The secret to happiness is freedom. The secret to freedom is courage. Thucydides
Sydney, New South Wales
Joined August 2010
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Sam Kennard retweeted
Individual French workers pay tens of thousands to social security every year only to watch the recipients burn their cities down
xitter.cf/koshercockney/status/2…
Sam Kennard retweeted
The government today will introduce sweeping censorship that @AlboMP & @AnikaWells lie about. Below she claims the government wants to create a bot army of fake accounts for “research” when the bill clearly intends for them to be used in partisan warfare against fooled citizens.
Sam Kennard retweeted
“This is by far the worst censorship legislation we have seen in the West.”
Michael Shellenberger, founder of Public and CBR Chair of Politics, warns that the Albanese government’s proposed Digital Duty of Care could give the government sweeping censorship powers and allow it to operate unlimited fake social media accounts.
📺 Watch more: bit.ly/46FPgi4
#Censorship #Politics #Australia
Sam Kennard retweeted
Well, that was wild. I'm at the Australian Parliament and just left a meeting with two staffers for the governing party. They told us that the government needed more power to censor things like the upcoming US execution of Nidal Hasan.
When I asked why they needed to censor that video, one said it was to prevent copycat killings. Copycat killings by governments? I asked. Er, no, they said. Copycat killings like of a backpacker, several decades ago.
So, under that logic, I pointed out, the government should censor things like last year's Bondi massacre, where two Muslims killed 15 people, no? Well, that was news, they said. Didn't they realize their bill would allow the government to censor news? They didn't seem to know, or care.
They also admitted that they did not know that the bill would allow the government to create and operate an unlimited number of fake social media accounts to attack its political enemies and spread disinformation. Having presented them with information they had never heard about a bill they had clearly not read, they emphasized to us, strenuously, that they were moving forward with the bill.
So there you have it. The government wants the power to arbitrarily censor scenes of violent crime, or violence, for any reason. And it wants the power to use an unlimited number of fake accounts to wage offensive disinformational warfare against the Australian people.
Given that the Bondi massacre last year increased public opposition to mass migration, and support for the populist One Nation Party, it seems obvious that the government wants to censor such events in order to protect its political power.
It's quite telling how obediently governing party members insist such a law is needed without even knowing what's in it.
Sam Kennard retweeted
Federal Labor Digital Minister Andrew Charlton was a Kevin Rudd staffer back in his PM days. When KRudd imploded, Andrew started a consultancy helping business ‘Connect with Government’, he sold it to Accenture for 35 million in 2020. Over 32 million of that was ‘goodwill’. Andrew then worked for Accenture for a while. He bought a 2 million dollar house in Parramatta to get that safe Labor seat in 2022 election, while mainly still living in an Eastern Suburbs mansion. Accenture get massive Federal Government contracts to improve things like the BOM website, 80 million went to Accenture for that. The website got worse, not better. After that flop, Accenture got even more taxpayer funded contracts, around a billion dollars worth, funded by the ATO sending small businesses broke and taxpayer debt. Apparently Andrew has nothing to do with Accenture getting contracts.
Andrew is what Labor is now.
He may be their next leader.
Speaking of Showbridge - known as the $10 million wife’s man - Labor’s Andrew Charlton’s is way richer
The Parramatta MP owns a staggering $42 million worth of property. Given the amount of hardship in Parramatta, why do they keep voting for him?
Charlton thinks he’s going to be Prime Minister but unless he’s going to undermine Albanese, it’s unlikely there’s an appetite from Australians to elect someone that privileged
Sam Kennard retweeted
Compelling:
The West’s net-zero policies are handing China a huge strategic advantage
While Western nations close reliable energy and raise costs, China adds wind and solar without giving up coal, oil or gas—then sells us the panels, batteries and other products our mandates require
China’s approach is “add, don’t subtract”: build renewables and nuclear power while continuing to expand fossil fuels. This supplies cheap, dependable energy for Chinese industry. Meanwhile, many Western governments deliberately make their own energy more expensive and become increasingly dependent on Chinese solar panels, batteries, critical minerals and manufacturing.
Western climate organizations scrutinize democracies far more aggressively than China, where independent activism is impossible and access depends on the state.
Climate policy should be judged by its actual effect on global emissions, energy prices, industrial competitiveness and dependence on China—not simply by whether it appears ambitious at home.
tabletmag.com/sections/news/…
Sam Kennard retweeted
Africans rank jobs, the economy, health, education, poverty, roads, electricity, hunger, and corruption as their top concerns
Climate ranks near the bottom of African worries
Afrobarometer 2021-23, afrobarometer.org/wp-content…
You can see all the references in my Twitter thread:
xitter.cf/BjornLomborg/status/20…
Not what the world's poor want:
31% of Official Development Aid between 2020 and 2024 was spent on climate
bsky.app/profile/richardtol.…
Sam Kennard retweeted
To believe that letting people access their Super is 'inflationary' you also have to believe that high wages cause inflation, that tax cuts cause inflation, or that consumer choice causes inflation.
Sam Kennard retweeted
There’s an old saying in financial modelling: garbage in, garbage out. My take on Treasury’s tax reform assumptions, from today’s @australian.
Sam Kennard retweeted
Cigarettes in Australia are already cheap and being supplied by criminals.
The illicit tobacco industry is a policing and health issue, not a tax one.
66 Australians die every day from tobacco smoking. If the excise is cut and cigarettes are cheaper, people will smoke more.
We should deal with illicit tobacco as we do with illegal alcohol, drugs and firearms - by strong border controls and effective policing.
abc.net.au/news/2026-09-03/c…
Sam Kennard retweeted
-8% after money printing makes Australians wealth halve in a decade
#BREAKING: Australia's economy grew 0.4 per cent in the June quarter and 2.1 per cent over the past year, both faster than most economists were expecting. abc.net.au/news/2026-09-02/g…
Sam Kennard retweeted
Former Shark Tank judge Steve Baxter warns that says the federal budget is a “bad dream”, and predicts Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ tax overhaul will crumble in two years once the government realises the “wasteland” it has created.
Mr Baxter, a former army officer-turned-tech-entrepreneur, has raised $26m in his Beaten Zone Venture Fund I, which is aimed at bolstering Australia’s sovereign defence sovereign capability, reports Jared Lynch: bit.ly/4iD5u2C
Sam Kennard retweeted
Fossil China vs Green hype
You're told China is green
Reality: China is predominantly fossil fuel-powered, as is the rest of the world
China's renewable energy share 40% in 1971 when poor (wood, dung)
As average Chinese got 35x richer over the period, fossil fuels maxed at 2024
iea.org/data-and-statistics/…
You can see all the references in my Twitter thread:
xitter.cf/BjornLomborg/status/20…
Fossil China vs Green hype
You're told China is green
Reality: China is predominantly fossil fuel-powered, as is the rest of the world
China's renewable energy share 40% in 1971 when poor (wood, dung)
As average Chinese got 35x richer over the period, fossil fuels maxed at 92% in 2011, now 86% in 2024
iea.org/data-and-statistics/…
Sam Kennard retweeted
Government raises taxes on local investment.
While offering tax concessions for foreign investment.
So it can claim success of projects that rely on lower taxes.
While denying local investment is constrained by high taxes.
Foreign investors in renewables will be offered a concessional 15 per cent tax rate until 2040, under a deal struck between the government and the Greens. ebx.sh/v2Sl0i
Sam Kennard retweeted
"Origin Energy warns renewable costs, low wholesale prices put Yanco Delta wind farm at risk"
Talk about timing for this kind of public musing...
What the article states (as though it's as obvious as the sky is blue) is that wind is high cost. So high, in fact, that wholesale power prices will have to rise significantly from where they are to make wind investable. Even with subsidies.
The implications for renewable advocates, who were crowing about how wholesale costs had come down, are profound. Whatever combination of new renewables and reliable coal has put downward pressure on prices, the outcome has definitely damned any further investment in renewables.
But for coal? The significance of this observation from Origin, which owns the largest existing coal fired power station, and the largest prospective wind development is hard to overstate. The musing goes like:
Dear @PennySharpemlc , should we put a few billion dollars into a giant wind project, which needs prices far higher than what we have in NSW to be viable?
Or... if we put a fraction of that money into refurbishing our coal generator, we could continue doing that which has kept prices low enough to make that wind uninvestable.
You choose Penny, because we certainly won't do both!
theaustralian.com.au/busines… via @australian
Sam Kennard retweeted
mind the gap
In other words, Australia is trending more and more towards socialism. Instead of low taxes that encourage economic activity and letting the free market decide who succeeds or fails, the government keeps raising taxes and propping industries up with bailouts and handouts.
No wonder Australia has experienced one of the sharpest declines in living standards among OECD nations in recent years — with real disposable income per capita lagging badly behind the rest of the developed world.
Source: OECD data via MacroBusiness (October 2025)
Sam Kennard retweeted
Where have all the climate alarmists gone?
Leaders barely mention it. Voters rank it near the bottom. Even Greta has moved on.
Here’s why the panic is fading — and what we should do instead:
youtube.com/watch?v=D9yizR2f…
Sam Kennard retweeted
Australia is sick
"Turnbull promised Snowy 2.0 for $2 billion. The budget is $12 billion, while outside estimates run to $40 billion. The greatest white elephant in Australian infrastructure history, and it isn’t even finished.""
open.substack.com/pub/kvetch…
