For many Australian households, this has been a sobering Christmas. First, with energy prices up an astonishing 37.1 per cent for the year, they were suffering from acute mortgage stress. In real terms, their household income had gone backwards.

Then came the Bondi Beach atrocity, which left most Australians feeling defiled. There, two Muslim terrorists methodically gunned down 55 innocent people celebrating a Jewish festival. Fifteen Jews, including a ten-year-old, were killed.

Earlier Federal Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, had consoled the financially stressed with, ‘Today’s annual (inflation) result is higher than we would like but still much lower than what we inherited from our predecessors.’ In other words, ‘Be grateful.’

Australia’s 2.6 million public servants should certainly be grateful. Not only did their wage growth match inflation, but only a third attended the office five days a week. Indeed, in some cases, full-time office attendance was as low as ten per cent. Others were reportedly working from a travelling caravan.

But the Bondi Beach massacre shattered even their secure comfort zones. They were confronted with the reality that the Left’s cynical visas for votes policy had permitted those intent on establishing an Islamic caliphate to find unconditional refuge in this country.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signalled Australia’s acquiescence by surrendering his electoral office after two years of aggressive Palestinian protesters blocking access.

A politically aware Federal Police Commissioner, Krissy Barrett, described the Bondi Beach attack as an act of terrorism driven by ideology rather than religion. She seems unaware that Islamism is a political project rooted in religious orthodoxy, which seeks to remake society according to strict Islamic codes.

The ‘independent’ Australian Human Rights Commission is equally ignorant. It argues that Australia’s terror laws and public discourse unfairly target Muslims.

Perhaps such nonchalance explains why only three police officers were present at the Bondi Beach festival?

For those on the Left, the West is the embodiment of capitalism, colonialism, racism, patriarchy, and ‘white supremacy’. Islamic Jihad agrees. Australian government departments and agencies are now infected with this ‘progressive’ disease.

Today’s bureaucracies look inward and are geared to expand their remit. More laws and regulations mean more staff to administer them; more pay for senior bureaucrats and more control over people. Increasingly, these bureaucrats initiate policy and oversee implementation.

Bureaucrats are not judged on productivity or financial outcomes. Their focus is primarily on social change and compliance. Programmes and policies have been tailored to ensure it.

There are mandatory Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural learning courses requiring government employees to ‘reflect on how ‘learnings might inform your professional practices’.

The ADF and its academies support ‘Wear It Purple Day’, an annual event held to show support for LGBTIQA+ youth and to soften the image of ‘toxic masculinity’. With its focus elsewhere, Defence is understaffed and under-equipped, leaving the nation fundamentally defenceless.

Like the Defence forces, police academies also fly rainbow flags to signal their alignment with fashionable thinking.

As the bureaucracy has grown, so parliamentary authority has been wrested away from the people’s elected representatives. It represents an existential threat to democracy.

Even Senate Estimates, once forums for bringing transparency to government, are now little more than theatre and places to repeat slogans. Seeking to minimise scrutiny, Albanese’s office has encouraged the public service to take even predictable questions, ‘on notice’. Typically, up to fifteen per cent of questions remain unanswered months after they are asked.

This obfuscation is intended to control the news cycle and, given their ideological alignment, Labor willingly runs interference for challenged departmental heads, making accountability an elusive proposition.

The recent example of the Bureau of Meteorology’s website upgrade, where costs blew out from $4.1 million to $96.5 million, makes the point. Rather than express outrage, the Minister responsible for the Bureau of Meteorology, Murray Watt, declared that ‘The BoM is an independent agency, and it manages its own affairs. We don’t want ministers sort of getting in there and predicting the weather and all the other activities of the BoM.’

There will be an investigation, but the Bureau champions Labor’s climate change agenda, so few serious consequences will follow.

The truth is, neither Senator Watt nor the Albanese government wants to upset this unholy alliance with the public service. It’s why, despite irrefutable evidence of the deliberate broadcasting of disinformation and the spending of millions on legal fees and defamation payouts, Labor still pushes ‘the ‘independence’ of the national broadcaster and the need to protect it from ‘political interference’. In return, the ABC provides a useful megaphone for Labor’s leftist policies and conflates criticism of bias with ‘political interference’.

Clearly, the ABC’s intellectual and moral compass is broken; it sides with Hamas while championing feminism, knowing that under Islamic law, women suffer discrimination. And it promotes gay rights, aware that in Palestine, the LGBTIQA+ community would be imprisoned or worse.

Sadly, we have reached the point where dissembling, secrecy, and cover-ups have become routine. Some policies knowingly rely on lies for tactical political reasons.

The resistance to holding a royal commission into the Bondi Beach slaughter is symptomatic of the malaise. Those we trusted betrayed us, yet still refuse to be held accountable.

Indeed, as they eroded our freedoms, we silently watched them cynically corrupting the line separating government from its legislative, executive and judicial arms. That same elite cohort now seeks to exploit the Bondi Beach massacre by demanding even more power be given to them. But enough is enough.

While smaller governments will take pressure off budgets, that alone is insufficient. It is time to restore individual freedoms, encourage personal responsibility and attack government interference. Consumers and markets, not bureaucrats, must decide where capital is allocated.

To achieve any of this takes courage. The establishment has created multiple Praetorian Guards who will stop at nothing. However, to quote George Orwell, ‘To survive, it is often necessary to fight and, to fight, you have to dirty yourself.’ We have been warned.