Release: REVIVE AUSTRALIA SECURES MAJOR BACKING TO EXPAND NATIONAL OPERATION
Revive Australia has secured major backing to employ full-time staff and expand its national campaigning, policy development and political engagement. Every public donation will now be matched dollar for dollar until supporters collectively contribute $25,000.
Public donations will be matched dollar for dollar until $25,000 is raised
Revive Australia has secured major financial backing that will allow the organisation to bring on full-time staff and substantially expand its national campaigning, policy development and engagement with federal and state MPs. The move will give Revive Australia sustained day-to-day capacity to develop campaigns, respond to political events and advance its policy agenda.
Every public donation made to Revive Australia will now be matched dollar for dollar until supporters collectively contribute $25,000. Reaching that target will generate a total of $50,000 to strengthen the organisation’s work across Australia.
Revive Australia Founder and Executive Director Brian Marlow said the announcement marked an important step forward for an organisation that has built an audience of almost 36,000 Australians organically, without paid advertising or purchased lists.
“Bringing on full-time staff changes the scale of what Revive Australia can do. It gives us the people and time required to run more campaigns, develop serious policy and maintain direct engagement with decision-makers across the country,” Mr Marlow said.
“Revive Australia began with a clear belief that Australians concerned about the direction of their country needed an organisation capable of turning that concern into sustained national action. We have built the foundations of that organisation, and we can now begin developing the full-time professional operation required to deliver on that mission.”
Over the past year, Revive Australia has campaigned on ending mass migration, free speech, national sovereignty and the growing pressure on Australian living standards. Its work has given Australians a practical way to participate in the national debate and ensured their concerns reach political decision-makers.
Full-time staffing will allow Revive Australia to respond faster when important decisions are being made and sustain its campaigns beyond a single news cycle. It will also support deeper policy development and more consistent engagement with MPs in Canberra and state parliaments.
“Australians can see that decisions affecting their families, communities and future are being made without their interests coming first. Revive Australia exists to organise those Australians, develop credible alternatives and press governments to put the country and its people back at the centre of national policy,” Mr Marlow said.
“Having people working full-time on that task means we can increase our output, prepare stronger campaigns and engage political decision-makers with greater consistency. It gives Revive Australia the capacity to become a serious and enduring force in Australian public life.”
The matching commitment gives members of the public an immediate opportunity to help expand that work. Every dollar donated before the public target is reached will produce another dollar for Revive Australia’s campaign activities, policy work and political engagement.
“This is a significant moment for Revive Australia, and it has only been made possible by the people who have supported our campaigns, shared our work and helped bring more Australians into the fold,” Mr Marlow said.
“We are grateful for everything they have helped us build. We now have an opportunity to create the professional campaigning organisation Australia needs and work towards a country that is cohesive, confident and governed in the interests of its own people.”
The matching campaign will continue until Revive Australia receives $25,000 in public donations.
Australians who want to have their contribution doubled can donate using the button below.
ENDS
Media contact:
Brian Marlow
Founder and Executive Director
Revive Australia
+61 439 138 826
info@reviveaus.com
Demographics Will Dictate Democracy
One Nation can turf out the establishment and still lose the country
One Nation could turf out the establishment at the next election and still hand it the country in the long run.
Its supporters have every reason to want Labor and the Liberals punished for the housing crisis, falling living standards, overcrowded infrastructure and migration levels Australians were never asked to approve. One Nation is where much of that anger has gone.
Suppose the party wins. Establishment MPs lose their seats, the major parties are humiliated and, after decades of being ignored, Australians finally see the political class pay a price. The same government then adds another 130,000 people through net overseas migration in its first year, repeats it in the second and continues year after year. Ten years of that adds 1.3 million people through migration; twenty years adds 2.6 million. The faces in Parliament have changed, but the demographic transformation imposed by the old establishment is still being carried forward by the people elected to stop it, so what exactly has been won?
Only a few months ago, Pauline Hanson was explaining how a cap of 130,000 arrivals, set against about 230,000 departures, would produce net negative migration of roughly 100,000. Malcolm Roberts was making the same case, repeatedly calling for negative net migration until housing and infrastructure had time to catch up. That is no longer what 130,000 means. Hanson has since confirmed it now refers to net overseas migration, leaving Australia with 130,000 more people each year and shifting the annual result by 230,000. Supporters who backed a period of national recovery are now being asked to accept permanent migration-driven population growth, only at a slower rate than Labor currently delivers.
For most people, mass migration becomes real in their rent or mortgage repayments, the pressure on wages and the strain on roads, schools and hospitals. The political effect takes longer to show up because every voter comes to the polling booth with a history, culture, loyalties and interests; change who lives in the country over decades and you change the politics it will have in the future. Once Australia’s founding population loses its majority, it no longer has the numbers to preserve the country’s political, cultural and institutional character on its own, and every election is fought on terrain created by decades of mass migration. By the time that becomes obvious, the population change behind it is extraordinarily difficult to reverse. Demographics will dictate democracy.
Another generation of this and Australia will end up in the same situation as South Africa or Brazil, with politics organised around racial, ethnic and religious blocs and public institutions fought over as spoils. Extreme inequality, chronic disorder and weak national cohesion would become permanent features of Australian life. Take the process further still and we risk what others have called “Project Zimbabwe”, where the founding population loses political power altogether and is eventually dispossessed of the country it built. Australia still has time to choose another course, provided we stop moving towards that outcome.
You can repeal a bad tax in one budget and remove a failed regulation in one term of government. There is no equivalent way to recover demographic ground lost over decades, which makes the decisions being taken now more important than the election result alone. Much of the Australian right keeps returning to tax rates, regulation and GDP as though better management of the economy could settle a question about national survival. The pursuit of endless GDP growth also gives the establishment a permanent excuse for mass migration, because importing more workers and consumers makes the economy larger on paper even as living standards fall, housing pressure worsens and the country loses more of its continuity. Economic policy should serve the Australian nation and give families the security to build a future here.
We should judge policies and alliances by what they do to Australia’s demographic future. We should work with anyone who has a credible plan to halt the decline of Australia’s founding stock, wherever they sit in party or factional politics. Our movement has no political common cause with people who offer tax tinkering while accepting permanent migration-driven population growth, or who sacrifice our demographic future to endless GDP expansion. Whatever label they use, they are leading us towards defeat on the only measure that will matter in the end.
Too much of the right still organises as though politics were a night out. Personalities, social circles, factional arguments and online feuds soak up time and energy that should go into serious institutions and political work that can actually be measured. If we genuinely believe we are facing demographic defeat, then we need the discipline. That means agreeing on what victory looks like and building organisations capable of pursuing it long after the excitement of an election has passed. Without that organising principle, the right cannot turn shared anger into the power needed to preserve the country.
One Nation already had the policy needed to begin that work, and it can return to it now by capping arrivals at 130,000, recommitting to net negative migration, counting every migration pathway and publishing an honest total.
At a bare minimum, more people need to leave Australia than settle here for the foreseeable future.
That would begin easing pressure on housing and services while protecting the culture and institutions we should be able to hand intact to our children.
Winning the next election should secure Australia for the next generation, and a policy that adds 130,000 people through migration every year will not do that.
Tell One Nation to restore net negative migration: reviveaus.com/commit
The Great Australian Wealth Extraction
Revive Australia has released a comprehensive policy paper outlining the benefits of a flat 30% tax on remittances. In this article, we examine the revenue it could raise, and how those billions could be put to work for Australian families and Australia’s future.
Read The Great Australian Wealth Extraction here:
Every year, tens of billions of dollars earned in Australia are transferred overseas through personal remittances.
A remittance is money someone sends to a foreign country.
Here’s how it works: If an Indian migrant earns $1000 in Australia then sends that $1000 back home to India, that $1000 is a remittance. That $1000 will not return to the Australian economy.
The infographic below shows how it works:
TO AUSTRALIA.
IN AUSTRALIA
IS SENT OVERSEAS.
AUSTRALIA
REMITTANCE
FOREIGN ECONOMIES.
AUSTRALIA
Official World Bank data places outbound personal remittances from Australia at approximately $24 to $25 billion a year. Broader industry estimates place the total closer to $38 billion.
That is Australian-earned income leaving the Australian economy.
The jobs are here. The wages are earned here. Australian taxpayers fund the infrastructure, institutions and public services that make those earnings possible.
Once that money is transferred overseas, it is no longer available to be spent with Australian businesses, deposited in Australian banks, invested in Australian enterprises or circulated through Australian communities.
At this scale, remittances represent a major transfer of Australian-earned wealth overseas.
Revive Australia believes Australia should impose a 30% tax on outbound personal remittances.
The principle is straightforward:
If income is earned in Australia and transferred out of the Australian economy, Australia should retain a share of it.
How a 30% remittance tax would work
The tax would be added to the amount being transferred overseas.
If someone wants to send $1,000 overseas, the recipient would still receive the full $1,000.
The sender would pay:
$1,000 remittance + $300 remittance tax = $1,300, plus any provider fee.
The tax would be collected at the point of transfer by regulated international-transfer providers and administered by the ATO.
TAX WORKS
WEALTH IN AUSTRALIA.
and raises revenue that can be put to work here.
AUSTRALIA
The scale of the wealth leaving Australia is growing rapidly
The amount of Australian-earned wealth being transferred overseas has risen dramatically.
Estimated net remittance outflows increased from approximately $9.3 billion in 2019 to $21.7 billion in 2024.
In just five years, net outflows more than doubled.
Income retained in Australia continues to circulate through the Australian economy. It can be spent with Australian businesses, deposited in Australian banks, invested in Australian companies and assets, used to purchase homes, or saved by Australian households.
Income transferred overseas begins circulating somewhere else.
At more than $20 billion in estimated net outflows each year, this is no longer a marginal economic issue. It represents a substantial and growing transfer of wealth out of Australia.
HAVE MORE THAN
DOUBLED.
IS LEAVING THE COUNTRY
AT AN ACCELERATING RATE.
AUSTRALIA
How the wealth extraction works
The mechanics are straightforward.
Wealth is generated in Australia through Australian jobs, wages and economic activity.
Those earnings are made possible within an economy supported by Australian infrastructure, public services, institutions, law enforcement, transport networks, hospitals, schools and a stable financial system.
When a portion of that income is transferred overseas as a personal remittance, it leaves the Australian economy.
That money is no longer available to circulate through Australian businesses, savings and investment. It instead supports household consumption, saving and investment overseas.
Australia continues carrying the costs associated with generating the economic opportunity.
The wealth leaves.
That is why Revive Australia describes large-scale remittance outflows as a form of wealth extraction.
Australia creates the jobs. Australia maintains the infrastructure. Australia provides the economic opportunity. Australia should have a legitimate interest in ensuring more of the resulting wealth remains here.
IN AUSTRALIA.
OPPORTUNITY
WEALTH
THE CONDITIONS.
THE WEALTH LEAVES.
AUSTRALIA
Migration-led growth has to deliver for Australians
For years Australians have been told that high migration will produce greater economic growth and prosperity.
The measure that matters is whether that prosperity improves the lives of Australians and strengthens the country over the long term.
The migration system should not encourage an extractive relationship in which Australia supplies the employment, infrastructure, public services and economic opportunity while a substantial share of the resulting income is continually directed overseas.
If Australia is going to absorb the costs associated with population growth, then more of the wealth produced through that growth should remain within the Australian economy.
Australian prosperity should build Australian businesses, Australian savings, Australian homes, Australian families and Australian national wealth.
Why 30%?
The tax has two purposes.
First, it changes the financial incentive to continually transfer income out of Australia.
Second, it raises revenue from the money that continues to be sent overseas.
Under Revive Australia's modelling, a 30% remittance tax applied to the official outbound-remittance base produces approximately $7.3 billion in annual revenue before behavioural change and exclusions.
Using the broader industry estimate of outbound remittances, the static revenue figure rises to approximately $11.4 billion a year.
That means a 30% remittance tax could generate more than $10 billion a year under the broader static estimate.
Actual revenue would depend on how strongly people respond to the tax, which is precisely why Revive Australia has also modelled substantial reductions in remittance volumes.
What happens if people send less money?
A remittance tax is intended to change behaviour.
If sending money overseas becomes substantially more expensive, some people will send less.
Revive Australia's behavioural modelling deliberately tests that outcome.
Across the three stress-test scenarios in the policy paper, a 30% tax still produces approximately $3.7 billion to $9.9 billion in annual revenue.
Both outcomes advance the policy objective.
Where remittances continue, Australia receives revenue.
Where remittances fall, more Australian-earned wealth remains in Australia.
Success should therefore be measured by more than the amount collected by the Treasury. It should also be measured by the reduction in outbound remittances and the amount of Australian-earned income retained in the domestic economy.
OUTFLOWS FALL?
TEST 30% TAX REVENUE $0.0 BILLION / YEAR
TEST 30% TAX REVENUE $0.00 BILLION / YEAR
TEST 30% TAX REVENUE $0.0 BILLION / YEAR
RAISES BILLIONS
PATHS TO SUCCESS
IN REVENUE
STAYS HERE
MORE WEALTH RETAINED
IN AUSTRALIA.
AUSTRALIA
Put the money to work for Australians
Revenue raised from Australian-earned income leaving the country should be put to work for Australians.
Revive Australia proposes placing Australian families at the centre of that investment.
Australia faces a serious long-term challenge in declining family formation and birth rates. Young Australians are being asked to establish families in an environment of high housing costs, heavy taxation and growing household expenses.
A remittance tax capable of generating billions of dollars creates an opportunity to pursue a serious national pro-family agenda.
Australian families
Revenue could fund targeted newborn, parental and early-childhood support designed to reduce the financial cost of having and raising children.
Starting a family should not impose an ever-growing financial penalty on Australians who choose to have children.
Family tax relief
Billions in remittance-tax revenue could support substantial tax relief for Australian families.
Parents should be able to keep more of what they earn and have greater freedom to decide how their household income is spent.
Housing
Revenue could be directed toward helping Australian families into home ownership.
Stable and affordable housing is fundamental to family formation. A country that wants more young Australians to marry, have children and establish permanent roots should make home ownership easier to achieve.
Essential health services
Revenue could strengthen essential health services, including services relied upon by mothers, babies, children and families.
A growing population requires health infrastructure that keeps pace.
National infrastructure
At higher revenue levels, the tax could also support major national and regional infrastructure investment.
Roads, transport, energy, water and productive infrastructure create lasting assets and strengthen Australia's capacity to support future generations.
Fiscal repair
Additional revenue could also contribute to enforcement and debt reduction, reducing the financial burden passed on to future Australians.
At different revenue levels, the policy could support increasingly substantial packages.
At around $3 billion, it could fund targeted newborn, parental and early-childhood support.
At around $5 billion, it could support family assistance and significant family tax relief.
At around $7 billion, it could support broader family measures, tax relief and housing assistance.
At around $9 billion, it could support family measures alongside major investment in essential services and infrastructure.
At the upper static estimate of approximately $11.4 billion, Australia could fund a broad package of family support, tax relief, housing assistance, national infrastructure and fiscal repair.
TO WORK HERE.
FAMILIES
RELIEF
INFRASTRUCTURE
AUSTRALIA'S PRIORITIES
RETURN THE REVENUE
TO AUSTRALIANS.
AUSTRALIA
A tax that can actually be collected
Australia already has a highly regulated banking and international payments system.
Under Revive Australia's proposal, the ATO would administer the remittance tax and regulated financial institutions would collect it when a taxable personal remittance is made.
Banks, registered remittance businesses, regulated international payment services and relevant regulated crypto providers would act as collection agents.
The tax would be collected upfront.
A sender seeking to transfer $1,000 overseas would pay the $1,000 transfer amount, the $300 remittance tax and any normal provider fee. The recipient would still receive the full $1,000.
Senders would also be required to declare the purpose of the transfer.
The proposal is directed at personal remittances, not ordinary commercial activity.
Documented payments for imports, genuine business investment, securities purchases, regulated pension and superannuation payments, capital transfers and defined direct tuition, medical and humanitarian payments would sit outside the taxable personal-remittance category.
There would be no general tax-free threshold.
The tax would apply from the first dollar of a taxable personal remittance.
Evasion should have consequences
A serious tax requires serious enforcement.
The system would need to deal with attempts to disguise personal remittances as other forms of payment, split transfers into smaller amounts, route payments through third countries, use nominees or deliberately shift transactions into undeclared cash or unreported crypto channels.
Knowingly false declarations and fabricated documentation should attract substantial penalties.
Australia should also publish regular data on remittance volumes, revenue collected, exclusions, refunds, enforcement activity and evidence of transfers moving into informal channels.
The principle should be simple:
Collect the tax upfront. Trace evasion. Enforce the law.
Keep Australian-earned wealth in Australia
Australia has allowed tens of billions of dollars earned here to be transferred overseas every year without a dedicated federal remittance tax.
The scale of those transfers is now too large to ignore.
Australians fund the infrastructure and institutions that make economic activity possible.
Australian businesses create jobs and opportunities.
Australian households carry the costs associated with housing pressure, population growth and stretched public services.
More of the wealth generated through that system should remain in this country.
A 30% remittance tax would change the incentive to transfer Australian-earned income offshore, retain more wealth within the Australian economy and potentially raise billions of dollars for Australian families and Australia's future.
Remittances are a form of wealth extraction. Plain and simple.
It is time to tax remittances and keep Australian-earned wealth in Australia.
Read the full policy proposal
The Great Australian Wealth Extraction sets out Revive Australia's full proposal for a 30% remittance tax, including the economic case, revenue modelling, administration, enforcement and proposed uses of the proceeds.
Media release - REVIVE AUSTRALIA CALLS FOR 30% remittance TAX ON BILLIONS SENT OVERSEAS
Revive Australia has released a new policy paper calling for a 30% levy on outbound personal remittances, designed to keep more Australian-earned wealth in Australia and raise billions in revenue for Australian families, essential services and national infrastructure.
Revive Australia has today released a new policy paper calling for a 30 per cent levy on outbound personal remittances, with the proceeds used to support Australian families, essential services and national infrastructure.
Every year, tens of billions of dollars earned in Australia are sent overseas through personal remittances.
Revive Australia’s new policy paper, The Great Australian Wealth Extraction, argues Australia should recover a share of that money before it leaves the country.
Under the proposal, the levy would be added to the amount being sent. Someone sending $1,000 overseas would pay a $300 levy, while the recipient would still receive the full $1,000. The ATO would administer the system and regulated transfer providers would collect the levy at the point of transfer.
Revive Australia’s Brian Marlow said Australia could no longer ignore the scale of the money leaving the country.
“Remittances are a form of wealth extraction. Plain and simple.”
“Australia provides the jobs, the wages, the infrastructure, the public services and the stable economy that allow this money to be earned. Billions are then transferred overseas to support foreign households and foreign economies.”
“Australia should retain a share of that wealth.”
The policy paper estimates a 30 per cent levy would raise approximately $7.3 billion a year when applied to the official remittance figure, or $11.4 billion using the broader industry estimate, before behavioural changes and exclusions. Revive Australia’s behavioural stress testing produces revenue of approximately $3.7 billion to $9.9 billion a year at the proposed rate.
Marlow said the levy would have two objectives.
“We want to raise billions for Australians and make it more expensive to continually transfer Australian-earned wealth offshore.”
“That money can help Australian families raise children, buy homes, access better health services and build the infrastructure this country needs.”
The United States has already moved to tax outbound remittances. A new 1 per cent US remittance transfer tax took effect on 1 January 2026 for certain transfers funded using cash, money orders, cashier’s cheques and similar physical instruments. The tax is paid by the sender and collected by remittance providers.
The Trump White House has publicly promoted taxing money sent out of the United States as part of its immigration and financial policy agenda.
“Australia should be prepared to go much further,” Marlow said.
“For years governments have focused on how much economic activity migration creates. Australians are entitled to ask how much of the wealth created here actually stays here.”
“Tax outbound remittances at 30 per cent. Keep more Australian-earned wealth in Australia. Use the revenue to back an Australian revival.”
ENDS
The Limits of Grievance Politics
Recent polling does not mean One Nation’s rise is over, but it does expose a real weakness. Voters may reward a party for naming the pressure caused by migration, housing costs and national decline, but support becomes less secure when that party cannot connect the problem to a serious vision of Australian revival.
The latest Roy Morgan poll shows One Nation falling from its peak of 31.5% down to 22.5%. That represents a nine-point drop across two weeks. This follows last week’s polling, where both Newspoll and the RedBridge/Accent Research poll already showed One Nation slipping by two points. Newspoll had One Nation down to 29%, while RedBridge/Accent had One Nation on 29% after falling from 31%. Most of the lost primary support in the Roy Morgan poll has moved into the Independents and Others category, while some has gone toward the L-NP Coalition. Labor’s primary vote has remained largely unchanged and sits at 28%.
Much of the commentary around this drop has focused on Pauline Hanson’s comments about monoculturalism at the National Press Club. The reality is more straightforward.
One Nation has spent three decades positioning itself as the party willing to say plainly that high levels of migration and official multiculturalism have created serious problems for housing, wages, infrastructure and social cohesion. The people who pushed its numbers up to 31.5% were responding to those visible pressures. They were not encountering the party’s core positions for the first time and deciding they had made a mistake.
The sharper losses came from other directions. The paid parental leave comments created problems with families who are already struggling with the cost of raising children. The association with Gina Rinehart’s public remarks added another layer of friction. There was also a clear reaction to the sense that Pauline was taking a dismissive view of Gen Y and Gen Z. These issues landed with younger voters and with people who had been willing to support One Nation on migration but wanted to see the party address the full range of pressures affecting working Australians.
Voters will back One Nation when migration feels like the central issue driving down their living standards. They begin to drift when the party appears to have little concrete to offer on the other things that are making life harder. Cost of living, the ability to buy a home, and the practical question of whether people can afford to have children all sit alongside migration as daily realities. When those issues are left unaddressed, support becomes conditional rather than solid.
Grievance alone has limits as a political foundation. There is widespread and legitimate anger about the scale of migration, the failure of governments to protect the interests of existing citizens, and the broader sense that the country is changing in ways that leave ordinary people worse off. That anger can bring people to a party quickly. What it does not do on its own is create lasting attachment. People who step outside the major parties are not simply looking for validation of their frustration, they are looking for something that feels like it can actually change the direction of the country
This is where the question of seriousness becomes important. Voting for One Nation still carries a degree of risk for many Australians. It feels like a break from the established political class. When people take that step, they need to see that the party understands the weight of what it is asking. That means showing up consistently in parliament. It means treating staffing, candidate selection, policy development and public communication as responsibilities rather than ongoing protest activities. Some supporters are already questioning whether the party understands the mantle of responsibility that comes with the level of support it is now receiving.
The migration debate itself shows where this matters most. It is possible to build a large audience by describing the failures of current policy on borders, housing pressure and wage suppression. A movement that wants to last needs to go further. It needs to speak clearly about what it is trying to protect and what kind of country it wants Australia to remain. That includes talking about the culture, the history and the conditions under which Australian families can actually build stable lives. The argument against mass migration becomes stronger when it is connected to a clear picture of stability, cohesion and opportunity for the people already here.
This is where practical framing makes a difference. On families, the issue is not just the design of paid parental leave. Many Australians cannot afford to have children in the first place because wages have been held down by high migration and housing costs have become extreme. Policies such as income splitting and genuine pro-natalist measures speak to the actual constraints rather than adding more temporary payments while the underlying problems continue.
On young Australians, the response needs to be equally direct. Claims that Gen Y and Gen Z are lazy ignore the reality that large numbers of them are struggling to get stable entry-level work and career progression. Employers have become accustomed to sourcing cheaper labour from overseas under weak enterprise agreements. The practical response is to tighten the rules around those agreements and give Australian workers, particularly younger ones, a clearer path into decent employment instead of treating them as an afterthought.
One Nation still has a significant opening in Australian politics. Trust in the major parties remains low and the underlying frustrations with migration, housing and living standards have not gone away. At the same time, recent polling is a reminder that support built on protest can move in both directions. It can rise quickly when people feel ignored by the established system, but it can also recede if the party receiving that support does not demonstrate that it can move beyond anger into something more substantial.
The weakness exposed by this polling goes well beyond One Nation. Too much of the right treats migration as if naming the problem is the same as offering the country a future. Australians can already see the pressure on housing, wages, schools, infrastructure and social cohesion. Repeating the grievance without tying it to a positive national project leaves voters with a complaint and little reason to believe anything will actually be rebuilt.
Any serious movement has to understand what this moment requires. Australian voters are looking for more than a running commentary on decline. They want a vision of the future they can recognise and rally around: a country that works for its own citizens, protects its culture and social cohesion, makes family formation possible, rewards work, and treats national continuity as something worth defending.
Migration matters because it is eroding the basic conditions of national life: affordable homes, decent work, family formation, social trust, and a country that still feels like it belongs to its own people.
The party that can connect the problem to Australian revival will have a much stronger claim than the party that merely complains about decline.
Conservatives Still Do Not Understand Power
The Giggle decision represents far more than a legal dispute over an app. It marks another institutional victory in a much larger struggle over culture, power, and the future shape of Western society.
The Federal Court has ruled in favour of transgender female Roxanne Tickle, dismissing an appeal brought by the female-only Giggle app and reinforcing a broader legal interpretation of the word “woman” under Australian law. The case centred on whether a biological male who identifies as female and has undergone gender reassignment could lawfully be excluded from a platform explicitly designed as a space for women.
The practical implication of the ruling, in the eyes of many Australians, is that biological sex has increasingly been subordinated to gender identity within parts of Australian law. Critics of the decision argue that the Federal Court has effectively opened the door for biological males identifying as women, including those who have undergone gender reassignment procedures, to access female-only spaces while simultaneously eroding any fixed legal definition of what a woman actually is.
In short, Eunuchs with a diagnosed mental disorder — as listed in the DSM-5-TR under gender dysphoria — have been given a green light to enter female-only spaces, and the federal courts have decided that real women don’t exist.
For many women, and for many ordinary Australians watching these developments unfold, that represents a profound civilisational shift rather than a narrow technical legal dispute.
People can rage about the judgment itself, debate its scope, or argue over the downstream implications for women and female-only spaces, but the deeper issue sits well beyond this individual case. The ruling is a reflection of institutional power, ideological capture, and a political class that still fundamentally misunderstands how modern politics actually functions.
For most of modern political history, the Right understood the importance of institutions. Conservatives knew civilisations are maintained through cultural continuity, legal traditions, universities, churches, bureaucracies, courts, and inherited social norms. They knew institutions shape nations across generations.
What changed was the rise of a modern conservative mindset that treated institutional retreat as strategic realism. As institutions drifted left, much of the Right simply wrote them off as lost and walked away. Universities became hostile, so conservatives told young people to avoid them. Bureaucracies turned ideological, so engagement gave way to outsider resentment. Cultural institutions were captured, so the response was withdrawal instead of counter-occupation.
That approach proved catastrophic. Vacuums don’t stay empty and institutions abandoned by one side are filled by the other.
Even worse, many conservatives convinced themselves certain institutions were untouchable. Courts, in particular, were seen as sacred pillars of impartiality that nobody would dare politicise.
This ignores a basic truth: large parts of the activist Left reject Western civilisational norms outright. They see those traditions, hierarchies, and moral frameworks as obstacles to be dismantled, not preserved. Once you grasp that, it’s obvious why every institution — including the judiciary — became contested ground.
The modern Left understood decades ago that power flows through institutions: judiciary, academia, media, public administration, regulators, arts bodies, and the credentialing systems that shape elite opinion. Control those, and society eventually bends to your definitions.
The modern Right, by contrast, responded with retreat and escapism. Every call for young conservatives to skip university, “just become tradies,” or retreat into parallel societies is effectively a call to surrender.
Universities aren’t just classrooms. They are the pipeline feeding every other layer of power — future lawyers, judges, journalists, bureaucrats, executives, teachers, and politicians. Abandon them and you abandon the future ruling class.
That’s exactly why rulings like this come as no surprise.
Federally appointed judges don’t just apply the law mechanically. They define its scope. Their interpretations shape how statutes work in practice, how future cases are argued, how legislation is drafted, and how society understands contested concepts. Judicial appointments echo for decades.
The public barely notices. Minor parties barely notice. Attorneys-General make these appointments with almost no sustained scrutiny outside the legal bubble, even though they can reshape society long after the government has gone.
The deeper frustration many Australians feel isn’t just the outcome. It’s the growing sense that large sections of institutional Australia operate from a narrow ideological framework while pretending to stand above politics.
This didn’t happen by accident.
Attorneys-General since Christian Porter have treated federal judicial appointments with astonishing complacency. Merit often seems secondary to box-ticking, factional balance, symbolism, or ideological comfort. Recent appointments frequently show judges elevated with limited senior counsel experience and clear pre-existing worldviews.
Judges are human. They bring assumptions, moral intuitions, and ideological priors into their rulings, especially on vague, politically charged social issues. Many in the federal judiciary also seem increasingly detached from core disciplines like criminal law, the traditional grounding of legal reasoning. When institutions become culturally uniform, dissenting views vanish.
The result is a judiciary that feels culturally and ideologically remote from ordinary Australians.
Conservatives now face a choice they’ve dodged for decades. Keep pretending institutions don’t matter, or accept what every serious political movement has always known: institutions determine civilisational direction.
Winning elections isn’t enough. A single term in government achieves little if universities, courts, bureaucracies, media, and the professional class remain hostile and keep reproducing the same worldview.
That’s why conservative victories across the West so often feel temporary and hollow. Governments change while the permanent institutional architecture stays intact.
Real change demands a long march through the institutions. It requires generations willing to enter law, academia, bureaucracy, media, culture, education, and public administration — knowing these spaces shape the nation’s future consciousness. Above all, it requires dropping the fantasy that neutrality still exists.
The Giggle ruling is no isolated anomaly. It is the predictable product of institutional momentum built over years across the West. Anyone shocked by it simply hasn’t been paying attention to where power actually resides.
The central political struggle of our era is no longer merely electoral. It is institutional, cultural, and generational. The side that commits to the long march — whether rewards come in five, twenty, or fifty years — is the side that will shape the civilisation its descendants inherit.
This demands a seriousness many still refuse to confront. Too many movements chase immediate gratification through one election win, one viral moment, or one parliamentary breakthrough. Real civilisational change unfolds across generations, often requiring decades of institutional persistence before cultural and political transformation becomes visible. Most who lay the foundations for that future will never personally experience the world they helped create. The struggle is generational by its very nature.
In many ways the task ahead echoes Ernest Shackleton’s famous recruitment ad — men wanted for a hazardous journey into bitter cold, darkness, and danger, with only honour if they succeed. The modern struggle across the West demands the same spirit: people willing to face social hostility, professional consequences, institutional exclusion, and years of defeat, knowing the fruits may belong to their children or grandchildren. It is a cause worth dedicating a life to.
An artistic visualization of the ad in London newspapers seeking explorers for Ernest Shackleton’s expedition aboard the Endurance
Many conservatives also misunderstand what victory looks like. A minor party in parliament is not victory. A temporary swing is not victory. A populist government lasting one or two terms is not victory. These are just tactical gains in a deeper war over culture, legitimacy, institutions, and national identity.
True victory comes when certain ideas become socially toxic. When embracing them carries real consequences, when families recoil in embarrassment, when destructive ideologies provoke the same instinctive revulsion once reserved for extremism and decay. Such a cultural shift requires discipline, institutional persistence, long-term thinking, and generations willing to fight battles they may never personally win.
If conservatives keep refusing to engage with institutional power, they will keep losing, no matter how many elections they scrape together along the way.
The people who understood that institutions define reality have already been acting on that truth for decades. They are winning.
Submission to the Senate Select Committee on Productivity
The current economic model has failed the people it was supposed to serve. Australians are being asked to accept a larger economy while falling behind in their own country, with rising costs, declining living standards, and housing slipping further out of reach. This submission sets out why that outcome is not accidental, why it is being driven by policy choices, and why reversing it requires ending the current approach and putting Australians first.
opening statement
Thank you for the opportunity to appear today.
Australians were promised prosperity, but what they have experienced is decline.
The gap between what was promised and what has been delivered sits at the centre of this discussion.
The current economic model has failed the people it was supposed to serve, yet Australians are still being asked to accept a bigger economy while they themselves fall behind in their own country.
Living standards have stalled or gone backwards, housing has moved out of reach for large parts of the population, and the cost of living continues to rise faster than incomes. Australians are getting poorer inside an economy that is still being described as a success. It is anything but.
A key driver of that outcome has been the mass migration experiment, and it has failed on every metric. It has not delivered prosperity where it matters, and it has made things worse for everyday Australians. Headline GDP has been nudged higher through deliberate efforts to expand the size of the economy, but GDP per person has gone backwards and people’s lives have suffered as a result.
Despite this, the economic establishment remains committed to continuing an approach that has already failed in practice and is now being felt in the daily lives of Australians.
Aggregate GDP should not be treated as the primary measure of a nation’s success. If the price of higher GDP is turning Australia into something like a Mos Eisley cantina, then the problem is not that we need to manage migration better, it is that we are chasing the wrong objective altogether.
A country is not an abstract economic zone whose purpose is to maximise output at any cost. It is a place with a history, a culture, and a people who have a right to continuity and stability in their own communities.
Once you accept the premise that any level of change is justified if it lifts a headline number, you have already conceded that the character of the nation is expendable. I reject that completely. Economic performance matters, but it does not override the right of Australians to preserve a country that remains recognisable, cohesive, and their own.
Australia is stagnating while the mass migration experiment continues. that alone proves the model has failed.
You cannot fix productivity, housing, or the cost of living while continuing to increase population under the same approach, because every one of those pressures is being intensified at the same time as policymakers claim to be solving them.
Australians are not widgets. They are not flesh-covered units of economic output to be scaled up or scaled down to improve a graph.
A nation is its people, not a set of numbers, yet the system we are operating under continues to expand without regard for the consequences, and Australians are carrying the cost of that expansion every day.
If this inquiry is serious about productivity, then it has to confront the structure that is producing these outcomes.
That means ending the mass migration experiment, resetting the model, and putting Australians first.
Full Submission to the Senate Select Committee on Productivity in Australia:
This submission focuses on paragraph B, which deals with a long-term national settlement strategy, and paragraph K, which allows for related matters. Both lead back to the same issue. You cannot deal with productivity, housing, infrastructure, or regional development without addressing the impact of mass migration.
Australia is now confronting the consequences of a failed policy model that has not delivered rising living standards for its people and is actively contributing to their decline. Governments have relied on high migration and rapid population growth to make the economy appear stronger than it is. That headline growth has been used as proof that the system is working. It has not. The policy was sold on the promise that it would lift productivity and improve living standards. It has failed to do both. Productivity has stalled and outcomes for Australians, measured per person, have gone backwards.
Australia is stagnating while migration continues at elevated levels. That alone clearly demonstrates that the mass migration experiment has failed, was always going to fail, and must be abandoned immediately.
When a system delivers worse outcomes for the people living under it, it is failing. GDP per person has gone backwards over extended periods, housing has become unaffordable for a growing share of Australians, infrastructure is under strain, and the cost of living continues to rise faster than incomes. These outcomes flow directly from the policy settings that have been chosen.
The current model rests on a simple idea. Bring in more people, increase demand, and the economy grows. That idea is flawed. It substitutes population growth for real productivity and calls it success, even when Australians are worse off.
Housing shows this clearly. Demand has been pushed higher year after year. Access to stable and affordable housing has deteriorated. These outcomes are driven by decisions that deliberately increase demand without regard for the consequences.
The impact on productivity follows directly. Growth driven by population rather than output per person weakens the system. Workers face higher costs and fewer opportunities to get ahead. Capital flows into land and housing instead of productive investment. Businesses operate under higher costs and tighter margins. Over time, this erodes the strength of the economy.
The policy implication is straightforward. You do not solve this by trying to absorb ever-increasing population levels through changes to the built environment. Turning suburbs into high-density, mass-produced dog boxes embeds the problem and shifts the cost onto Australians in their daily lives.
The only workable solution is to address the source of the problem. That means ending mass migration in the interests of the country. Without that, every other policy will be a stopgap while the system continues to add fuel to the fire.
This goes beyond economics. It speaks to the nature of the country itself. Australians expect continuity in their homes, their neighbourhoods, and their national identity. They do not expect a country that is constantly reshaped by policy decisions outside their control.
The whole world comes here, which raises a basic question about limits and continuity. If everyone can become part of the same system without constraint, the character of that system changes. A civilisation that expands without limit cannot remain stable.
Australians are governed by an establishment fixated on flawed economic models that treat expansion as an end in itself. This is wrong. It hollows out the country and leaves behind an empty shell, where a nation once defined by its people, its culture, and its history is reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet.
This approach reduces Australians to inputs in a system designed to push headline figures higher. When growth slows, the response is to increase scale rather than fix the underlying problems. The result is a model that prioritises expansion over outcomes and ignores whether living standards are improving.
Australians are not widgets. They are not flesh-covered units of economic output to be scaled up or scaled down to improve a graph. A functioning economy matters, but it is not the sole measure of a nation’s success, and when policy treats people as interchangeable inputs rather than citizens with a stake in the country, it loses its purpose and drives long-term decline.
That decline is already visible. Many individuals in Australia have lost a sense of meaning and direction because they are being pushed into a system that treats them as machines whose role is to generate ever-increasing output. The result is a culture that rewards short-term consumption and day-to-day living, which may improve headline GDP figures but leaves the country weaker.
Great civilizations do not operate like this. They lift people out of that abyss and give them something higher to aim at. That cannot happen if the country is run on the assumption that leaving the borders open and increasing population will somehow deliver prosperity, while GDP per person continues to fall and living standards continue to deteriorate.
A national settlement strategy cannot work under these conditions because spreading population across regions while continuing to increase it simply extends the same pressures rather than resolving them. Any serious long-term strategy has to focus on improving outcomes for Australians on a per-person basis, with higher living standards, lower costs, and a system that works in their favour, because without that focus the entire exercise becomes another attempt to manage the consequences of a model that is already failing.
That failure sits within a broader economic framework that prioritises scale and constant expansion without delivering results, and continuing along this path is not a sign of stability or prudence but an admission that the underlying problem is being avoided. Current settings are often treated as the safe option, yet rising costs, declining affordability, and weakening outcomes are steadily eroding economic and social stability and reducing the country’s ability to sustain itself over time.
Australia has reached a point where incremental change will not be enough. The path we are on leads to managed decline, and continuing along it will not stabilise the country, it will hollow it out over time. We are being asked to accept lower living standards, weaker communities, and a loss of continuity as the price of maintaining a model that no longer works. That is not a serious offer to the Australian people, and it is not a future that should be accepted.
What is required now is a decisive shift in direction that puts Australians first, restores a sense of ownership over this country, and rebuilds a system that serves its people rather than reducing them to inputs within it.
This will require political courage, because it means stepping away from a framework that has dominated for decades and confronting the reality that it has failed. It means choosing to lead rather than manage outcomes, and acting in the long-term interests of the country even when that breaks with established thinking.
There is no easy path from here, but there is a necessary one. The task is not to manage decline or to make it appear less severe. The task is to turn the country around, restore its direction, and ensure that Australia remains a nation that its people recognise, can belong to, and can pass on intact.
Recommendations
I recommend that the Committee endorse the following:
Formally acknowledge that mass migration has failed as a productivity strategy and is driving declining outcomes for Australians on a per-person basis.
Commit to a substantial and sustained reduction in net overseas migration to levels that serve the long-term interests of Australians, not short-term economic optics.
Establish as a core policy principle that improving living standards for Australians on a per-person basis takes priority over aggregate economic growth.
Replace aggregate GDP as the primary measure of economic success with metrics that reflect real outcomes for Australians, including GDP per capita, real wage growth, and housing affordability.
End demand-side housing policies that inflate prices and increase competition against Australians, including access by non-citizens to government-backed housing schemes.
Direct all taxpayer-funded housing, infrastructure, and social support policies toward Australian citizens as a first priority.
Recognise migration-driven demand as a central cause of housing unaffordability, infrastructure strain, and declining productivity, and treat it accordingly in all future policy design.
Undertake a full structural reset of the current economic model, with a clear mandate to move away from population-driven growth and toward a system that delivers rising living standards for Australians.
Yours sincerely,
Brian Marlow
Founder and Director - Revive Australia
Our Mission
Australians can see that something is not right. Living standards are under pressure, institutions are losing trust, and the country feels less stable than it once did. Revive Australia exists to confront these problems directly, to challenge the political class that allowed them to emerge, and to build a movement focused on restoring strength, sovereignty, and long-term prosperity for Australians.
The case for a new political movement to restore Australia’s strength, stability, and direction
Australia is sleeping
And it is plagued by nightmares. Mass immigration at catastrophic levels. Threats to sovereignty and security from within and without. The erosion of national identity and culture. Collapse and capture of institutions. Attacks on freedom of speech and civil liberties.
Revive Australia’s mission is to wake Australia up.
We are a political organisation focused on setting Australia back on the path to power and prosperity.
An Australia for Australians, that puts Australia First, that knows itself, and knows what has to be done to secure its own existence.
Our current political establishment cannot do this. They are crippled by a crisis of competence brought on by decades of intellectual and political stagnation. They have no interest in changing our country for the better. Their only interest is in remaining as the establishment. They can achieve this by simply pandering to narrow interest groups, corporate lobbyists, their allies in the media, and the growing cohorts of new migrants.
We need a new type of politics. One that does not take the path of least resistance. One that is willing to climb a mountain.
That’s what Revive Australia is here to do.
To find like minded Australians and connect them with each other.
To support campaigns that change the trajectory Australia is on.
To educate and inform people on the issues that other institutions are too scared, or too compromised to mention.
The journey to a New Australia will be long, it will not be easy. There are no simple solutions. No one is coming to save us. Every Australian who loves their country has to work together, and work hard. The first step on that journey – is to wake up.
Revive Australia.