Paul Collits: Political Science

This is the story of how networks of Mates have come to dominate business and government, robbing ordinary Australians.

Every hour you work, thirty minutes of it goes to line the Mates’ pockets rather than your own. Mates in big corporations, industry groups, government departments, the halls of parliament and the media skew the system to suit each other. Corporations dodge taxes, so you pay more. You pay more for your house and higher interest rates on your mortgage, more for your medicines and transport, and more for your children’s education and insurance, because the Mates take a cut.

It was the late, great Harvard philosopher, Robert Nozick (the subject of an MA thesis I wrote when I was twenty-five), who argued compellingly that taxation was on a par with forced labour. Or theft, by the state. A few others have said similar.

Doing a deeper dive … Some forms of taxation are especially pernicious. Like retrospective tax. And hidden tax. And progressive tax. And non-indexed tax that is extra punitive as a result of inflation, the state’s best friend.

Just in: As of April 29, 2026, Australian headline inflation rose to 4.6% in the 12 months to March 2026, up from 3.7% in February, driven by high housing (6.5%), transport (+8.9%), and fuel costs. While headline inflation surged, the Reserve Bank’s preferred trimmed mean (underlying) inflation held steady at 3.3% for March.

Stealing your money and then spending it on things that you don’t want or need, or that you believe to be morally reprehensible or economically vandalous (and scandalous), is especially abhorrent. What about spending your money on things they said they wouldn’t spend it on? Or happened not to mention when we were voting last? What kind of a mandate is that?

And what about spending it on projects that the Government says will cost $2 billion (Snowy 2.0, Malcolm?) but turn out to cost over $40 billion? Then there is the high-speed rail scam, apparently coming in 2028 (the starting date for construction). 90 billion on current estimates. We know the final cost will be many times this.

And then the NDIS, Australia’s National Disability Scheme, which everybody knows is a scam.

The NDIS is projected to cost taxpayers approximately $50 billion in the 2025–26 financial year, representing one of Australia’s fastest-growing expenditures. Costs are expected to reach $58 billion by 2028 and potentially $100 billion by 2034–35 without reforms …

We won’t mention the trillion on net zero and the renewables scam. Or the Covid trillion.

Can anyone name even one of these rorts that was subject to an election debate? Oh, and we won’t mention all the pork barrelling for “local communities”, none of whom ever had the chance of a local plebiscite to determine if they even wanted the mini white elephants duly provided to them. Funding, funding, funding.

The sheer size of the policy corruption and the exposure of Australian taxpayers involved in the ever-growing climate hoax should be the cause of head shaking and buyer remorse. How many taxpayers even know the numbers involved? Trillions, anyone?

Moreover, out-of-control taxing and spending that we haven’t signed up for breaks the implied social contract, described by (for example) John Locke, that is the basis of modern democracy. What about the one third of voters who don’t even consent to be governed by the Liberal Labor UniParty, let alone to accept anything they spend those voters’ hard-earned on? Remember the lessons of the Boston Tea Party.

No taxation without representation.

Taxation is in the news right about now. Budget leaks suggest punitive changes to the Capital Gains Tax. That no one from Canberra discussed with voters before the last election, as far as I am aware.

Where are the Liberals and the Nats, you might well ask?

The Australian Government is slugging us all, especially seniors, without consent and in devious ways, in a naked daylight robbery-level tax grab, to pay for its crimes against our economy and our people. Why people aren’t marching in the streets over this is entirely beyond me. Maybe, at least in Farrer, they will express a view on 9 May.

But it isn’t always the big tax-and-spend crimes that grab your attention and incite your righteous anger. Well, you might think that six hundred million dollars pissed up against the wall isn’t huge, in today’s terms and in the context of (for example) the state’s net zero and Covid crimes. It is loose change. A rounding error, as they say.

But, still …

Readers may or may not have heard of Jarome Luai and Alex Johnston. Who? They are NRL football players who are signing up to play for a new Papua New Guinea team that is joining the rugby league competition in 2028.

The reasons this is germane here are twofold. One is that the Albo trainwreck Government is spending 600 million dollars of our money to give PNG a team in the NRL. The other is that Luai, Johnston and anyone else who signs on will get their incomes tax free!

You are reading this right.

The PNG Chiefs, joining the NRL in 2028, are offering marquee players massive, tax-free contracts and untaxed third-party deals. Jarome Luai has reportedly signed a three-year deal worth roughly $1.2 million per season (tax-free), making him potentially the highest-paid player in the competition.

Tax-Free Structure: As part of a partnership likely facilitated by the PNG government, player salaries earned in PNG will be tax-free.

Third-Party Advantages: Third-party sponsorship deals, often from local businesses, are also considered tax-free, enhancing the overall value of the contracts.

Marquee Signings: Jarome Luai has confirmed he will leave the Wests Tigers to join the Chiefs as a foundation player in 2028, citing the unique opportunity and tax-free appeal. Other players like Alex Johnston have also been linked to the team.

Significance: This financial model provides a significant competitive advantage in recruitment compared to Australian NRL clubs, which must operate under a strict salary cap.

Reports suggest this setup is part of a broader, government-backed effort to make the expansion club immediately competitive.

So, $1.2 million tax free is the equivalent of a $2 million normal income. Can’t-say-no money, as Paul Kent calls it. No theft or forced labour here.

And then there are all the third-party financial deals available to the PNG players. And they are tax free as well!

One report noted: If the Chiefs offered a marquee player a salary of $1.5 million, and he earned $400,000 in sponsorships — the earnings would be equivalent to that of a $3.5 million salary after tax in Australia.

One journo (Brent Read) shared his views: “The money is ridiculous. Aside from the contract money, there are third party deals over there which is all tax free as well. He would instantly become the highest-paid player in rugby league.”

Yes, it is ridiculous. You could NOT make this up. A tax-free income paid for by … your fellow taxpayers.

Australia is now officially certifiable. When its leaders can simply identify one group of citizens and declare their earnings tax-free. Where is ICAC, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, when you need it? Or the new corruption watchdog in Canberra? If they aren’t interested, well, corruption needs urgent re-definition.

What was I saying about marching in the streets? Even by modern government standards, paying millionaire elite sportsmen these kinds of salaries, tax free, at the same time (literally) you are slugging modestly well-off retirees for having made prudent savings and investment decisions while they were PAYE taxpayers during their working lives is, as the old left used to say, “obscene”. Where is the new left on this scam?

Australia has become one of the most unequal societies in the Western world, when just a generation ago, it was one of the most equal.

In the case of the NRL, its motivations for endlessly expanding its league competition are essentially imperialist. It is a code now for millionaires. And in the case of PNG, we-the-public are paying for a particular sporting code’s greed. Led by the NRL mate-in-chief, Peter V’Landys. PVL to friends and enemies alike.

Peter V’landys AM, commonly known as “PVL,” is a highly influential Australian sporting administrator serving as the CEO of Racing NSW and Chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission (ARLC). Known for his aggressive “bull-at-a-gate” leadership style, he has revolutionized the NRL through initiatives like the Las Vegas expansion, rule changes, and securing major broadcasting deals.

A mover and shaker. A textbook Fritjers mate, in other words. Governments in his pockets. Able readily to pull the strings of the sports tragic, cosplaying Albo, for example. Albo loves nothing more than to get his footy jersey out and stride around the paddock in search of photo bombing opps. What PVL wants, PVL gets.

The optics aren’t nice. It is a case of win-win-lose. Have a guess which one is the Aussie taxpayer, which one is the venal NRL and which one is Albo.

Speaking of optics, there is this: Luai landed back in Sydney on Monday on a private jet.

He avoided the large media contingent at the Kingsford Smith Airport by being privately ushered into his car, adorned with a personalised ‘LUAI’ number plate, waiting on the tarmac.

He immediately climbed into the back seat of the heavily tinted car and was driven away by his partner.

Ouch. Back in the day, rugby league was the working man’s game … But there are issues here far bigger than one man, a man against whom I hold no personal animus.

PVL calls people who query the PNG move “haters”. That well-worn and convenient epithet that is thrown at anyone who dissents from the official narrative.

Well, what about the long-suffering taxpayers who are about to be slugged afresh?

As for the punters in the stands, the faithful fans, they face the toll roads, the hyper-inflation that is driving our cost-of-living nightmare, the GST on everything, the stamp duties, the sin taxes, the Capital Gains Tax, and the punitive income taxes driven ever higher by fiscal drag. They probably won’t begrudge the players swayed by the big dollar. They are generally forgiving of that. But they might baulk at the largesse given – out of their shallow pockets – to another country to set up a football team. International diplomacy? International diplomacy be damned. Nation building? Fine, but not on our dime, thank you.

No, it is simply the elites at play. Sick-making stuff.

The Government and the NRL are double-dipping here too. And playing favourites in the NRL. Discriminating against existing teams. And spitting in the face of the other new team entering the NRL (in 2027), the Perth Bears. Who are struggling to sign elite players to an equally distant new home base.

Yes, taxation IS on a par with theft or forced labour

In our age of democracy-free taxation and immoral, out-of-control government spending, on everything from unwinnable foreign wars to abortion-on-demand to subsidised childcare for other (rich) people’s children to deadly Covid vaccines to bird-chomping wind towers to koala-killing land clearances for net zero scams, to fast choot-choot trains to nowhere to foreign countries footy teams and their mega-rich players, we have hit the super-state jackpot.

Oh, and we’ll just change the tax rules without your permission just so we can keep giving powerful interest groups their slices of the pie, and so return us to government every three years, on cue. Rinse, repeat.