Anzac Day is a day when, in solemn ceremonies, our government, military and community leaders deliver gushing speeches remembering those who gave service, not least in two world wars, and especially those who gave their lives so that future generations could live in freedom. From the Prime Minister down, fine words are uttered yet, while not forgotten, those who made those wartime sacrifices would today view the speeches as mostly empty rhetoric.

Indeed, if they were alive today they would be saddened to see their gallantry trivialised in schools and universities as examples of white supremacy defending a dark colonial history of oppression and slavery. They would despair as they watch the liberties they fought for maligned daily.

They would watch in disbelief as big media and big business collude with governments in the promotion of lies. With counter-narratives sanitised, the public meekly accepts the official line.

This was recently highlighted when an Australian Environment Foundation survey of 1,004 Australians found 80 per cent of respondents believed the condition of the Great Barrier Reef has deteriorated to below average or worse. Only three per cent knew that the Australian Institute of Marine Science had found coral cover was the highest it had been in its 37 years of monitoring.

The public’s ignorance is not surprising. For years, the reef has been portrayed as being under existential threat from climate change. A half a billion dollars of taxpayer money was granted to save it which, the ABC assessed would have only ‘limited impact’. James Cook University Professor Peter Ridd was sacked for disagreeing with the scientific consensus.

Instead of headlines and outrage for being deliberately misled, the AIMS findings, received muted media coverage at best. Sky News Outsiders programme was an exception and was targeted by the Australian Communication and Media Authority for failing to mention the reef’s recovery was fragile and at risk. Really? Despite six devastating bleaching events since 2016, we now know the predicted impacts of climate change and bleaching have been grossly exaggerated. Still, containing damage to the official global warming line is paramount. Better the public be misled by authority than have authority exposed for its duplicity.

A similar attempt to stifle a counter-narrative  occurred when the Australian Press Council found, then-journalist with the Australian, Bernard Lane, not fair or balanced in his reporting on gender dysphoria among minors.

Lane has been almost alone in drawing attention to the risks minors, unsure of their gender, face, when resorting to puberty blockers and mastectomies. He has warned it may be years before many regret their largely irreversible decisions. In America, in states where it is easier for minors to access puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, suicide rates have increased. Yet the trans lobby is so powerful it has influenced schools not to alert parents when a child declares a trans/non-binary identity. Should a minor proceed with medical treatment in a taxpayer-funded clinic, patient/doctor confidentiality can be demanded and parental access denied.

Lane argues, it’s not ‘transphobia’ to scrutinise the confident claims made by ‘gender affirming’ clinicians, or to ‘inquire into the likely risks and outcomes of their interventions with children and adolescents’. Yet it appears it is. At the heart of the APC complaint and ruling is the hurt feelings of an individual who claims to be an expert in the field. But feelings should play no part in science and as Finland’s public sector Council for Choices in Health Care has concluded, ‘gender reassignment of minors is an experimental practice’.

Where then is the APC’s line of fairness and balance? Mr Lane doesn’t have a media monopoly. Rather than brand him as intolerant those who disagree are free to argue their case anywhere. Surely the interests of children, too young to vote, and freedom of expression, override the feelings of LGBTI+ experts?

No doubt if they were alive today, the veterans of El Alamein, Tobruk and Kokoda would see their celebrated victories as simply deferrals of an ultimate day of reckoning. What was once a young, self-confident, free-thinking, resilient, somewhat irreverent nation, has become a guilt-ridden, politically correct collection of tribes, divided by race, religion, sexuality and politics. The proposal to enshrine racism in our constitution and the accompanying disregard for due process and truth would rightly be beyond their comprehension.

And they would think the media’s lack of curiosity and its conformity with the offical agenda is more akin to state broadcasting than a vibrant democracy.

Would they believe such a society is worth defending? Or would they see this cultural undermining of Australian society as Hitler-style ‘political decontamination’. Still a democracy perhaps, but with the ideological differences between the major parties so narrow it has become essentially a one-party state.

It’s late in the day, but those controlling the political agenda are aware the truth is becoming harder to suppress. The AIMS Great Barrier Reef revelations and the dangers associated with child gender reassignment are just two of a myriad of examples. Like recent credentialed research which finds the climate system is only half as sensitive to greenhouse gases as the average IPCC models predict. Like the significant rise in unexplained deaths following the Covid pandemic now being blamed on the very vaccines which governments mandated. Like promises of cheaper renewable energy which are proving to be patently false and now threaten jobs. The list goes on.

This unravelling poses a threat to authoritarians and commits them to a race against time. Concentrating power into fewer hands initially plays well for elites, but over time, the very institutional rigidities they create limit their options to minimise economic and social hardship.

Covid demonstrated Australians are a trusting lot, obediently putting their lives in the hands of elites. However, as these and other follies are exposed and, as living standards fall and freedoms further erode, people will begin to realise that what drove the Anzacs is still worth fighting for.