrutinised. Accountability disappears. Truth becomes negotiable. Power goes unchecked. 

Yet that is precisely the direction Australia is heading under the Albanese regime.

Not content with a billion-dollar taxpayer-funded ABC pumping out leftist bias, the Albanese government has now established a $74 million "Journalism Assistance Fund"; a scheme that sends taxpayers' money directly into the bank accounts of media organisations.

The Albanese is distributing public money to 184 media organisations. The recipients include:

• Fairfax Media (SMH, The Age, AFR): $8,163,870
• Nine Network: $7,962,240
• Seven Network: $5,594,160
• WIN TV: $1,673,100
• The Conversation: $1,033,890
• Australian Radio Network (KISS, Gold): $978,120
• Crikey / SmartCompany: $737,022
• The Chinese Herald: $600,600
• The Greek Herald: $592,449
• Illawarra Mercury: $532,380
• Post Newspapers: $311,025
• The Saturday Paper: $300,300
• Mamamia: $268,125
• Mumbrella: $214,500
• Gympie Today: $175,600
• Bundaberg Today: $151,150
• Michael West Media: $128,700
• Canberra Daily: $125,268
• Vision China Times: $123,120
• Fremantle Herald: $111,540
• Manly Observer: $107,250
• Vietnamese Daily: $85,800
• The Indian Sun: $85,800
• The Korean Herald: $42,900

This is not assistance. This is a slush fund. This is the purchase of the press. This is taxpayers' money flowing into newsrooms that are supposed to hold governments to account.

And this is how democracies begin to die; not with tanks rolling down the streets, but with governments quietly writing cheques to the very organisations entrusted with scrutinising them.

Once a media outlet becomes financially dependent on government funding, it ceases to be independent. It becomes a fully owned propaganda subsidiary of the Albanese regime; a captured mouthpiece that can no longer be trusted on any issue.

Australia's free press is collapsing before our eyes. Accountability is gone. Truth is for sale. Albanese has just put the final nail in the coffin of Australian democracy.

And if you think that's an exaggeration, consider the example of Chris Bowen spending $4.2 million of taxpayers' money on luxury accommodation at five-star Fijian resorts for delegates to enjoy the luxuries in a tropical paradise, attending yet another international climate change conference.

At a time when a record number of Australian families are struggling to pay their electricity bills, and many cannot adequately heat their homes during winter, it's hard to remember a more egregious abuse of taxpayers' money.

Yet this story has been completely ignored by the ABC, and across the 184 Albanese regime-funded media outlets, the very same organisations that breathlessly report on Pauline Hanson stopping off in Italy on her way home from the UK, a trip funded without a cent of taxpayers' money.

If our mainstream media will no longer hold the government of the day to account, if it will no longer inform the public, then democracy is dead.

Meanwhile, here at Confidential Daily, we don't accept a single cent of taxpayers' money. We run on the smell of an oily rag, funded entirely by the voluntary subscriptions of our readers. And we thank you for that support. That means, unlike the majority of Australian media, we answer only to one group of people, our readers, not the government.

And we will continue to expose government waste, incompetence, and policies that we believe are destroying Australia, without fear, without favour, and without ever putting out our hand for taxpayers' money. 

“Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.”
― paraphrase of Aristotle