Matt Bach: Stop the rot — it’s time to talk honestly about immigration, energy policy and public finances

‘Brain rot’ has been named word of the year, and right across the West, the rot has already set in. It’s time to stop the rot and talk honestly about immigration, energy policy and public finances.

Some people wait expectantly for the latest iPhone or perhaps a new Hollywood blockbuster. I realise it’s a little odd, but come the end of the year I find myself almost bursting with excitement at the prospect of discovering the ‘word of the year’.

This year Oxford University Press did not disappoint: brain rot. Yes, that’s two words. But let’s not quibble.

Brain rot describes the debilitating impact of hours spent on social media, endlessly scrolling (doom scrolling, they call it) through rubbish: cat videos, memes of Donald Trump or Joe Biden, or content created by semi-clothed, talentless, fish-lipped “influencers”.

I am sure you would agree, this is a huge problem, for young and old. Think of what we could have done with all that lost time. Worse, think of how our brains are being rewired by the sinister algorithms of Big Tech – confirming our biases and convincing us that those we disagree with are not just wrong, but bad.

Let’s pray (if that’s still allowed) that the government’s social media ban is enforceable. Those of us over 16 should follow suit and ban ourselves.

Brain rot has another meaning, an older meaning, that I confess I like even more.

The term was actually coined in 1854 by the philosopher David Henry Thoreau, to describe what he was witnessing in England: the decline of critical thinking and the failure to grapple with complicated ideas.

“While England endeavours to cure the potato rot”, he wrote, “will not any endeavour to cure the brain rot — which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”

Brain rot, thus, is a very apt word of the year. Right across the West, the rot has set it. Three obvious examples present themselves: immigration, energy policy and public finances.

In these three critical areas there is, depressingly, so much commonality across what used to be called Western Christendom.

History teaches us, above all else, that nothing lasts forever. Unless the rot is excised, I fear the West will fall, perhaps soon. There is an alternative to what we hold dear: parliamentary democracy, pluralism, the rule of law.

That alternative is embodied by brutal regimes in Moscow and in Beijing, first and foremost.

The question, therefore, is how do we stop the rot?

The inability of the political class to talk sensibly about immigration has been its principal failure, writes Matt Bach. Picture: Getty Images

On immigration I am a little biased, being an immigrant myself. My family and I immigrated to the United Kingdom a year ago, along with — wait for it — over a million people!

Net migration in the year ending June 2023 was a staggering 906,000. It’s not abating.

The inability of the political class to talk sensibly about immigration has been its principal failure of the last two decades.

You don’t have to be a racist or a bigot to feel rather uneasy about an extra million people a year being squeezed onto a tiny island with a failing health service, inadequate infrastructure and a housing crisis.

Similar issues are playing our writ large across the West — in America (where Donald Trump was just elected, again), in Germany (where earlier this month the government fell), in France (where the government has also fallen), and just about everywhere else.

Leaders need to follow Peter Dutton’s suit and start an honest conversation. Yes, immigration can increase growth. No, open borders are a bad idea and more immigrants cannot be accommodated unless there is commensurate investment in roads, rail and housing.

Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton. Picture: NewsWire

In energy policy Australia is an outlier, with its failure to acknowledge the benefits of nuclear power. Nuclear may not be the answer to the massive problems of skyrocketing bills and intermittent supply. But it is part of the answer.

Outside Australia this is not a controversial view. It is the view of Left-wing governments in the United Kingdom, America, Germany, France, and just about everywhere else across the West.

In truth, energy policy is a mess in many of these countries too. The key reason for the recent fall of the German government was its policy of reliance on Russian gas.

Yet Australians need to know that our government is an international laughing-stock for its bizarre, costly energy policy.

Finally, and most importantly, comes the mess in public finances. We want Scandinavian-style public services yet American-style taxation. Across the West, debt is ballooning and deficits are entrenched.

No politician tells us the truth: if you want government to do more, you’ll have to pay for it with higher taxes. Victoria, of course, is the dunce of the class. I’ve lost track, but I think the Labor government has raised taxes 47 times since it promised to do no such thing.

The antidote to our problems is truth. Perhaps this is too much to ask. After all, post-truth was Oxford’s word of the year in 2016. Yet we should try.

That means not being taken in by snake-oil salesmen who promise easy solutions to complex problems. It means that, one way or another, sacrifices need to be made.

The hour is late. But there’s still time to stop the rot.

Matt Bach is a former Victorian Liberal MP

Originally published as Matt Bach: Stop the rot — it’s time to talk honestly about immigration, energy policy and public finances