The federal government wants Australia to become a major destination for data centres and artificial intelligence. These facilities promise investment, jobs and a place in the rapidly expanding global digital economy. But they also require enormous quantities of electricity—reliably and around the clock.

At the same time, Australia continues to prohibit nuclear power. It is a real contradiction.

The International Energy Agency says global investment in nuclear power has been rising, with annual investment now exceeding US$60 billion. Nuclear generation is also expected to reach record levels, driven by new reactors and restarts in countries including China, India, South Korea, Japan, France and the United States. Nuclear energy output is increasing, not decreasing.

We are told that Australia cannot afford nuclear power, yet countries much poorer than Australia operate nuclear reactors. It is also difficult to argue that nuclear power is not a clean source of electricity when its generation does not involve the burning of fossil fuels.

Australia’s energy policy increasingly appears irrational. It is the same policy framework that is closing coal-fired power plants without adequate replacement capacity. It is also the policy environment that has seen oil refineries close, leaving Australia with only two major refineries and increasingly dependent on overseas supplies of refined petroleum.

Again, the argument is that these alternatives are too expensive. Yet despite all the supposed cost savings, Australians are still paying a high price for electricity. Some businesses have to stop operating on certain days to reduce their energy costs. That is hardly the hallmark of a first-world economy.

Canada Offers an Alternative

Canada provides an especially interesting example when it comes to nuclear energy. It has decades of experience operating CANDU reactors, a technology developed in Canada and designed around natural uranium fuel.

Canada currently generates around 13 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power and is pursuing an ambitious expansion of its nuclear fleet. Its 2026 nuclear strategy envisages up to ten new large-scale reactors. Canada has also exported CANDU technology to several countries over many years.

For Australia, that raises an obvious question: why couldn’t we buy proven Canadian technology rather than starting from scratch?

Australia has abundant uranium resources and a sophisticated engineering and mining industry. Canada has extensive nuclear operating experience and an established CANDU supply chain. Rather than treating nuclear power as an entirely Australian industry that would have to be created from nothing, Australia could potentially partner with an experienced nuclear nation such as Canada.

There are legitimate concerns. New nuclear plants are expensive, construction can take many years, and Australia would need to develop the workforce and expertise required to operate them safely. Those are serious issues that deserve careful consideration. But those concerns are arguments for debate, not for an outright ban.

At present, Australia cannot even have a serious discussion about nuclear power without running into the government’s existing prohibition. That makes little sense when so many other advanced economies are reconsidering nuclear energy.

The Cost of Electricity

Meanwhile, Australians are repeatedly told that electricity prices will become cheaper. In reality, many consumers continue to face high electricity costs.

Australians can pay anywhere from 33 to 38 cents per kilowatt-hour. By comparison, electricity prices in the United States and Canada can be around 16 and 12 cents per kilowatt-hour respectively—roughly one-third to one-half of what Australians pay.

Australia is also one of the world’s major energy exporters, particularly of natural gas. Yet Australian households and businesses continue to face relatively high domestic energy prices.

That raises an obvious question: if Australia is so rich in energy resources, why is its own electricity so expensive?

Much of Australia’s current policy appears designed to satisfy the demands of the net-zero lobby. In doing so, however, it may also be playing into China’s hands.

Australia has become increasingly dependent on China for many parts of its energy and industrial supply chains. For Americans who have not visited Australia in recent years, they may find the number of Chinese-made vehicles on Australian roads shocking. Chinese manufacturers have become major players in the Australian automotive market, and many of their vehicles are now of surprisingly good quality.

The same dependence exists in renewable energy technology. Solar panels are widespread on Australian rooftops, and household battery storage is becoming increasingly popular. Yet much of the world’s solar-panel and battery supply chain is dominated by Chinese manufacturing.

This does not mean Australia should reject renewable energy or Chinese-made products. It does mean that energy security should be considered alongside emissions reductions and cost.

The issue becomes even more important as electricity demand changes for AI increases. Traditional electricity planning was largely about supplying households and conventional industry. The coming wave of artificial intelligence and hyperscale data centres is different. These facilities can represent enormous, concentrated electricity loads that require dependable power 24 hours a day.

It is perfectly reasonable for governments to insist that data-centre developers pay for the additional generation and transmission capacity they require. But if Australia wants this investment, it should also ask whether its energy policy gives investors enough options to provide that power reliably and competitively.

Instead, Australia has effectively decided the answer in advance: build more wind and solar, add storage and expand transmission. That may be part of the solution, but why should it be the only solution?

The irony is becoming particularly obvious internationally.

Countries that once regarded nuclear power as yesterday’s technology are reconsidering it because they need abundant, reliable, low-emissions electricity.

Canada is expanding its nuclear ambitions. The United States is pursuing new nuclear technologies. China, India and South Korea continue to build reactors. More than 30 countries already operate nuclear power plants, while many others are planning new programmes.

Australia, meanwhile, has one of the world’s largest uranium resources but remains one of the few advanced economies where nuclear electricity generation is legally prohibited. That is difficult to reconcile with the ambition to become a major AI and data-centre hub.

Australia does not need to become a nuclear-only country. It does not need to abandon renewables. It simply needs to lift the ban and allow different technologies to compete.

If Canadian CANDU reactors, American designs, emerging small modular reactors, renewables, batteries, hydro and gas all have to compete on cost, reliability, emissions and construction time, then let them compete. That is what a rational energy policy should look like.

The test of energy policy should be whether it delivers reliable, affordable and low-emissions electricity—not whether a particular technology fits an ideological preference.

Australia wants to build the data centres of the future. It should be equally ambitious about building the electricity system capable of powering them.

Chiropractic and mental health? Putting those words together may seem incongruous. What does mental health have to do with manipulation or spinal adjusting? In fact, I would venture to guess that many young chiropractors graduating today have little idea that there is a historical relationship between the two.

Early in the history of chiropractic, the profession was associated with the treatment of mental illness. B.J. Palmer, who developed and promoted chiropractic after his father, D.D. Palmer, stated:

“D.D. Palmer was the first man to discover that insanity was caused by displaced vertebrae, that by replacing them the patient could be restored to normal condition.”

B.J. Palmer also stated the following during expert testimony he gave in court:

“If an atlas is subluxated it makes abnormal the functions of the brain.”

These statements may seem outlandish to many people, particularly those in the psychiatric and psychological professions. To suggest that all mental illness or insanity is caused by a spinal subluxation is certainly a dogmatic position. It is There is a historical relationship between chiropractic care and mental health.

We have to think back to the 1920s, an era before the advent of modern psychotropic medications, including many of the drugs now used to treat depression, anxiety, and psychotic disorders. These medications can be a mixed blessing. They can help people deal with crises but they can also have significant side effects and risks. They alter brain function, sometimes in ways that are therapeutic and sometimes in ways that can be problematic.

In 1922, an institution opened in Davenport, Iowa, called the Chiropractic Psychopathic Sanitarium. What a poor choice; it made it sound like chiropractors were psychopaths. The institution was eventually renamed the Forest Park Sanitarium.

Another mental-health facility, the Clear View Sanitarium, opened in Davenport in 1926. Both institutions operated for decades and incorporated chiropractic care into their treatment of patients with mental illness, at times with astonishing results.

As pharmaceutical treatments became increasingly prominent, the role of these chiropractic institutions diminished. Eventually, the hospitals closed due to financial constraints. Chiropractic did not have the same financial resources, institutional backing, or research infrastructure available to the pharmaceutical and medical industries.

This points to a longstanding challenge for chiropractic. On one hand, the medical community has often criticized the profession for lacking sufficient high-quality research to validate some of its claims. On the other hand, chiropractic has historically had far fewer financial resources available for large-scale research than the institutions and industries that fund much of modern medical research. In addition, the medical profession and pharmaceutical companies have tried to block chiropractic from entering the mainstream of healthcare.

There are, however, studies that provide interesting insights into how spinal adjusting may influence the nervous system—and potentially mental wellbeing.

Read more

Today, especially in light of the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, how it was handled, the mixed messaging, and the vaccine, which was disastrous for many, trust in the medical profession and the health bureaucracy has taken a big hit.

My wife, who is now retired as a medical doctor, became disgusted with the direction her profession took. Some of the so-called rebels who stood out during the pandemic, people like Doctors Peter McCullough, Pierre Kory, Ryan Cole, and Joseph Varon, bravely pointed out how medicine had failed people during the pandemic.

I thought back to the first time I heard a medical doctor rail against his profession. This was way back in the 1970s, when I had a chiropractic practice in Canada. I got to see him speak at a chiropractic conference. The man was Dr. Robert Mendelsohn. He had impeccable credentials:

• Instructor at Northwest University Medical College

• 12 years as Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Community Health and Preventive Medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine

• President of the National Health Federation

• National Director of Project Head Start’s Medical Consultation Service

• Chairman of the Medical Licensing Committee of the State of Illinois

Despite all this, Dr. Mendelsohn was a medical heretic. The fact that he not only spoke at chiropractic conferences but also recommended that people receive chiropractic care was most unusual, especially in the 1970s, when much of the medical profession was strongly anti-chiropractic.

This past weekend, I decided to have another read of his book, Confessions of a Medical Heretic, which is on my bookshelf. It’s yellowing around the edges, and a couple of pages are loose, but after all, I’ve had it for 47 years.

Mendelsohn came to the conclusion that modern medicine is like a religion. He compared hospitals to the cathedrals of power, with doctors functioning as authoritative “priests” whose recommendations patients tend to accept without questioning. He also called hospitals “Temples of Doom” and suggested that one should go to great lengths to stay out of them.

Now, where did we hear that idea of medicine as a religion before? Oh yes, Aaron Siri, who has litigated many vaccine injury cases and who recently wrote the book, Vaccines Amen: The Religion of Vaccines.

This is what Mendelsohn wrote in his book regarding vaccines:

“There are significant risks associated with every immunization and numerous contraindications that may make it dangerous for the shots to be given to your child….There is growing suspicion that immunization against relatively harmless childhood diseases may be responsible for the dramatic increase in autoimmune diseases since mass inoculations were introduced.”

How prescient was that? He recognized the potential for harm from childhood vaccines, and at that stage, the numbers were not at the level they are today. Many doctors today are starting to question the massive onslaught of vaccines and their effect on children’s bodies. This is no longer fake news, but it speaks to a crisis of chronic disease that is affecting the young to a greater extent than ever.

He spends quite a bit of time discussing how the overmedication of both children and adults leads to so many side effects, which themselves create disease. He cites the example of diethylstilbestrol, given to pregnant mothers for morning sickness, resulting in cancer in some of their offspring, as well as the mind-altering drugs used to treat various mental ailments like depression.

We now have an epidemic of these drugs being prescribed. The case of Lindsay Clancy, who murdered her children, exemplifies this. This is a list of the prescriptions she filled prior to the death of her children:

• Sept. 15, 2022: Sertraline (25 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Oct. 21, 2022: Lorazepam (0.5 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Oct. 26, 2022: Hydroxyzine (25 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Oct. 26, 2022: Lorazepam (1 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Oct. 26, 2022: Buspirone (5 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Nov. 2, 2022: Lorazepam (0.5 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Nov. 9, 2022: Buspirone (5 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Nov. 16, 2022: Trazodone (50 mg) – Kayvon Izadpanah, MD

• Nov. 21, 2022: Fluoxetine (10 mg) – Julie Paul, RN, CNP

• Nov. 25, 2022: Zolpidem (5 mg) – Julie Paul, RN, CNP

• Nov. 25, 2022: Mirtazapine (7.5 mg) – Julie Paul, RN, CNP

• Nov. 25, 2022: Clonazepam (0.5 mg) – Julie Paul, RN, CNP

• Nov. 30, 2022: Quetiapine (25 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Dec. 6, 2022: Diazepam (5 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Dec. 7, 2022: Diazepam (5 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Dec. 7, 2022: Quetiapine (100 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Dec. 9, 2022: Diazepam (5 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Dec. 13, 2022: Diazepam (2 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Dec. 16, 2022: Lamotrigine (25 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Dec. 19, 2022: Diazepam (2 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Dec. 19, 2022: Quetiapine ER (300 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Dec. 21, 2022: Quetiapine (100 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Dec. 22, 2022: Quetiapine (25 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Jan. 5, 2023: Trazodone (50 mg) – Alia Goodheart, MD

• Jan. 5, 2023: Lorazepam (1 mg) – Alia Goodheart, MD

• Jan. 9, 2023: Diazepam (5 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Jan. 12, 2023: Trazodone (150 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Jan. 13, 2023: Diazepam (2 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Jan. 16, 2023: Diazepam (2 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Jan. 16, 2023: Amitriptyline (10 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

• Jan. 19, 2023: Diazepam (2 mg) – Rebecca Jollatta, NP

• Jan. 23, 2023: Diazepam (2 mg) – Jennifer Tufts, MD

As Dr. Mendelsohn points out in his book, with a plethora of medications being given to people, how can we not expect disastrous effects on the human brain?

The book also covers several other areas, such as the problems with routine diagnosis, surgery, obstetrics and childbirth, women’s health, and the doctor-patient relationship.

In the final chapter, titled “The New Medicine,” Mendelsohn proposes a more patient-centered approach in which people take greater responsibility for their health and doctors provide information rather than simply issuing unquestioned directives.

In the epilogue, he describes the “New Doctor,” who communicates directly with the patient and doesn’t just think in terms of “how” to do something, but “why.” He also promotes the referral of patients to chiropractors for health care.

The book is an excellent read that has stood the test of time, and I give it five stars.

The U.S. debt has just crossed the magical $40 trillion line. Though there is nothing really magical here—it’s pretty much predictable. Spend, spend, spend, and if you don’t cover the spending, the debt just keeps increasing.

Would you run your finances this way? Well, some do, maxing out their credit cards and making minimal payments, which just perpetuates the problem. Let’s look at it on a personal level. Most of us have credit cards.

In fact, today it’s hard to do business without one, though debit cards are usually suitable in most cases and are safer from a financial standpoint. If you don’t have the money in the account your debit card is linked to, then you can’t spend the money.

Here is a credit card scenario. Most banks charge around 20% annual interest on outstanding balances. Let’s say you have a $25,000 credit limit on your card, max it out, and keep it at the limit while making only the minimum payments required to avoid default. Your credit card position would look like this:

• Debt: $25,000

• Annual interest: $5,000

• Monthly interest: $417

• 5 years of interest: $25,000

• 10 years of interest: $50,000

• 20 years of interest: $100,000

It’s actually worse than these figures suggest because all the money you forked out on interest was not working for you, so you’ve lost the potential compounding effect of that money. If your partner had a similarly maxed-out credit card and was also making only minimum payments, the figures would be even worse.

So the person could potentially pay $5,000 a year in interest alone, year after year, without making any meaningful progress toward eliminating the $25,000 debt. It doesn’t take long for interest to outstrip the original debt.

In this scenario, if the person is continually maxing out the card, the minimum payments aren’t really paying down the debt—they’re largely servicing the interest and financing ongoing consumption. At some point, you can’t consume much more because you are at your limit.

What if the bank decided to be benevolent and gave you an extra $5,000 annually in credit on your credit card? If you stopped spending, that additional credit could help you pay down your debt. However, if you simply added more consumption to your credit card, you would end up in an even worse financial position.

The thing is, you can’t print money or issue instruments of debt. Other than a loan shark, or perhaps a very generous family member, who is going to bail you out of your debt? The U.S. government can do something that you cannot: It can issue new debt instruments, such as Treasury bonds, to finance continuing deficits and, increasingly, the interest on its existing debt.

The striking difference is that an individual eventually hits a credit limit. The U.S. government doesn’t have a comparable fixed limit. Its constraint is ultimately the willingness of investors to keep buying Treasury bonds and the interest rates they demand to do so. When it comes to U.S. debt, there is a shocking number. Interest on the debt in 2025 hit $1.22 trillion.

There is only one solution: You have to cut spending, especially on the big-ticket items such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the military. However, no one—whether a president, senator, or House representative—seems to have the political courage to rein in spending. It appears to be electoral suicide. Another option is to increase taxes; instead, taxes have been cut. A third alternative would be to greatly expand the economy, but that is a difficult proposition. While the economy has continued to grow over the long term, the percentage growth of the GDP has been on a downward trend for decades except for a couple of one-year blips, as can be seen on the chart below from Macrotrends, and much of the recent increase in GDP has been supported by government spending rather than by a dramatic expansion of private-sector activity.

So how has Trump done with the debt? The answer is terrible. In his first presidency the debt went from $19.9 trillion to $27.8 trillion, an increase of $7.9 trillion. If you take his second presidency from January 2025 to now, it’s another $3.8 trillion increase. That is a total of $11.7 trillion so far.

Joe Biden was no better, increasing the debt by $8.0 trillion during his four years. So during the Trump and Biden admimistrations there has been a 50% increase in the debt in just under 10 years.

Another shocking statistic is how the debt has increased since 9/11––25 years. It was $5.6 trillion on September 11 and so in the 25 years since then, there has been a 727% increase in the debt!

The situation is not getting any better with July 2026 coming in at a $432.3 billion deficit in — the highest monthly level in more than five years. Continually running deficits merely adds to the debt, adding more interest and so the cycle goes on.

Unless someone bites the bullet and gets serious about spending reductions and actually increasing taxes to a tolerable level, then the problem will go on and on. At some point international investors will stop buying U.S. debt as it will be perceived as high risk. If the U.S. ever defaults it will have huge ramifications for the whole global economy.

I can’t remember when or from whom I first heard this quote, but it was many decades ago. The statement seems obvious: if you can’t see something, it’s as if you’re working blind. This certainly applies to X-rays, but it’s not the whole story when it comes to chiropractic.

X-rays and chiropractic have been bedfellows since the early days of the profession. In fact, 1895 was a pivotal year. It was the year Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X-rays and D.D. Palmer developed chiropractic. Just a short time later, in 1910, B.J. Palmer introduced the first X-ray machine to the chiropractic profession.

We can see how primitive those early X-ray machines were. The images produced were not of the quality we have today, and exposure times were quite long, resulting in much higher radiation doses.

During my chiropractic career, I have gone from manually processing films in a darkroom and hanging them on hangers, to automatic processors—still in a darkroom—and, in recent years, to digital X-ray technology. Digital X-rays allow for very low exposures while producing images of much higher quality than those available decades ago.

The use of X-rays in chiropractic has several important purposes, but X-rays are most valuable when integrated with other forms of analysis. Together, these tools can give the chiropractor a more complete picture and help determine the best approach to spinal correction.

Read more

For most of you the name Dr Pierre Kory will sound familiar. He was one on the heroes in the battle for medical freedom and bodily autonomy during the COVID-19 pandemic. For his efforts he was vilified and lost his certfication as a medical specialist.

One would think Dr Kory was just some fringe quack who lost his way when COVID-19 appeared. In fact, he had been the Chief of the Critical Care Service and Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center at the University of Wisconsin. He is one of the world pioneers in the use of ultrasound by physicians in diagnosing and treating critically ill patients.

So Dr Kory saw critically ill people in intensive care units with COVID-19 in the hospital and he had to think critically on the go, to save people’s lives. This raises an important question: “Who is best qualified to deal with COVID-19 patients in an advanced state, medical bureaucrats who sit in their ivory towers, or a person like Dr Kory?”

As Dr Kory found several treatments that saved people’s lives, he headed up Critical Care Units in several states and as the pandemic progressed, he co-founded the Front Line Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). However, look at what a site like Wikepedia continues to say about Dr Kory:

“Pierre Kory is an American critical care physician who gained attention during the COVID-19 pandemic for advocating widespread off-label use of ineffective drug treatments for COVID-19, as president and co-founder of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). Kory testified twice to the U.S. Senate regarding COVID-19. During his testimony in December 2020, Kory erroneously claimed that the antiparasitic medication ivermectin was a "wonder drug" with "miraculous effectiveness" against COVID-19.”

The words reveal what a disgusting outfit Wikipedia is, making Dr Kory out to be some wild-eyed conspiracy theorist. Stating that Dr Kory made erroneous claims about Ivermectin? No, Dr Kory actually did his research and it is well known that Ivermectin has parasitic, viral and even anti-cancer properties. He wrote the highly acclaimed and well researched, The War On Ivermectin. Wikepedia shows themselves to be am amateurish outfit.

Watch Dr Kory’s senate testimony way back in December, 2020.

Kory’s problems stemmed from the fact that in California, they passed a law restricting a doctor’s freedom to speak out against the consensus with respect to COVID, essentially calling any alternative commentary “disinformation”. While it was repealed, the Attorney General went after doctors who deviated from the “safe and effective” mantra.

Dr Kory and a couple of others, sued California, lost the case, which then went to the Supreme Court. Justice Kagan denied them a hearing, and then they appealed and were kept on hold. Meanwhile another case from Colorado was being heard on similar grounds and that was won on the grounds of free speech.

Because of the Supreme Court’s decision, the federal judge who acted aginst Kory now ruled in his favour. So the Attorney General of California and the medical board cannot go against him for expressing his medical opinion which may deviate from the “consensus”.

The ruling does give physicians immunity from ordinary medical regulation. The court specifically stated that the medical boards may still act in cases involving fraud, negligent treatment, prescribing violations, failures of informed consent, or other inappropriate conduct.

Notice the hypocritical words about informed consent. That was thrown out the window during the pandemic. That bond was broken when it should have been an unshakeable tenet of medical treatment.

This is really a big win for free speech and for science. Consensus is not science. The danger arises when “consensus” becomes a substitute for evidence—or when government authorities acquire the power to determine which scientific opinions physicians are permitted to communicate to their patients.

Instead of taking action against a rational, scientific mind like Dr Kory, it behooves authorities to take action against those who violated the science and medical ethics. That even extends to politicians who used authoritian powers to abuse their constituents.

It appears that the tied is turning. Not only was Anthony Fauci disgraced by what was divulged during his recent non-testimony when he pleaded the fifth 122 times, but another player in the COVID saga, Dr Ralph Baric who is now retired is being suspended and action is being taken against him by Human Health and Services (HHS) for his involvement in gain-of-function research that led to the creation of Sars-Cov-2.

Kudos to Dr Kory and all those others who have stood up for medical autonomy and freedom of expression which is a tenet of the U.S. constitution and should be for any democratic country.

A few days ago, I was talking with friends about a trip we took in 2012, when we set off for more than seven months travelling around the world. One of the truly magical places we visited was Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia.

We stayed at the luxurious five-star Hotel Explora, with views from our room that were simply breathtaking, as you can see above. Our friends are now interested in going, so I decided to check what it would cost today.

Back in 2012, the total cost for eight nights—including our room, all food and beverages, and guided hikes every day—was US$10,000. In April of that year, the Australian dollar was worth more than the U.S. dollar, at around US$1.10, so the trip cost us just over A$9,000.

Today, the Australian dollar is worth around US$0.70.

Hotel Explora is the sort of place you need to book almost a year in advance, and despite the cost, it remains booked well ahead. So I went online to see what eight nights would cost today.

The answer shocked me:

Currently, $25,280 USD converts to $35,735! In other words, the same eight-night experience has gone from just over A$9,000 in 2012 to almost A$36,000 today. That is an increase of roughly A$26,000 or an annualized rate of 28.5% increase.

The reason I raise this example is because I think governments can give us a misleading impression when they tell us inflation is running at 3–4%.

The official inflation rate is based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures changes in the prices of a basket of goods and services. But the CPI is not the same thing as the cost of maintaining the lifestyle people had in the past—or the cost of buying the assets they need to build that lifestyle.

And one of the biggest costs for most Australians—housing—is where the story becomes particularly interesting.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics calculates the CPI using a basket of goods and services. Mortgage interest payments are not included in the CPI.

This is not the same as saying housing is completely absent from the CPI. New dwelling purchases and rents are represented in different ways. But mortgage interest—the cost that many existing homeowners actually experience when servicing their debt—is not part of the CPI.

The reason is largely methodological. The CPI is designed to measure changes in household consumption, rather than changes in the cost of purchasing assets or financing them.

That distinction matters.

Because even when inflation is low, it doesn’t mean prices are falling. It simply means prices are increasing more slowly.

A loaf of bread rising from $5 to $5.20 is still an increase.

And a house rising from $500,000 to $1 million is an enormous increase, even if the official CPI doesn’t capture that increase in the same way.

This is where I believe the official inflation number can obscure what is happening to people’s living standards.

Over the past 40 years, Australians have experienced enormous increases in both wages and house prices. But the two have not risen together. House prices have increased much faster than incomes, and that difference is at the heart of Australia’s housing-affordability crisis.

In the 1980s, houses were expensive, but they were still much closer to the incomes of ordinary working families. Today, the gap is dramatically wider.

Recent estimates put Australia’s national house-price-to-income ratio at around nine times income, although the exact figure varies depending on whether you compare dwelling prices with median household income, individual earnings, or another measure.

Whatever measure you use, the direction is unmistakable:

The price of the asset Australians need to buy has risen far faster than the wages required to buy it.

And the deposit problem is even worse.

Suppose a house rises from $200,000 to $1 million.

A 20% deposit goes from $40,000 to $200,000.

Even if wages have increased substantially over the same period, the amount of cash required simply to get into the market has increased enormously.

That is why housing affordability has deteriorated so dramatically.

What happened to the Australian dream?

When I came to Australia in 1980 and built my first home in 1981, I was supporting a family of five and had one income and a mortgage.

And yet it was possible to service that mortgage and raise a family.

Today, unless you’re among the higher earners, a two-income household is often required just to make the numbers work.

That is a remarkable change.

Many young Australians must be asking themselves:

How did the price of a home get so far ahead of the wages needed to buy it?

There are many reasons—land-use restrictions, planning rules, population growth, tax policy, credit availability, infrastructure constraints, investment incentives and years of policy decisions all play a role.

But whatever the causes, the outcome is clear: successive governments have presided over a housing market where asset prices have dramatically outpaced incomes.

Look at the difference

1986:

• Mortgage rates around 12%

• One income

• Three children

• Yet a mortgage was serviceable

Today:

• Mortgage rates around 6%

• A vastly larger mortgage principal relative to income

• Often two incomes required to service the mortgage

This is the paradox.

People often point to the 1980s and say, “But mortgage rates were 12%!” Yes, they were. But the house was much cheaper relative to income.

A high interest rate applied to a relatively small mortgage can be less burdensome than a low interest rate applied to an enormous mortgage.

Consider a simple example.

Forty years ago, suppose a house cost $100,000 and household income was $30,000.

The house cost about 3.3 times annual income.

With a 20% deposit, the mortgage would be $80,000. At 12%, the annual interest would be $9,600—about 32% of gross income.

Now suppose the equivalent house is $1 million and household income is $200,000.

That’s 5 times household income.

At 6%, interest on an $800,000 mortgage is $48,000 — 24% of gross income.

So despite the interest rate being half what it was, the household has to carry an enormously larger debt relative to its income and that’s before any other costs are considered.

This is where successive governments have been misleading us.

The “official” 3.5% CPI figure can be misleading when discussing living standards across generations. A young Australian today isn’t simply facing a basket of goods that has risen 3.5% a year. They are facing a housing market where the price of the entry ticket has risen dramatically relative to wages.

There are not only serious side effects such as nausea, blindness, pancreatitis, muscle loss, and suicidal thoughts—currently 3,000 in Australia—but also the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has admitted that at least 62 deaths are attributed to these drugs.

Of course, these drugs are being prescribed worldwide, where the news media in other countries are alerted to the situation. In the UK, the number of deaths is confirmed as 82 so far.

One thing that is known is that the use of these drugs has become so pervasive, and some doctors with questionable experience are prescribing these potentially dangerous drugs.

We have the well-known case of Vioxx, an anti-inflammatory that was banned in 2004 because of more than 30,000 deaths resulting from heart attacks. The likelihood that the weight-loss drugs will be banned anytime soon is slim. We have to wait until we have thousands dying before it is considered by the health authorities.

Then we have the COVID-19 shots, which were launched as an experimental agent. Despite the overwhelming evidence of being the most dangerous medical product in history, with millions of deaths and serious adverse events, it’s untouchable. Even though groups like the CDC mention the risk of myocarditis, it’s minimized as if it’s an annoyance rather than a very serious concern, and they always qualify their statements with the word ‘rare.’ How is something rare when I personally know of three people who developed myocarditis after the second injection?

The authorities are still trying to gaslight the population, and you come across people who still believe the safe and effective mantra.

What is annoying is that you meet people who are offended that you didn’t get the vaccine. I ask the question that if the individual is vaccinated, what do they have to fear if I’m not? After all, we are told that the COVID shots are safe and effective. That lie was put to bed long ago. It’s not effective because it can be transmitted between people whether vaccinated or not. It also doesn’t prevent either group from getting COVID. So what was the point of subjecting people to an experimental, dangerous drug? The answer is obvious. Governments and pharmaceutical companies are in an incestuous relationship to push a profitable product.

The whole government medical complex will lie to rationalize their position. A good example is highlighted by investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson when she looked at the Amish community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

A study, “Closed but Not Protected: Excess Deaths Among the Amish and Mennonites During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” in the Journal of Religion and Health on June 11, 2021, implied that there were more deaths in the Amish community who didn’t vaccinate.

Attkisson, reading over the study, found serious flaws as described on her Substack. She wrote to the researchers seeking answers and correction but was ignored until she filed an FOA. Ultimately, they made some minor cosmetic corrections, but this did not change the tone of the study.

It turned out that the researchers conflated the Amish with Mennonites. Most of the Mennonites received the COVID-19 shots, and the communities investigated were in Ohio, not Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As noted in the video below on her Full Measure program, the Lancaster Amish did not vaccinate, did not lock down, nor wear masks. They quickly achieved herd immunity, and the mortality rate was no worse than the rest of the U.S. community.

We know the story about Fauci and all the other health authorities, along with government leaders, notably the state premiers of several Australian states. They grossly abused their power and their constituents. In a just world, they would be prosecuted for the falsehoods they projected on humanity. It is beyond time that, as a minimum, action be taken on dangerous COVID-19 shots.

There are two things none of us can escape: we are born, and one day we die.

People often say there are two certainties in life—death and taxes. But taxes aren’t quite as certain. Some people manage to avoid paying them altogether. Birth and death, however, are different. You cannot have one without the other.

Look around you and you see the same cycle everywhere. Plants are born, grow, reproduce, wither, and die. Animals follow the same pattern. Even stars are born, burn for billions of years, and eventually die.

Our Sun is no exception. Fortunately, it has roughly another five billion years before it enters its final stage, expands into a red giant, and ultimately makes life on Earth impossible.

Five billion years sounds like an eternity. But human life, by comparison, is barely a flicker.

I sometimes think of life as a conveyor belt. We step onto it at birth, travel along it for perhaps 80 years or so, and eventually step off. The uncomfortable part is that, as we get older, we become increasingly aware that our place on that conveyor belt is getting closer to the end.

When you reach my age—80 in three months—you notice it more. You see people your age, and sometimes people considerably younger, die unexpectedly. Others survive but become severely debilitated by cardiovascular disease, cancer, arthritis, or other conditions that can dramatically reduce their quality of life.

It would be easy to become fearful. But I don’t want to spend my remaining years being afraid of the end. I consider myself fortunate. At my age, I can still practise chiropractic, stay fit, write, travel every year, and continue doing things that give me pleasure and purpose.

And that raises an important question:

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President Trump just issued an executive order with recommendations for changes to the childhood vaccination schedule. We should say that any changes in the right direction are positive, and we should take the win, despite uncertainty about the future.

The basic rationale behind the order is to bring the United States in line with other countries that have what are considered best practices regarding vaccination.

There are several important points:

• The use of public trust and education rather than vaccine mandates.

• The following immunizations are recommended for all children: measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, Haemophilus influenzae type B, pneumococcal disease, human papillomavirus, and varicella.

• Others, like hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and meningococcal B, are recommended only for high-risk groups.

• The following are based on shared clinical decision-making between doctor and patient: hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, influenza, and COVID-19.

• The measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine should be split into three separate shots, as is done in most other countries.

The order also mentions the need for ongoing and improved research into vaccines.

Meanwhile, the media and various doctors and “experts” are screaming foul, saying that the order will diminish trust in vaccines and that children will die unnecessarily because of Trump’s order. In other words, the sky is falling. Yet when you look at the changes objectively, they are minimal and are followed in countries that have better health outcomes than America. So the objections appear irrational.

However, there are some issues here.

Why are the COVID-19 vaccines at least paused pending further research, if not outright banned? We know that Trump stated on a number of occasions that the vaccines saved 100 million lives—clearly untrue. What we do know is that they killed and injured millions.

Ed Dowd of Phinance Technologies posted on his Substack how disabilities, according to the Department of Labor, among those aged 16 and over have risen dramatically since the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccines. This chart clearly demonstrates this.

Senator Ron Johnson, in seeking testimony from Anthony Fauci—who pleaded the Fifth 122 times and refused to answer—pointed out that what Fauci said in public contradicted what was in his online diaries. He had concerns about injecting mRNA into pregnant women. He knew that there was a very real danger of the spike protein causing a cytokine storm, with inflammation that could damage the fetus, especially in the first trimester, and more so after a second booster dose. He brought this up to the CDC director and the Surgeon General in early January 2021, when the vaccine rollout was just commencing. Publicly, he repeated the mantra: “safe and effective.”

Why, of all things, would you give an experimental product to pregnant women?

The health authorities advise pregnant women to avoid many drugs and certain foods. Are vaccines immune? Can they not cause harm to an unborn fetus? Of course, they can and do.

It’s interesting that in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, titled Preliminary Findings of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Safety in Pregnant Persons, the data shows a high rate of miscarriage or spontaneous abortion.

Out of 827 confirmed pregnancies in which the mothers received the COVID-19 shot, 104 had miscarriages, which is at least three times higher than the normal rate. However, when you look at where the 104 spontaneous abortions occurred, they were all in the first or second trimester. The percentage incidence of abortion is therefore 82% for those who took the vaccine in the first two trimesters.

What are we doing here? Biden gave Fauci a lifetime pardon, and Trump gave him a presidential commendation. For what—erroneous misinformation on vaccines, mask mandates, and lockdowns? Why was it misinformation? Because mothers were not given informed consent. The idea that an experimental injection could damage their unborn child was not even considered for discussion. Unfortunately, many parents trusted what was supposed to be the science. Ultimately, Fauci, as we now see, was driven by his ego, and the public suffered.

So Trump’s order is only a small step. A giant step would have been to announce that the COVID-19 vaccines were found to be unfit for human use and therefore suspended. The other issue is what happens when another president comes in. He or she could totally reverse Trump’s order.

The criminality is so pervasive and needs to be addressed. That would be a giant step.

There are several stories that have come across the news wires in recent times. There is no doubt about it, many children are out of control. It’s not only teenagers 15 or 16, but even those 10 and younger. We hear that the rate of neurodevelopmental disorders have skyrocketed: autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and intellectual disabilities are at epidemic levels in the young. The health authorities squash any possibility that there might be a link with the onslaught of vaccines that children received as they grow up.

Making matters even worse was the unscientific injection of children and babies with the COVID-19 injections when children were at low risk. Some of these children’s lives have been devastated. I believe we continue to see the lingering effects of not only the vaccines but of lockdowns, missing school and children have to contend with wearing masks.

Some of the behaviour of children is not just conditiions like autism or ADHD, but it’s also inappropriate and disrespectful behaviour towards parents and grandparents. Not all these behavioural problems are related to vaccines. Poor parenting and the addictive quality of smart phones have played a part.

Here are few disturbing headlines.

Four youths who allegedly fatally attacked 60-year-old Sunshine shopkeeper Van Viet Truong allowed free on bail, despite serious charges against them

Students from prestigious Perth school suspended over antisemitic message in group chat

Four teens charged with murder after deadly brawl south of Brisbane

Advocates warn of emerging adolescent violence at home in wake of Perth mum’s death

So the question is, could neurodevelopmentat disorders be initated by the COVID-19 shots or exacerbate these existing conditions?

In October 2021, less than a year after the introduction of the shots, investigative journalist, Sharyl Attkisson listed a plethora of side effects numbering into the thousands from the U.S. government’s own reporting system, Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System(VAERS).

A major category was neurological disorders.with 31,720 Mood, memory, depression, attention, nervousness, anxiety, confusion, and agitation.

They can be broken down into the following:

• 6,406 — Anxiety

• 4,733 — Confusional state, delirium or incoherence

• 3,188 — Nervousness, jitteriness or restlessness

• 1,930 — Hypersomnia or excessive daytime sleepiness

• 1,852 — Disorientation

• 1,672 — Attention disturbance

• 1,613 — Mental-status changes, fatigue, mood swings or disorders

• 1,188 — Panic attacks or panic disorder

• 1,213 — Memory impairment or transient global amnesia

• 1,167 — Depression or despair, including suicide-related reports

• 1,079 — Hallucinations or delusions

• 945 — Irritability or agitation

• 821 — Abnormal dreams or nightmares

• 709 — Crying or tearfulness

• 769 — Fear

• 532 — Altered state of consciousness or slowed thinking

• 431 — Emotional-related disorders

• 313 — Abnormal thinking

• 282 — Anger or aggression

• 265 — Euphoric mood or mania

• 129 — Psychogenic disorders affecting thought or movement

• 124 — Dissociation

• 154 — Dementia

• 144 — Staring

• 110 — Paranoid-related symptoms

• 101 — Psychotic-related symptoms or psychosis

• 76 — Decreased frustration tolerance

• 75 — Screaming

• 67 — Apathy

• 39 — Personality disorder

• 36 — Relaxation

• 30 — Depersonalisation disorder

• 28 — Dreamy state

• 24 — Distractibility

• 14 — Schizophrenia-related symptoms

• 13 — Stupor

• 10 — Self-injury ideation

Do you think injecting children with the mRNA shots which allows the body to become a spike protein factory could affect the brain? We know from biodistribution studies that the spike protein has been found in all organs and causes damage to the blood vessels with inflammatory reactions.

Remember too, that the figures above were in the first year. The number to date must be huge. We know that this is real, as a research study has found that the COVID-19 ‘vaccines” have been linked to 63 Serious Brain and Spinal Cord Adverse Events.

In addition researchers know that there is a link between the COVID=19 shots and psychiatric conditions. Anyone who claims this is all fake news and that there is no proof, chooses to ignore what is in front of them.

Again, is this affecting childhood behaviour, already dertrimenatlly affected by modern technological devices? I’ll put my money on it. Just to gaslight you some more, the medical authorities have introduced an mRNA vaccine for influenza. It’s just more of the same. People need to question extensively before they put things into their bodies or those of their children. Do the research and not to blindly trust what is promoted.

Since its inception, there have been a number of ways in which people have understood chiropractic. The initial paradigm was based on the discovery of Daniel David (D.D.) Palmer.

D.D. was investigating the human body, particularly the spine. Though he was not formally educated in medicine, he explored various forms of healing in the late 1800s, including magnetic healing. At the time, many different therapies were flourishing, including Mesmerism, which had been developed by the Austrian doctor Franz Anton Mesmer. Mesmer believed that there was a force that influenced both animals and humans and that this force could be used for healing. His ideas contributed to the later development of hypnosis.

It was in this milieu of healing that D.D. made his chiropractic discovery.

D.D., who was born in Canada, had moved to Davenport, Iowa. In the building where he had his office, he encountered a janitor named Harvey Lillard, who complained that he had lost his hearing 17 years earlier.

D.D. asked Lillard if he could examine his spine. When he did so, he found what appeared to be a lump where a vertebra seemed to be protruding in the upper spine. There is some debate about whether this was in the upper thoracic spine or the upper neck, but regardless, D.D. asked Lillard if he could reposition the vertebra.

Lillard agreed, and there was a sound as the vertebra was released. Within a short period of time, the janitor’s hearing was reportedly restored.

That was considered the first chiropractic adjustment and led to Paradigm 1.

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Australia’s fertility rate is collapsing, much as it is throughout the rest of the Western world. There are many ramifications to this situation, which is a ticking time bomb.

By the year 2100, we may see an economic collapse. You may ask why. Well, contrary to what climate change doomsayers say, Australia and most of the world may not have to worry about overconsumption by ever-larger populations, nor about increasing CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere.

Some believe that, if current trends continue, the world’s population could more than halve to 4 billion by the year 2200.

In the more immediate future, the population is aging, with fewer young people available to support older generations through taxation. Older people consume more healthcare and require more aged-care facilities, which are heavily subsidized by government. This will place greater strain on government budgets, resulting in higher taxation and making it more difficult for those on lower and middle incomes to get ahead.

In Australia, many people have the bulk of their wealth tied up in their primary residence, which, at an average value of more than one million dollars, represents substantial equity. However, as we are already seeing, government policies that are inflationary have contributed to a housing market that is now stalling and beginning to decline. Larger four-bedroom homes may also become less in demand as people have fewer children. As a result, many Australians could see their net worth decline substantially.

One thing Australia, along with many other countries, has been doing is increasing immigration levels to compensate for low fertility. This is ill thought out when countries import people from everywhere, whether legally or illegally. We are seeing what many increasingly regard as the rapid deterioration of Western Europe. The bulk of the increase is coming from the Islamic world.

This also holds true for Australia.

In 1950, Australia’s population was 8,170,750. As of 2025, it was 27,801,000. If we look at the number of Muslims in Australia, the figure in 1950 was 4,850. Today, it is 1,031,000. While Australia’s total population has increased 3.4 times since 1950, the Muslim population has increased 176 times.

This has been the largest increase of any religious group, not only because of migration but also because Muslims have more children than other Australian groups. While the majority of Muslims are peaceful and fit into the Australian way of life, surveys of Australian Muslims regarding their attitudes are quite revealing.

Unfortunately, Australia, like many other countries, is now experiencing the effects of radical elements within the Muslim community. This became evident less than 24 hours after the atrocities committed in Israel on October 7, and also culminated in the attack on Jews at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

An extensive survey of Muslims in Australia by MDPI, a publishing institute, reported the following findings:

• 5.8% disagreed that women should be given the same rights and opportunities as men.

• 2.1% believed that someone who dies attacking innocent civilians is a martyr.

• 20.4% said they would like to live in a country where polygamy (marrying multiple women) is legal.

• 17.9% said they would like to live in a country where classical Sharia punishments are implemented.

• 18.8% considered that jihad in the form of armed struggle is justified.

• 23.2% agreed that a caliphate needs to be religiously aligned with Islam.

The report also mentions that there has been a significant increase in Islamophobia during the 21st century, with between 25% and 50% of non-Muslims harbouring such views.

These developments are not occurring in isolation. The report highlighted what it described as the furthering of Islamic ideology through force and fear, including the indiscriminate killing of non-Muslims. Since 9/11, there have been many Islamic terrorist attacks connected with Australia.

A list of terrorist attacks in Australia by Grokipedia states that the majority of terrorist attacks in Australia have been Islamic.

“Australian intelligence agencies, including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), have assessed Islamist extremism—specifically Sunni jihadist ideologies inspired by groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State—as the principal terrorist threat to the nation since the early 2000s. This evaluation is grounded in the volume of disrupted plots, successful attacks, and radicalization cases traced to this ideology, which has accounted for the majority of counter-terrorism investigations and resource allocation by federal agencies like ASIO and the Australian Federal Police (AFP). For instance, ASIO’s 2024 Annual Threat Assessment explicitly states that ‘Sunni violent extremism poses the greatest religiously motivated violent extremist threat in Australia,’ reflecting persistent risks from lone actors and small cells motivated by global jihadist narratives despite the territorial defeat of ISIS in 2019.”

How many attacks have there been by Jews in Australia? None. Yet we have seen an increase in hate speech and terror attacks targeting Jews, exceeding those against all other groups. In fact, during the one-year period from 2023 to 2024, there were more than 2,000 attacks against Australian Jews.

So what is the solution? At the current rate of immigration, Australia is going to follow the path of Western Europe. Politicians are letting the country down. There needs to be a more judicious approach to migration. It is imperative that only those who are going to make a valuable contribution to Australian society be allowed in.

While the numbers are relatively low, there are still too many radicalised Muslims who do not share our values and who can cause havoc within our society. There are 53 Muslim-majority countries in the world. Why are they not taking in more of their fellow Muslims? Why is the West not putting pressure on these countries to increase their immigration intake? Why indeed?

Many Australians I speak to say they no longer recognise their country. The path we are on, they believe, will not end well for the “Lucky Country.”

You really have to wonder about the judgment of Australia’s leaders. They seem to be living in a kind of fantasy world, one that is devoid of logic, reality, and scientific rigor.

I recently watched a video in which a scientist presented what I considered to be a logical and evidence-based case for a more pragmatic approach to climate and energy policy.

Among the key points made in the video were:

• There is no such thing as truly “renewable” energy.

• The Earth has been steadily warming over the past 100 years.

• Many industrial emissions have effectively been shifted from countries such as Australia to Asia, rather than eliminated.

• Australia bans nuclear power, despite uranium being one of the highest energy-density fuel sources available.

• Australia exports its uranium for use in other countries while prohibiting its domestic use for electricity generation.

• Globally, approximately ten times as many people die from cold-related causes as from heat-related causes.

• Deaths from weather-related disasters have fallen by around 90% over the past century.

• Net Zero policies have contributed to higher electricity prices in Australia, with recent increases reaching 18% per kilowatt-hour in places such as Western Australia.

• Achieving absolute Net Zero carbon emissions is not realistically possible, yet governments continue to spend vast sums pursuing this objective, in what the scientist in the video describes as a costly shell game.

• Rather than excluding highly efficient energy sources such as nuclear power, the best long-term strategy is to diversify energy generation and make use of all reliable technologies.

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Golf

Where I live, there is a golf course surrounded by a large retirement community. As a result, many people think of golf as an “old person’s game.” While many older golfers may have reduced flexibility or physical limitations that shorten their swing, golf can still place significant and sometimes abnormal stresses on the body.

When I moved to this area several years ago, my neighbours persuaded my wife and me to join the local golf club. Since I hadn’t picked up a golf club for more than 20 years, I decided to spend some time at the driving range before risking embarrassment on the course.

To my surprise, I was hitting the driver reasonably well despite the long layoff. Feeling confident, I switched to an iron and began hitting balls off the turf. On my second swing, the club dug into the ground. My body continued moving forward, but my elbow didn’t. The result was a torn medial elbow tendon—commonly known as golfer’s elbow, which affects the inside of the elbow, unlike tennis elbow, which affects the outer tendon. It took six months for the injury to fully recover.

Even professional golfers—who possess technically excellent swings—have suffered serious spinal injuries. Players such as Tiger Woods, Lee Trevino and Jason Day have all experienced significant back problems. When you observe the powerful coiling and explosive uncoiling of the modern golf swing, it’s easy to understand why.

Take a look at this swing.

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Last weekend we were invited to a neighbour’s surprise birthday party. There were about a dozen guests, ranging in age from their early 50s to their 80s. After mingling and making small talk, we sat down while our hosts graciously served the meal.

At the end of the table where I was sitting, half a dozen of us were engaged in conversation. The topics ranged from golf—as several were members of the local golf club—to travel, and eventually to health.

Then the conversation turned to the COVID years. The woman to my right mentioned that after receiving her second Pfizer vaccine, she was hospitalised with myocarditis. She said she had been told she “had to” be vaccinated because she was asthmatic. She remained troubled by the whole experience because, as she put it, “I got COVID three times, so what was the point of it?”

Her husband then joined the conversation. He said he had never felt the same since receiving the shots. He described being constantly tired and, as someone who had always been athletic, was frustrated that fatigue had become a regular part of his life. He told me he had come to believe the whole affair had been a fraud and was angry that vaccination had been mandatory for him to keep his job.

Across the table sat a woman in her early 60s who looked as though she was about to fall asleep. I commented that she seemed very tired. She told me she had been experiencing chronic fatigue ever since receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. The woman beside her spoke of recurring bouts of brain fog that had begun after her vaccination.

What, then, should we make of these conversations? These individuals’ health problems were caused by the vaccines, it was clear there was a connection and that those experiences were still affecting their lives years later. Among the six people we spoke with at our end of the table, four described ongoing health concerns that they associated with their vaccinations. Several also questioned the benefits they had expected to receive. Even though the COVID-19 era is in the rearview mirror, many problems persist.

These conversations challenge the claim that adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines were exceptionally rare, one in a million. Well I don’t know a million people and I’ve lost count of friends, acqaintances and people I have randomly met who have suffered adverse events following the shots.

How about you? Have you had similar conversations or experiences? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

Three people I know have never visited the United States, despite my encouraging them to do so. Their response is always the same: they’ll wait until Donald Trump is no longer president.

Many of President Trump’s actions have done little to strengthen relationships with America’s allies. Instead, they have alienated many long-standing partners. Hisrepeated comments about acquiring Greenland, referring to Canada as the “51st state,” and publicly criticising allied leaders have all caused unnecessary friction. At the same time, he has often expressed admiration for authoritarian figures, praising Vladimir Putin’s “strength,” describing Syria’s interim leader as a “handsomeguy” despite his past association with al-Qaeda, and referring to Iran’s leaders as”decent” before later calling them “scumbags” when negotiations broke down. Such inconsistent rhetoric does little to inspire confidence among America’s friends.

Australia has been one of America’s most reliable allies for generations.

During the Second World War, despite being far removed from the Europeantheatre, Australia committed substantial forces alongside the United States, Britain, Canada, France and other Allied nations.

In Vietnam, the slogan “All the way with LBJ” symbolised Australia’s support for the United States, and Australian servicemen lost their lives fighting alongsideAmerican forces.

During the 1991 Gulf War, Australia contributed personnel, naval assets and other military support.

In the Iraq War, Australia again deployed troops and suffered casualties.

In Afghanistan, Australian forces served with distinction for two decades, with 41 Australians losing their lives.

Given such a loyal history, why has President Trump once again imposed tariffs on Australian exports, this time at a rate of 12.5 per cent? Once again, the justificationis that countries such as Australia have been taking advantage of America.

The facts tell a different story. This chart from The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ trade data clearly demonstrates the long-running trade deficit Australia has with the United States.

Since the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement came into effect in 2005, Australia has consistently recorded a trade deficit with the United States, with the brief exception of the first three months of 2025 due to unusually high exports of non-monetary gold. By April 2025, the trade deficit had returned.

If this is how America treats one of its closest allies, it is reasonable to ask what message it sends to the rest of the world. Tariffs imposed on the basis of a claimthat Australia is “ripping off” the United States are difficult to reconcile with the actual trade figures.

This approach also undermines broader strategic objectives. If the United States expects allies to stand with it in confronting serious international security threats, it must also demonstrate that it values those alliances. Any major military campaign requiring international participation would depend upon trust, cooperation and mutual respect. Alienating allies through unnecessary economic disputes weakens those relationships.

The trade war President Trump is pursuing—not only against Australia but againstmany countries—is likely to encourage nations to diversify their economic relationships, particularly with China. At the same time, higher tariffs ultimately increase costsfor American consumers.

These developments are contributing to increasingly negative perceptions ofboth America and President Trump overseas. They may also help explain the decline in his domestic approval ratings.

A recent Pew Research survey found that more than 80 per cent of Australians have little or no confidence in President Trump’s handling of international affairs. Confidence has continued to decline during his second term.

Perhaps some Americans believe they need not concern themselves with how other nations view the United States. However, we live in an interconnected world. Supply chains cross borders, alliances matter, and the actions of one nation inevitablyaffect others—including America itself.

America has long been one of Australia’s closest friends and allies. Friends deserve honesty, respect and fair treatment. If the United States expects loyalty from its allies, it should demonstrate that loyalty in return.

Too many people go through life from one day to the next, waiting for a health crisis before taking action. What is commonly called “health care” is often little more than crisis treatment. Unfortunately, many people also use chiropractic in much the same way they use medical care—seeking help only after symptoms appear.

It’s interesting how many people rely on one or more prescription drugs to manage their health conditions. One of the current trends is Ozempic, the weight-loss medication. Some people have to stop taking it because the side effects are intolerable. Others successfully lose weight, but they also lose muscle mass, which can ultimately have negative effects on their overall health.

I know one person who is diabetic and overweight who tried Ozempic but had to stop taking it. Yet despite this experience, they are unwilling to make meaningful lifestyle changes. I suggested starting with a simple morning walk. Because they are very unfit, the goal would be to begin with a short distance and gradually build up to walking several kilometres each day. Sitting at home, watching television, and eating a high-carbohydrate diet is not a recipe for better health.

These same people are often reluctant to give chiropractic a chance because they associate it only with musculoskeletal problems such as back pain and neck pain instead of the correction of spinal subluxations restore function and increase potential.

While many people experience relief from spinal adjustments, chiropractic is about much more than symptom relief. B.J. Palmer, the developer of chiropractic, expressed this beautifully in the following poem.

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I visited Japan last year, and there is much to admire about the country. Despite being the only nation in history to have suffered atomic bomb attacks, Japan has rebuilt itself into one of the safest, cleanest, and most orderly societies in the world.

Japan is also a highly homogeneous nation, both culturally and ethnically. Diversity is not a central social objective in the way it is in many Western countries.

Some in the West may label Japan as exclusionary or even racist. Whatever one’s opinion, Japan has created a stable and successful society. It experiences comparatively low levels of terrorism, crime, and societal polarization when compared with many Western nations.

The homicide rate in Japan is approximately 0.229 per 100,000 people, compared with 5.763 per 100,000 in the United States. That means the U.S. homicide rate is roughly 25 times higher than Japan’s.

Japan is also renowned for having one of the highest life expectancies in the world. Even Tokyo, a metropolitan area of around 37 million people, is remarkably clean.

Japanese culture places a strong emphasis on safety, cleanliness, respect for others, and healthy living. As we walked through various city centres, I was struck by how well-behaved Japanese teenagers were. We were told that children are taught from a young age to clean up after themselves, including cleaning their classrooms at school. It is no surprise, then, that despite the absence of rubbish bins on many streets, public areas remain almost spotless.

Diversity can be beneficial up to a point. However, the greater the differences between groups in terms of culture, religion, and values—particularly when those beliefs conflict with the secular laws of a country—the more difficult integration can become. Some societies have also experienced generations of conflict and instability, and migrants from those regions may arrive carrying the effects of those experiences.

In Australia, immigration has become a major political issue. Pauline Hanson, leader of the One Nation Party, has gained support while advocating for a halt to immigration from Islamist countries and the deportation of individuals who refuse to embrace Australian values. Her position has often been compared with former U.S. President Donald Trump’s border policies.

In recent years, Australia has experienced record levels of immigration, and many argue that the country is struggling to cope with the pace of population growth. Incidents such as the shooting attack on Jews attending a Hanukkah celebration have further intensified public debate about social cohesion and national security.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics

, gross overseas migration figures for recent fiscal years were:

• 2021 – 113,000

• 2022 – 423,000

• 2023 – 738,410

• 2024 – 601,360

• 2025 – 568,370

Over the five-year period from 2021 to 2025, Australia admitted approximately 2.44 million migrants. With Australia’s population standing at around 25.4 million in 2021, this represents population growth equivalent to almost 10% of the country’s population.

To say this is irrational is an understatement because anyone who lives knows there is a housing problem that has manifested into a crisis.

House prices are sky-high, and rents have risen sharply in many cities. In Perth, for example, average weekly rents have climbed to $750 and demand continues to severely outstrip supply. Reports of people living in their cars, renting tiny attic rooms such as this one at $380 a week, or even paying hundreds of dollars per week to sleep on enclosed balconies illustrate the extent of the housing crisis.

Critics of Australia’s immigration policy also argue that many migrants do not possess the highly specialised skills the country most urgently needs, such as engineering, scientific, or technical expertise. They contend that migration policy should place greater emphasis on attracting skilled professionals who can address labour shortages while contributing to economic productivity.

The United States faces many of the same challenges. Critics argue that legitimate concerns about immigration, integration, and national security are too often dismissed through accusations of racism or intolerance rather than debated on their merits. They also argue that while many the migrants are from Muslim countries and are peaceful and law-abiding, a small minority extremist beliefs, such as sharia law, that conflict with the secular legal traditions of Western democracies.

Many Muslim-majority countries do not separate religion from the state, and in some cases non-Muslims do not enjoy the same legal rights as Muslims. This makes accusations that countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Israel are inherently discriminatory or apartheid-like appear laughable.

If conditions in many Muslim-majority countries were as desirable as some claim, one might ask why so many people choose to migrate to Western nations. One possible answer is that many migrants are seeking greater economic opportunity, political stability, personal freedom, or higher living standards than are available in their countries of origin. Why don’t they demand change in their home countries? Why would they when the western world willingly brings them in by legal or illegal means?

Across Australia, the United States, and much of Western Europe, Muslim populations have grown significantly through immigration. By contrast, Muslims make up only a very small percentage of Japan’s population—around 0.3%. Japan’s approach is that the country has maintained a strong sense of cultural identity and social cohesion, whereas critics of Australia’s immigration policies believe Australian culture is gradually being weakened. They further argue that concerns about rising antisemitism following increased migration from some regions are too often dismissed as Islamophobia.

These issues raise broader questions about immigration, integration, national identity, and public safety. They deserve careful and open discussion based on evidence rather than slogans or personal attacks.

Last week, Donald Trump gave a speech focused on election integrity. While he did not specifically say that the 2020 election was stolen, he made a number of claims. Here are some of the highlights:

• He argued that newly declassified intelligence documents reveal previously concealed foreign interference, particularly by China.

• He contended that U.S. intelligence agencies and other government officials suppressed or covered up relevant information.

• He stated that U.S. elections are worse than those in many Third World countries.

• He suggested that the U.S. electoral system is not fair.

• He announced that he had directed federal agencies to investigate elections.

I do not know the veracity of all the statements Trump has made about U.S. elections, but I do recall something that struck me as unusual on election night in 2020.

Election night in the United States was daytime here in Australia. I was at home during my lunch break while my wife was at work. I turned on one of the U.S. television networks to follow the election results. My wife called to ask how things were progressing, and I mentioned something that seemed unusual to me. Several states had paused their vote counting, and at that stage Trump was leading in each of them.

I remember that about two hours later, what would have been the early hours of the morning on the U.S. East Coast, the network reported that vote counting had resumed. By then, Joe Biden had taken the lead in most, if not all, of the states where counting had been paused. At the time, I found the sudden change difficult to understand and wondered whether electronic vote manipulation might have occurred.

However, to this day, no court has ruled that there was election fraud on a scale sufficient to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s former Attorney General, Bill Barr, also stated that he had found no evidence of fraud that would have changed the result. In addition, following allegations that Dominion Voting Systems machines had been used to manipulate votes, Dominion sued Fox News for defamation. Fox ultimately settled the lawsuit for US$787.5 million without the case going to trial. There has yet to be evidence out there that Dominion machines were manipulated.

So, are U.S. elections vulnerable to fraud, or could another country such as China “steal” a U.S. election, as Trump has implied?

There is an important distinction between directly altering votes and attempting to influence voters. Foreign governments have long sought to influence public opinion in democratic countries through propaganda, cyber campaigns, and disinformation. The United States has also meddled to influence political outcomes abroad. Historians generally agree that the U.S. played a significant role in the 1953 coup in Iran that restored the Shah to power. The Obama administration also sought to influence Israeli elections during Benjamin Netanyahu’s time as Prime Minister.

So, what are the rules for voting in the United States?

• You must be registered to vote, except in North Dakota.

• Elections are administered primarily by the individual states rather than by the federal government, making the system highly decentralized.

• You must be a U.S. citizen to vote in federal elections. Non-citizens cannot legally vote in federal elections.

• Voting is voluntary.

Do people who are not legally eligible to vote occasionally cast ballots? Almost certainly. The more important question is whether such instances occur in numbers large enough to affect election outcomes. To date, there has been little evidence to suggest that they have.

By comparison, here is how voting works in Australia:

• Elections are administered by the Australian Electoral Commission, an independent federal body.

• Voting is compulsory.

• Failure to vote without a valid reason can result in a fine, currently around A$20 for a first offence, with higher penalties if the matter proceeds further.

• You must be an Australian citizen to vote.

Even this system is not foolproof. I once failed to vote and never received a fine, and I have heard of similar experiences from others.

When you arrive at a polling station, an election official asks for your name and address, confirms that you are on the electoral roll, and then hands you your ballot papers. The obvious question is: how does the official know that I am actually the person I claim to be? I am not asked to produce identification. In theory, someone impersonating me could cast a vote in my name, effectively cancelling out my own vote. I presume something similar could happen in parts of the United States.

For that reason, I think voter identification requirements are a sensible idea.

However, Trump is also known for making sweeping and sometimes exaggerated statements. Are his claims that U.S. elections are routinely “stolen” justified? While investigators, election officials, and courts have acknowledged that irregularities can occur, they have not concluded that such irregularities have altered the outcome of a U.S. presidential election in recent history. Based on the available evidence, it appears that U.S. elections remain fundamentally legitimate, even if no electoral system is perfect.

As always, I will leave it to the reader to decide.