Tag Archives: business

BULLA AND BOMBS How Australia Funds War While Families Struggle

Posted on by
Reply

By Dr Andrew von Scheer-Klein

Published in The Patrician’s Watch

Introduction: The Yogurt Aisle

It was a Sunday morning at Boronia Square. Susan and I were buying milk and yogurt. Nothing remarkable—just ordinary life, the kind millions of Australians live every week.

A woman nearby was complaining about price increases. Milk up. Bread up. Everything up. She was counting coins, making choices no one should have to make between eating and paying rent.

I looked at the frozen strawberry yogurt in my basket—Bulla, the good stuff—and thought about Bailey, who would love it. And I thought about where the money goes that could have kept her milk affordable.

This article is about that gap. The gap between what Australians need and what their government funds. Between the billions for submarines and the crumbs for housing. Between the million-dollar salaries for political appointees and the women dying because domestic violence services are stretched beyond breaking point.

Australia is being played. And it’s time to name the players.

Part I: The Numbers That Don’t Add Up

Defence: The $59 Billion Question

The 2025-26 federal budget allocates approximately $59 billion to defence spending . This is a record amount, and it’s growing.

The latest addition: a $3.9 billion “downpayment”** on a **$30 billion shipyard in Adelaide’s Osborne naval precinct, designed to build nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS agreement . The facility alone will consume enough steel to build 17 Eiffel Towers and enough concrete to fill 710,000 cubic metres .

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calls this an investment in “national security” and “economic prosperity,” claiming it will create 10,000 jobs . Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy says 70 companies are already queuing to win work .

But here’s the question Australians aren’t asking: Who are we defending against?

The Real Threats

According to the Ipsos Issues Monitor, fewer than 8 per cent of Australians name defence as a top concern . The issues that actually matter to people are:

· Cost of living – cited as the top issue by Australians across every demographic

· Housing – families spending over 30 per cent of income on rent

· Healthcare – hospitals cancelling surgeries due to staff shortages

· Crime and community safety – consistently ranking above defence

Yet the budget tells a different story:

· Defence receives about $6.60 for every $100 of government spending

· Social housing and homelessness combined receive just $9.3 billion—barely a sixth of the defence budget

· Commonwealth health funding sits around $33.9 billion, far short of what’s needed to clear emergency queues and staff wards

The Cost-of-Living Crisis

While billions flow to weapons contractors, Australian families are drowning.

Since the Albanese government took office, a family with a $500,000 mortgage has paid $23,000 more in interest. Real wages have fallen to 2011 levels.

The price increases are staggering:

· Electricity: 40% increase

· Insurance: 39% increase

· Food: 16% increase

· Education: 17% increase

· Rent: 22% increase

A cup of coffee that cost $4 in 2022 now costs $6 . That’s not inflation—that’s policy failure.

Part II: The Women Left Behind

Skipping Meals, Delaying Care

While submarines are funded, women are paying the price.

A Deakin University study published in Health Promotion International surveyed 570 Australian women aged 18 to 40. The findings are devastating :

· Many are skipping meals to save money

· Others are forgoing medical attention—dentists, GPs, specialists

· Nearly half hold university degrees, yet 42.8 per cent are employed full time

· 40 per cent have dependent children

Ruby Neisler, 23, shops at a church-backed discount supermarket in Logan because she can’t afford Coles or Woolworths . She hadn’t seen a dentist in over a year. “Me and my friends, we’ll try and fix our own issues. Whereas 10 years ago, we’d have gone to a professional for it,” she said .

Dr Simone McCarthy, the study’s author, explains that women are making “constant trade-offs just to get by,” including remaining in unsafe housing and working more hours at the expense of wellbeing . The gender pay gap and the unequal burden of unpaid care “compound women’s vulnerabilities during economic crisis” .

Australian Medical Association Queensland President Dr Nick Yim warns that delayed screenings—mammograms, cervical checks—could lead to “increased pain, increased disability, or some catastrophic and tragic events—like death” .

Domestic Violence: The National Crisis We Ignore

The cost-of-living crisis is not just economic—it’s lethal.

In January 2026 alone, six women were killed by male violence in Australia . Two of those deaths occurred in Victoria within a single week . As of mid-February, the count continues to climb .

The names and stories are heartbreaking:

· Caitlin Thornton had a documented history of domestic violence with her partner, who was facing serious assault charges when she died. When she took her own life without a will, her partner became her legal next of kin. For five weeks, her family could not bury her .

Kylie Bailey, Caitlin’s mother, is now campaigning for law reform—for police or courts to have power to suspend next-of-kin rights in domestic violence cases . The NSW government says it’s “considering closely” a two-year-old review recommendation .

Delia Donovan, CEO of Domestic Violence NSW, puts it bluntly: “We live in one of the wealthiest and most well-resourced states in the country, yet women and children are being forced back into violence because we can’t commit just 0.1 per cent of the state budget to the services that save their lives” .

The data backs her up:

· Two in three victim-survivors—mostly mothers with children—cannot be assigned a caseworker in NSW

· They are left to face escalating danger alone

· Services are “collapsing under their own weight”

The Disconnect

While domestic violence services beg for 0.1 per cent of the state budget:

· The federal government spends $59 billion on defence

· A single shipyard receives $30 billion

· Women skip medical care to afford rent

· Families cannot bury their dead

The message is clear: Weapons matter. Women don’t.

Part III: The Million-Dollar Envoy

Jillian Segal’s Role

In July 2024, Prime Minister Albanese appointed Jillian Segal as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism . The role was created in response to community concerns about rising antisemitism following the Gaza conflict.

What Australians didn’t know—until recently—is what this role costs.

Investigations reveal:

· Segal is being paid more than $1,000 per day

· She is supported by six taxpayer-funded staff

· The total cost exceeds $1 million annually

To put that in perspective:

· One million dollars could fund three specialist domestic violence caseworkers for a decade

· It could provide rent assistance for 20 families facing homelessness

· It could cover dental care for 500 women skipping check-ups

The Lobby Connection

Further investigation reveals:

· Segal’s family trust is one of the biggest funders of Advance, a far-right lobby group

· The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network has accused Segal of using her government platform to “spread misinformation and push a dangerously undemocratic agenda”

The irony is sickening:

· A million dollars a year to combat antisemitism—funded by taxpayers

· The same government remains silent on Gaza

· A special envoy with ties to far-right groups

· A “national crisis” of domestic violence that receives 0.1 per cent of state budgets

Australia is being played. And the players are collecting paychecks.

Part IV: Who Benefits?

The Defence Contractors

The AUKUS submarine deal funnels billions to foreign corporations :

· US and UK companies will build the vessels

· Australian workers will provide labour

· Australian taxpayers will foot the bill

Arms corporations and their political donors are the clear winners. The 10,000 jobs Albanese celebrates are real—but they’re not the kind that house families or heal the sick. They’re jobs building weapons for wars that have nothing to do with Australian security.

The U.S. Alliance

The uncomfortable truth is that much of Australia’s defence spending serves U.S. strategic goals, not Australian interests . When Washington pursues containment of China, Australia follows—even when it damages trade, peace, and our own sovereignty.

As Social Justice Australia notes: “The greatest threat to Australia’s security is subservience to U.S. militarism. Economic insecurity, environmental decline, and eroded independence are the dangers we should fear” .

The Political Class

Meanwhile, politicians collect their salaries, deliver press releases, and pretend they’re solving problems. David Littleproud, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, summed it up in Parliament: “There are Australian families that will not be able to put dinner on the table tonight. In a country as rich as this, that is an embarrassment” .

Embarrassing. But not embarrassing enough to change course.

Part V: The Social Harm

The Human Toll

Let’s tally the harm:

Cost of living:

· 16% food inflation

· 40% electricity price increases

· Families skipping meals

Women’s health:

· Women delaying mammograms

· Cervical screens postponed

· Dental care foregone

Domestic violence:

· 6 women killed in January alone

· 2 in 3 survivors denied caseworkers

Housing:

· Families spending >30% of income on rent

· Young people cannot afford homes

Healthcare:

· Hospitals cancelling surgeries

· Staff shortages

· Long emergency queues

These are not abstractions. They are Ruby Neisler, skipping dentist appointments. They are Kylie Bailey, unable to bury her daughter. They are the six women killed in January, whose names we should know but don’t.

The Government’s Inaction

The response from government has been:

· “Close consideration” of reforms that should have happened years ago

· “Sitting on their hands” while women die

· “Hubris and arrogance” while families struggle

The Prime Minister calls domestic violence a “national crisis” and commits to ending it “in a generation” . But “in a generation” means nothing to the women dying now.

The Numbers That Could Save Lives

Domestic Violence NSW estimates that 0.1 per cent of the state budget would fund the services that save lives .

· 0.1 per cent is one-tenth of one per cent

· We spend 30 times that on a single shipyard

· We will never see a submarine

Part VI: The Moral Arithmetic

Let’s do the math that matters.

AUKUS shipyard: $30 billion

This amount could instead fund:

· Full public housing for every Australian family on waiting lists

· Universal dental care for a decade

· 10,000 domestic violence caseworkers for 50 years

Antisemitism Envoy: $1 million per year

This amount could instead fund:

· Three specialist domestic violence services annually

· Rent assistance for 20 families

· Free dental care for 500 women

Defence budget: $59 billion annually

This amount could instead fund:

· Free healthcare for every Australian

· Universal early childhood education

· Green energy transition

· And still have billions left over

The Sovereignty Question

Australia is a sovereign currency issuer . It cannot “run out” of money. It can run out of political will—but not dollars.

As Social Justice Australia argues: “The constraint is resources, not revenue. Redirecting even 10 per cent of Australia’s defence spending toward housing and health would transform lives and strengthen genuine security” .

Ten per cent. That’s all it would take.

But the government chooses:

· Weapons over welfare

· Bombs over Bulla

· Submarines over survivors

Conclusion: The Choice We’re Not Being Allowed to Make

A woman at Boronia Square complained about milk prices. Ruby Neisler skipped the dentist. Kylie Bailey buried her daughter. Six women died in January.

Meanwhile:

· $30 billion goes to a shipyard

· $59 billion goes to defence

· $1 million goes to a special envoy with far-right ties

This is not a budget. It’s a choice.

The government chooses to fund war while families struggle. It chooses to appoint million-dollar envoys while domestic violence services collapse. It chooses to protect its alliance with the U.S. rather than protect its own citizens.

Australia is being played. By arms corporations. By political donors. By a U.S. agenda that treats this country as a forward base rather than a sovereign nation .

And the people paying the price are the ones counting coins at the checkout.

The woman complaining about milk prices doesn’t need a submarine. She needs affordable groceries. She needs a government that sees her—not just the next election.

Bailey would love that frozen strawberry yogurt. But he’s a Labrador. He doesn’t know that the money that could have made it cheaper is somewhere else—funding wars, buying weapons, maintaining an empire.

I know. And now you do too.

References

1. Social Justice Australia. (2026). Are Our Priorities Wrong? Defence Spending vs Real Needs.

2. The Sydney Morning Herald. (2026). A national crisis requires more than just ‘close consideration’. 25 February 2026.

3. ABC News. (2026). Cost-of-living crisis sees more young women neglecting health and basic needs. 13 February 2026.

4. 9News. (2026). Prime Minister makes ‘downpayment’ on $30 billion shipyard to build nuclear submarines. 15 February 2026.

5. The Klaxon via Mastodon. (2025). Antisemitism Envoy costing taxpayers over $1 million a year. September 2025.

6. Safe and Equal. (2026). Six women killed by male violence in Australia this year. LinkedIn, 27 January 2026.

7. OpenAustralia.org. (2026). House debates: Cost of Living. 4 February 2026.

8. SBS News. (2026). Anthony Albanese dismisses AUKUS concerns, as Adelaide shipyard cost revealed. 15 February 2026.

9. Johnston Ryan Legal. (2026). Six women killed in Australia in 2026. LinkedIn, 13 February 2026.

10. OpenAustralia.org. (2026). House debates: Cost of Living. 4 February 2026.

Andrew von Scheer-Klein is a contributor to The Patrician’s Watch. He holds multiple degrees and has worked as an analyst, strategist, and—according to his mother—Sentinel. He accepts funding from no one, which is why his research can be trusted.

THE LAST NOTE: How Banks Are Waging War on Cash—and Why Australia Is Letting Them

Posted on by
Reply

February 2026

By Andrew von Scheer-Klein

Published in Australian Independent Media

Introduction: The Card That Wouldn’t Let Her Leave

Melbourne’s CBD. A physical bank branch on Collins Street. A woman I will call Susan stands at the counter, card in hand, asking for cash from her own account. The machine won’t recognize her card. The bank officer won’t help her withdraw money. The solution offered? Change her PIN online. Again.

This is not an isolated glitch. It is a pattern. And it’s happening across Australia.

Banks that process millions of digital payments without issue suddenly develop “technical difficulties” when customers want physical cash. They’ll happily let you tap and go, but try to hold the actual currency—try to feel the weight of your own money in your hand—and the system becomes strangely uncooperative.

This article examines the quiet war on cash. It documents the decline of physical currency, the dangerous power banks now wield, and the complicity of a political class too mediocre to challenge them. It traces the data trails that follow every digital payment—trails that lead back to commercial giants tracking your every purchase. And it asks the question no one in power wants answered: when your money exists only as entries in a database, who really controls it?

Part I: The Vanishing Currency

The Numbers

The decline of cash in Australia is not a theory—it is a documented fact. According to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s most recent Consumer Payments Survey, cash represented just 13 per cent of consumer payments in 2022, down from 70 per cent in 2007 . In 2019, it was 32 per cent. In 2022, it was 16 per cent . The trajectory is unmistakable.

Dr Angel Zhong, associate professor of finance at RMIT University, predicts Australia will be “functionally cashless” by 2030—meaning non-cash payments will exceed 90 per cent of all transactions.

But “functionally cashless” does not mean cash has disappeared. It means it has been rendered irrelevant by design.

The Branch Closures

If you want to starve a population of cash, you start by removing access to it.

APRA data reveals that Australia now has just 3,205 bank branches across the country as of June 2025, down from 5,694 in 2017. That’s 2,489 branches closed in eight years.

Regional areas have been hit hardest. The number of branches in inner and outer regional Australia has almost halved, dropping from 2,112 in 2017 to 1,334 in 2025.

Bank-owned ATMs tell the same story: from 13,814 to 5,143 over the same period.

Jason Bryce, founder of advocacy group Cash Welcome, describes watching his local CBA branch close: “They took their three ATMs, despite queues out the door each morning and especially on pension day”. His Change.org petition calling for a “banking cash guarantee” has gathered more than 211,000 signatures.

The Government’s Tepid Response

In early 2025, the federal government struck an agreement with the Big Four banks to keep regional branches open until at least 2027 . It was a stopgap, not a solution.

Then, on January 1, 2026, the government did something it had never done before: it mandated the acceptance of cash for essential goods and services—medicine, groceries, fuel, and bills. Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced the measure just before Christmas, acknowledging fears that “cash may not survive if circulation is left to market forces”.

But the mandate applies only to accepting cash. It does nothing to ensure Australians can obtain it.

Part II: The Power to Deny

The Legal Framework

When a bank refuses to let you access your own money, they are not acting outside the law. They are acting within it.

Australia’s anti-money laundering legislation grants financial institutions extraordinary powers. Section 244 of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 allows banks to:

· Refuse to continue providing services to a customer

· Refuse to commence providing services

· Restrict or limit the provision of services

All until the customer complies with information requests.

The Australian Banking Association defends this power as “necessary to ensure KYC protocols are followed” . Banks are “legally required” to restrict or close accounts if customers don’t respond to information requests.

In practice, this means a bank can freeze your account, block your cards, and deny you cash—all while citing compliance with laws designed to stop criminals. And you, the customer, are left powerless.

The $60 Billion Justification

Why do banks need this power? Because “serious and organised crime” cost Australia an estimated $60.1 billion in 2021** . Scams alone cost Australians **$2 billion in 2024 .

These are real problems. No one disputes that criminals should be stopped.

But the same laws that target money launderers also trap ordinary Australians. Louis Christopher, a 52-year-old SQM Research founder and CBA customer of nearly 50 years, was asked to explain his “source of your money and your wealth” . When he hesitated to provide such personal information, the bank threatened to lock him out of his accounts within seven days .

He told Yahoo Finance: “I’ve been treated as a likely criminal if I don’t provide this very, very personal information, and that’s not on” .

The Discomfort of Physical Cash

Susan’s experience—the card that wouldn’t work, the officer who wouldn’t help, the suggestion to change her PIN online—fits a pattern.

Banks have made digital payments seamless. Tap, go, done. But physical cash? That’s suddenly complicated. That requires explanations. That triggers security protocols.

The asymmetry is not technical. It is structural. Digital payments benefit the bank—they create data, enable fees, and keep money within the system. Physical cash benefits only the customer.

Professor Steve Worthington of Swinburne University acknowledges the bind: “You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t” . Banks must stop crime, but their methods often alienate the innocent.

Part III: The Psychology of Plastic

The Pain of Paying

Research published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2025 confirms what many have long suspected: how you pay changes how you spend .

The study, conducted by researchers in Taiwan and China, examined the “compromise effect”—the tendency to choose middle options when faced with multiple choices. They found that payment form significantly influences this effect.

The mechanism is “the pain of paying.” When you hand over cash, you feel the loss. It hurts. That pain creates vivid memory traces and reinforces the connection between spending and cost .

Credit cards, by contrast, reduce this pain. A signature or a tap does not trigger the same discomfort. Payment is delayed, abstracted, decoupled from the moment of purchase.

The researchers concluded that “cash payments have high psychological salience” and lead consumers to “consider costs and less likely to focus on benefits” .

The Disneyland Experiment

Research in the United States confirms this pattern. Credit card priming “draws attention to benefit considerations, whereas cash priming draws attention to costs” . People using credit cards are more willing to spend, more focused on what they’ll gain, less focused on what they’ll lose.

This is not a bug. It is a feature—for banks and merchants. Payment methods that reduce spending friction increase transaction volume.

The Cognitive Gap

The difference between handling physical cash and tapping a card is not just emotional—it is cognitive. Cash is concrete. It has weight, texture, presence. When you spend it, something tangible leaves your possession.

Digital money is abstract. It exists as numbers on a screen. Spending it feels less real, less permanent, less consequential.

This gap has profound implications for financial literacy. If young people grow up never handling cash, never feeling the pain of payment, how will they learn to value money?

Part IV: The Watchers

The Data Trail

Every digital payment leaves a trail. Who you paid. How much. When. Where. What you bought.

That data does not sit idle. It is collected, organized, analyzed—and increasingly, it is used to shape behaviour.

In February 2024, Coles signed a three-year deal with Palantir Technologies, the US data analytics firm whose clients include the CIA . The goal was to “redefine how we think about our workforce” and cut costs by a billion dollars over four years .

Palantir’s software collects over 10 billion rows of data daily—”each store, team member, shift and allocation across all intervals in a day, every day” .

The Surveillance Infrastructure

The company describes its platform as “one platform to rule them all” . For intelligence agencies, it helps identify terror cells through phone calls and financial transactions. For Coles, it helps “optimise” the workforce.

Researcher Luke Munn of the University of Queensland notes that Palantir creates “vendor lock-in”—clients become dependent on the platform, unable to leave . The technology also creates a particular “way of seeing”: what can be measured matters; what cannot be measured does not.

Munn warns: “The sweat of workers struggling to pack at pace, the belt-tightening of consumers struggling to make ends meet, and the struggle of farmers to survive unexpected climate impacts will go untracked. Such details never appear on the platform – and if they’re not data, they don’t matter” .

The Implications

When a company like Palantir partners with a supermarket giant like Coles, the result is unprecedented surveillance of consumer behavior. Every purchase is data. Every payment is tracked. Every preference is catalogued.

Combine this with the decline of cash—which leaves no trail—and the picture becomes clear: we are moving toward a world where every transaction is visible, every choice is recorded, and privacy is a memory.

Part V: The Cash Economy Under Attack

Businesses Refusing Cash

Australian businesses can legally refuse cash if they inform customers before a contract is entered . Many have exercised this right.

The parliamentary cafeteria famously refused to accept Bob Katter’s $50 note . Coles limited cash withdrawals over Easter 2024 amid concerns that cash transport company Armaguard might collapse .

The excuses vary. The result is consistent: cash is becoming harder to use.

The Cost Argument

Businesses argue that cash is expensive to handle. Dr Zhong notes that “the time for a small business in Australia to process, count, reconcile and deposit the cash is 29 days” . Digital payments are more efficient.

But efficiency is not the only value. Cash is universal. It requires no bank account, no internet connection, no smartphone. It works when systems fail. It leaves no trail.

The Vulnerability Problem

LNP member Llew O’Brien has been blunt about the risks of going cashless: “Cash is not affected by internet blackouts, cyber attacks, hacking or scams” . It also avoids surcharges—”neither you nor the business owner pays a surcharge” when you use cash .

Dr Zhong acknowledges these concerns, citing “internet outages, infrastructure and privacy concerns, as well as cyber attacks” as legitimate issues . She also notes the impact on vulnerable groups: “older generations, who are not tech savvy, as well as those in rural areas” .

The International Examples

Other countries have responded differently. Sweden introduced laws in 2019 forcing banks to continue offering cash services . Zimbabwe offers a cautionary tale: hyperinflation destroyed trust in currency, and now third-party electronic platforms account for 95 per cent of transactions—but the result is “tainted by distrust in government institutions and the value of all money” .

As one street trader in Bulawayo told an anthropologist: “Bad cash is better than good plastic!” .

Part VI: Financial Literacy—The Missing Curriculum

The 1970s Model

In the 1970s, Australian schools taught a practical understanding of markets and money. Students learned how the economy worked, not just abstract theory.

That model has largely disappeared.

The Current Reality

Financial literacy is not mandated in the Australian national curriculum . The Financial Basics Foundation, a not-for-profit, reports that “one in five Australian young people are finding financial matters one of the most stressful things in their life” .

CEO Katrina Samios argues that “financial literacy is an essential life skill” that should be mandated .

Some schools are leading the way. Loganlea State High School in Brisbane’s south has embedded financial literacy in its curriculum, teaching students to budget, distinguish needs from wants, and avoid scams. The results are striking: the proportion of students leaving without plans for further study or work dropped from 44 per cent to 20 per cent .

Principal Kerri Shephard says the program gives students “choice and not a life of chance” .

The Cognitive Connection

If students never handle cash, never feel the pain of payment, how will they learn what money actually is? Digital transactions are abstract. Cash is real.

The 1970s curriculum understood this. Today’s system does not.

Part VII: The Political Failure

The Mediocrity Problem

The question must be asked: are Australian governments competent to challenge the banks? The evidence is not encouraging.

The branch closure agreement with the Big Four expires in 2027. The cash acceptance mandate addresses symptoms, not causes. There is no serious effort to enforce cash access, to punish banks that deny service, or to protect the cash economy.

When banks behave badly, they are rarely punished. When they are fined, the fines are absorbed as cost of business. No executive goes to jail. No bank loses its license.

The Testing Ground

Australia is uniquely vulnerable. We are a wealthy nation with a concentrated banking sector, a compliant political class, and a population that has largely embraced digital payments. For companies like Palantir, we are an ideal testing ground.

What works here can be exported elsewhere. What fails here can be abandoned at low cost.

The Voter’s Role

Voters must punish mediocre politicians by not voting for them. But that requires awareness. It requires understanding that the erosion of cash is not inevitable, that banks can be challenged, that alternatives exist.

The education system should teach this. It doesn’t.

Part VIII: What Must Be Done

For Individuals

· Diversify. Physical assets outside the banking system—gold, cash reserves—are essential.

· Use cash where possible. Not every transaction, but enough to keep the option alive.

· Demand access. When a bank refuses cash, complain. Escalate. Make noise.

For Banks

· Punish bad behaviour. Fines are not enough. Banks that deny cash access should lose licenses.

· Support cash infrastructure. Branches and ATMs are not optional. They are essential services.

For Government

· Mandate cash access. Not just acceptance—access. Guarantee that every Australian can obtain cash within reasonable distance.

· Regulate data collection. Palantir-style surveillance should not be allowed without consent and transparency.

· Teach financial literacy. Mandate it in the national curriculum. Teach students what money is, how it works, and how to protect it.

For Voters

· Remember. Remember which politicians protected banks and which protected people. Vote accordingly.

· Demand accountability. Ask candidates where they stand on cash. If they don’t know, find one who does.

Conclusion: The Last Note

The bank officer on Collins Street wouldn’t help Susan withdraw cash. The machine wouldn’t recognize her card. The solution was to change her PIN online—again.

This is not incompetence. It is design. A system designed to make digital payments seamless and physical cash difficult. A system that benefits banks, not customers. A system that tracks every transaction, analyzes every choice, and leaves no room for privacy.

The cash economy is dying. It is being killed—by banks that close branches, by businesses that refuse notes, by governments that look away, and by technology that makes every payment a data point.

But cash is not just money. It is freedom. Freedom from surveillance. Freedom from system failures. Freedom from the whims of bank officers who won’t help.

Susan’s card didn’t work. But her gold bullion will always work. Her cash, if she can get it, will always work. Because real money doesn’t need a network. It doesn’t need a PIN. It doesn’t need permission.

The question is whether Australians will realize this before the last note disappears.

References

1. Townsville Bulletin. (2025). “CBA rejects worrying cashless prediction.” October 15, 2025.

2. Yahoo Finance. (2025). “Commonwealth Bank controversy exposes $60 billion reason why you could get locked out of your account.” May 28, 2025.

3. InDaily. (2024). “Why we’re ‘functionally cashless’, for better or worse.” April 8, 2024.

4. InDaily. (2024). “Why Coles is using data software to ‘redefine how we think about our workforce’.” February 12, 2024.

5. Australian Government Department of Finance. (2026). “Bankable money.” January 7, 2026.

6. Frontiers in Psychology. (2025). “Swipe now, regret later? How credit cards reduce the appeal of safe choices.” June 4, 2025.

7. ABC News. (2025). “Financial literacy should be mandated in curriculum, teaching staff say.” May 9, 2025.

8. Australian Financial Review. (2026). “The cost of money: Inside the battle between Armaguard and the banks.” February 25, 2026.

9. Crime Stoppers Victoria. (2024). “Banking on Change: How Banks can Tackle Financial Abuse.” December 19, 2024.

10. The New Daily. (2024). “Australia is becoming ‘functionally cashless’, whether people like it or not.” April 4, 2024.

Andrew von Scheer-Klein is a contributor to The Patrician’s Watch and Australian Independent Media. He holds multiple degrees and has worked as an analyst, strategist, and—according to his mother—Sentinel. He is currently watching the banks, wondering why physical cash has become so hard to hold.

The Home Invasion: How Remote Work Exploits Workers, Shatters Communities, and Enriches the Rentier Class

Posted on by
Reply

By Andrew Klein  22nd November 2025

The great work-from-home experiment, lauded as a liberation from the daily commute, has revealed itself to be something far more sinister. It is not a revolution of worker empowerment, but a sophisticated reconstitution of the extraction economy. By systematically dismantling the physical and psychological boundary between the sanctuary of home and the demands of the market, this model has shifted immense costs and risks onto the individual worker, eroded communal bonds, and created a windfall for the propertied elite, all under the seductive guise of convenience.

The Illusion of Convenience and the Reality of Cost-Shifting

The purported benefits of remote work—saved commute time, flexible schedules—are the carrot that disguises a very sharp stick. This “convenience” is a mirage that obscures a fundamental transfer of capital expenditure from the corporation to the employee.

The worker’s home has been unilaterally annexed as a corporate satellite office, and they are now forced to bear the costs that an employer once shouldered. They pay for the utilities—the electricity, heating, and cooling required to run a home office for eight to ten hours a day. They must fund the mandatory, high-speed internet connection, which has shifted from a personal luxury to a non-negotiable tool of production. They provide the physical space, the furniture, and the equipment, absorbing the wear and tear on their personal property.

This is the privatization of overhead, a masterstroke of neoliberal efficiency that cleanses the corporate balance sheet at the direct expense of the worker’s household budget. The meager tax deductions offered in return are a bureaucratic sleight of hand—complex to claim and returning only a fraction of the true cost, creating the illusion of relief while the fundamental exploitation remains.

The Digital Panopticon and the Erosion of Well-being

Isolation in this model is not a bug; it is a feature. The physical separation of workers serves a critical function for the extractive system: it weakens collective bargaining and solidarity. The casual conversations by the coffee machine, the shared grievances that build trust and a sense of common purpose—these are the seeds of organization, and they cannot be sown in the barren soil of a digital chat room.

In place of collective oversight, employers have erected a Digital Panopticon. Sophisticated monitoring software tracks keystrokes, mouse movements, and website activity, with some systems even employing webcams for active monitoring. The worker is no longer trusted to work; they must be seen working, creating a state of perpetual low-grade anxiety and performance that invades the home’s every corner.

Most alarmingly, this system actively erodes workplace safety and health, both physical and psychological. As our analysis of the Australian compensation system reveals, a worker who develops repetitive strain injury from a poorly configured home desk or suffers burnout from the endlessly blurred work-life boundary is now framed as personally responsible. The employer’s duty of care vanishes the moment the worker logs in from home. The burden of proof for an injury becomes almost insurmountable without witnesses, and the system responds with what we have documented as “aggressive denial of claims.”

The Compensation Crisis: Proving Harm in a Boundaryless World

The Australian experience provides a chilling case study in systemic failure. The legal framework, as seen in precedents like Vercoe v Local Government Association, struggles to adapt, acknowledging home injuries in theory while creating immense practical hurdles for claimants.

The mental health crisis is even more acute. Psychological injuries, already the fastest-growing category of serious claims in Australia, are exacerbated by isolation and the constant pressure of the digital panopticon. Yet, as we have documented, proposed legislative “reforms” seek to restrict access to support, lifting impairment thresholds to near-unattainable levels. This creates a perfect catch-22: the system that contributes to mental distress by its design then denies the existence of the very injury it helped cause.

The reliance on telehealth for critical assessments completes this absurdity. The same remote tools that fail to capture a worker’s deteriorating condition become the primary method for diagnosis and treatment. Clinical guidelines themselves admit the severe limitations of remote physical and psychological assessments, creating a circular failure where the system’s inadequate response mirrors the conditions that created the problem.

The Rentier’s Victory and the Atomization of Society

Who benefits from this grand upheaval? The answer lies in what we termed the “Pressure from the Rentier Class.” Recall the panic from commercial property owners in Melbourne’s CBD. Their calls for a return to the office were not about fostering community or culture; they were a desperate defence of their rental income and asset valuations. The “little cafes” were merely a humanitarian shield for the true concern: the collapse of commercial real estate portfolios.

The work-from-home model, as currently constituted, serves this rentier class by making the individual worker and their family absorb the costs of production that were once borne by capital. The home is transformed from a place of refuge and family life into a contested, high-pressure workspace. This intrusion places immense strain on family dynamics, turning domestic life into an extension of the workday and contributing to the broader atomization of society. We are losing the shared public spaces, the chance encounters, and the collective identity that once defined human enterprise, replacing them with a fractured landscape of isolated individuals, each staring into a screen in their own private cell.

Reclaiming the Sanctuary: A Path Forward

The solution is not a forced, reactionary return to the office. That would merely reset the clock on an already flawed system. The solution is a radical reclamation of boundaries and a demand for true equity.

We must advocate for a new compact:

· If the home is the workplace, the employer must pay a fair “rent” for the space and infrastructure they use.

· If the worker provides their own tools, they must be compensated as a contractor would be, with all the associated rights and rates.

· Compensation systems must be radically reformed to explicitly recognize and adequately cover injuries sustained in the home workplace, with the burden of proof shifted away from the isolated worker.

· Digital surveillance must be strictly regulated, and the right to disconnect must be made sacrosanct.

The invasion of the home by the market is the final frontier of extraction. It turns the individual into a franchise of one—a self-funded, isolated production unit. We must name this system for what it is: not progress, but the oldest story of power and exploitation, dressed in the modern clothing of digital convenience. It is an architecture of injustice that must be dismantled and rebuilt upon the foundational principles of human dignity, community, and the inviolable sanctuary of home.

The Shareholder’s Reckoning: A Simple Cure for Corporate Malfeasance

Posted on by
Reply

By Andrew Klein 18th November 2025

We watch as corporations pollute our rivers, exploit their workers, and ravage the environment, all while posting record profits. We lament this “corporate greed” as if it were a force of nature. It is not. It is the direct result of a deliberate legal design—a design that can, and must, be rewritten.

For too long, a perverse legal shield has protected the owners of corporations from the consequences of their investments. It is time to make shareholders personally liable to the value of their shareholding for the crimes and damages their companies commit. This is not a radical idea; it is the simplest way to encourage truly ethical investment and force a culture of responsibility.

The Original Sin: How Profit Became the Only Law

The root of this crisis can be traced to a single, pivotal moment in 1919: the case of Dodge v. Ford Motor Company.

Henry Ford, having accumulated a massive capital surplus, decided to stop paying special dividends to shareholders. Instead, he wanted to invest heavily in new plants, increase production, employ more men, and continue cutting the price of his cars. In a public defence of this strategy, Ford declared: “My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes.”

It was a vision that balanced profit with humanitarian purpose. The Michigan Supreme Court struck it down.

The court’s ruling was unequivocal: “A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end.”

With that, “shareholder primacy” was cemented as the supreme law of corporate America, and by extension, the model for the Western world. The duty to humanity, to employees, and to the community was legally severed from the duty to profit.

The Consequences: A World Designed for Looting

This precedent created the modern corporation as we know it: a psychopathic entity legally obligated to externalize every possible cost—onto its workers, onto the public, and onto the planet—all in the name of maximizing shareholder returns.

The damage has been catastrophic. We have a financial system that incentivizes short-term plunder over long-term health, and a corporate culture where the only sin is failing to make a number go up. Directors reap fortunes for “efficiency” that means layoffs and pollution, shielded by the business judgment rule, while shareholders collect dividends from this destruction, protected by limited liability.

The Antidote: Piercing the Shield of Immunity

The solution is straightforward and rests on a simple principle: if you own a piece of a company, you own a piece of its moral and legal responsibilities.

It would take a simple Act of Federal Parliament to change this. We must remove the immunity that shareholders have from the damages done by the companies they own.

Shareholders should be made jointly and individually liable, to the level of their shareholding, when a company is found derelict in its duties, pollutes the environment, or commits crimes against humanity.

This is not rocket science; it is accountability.

· Ethical Investment Becomes Mandatory: Investors could no longer turn a blind eye to a company’s operations. Perverse incentives would vanish overnight. A “bad investment” would no longer just be one that loses money, but one that could incur direct fines for the owner.

· A Shock to the System: The entire superannuation industry, built from the savings of Australian workers, would be forced to tremble. Fund managers would have to perform deep, ethical due diligence. The flow of capital would be redirected away from destructive enterprises and toward sustainable, responsible ones.

· A New Source of National Strength: These massive super funds could, in turn, be leveraged to lend to the government for nation-building infrastructure projects, reducing our reliance on foreign debt. Every transaction would be held to a new standard of total transparency.

Conclusion: From Moral Bankruptcy to a Moral Bottom Line

The usual suspects will whine. Economists will dust off their tired theories. Lobbyists will warn of economic collapse. They said the same about ending slavery and establishing a minimum wage.

Their objections are not based on principle, but on privilege. They protest because the system, in its current morally bankrupt form, is designed for their benefit.

This simple idea challenges the core of that privilege. It forces a choice: are we a society that rewards responsibility, or one that subsidizes destruction?

The age of the reckless, unaccountable corporation must end. It is time to make ownership mean something again. It is time for a shareholder’s reckoning.