From Gaz’s A Defender’s Voice

Greg Sheridan’s bombshell article in The Australian, “Australia Divided, Misgoverned, in Retreat,” doesn’t just diagnose a nation in trouble; it rips off the bandages to expose the systemic rot infecting every major artery of the country. From education to energy, defence to demographics, Sheridan paints a chilling portrait of deliberate national erosion—a collapse that is being orchestrated under the cover of normalcy.

Sheridan’s core contention is clear: what we’re witnessing is not merely policy failure or bureaucratic inertia. It is a calculated dismantling of the structures that once made Australia sovereign, secure, and successful. The education system is not declining by mistake—it is producing citizens less able to question authority. The military isn’t being neglected accidentally—it’s being hollowed out at a time of mounting regional threats. The housing crisis doesn’t just reflect economic shifts—it enforces dependence and disillusionment.

And the worst part? Australians, hard-working and trusting by nature, are too burdened by daily survival—by the cost of living, by insecure work, by raising families in a climate of constant pressure—to realise they’re being quietly and methodically strangled. The machine of misgovernment runs best when no one notices the chains tightening.

Sheridan needs to be congratulated for his courage—not only for diagnosing the rot but for having the audacity to name it. In an era where speaking inconvenient truths can cost a career, he chose integrity over safety. And The Australian deserves a rare pat on the back for publishing it. At a time when most mainstream outlets are content to recycle press releases and political spin, this piece stands out as a journalistic act of defiance. It’s a clarion call, and it’s time we listened.

A People Distracted, A Nation Dismantled

You can’t blame the average Aussie. They’re working double shifts, juggling childcare, watching rent skyrocket while their wages stagnate, and praying that the next government handout or tax break will buy them a little breathing room. Meanwhile, they are fed slogans and distractions while the pillars of the nation are quietly reduced to rubble.

Sheridan’s thesis—and the numbers he lays bare—should jolt every complacent citizen out of slumber. This isn’t just political failure—it’s the systemic exploitation of trust, sold to the highest bidder.

  • Debt: Over $1 trillion and rising, with $27 billion a year evaporating just in interest—more than the entire federal education budget. That’s not fiscal policy. That’s economic quicksand.
  • Education: We are four years behind Asia in math. Our classrooms are factories of intellectual erosion. One in three students can’t pass basic literacy. We are raising a generation less capable than the last, in a world that’s only getting more complex.
  • Mental Health: Suicide is now the number one killer for Australians aged 15–44. Let that settle. Not car accidents. Not disease. Despair. Australia now ranks just behind the U.S. in youth mental illness trends, according to The Lancet. We are burying our future in cemeteries of silence.

This is not just incompetence—it’s engineered helplessness. A nation anesthetised with Netflix and bureaucracy, while its social fabric is shredded in boardrooms and rubber-stamped in parliaments. What’s happening isn’t accidental—it’s orchestrated.

The Death Spiral of a Sovereign Nation

Sheridan doesn’t tiptoe. He fires a warning shot directly into the heart of Australia’s delusion: this is not a drift into second-rank status—it’s a nosedive, and someone has both hands on the yoke.

But who’s flying us into the mountain?

It’s not the single mum skipping meals to feed her kids. Not the tradie pulling overtime to make rent. Not the millions of Australians who still believe their vote matters. No—Sheridan names the true saboteurs: a “comfortable, coddled and second-rate political class.” The architects of decline wear suits, smile for cameras, and rubber-stamp ruin from behind government desks and think-tank podiums.

These people are not failing us. They are betraying us. Decisions are no longer made in Canberra for Australians—they’re dictated from offshore boardrooms, global NGOs, and multinational interests whose loyalty lies not with nations but with profits and power.

Sheridan’s insight is not just a local revelation—it is a geopolitical alarm bell. This blueprint of engineered collapse is not unique to Australia. It’s a western-wide contagion:

  • In the UK, the once-mighty industrial engine has been dismantled by bureaucrats preaching carbon puritanism while relying on Russian gas.
  • In the U.S., the middle class—once the backbone of the world’s most powerful democracy—is disintegrating under debt, division, and digital surveillance.
  • In Canada, a nation built on resource wealth and rugged independence is drowning in a cost-of-living tsunami and authoritarian climate dogma.

These aren’t isolated policy mistakes. They are surgical strikes against sovereignty. What we are witnessing is not decay—it’s demolition. It is cultural euthanasia masked as progressive reform. It is a silent war on the nation-state, and Australia is not just in the crosshairs—it is the test case.

If they can gut Australia—rich in resources, history, and resilience—then nowhere is safe. And no one is coming to save us.

Energy as Ideology, Not Strategy

Sheridan calls it out: “Net zero is a fraudulent concept.” And that fraud is costing lives, liberty, and livelihoods—especially among those who can least afford it.

Net Zero has become the cruelest bait-and-switch of our time: a shimmering promise of planetary salvation masking a brutal regime of economic disenfranchisement. The elites who drafted this agenda will never be touched by its fallout. When they speak of sacrifice, it’s never themselves they have in mind. While they dine on wagyu beef and fly in private jets to climate summits, they instruct working Australians to eat bugs, give up their utes, and endure blackouts. For them, carbon credits are indulgences; for the rest of us, they’re digital shackles.

It is the single mum who can’t afford to retrofit her home, the pensioner shivering through winter, the tradesman priced off the road by fuel taxes—these are the real casualties of Net Zero. This isn’t a climate strategy. It’s a class war, executed in the language of virtue. As factories close and power bills skyrocket, we are told to celebrate our sacrifice as noble. But this is not nobility. It is enforced austerity. And it is no accident. It’s policy. A top-down, asset-stripping operation where the poor are priced out of modernity and the middle class is gaslit into submission.

Even in Britain, the spell is breaking. Reform UK is rising not because they deny climate change, but because they refuse to pretend that destroying your economy will save the planet. Meanwhile, Australia marches forward like a climate lemming, ignoring nuclear, punishing the productive, and applauding its own deindustrialisation. This isn’t a green future. It’s a controlled demolition disguised as salvation. The biggest losers? The ordinary people. The ones who never had a seat at the table but will still be handed the bill for the banquet they weren’t invited to.

The Price of Denial

Sheridan’s article isn’t anti-Australian. It’s the most pro-Australian thing you’ll read this year—a rallying cry buried in a media landscape where truth has become a contraband item. He compares us to Nauru—once wealthy, now forgotten—and it’s not a stretch. The implication is clear and terrifying: even the most blessed nations can be brought to their knees if they abandon vigilance, sovereignty, and above all, informed public discourse.

But here’s the twist: it’s not the public’s fault. Australians aren’t stupid or lazy—they’ve been systematically kept in the dark. Censorship isn’t just a dystopian buzzword anymore; it’s the invisible hand that shapes what we see, hear, and believe. Dissenting voices have been algorithmically buried, de-platformed, or discredited. Experts who challenge the narrative are labelled fringe or dangerous. Meanwhile, the same five talking heads rotate through television panels, reinforcing a consensus that was never honestly debated. What Sheridan does in his article is nothing short of heretical in today’s tightly policed discourse.

This is the danger of managed information: a nation sleepwalks into ruin while believing it’s just enduring a rough patch. We’ve confused comfort with freedom, headlines with truth, and government reassurance with national stability. Sheridan’s piece rips through that fog like a flare in the night—and it should terrify us into action.

This Is Not Inevitable—But It Is Imminent

The good news? Decline isn’t fate. But it demands recognition.

Sheridan scorns both Labor and Coalition cowardice. He implores Australians to wake up, reject the cultural cringe, and fight for their future.

If Australia can be dismantled, so can any nation.

So read the article. Share it. Rage at it. But above all, realise this:

Australia isn’t dying of old age.

It’s being murdered.

And unless we fight for it, there’ll be nothing left to inherit.

You can follow Gaz’s Substack page A Defender’s Voice HERE.