The Triple Conference took place in Albury in March. Conspiracists and hustlers appeared alongside the well-meaning and self-important to inform a small audience of largely white-haired elders about the North Korean conditions overtaking Australia. We are dark in politics and spirit.

The “triple” in the name referred to the uniting of three distinct events. The third day was dedicated to “The Aussie Wire,” a Red-pilled Right YouTube channel integrating transnational rightwing figures.

The second day was the “Church and State conference.” Church and State describes itself as “grassroots-funded, unaffiliated ‘marketplace’ ministry” founded by David Pellowe. As a political organiser, more recently for Family First, he was frustrated by the fact that Christians were not actively ensuring their priorities were represented in government. It held its inaugural conference in 2018, with former Deputy PM John Anderson as the keynote speaker. Pellowe enjoined the 2023 conference to ensure ultra-conservative, religiously-driven candidates “prevail” in every branch in a “long march” over decades. In 2018, Pellowe orchestrated a speaking tour for two white nationalist agitators.

The first of the three days was the Friedman Conference, an event that has been the droll highlight of the libertarian calendar in Australia since 2013. It was the product of the Australian Libertarian Society (ALS) and the Taxpayer Alliance of Australia (ATA), co-hosted with other Atlas Network junktank partners. It drew together university students with the few keen adults who have not grown out of the faux-intellectual ideology. 

There, in better days, representatives of the US Atlas bodies such as Dr Tom Palmer appeared. The event described him thus in 2018: he is “executive vice president for international programs at Atlas Network and is responsible for establishing operating programs in 14 languages and managing programs for a worldwide network of think tanks.”

In 2018, for example, Palmer delivered a patronising lecture to the students on “personal responsibility,” decorated with references to Friedrich Hayek and Aristotle, also advertising the Network’s products including his “snack boxes for the mind.” One such was “The Morality of Capitalism” which had been translated into 43 languages at that time: convenient with around 100 countries now hosting these bodies designed to promote ease of operation for American (and local) corporations.

Tim Wilson has presented from the inaugural conference in 2013 and was a sometime coordinator. In 2015, he was welcomed to the Friedman Conference podium as the Human Rights Commissioner but “better known to all of us here as the Freedom Commissioner.” The MC declared, “In that role, he is actually standing up for real human rights as opposed to what the human rights industry might think are human rights, which is in fact quite the opposite of it.” The human rights he went on to defend after that introduction? “Property rights as human rights.” It was a fitting topic: as a servant of the aspiring plutocrats, he had to defend their right to stage their “tax strike.” Redistribution is theft; taxation is, these figures imply, a slippery slide to a totalitarian state that outlaws private property. 

It is hardly surprising that the event brought Grover Norquist out for the 2019 conference. He is the founder of the Atlas anti-tax body, Americans for Tax Reform, responsible for the statement, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” His anti-tax and anti-government mission has been a key component of the massive inequalities that are damaging societies. They are also a producer of the vast sums available to dark money distortion of our politics. The constant campaigning of Atlas partners such as the ATA has helped create an Australia that “has one of the weakest tax systems for redistribution among industrial nations.” Our system behaves like an “emerging economy” such as Chile, Mexico and Türkiye. 

Members of the scandal-ridden Libertarian Party, better known as the Liberal Democrat Party have been regular attendees; this is not surprising since the party was created by the ATA’s John Humphreys.(1) David Leyonhjelm spoke in the second year. In 2016, the Atlas-partner Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) celebrated his election as placing someone representing that body in parliament. Climate-conspiracist John Ruddick MP has been a regular attendee too. The party had tried to use pandemic health measures to garner support, intertwining its politicians with the conspiracy sphere. David Limbrick, Victorian Libertarian is part of a “moral” panic that distorts the facts about trans healthcare.

The connection of “liberty” and conspiracy was reinforced by other political attendees in 2024. One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts presented; his election to politics in Canberra was best described as sad because it “denied a village somewhere in Australia of its idiot.” Victorian Senator and United Australia Party buffoon Ralph Babet also spoke. These parties are guilty of promoting conspiracy theories as part of a message of freedom from nefarious “elites,” as opposed to the mundane big money figures distorting politics against the wellbeing of Roberts’ and Babet’s voters.

Friedman Day was dominated by celebrations of Atlas Network operative President Javier Milei’s “success” at bringing “freedom” to Argentina. There was no sign of other Atlas Junktanks this year, perhaps preferring the posh crowd at the Atlas conference celebrating Gina Rinehart in Perth. When Babet and Roberts are considered exciting guests, the better-connected libertarians have lost interest.

Intellectual heft was granted by the dolorous Augusto Zimmerman, Brazilian-Australian Liberal Party legal scholar and Quadrant-affiliate, who coined the neologism “Wokeshevism.” Social justice concerns and empirical bases for policies are, of course, communist. He asserts the oligarchic threat to Australian rule of law lies in ministers and senior public servants, rather than in the plutocrats. If he had cited Robodebt rather than pandemic responses, his speech might have had resonance for a less niche audience.

Note that Zimmerman’s choice of topic is a trope of the libertarian and radicalising right signalling an intent to fight any law that constrains (corporate) freedom, whatever the cost.(2) Such figures naturally oppose any “democratic regulation of money in politics.” Steve Bannon established two “rule of law” junktanks over Covid, which are held responsible for disseminating anti-China propaganda. Zimmerman’s flippant use of the term “plandemic” for the pandemic was a gift to the conspiracists in the audience, who had been radicalised by that “documentary” when Steve Bannon helped it go viral. 

While the 2024 event was organised by conspiracist Topher Field, the ATA continued to play a subdued function with their “Chief Economist” John Humphreys delivering the welcome. The IPA, Ron Manners’ Mannkal and the Centre for Independent Studies were missing after a decade of involvement. Instead the event featured the support of Reignite Democracy, Monica Smit’s anti-lockdown body. On May 4th, Smit and Reignite were convicted “on charges related to running an unregistered fundraiser to pay her legal bills.”

Another sponsor was the Australian Medical Professionals Society (AMPS) which has been described as one of several “fake unions” established to contest covid health measures such as mandatory vaccination. Both President Chris Neil and Vice President Duncan Syme spoke.

Professor Ian Brighthope, a doctor who has been platformed by the AMPS, also presented. His prior career in “Nutritional and Environmental Medicine” included treating an extensive range of diseases like cancer with “megadoses of intravenous Vitamin C and other nutrients.” He spoke about how he had experienced a heart attack as a result of breathing in exosomes “because I was too close to too many people breathing out toxic substances from the vaccines.” Gina Rinehart has disseminated his assertion that covid should have been treated with vitamins. So has Russell Broadbent.

In America, it has been established that there are far more excess deaths in states with low vaccination rates.

Predictably, climate action was a target at the conference with the “Gala” dinner named “Nyet Zero.” On the “Aussie Wire” conference day, Joanne Nova spoke. She is a “science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host.” She began her speech on Net Zero complaining that we let “freeloading parasites turn science into a group hug form of neolithic sorcery.”

Smit’s speech on her relationship with God included the instruction that her fellow travellers must stand for the end to all abortion.

Christian activist Kirralie Smith also appeared. In 2017, Smith presented a video for the Islamophobic Q Society. At around that time, she opposed marriage equality. In 2018 after marriage equality was passed in Australia, she rebranded her “Marriage Alliance” group to “Binary Australia.” She had AVOs taken out against her in 2023 for “multiple alleged instances of harassing two individuals.” She sees multiculturalism as a “threat.” In Albury, she continued her anti-trans campaign.

Topher Field’s sermon on Church and State Day promoted a form of theocracy known as “theonomy.” This is the belief that “teaches that Old Covenant judicial laws are the universal moral standard of civil law for all Gentile nations.” Field uses the prescription that the only laws are those given by God to “the Children of Israel.” He asserts there is no basis for the creation of any further laws. Thus any law implemented in modern society that does not function within Old Testament parameters is idolatrous, worshipping man instead of God.

Laws that Field interprets as contradicting Mosaic laws – such as those enabling abortion, preventing conversion “therapy” abuse of LGBTQIA people, and pandemic health measures – demand civil disobedience. Indeed, according to these strictures, paying 10% tax makes the individual a slave.

Field depicts being a Christian in Victoria as being the same as being a Christian in China, feeding the unfounded fear that Christianity is under siege. One slide declared we are beyond “fixing” this with politics.

The uniting of theocrats with libertarians and “cranks” is not a novel phenomenon. The unsavoury Right has exerted a long-term influence on fusion conservatism, despite the intellectual conservatives’ boast about exiling the outliers and bigots.

In 1962, National Review’s senior editor Frank S Meyer wrote an essay called “The Twisted Tree of Liberty” celebrating the allied conservative factions. In response, Catholic L Brent Bozell Jnr wrote “Freedom or Virtue,” a passionate opposition to freedom as the aspiration. There is plenty of temptation to allow individuals to choose virtue in pursuit of salvation; libertarians, he argued, do not need to strip away the legal constraints on sin to earn Heaven. Christians must, according to Bozell, pursue laws that prevent the “sins” they abhor. Government is required, despite libertarian misgivings, to “assist man in this adventure, either with its hobbles or with its crutches.” Both men, like Zimmerman in Albury, accepted that law comes from God rather than the social contract.

Conservatives in the 1950s were able to unite against atheist communism posing an existential threat. The libertarians, theocrats and “cranks” at the Triple Conference were united by the pandemic against “tyrannous” governments. The pandemic and responses were “a dream come true for any and every hate group, snake-oil salesman and everything in between.” The libertarian and conspiracy Right flourished, and some Christian allies declared the vaccine to be “the mark of the beast.”

The factions’ cooperation was, however, visible long before the pandemic. The old paleoconservatives deployed conservative social values cynically to distract from the value-free and cruel libertarian economic policy positions. The post-liberal Right disdains the messy vitality of the diverse, modern world. “Inclusive” is anathema. For some, Christianity drives the mission, pursuing their distinctive definitions of “virtue.” For others, Christianity stands as a cultural signal of White or European or Western Civilisation allegiance. For these, “Christian” functions to divide between allies and outsiders. “Woke” has become the catch-all phrase for the “bleeding hearts” of the empirically-minded world they disdain.

The realignments of the old conservative fusion have pushed the socially coercive and the fringe to the centre of the radicalised movement. This coalition of the free wants only their definition of freedom to be legal. Compliance will be enforced.

The pandemic helped them to galvanise a base hurt and confused by pandemic responses. Now they are working to build electoral success on a strange coalition of actors. They hope to shave off enough votes to win tight races. Groups within the contingent are targeting branches, party structures and elections at all levels of government in Australia.

The Triple Conference might look small and ridiculous. That does not mean we can ignore its message.

Meanwhile in America, libertarians are campaigning to have employers freed from compulsory meal breaks for child labourers and from compulsory water breaks for the agricultural and construction labourers dying in extreme heat. Arizona’s laws removing protections for child labour were drafted by an Atlas Network junktank, the Foundation for Government Accountability.

Their theocrat friends are ensuring the fertility of the poor is uncontrolled, for religious freedom’s sake. So the desperate will replenish the stock of slave-labour workers, obliging the Christians’ libertarian donors.

The conservative movement is sadly debased. L. Brent Bozell Jnr has been described as “the first theocon.” Individual freedom he characterised as “a revolt against God. Bozell’s son spreads disinformation for the Trumpist Republican era. His grandson was recently sentenced to 45 months in prison for his role in Trump’s insurrection.

We have a crisis of authority. Topher Field’s speech suggests he might argue that the youngest Bozell is accepting with Grace the repercussions for Divinely-mandated resistance to bad laws. This is  a dangerous place for democratic projects.

(1) Maybe copied from NZ where an Atlas Network partner, the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT), transformed into a political party in the early 90s. It is now in the coalition government with its Atlas-operative leader, David Seymour acting as co-Deputy PM.

(2) The Rule of Law Institute in Australia is a “think” tank that describes itself as a “politically non-partisan” body. It largely functions, however, to muddy debate about legislative action that is antagonistic to the corporate interests of its affiliates such as a charter of rights or the Voice to Parliament. Chris Merritt is its Vice President, and writes on legal issues for The Australian. A person common to histories of Atlas Network partners in Australia, Hugh Morgan, is on the governing committee of its education arm. So too is Bruce McWilliam, a pivotal figure at Channel 7, with previous history working for both the Murdochs and Packers, before his recent retirement.

A shorter version of this essay was first published at Pearls and Irritations as Australian Libertarians and Theocrats unite in Albury.