Well, some wonderful news has come out of South America over the weekend that Javier Milei, the president of Argentina,

has had a wonderful result at their president, their non-presidential rather, their midterm elections. It’s all a little bit arcane and very different to Australia’s electoral system. So, I thought who better to discuss it with than fellow Javier Mille fan John Ruddick MP. John, thank you so much for making some time for me once again on the Topher project.

[From video] Good to see you, Topher, on this very happy day. [End video]

It is a very happy day and sometimes it feels like there’s not a lot of good news in the world, but I feel like we’re seeing more good news these days than what we’ve seen in quite some time now. There’s many people who rightly wouldn’t really know what’s going on in Argentina. Fair enough. It is on an entirely other continent. Why are these events in Argentina so important to you as a libertarian? And why are you watching so closely and celebrating so greatly what we’ve just seen?

[From video]

If we could go back at a time of sense three years ago to if I could have been told that in 2025 I’m going to be following Argentinian politics very closely I would have said well that’s absurd. Why would I be interested in that? But look why it is interesting is because there has never been a world leader like Javier Milei. Okay. I like Trump. I probably love Trump. Okay. But Milei is a million times better than Trump. Milei is a radical libertarian. [End video]

I’m sorry to interrupt this interview with John Ruddick MP. We’ll get back to him and what’s happening in Argentina as well as around the world and indeed what it means for Australia in just a moment. But first, my name is Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and I help busy Australians like you to make sense of the nonsense, cut through the crap, and to understand the world as it changes around us. I am 100% viewer supported. So, if you appreciate interviews and news and perspective like what I bring here on the Topher project, then please buy me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you like my videos and my interviews, then you’re going to love my books. They’re all about civil disobedience, government, law, power, and what people like you and I ought to do when we are faced with governments that go too far. You’ll find my books, as well as the DVD of my multi-award-winning, internationally acclaimed documentary, Battleground Melbourne, as well as my merch in a range of different designs in t-shirts and hoodies. All of that is available at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. And everything you buy is going to help me to keep bringing you interviews like this one.Let’s get back to John Ruddick, MP.

[From video]

Milei is actually an anarcho-capitalist. Okay. So he like me he believes that we could actually in an ideal world we could phase the government out over a few decades. So it’s look we we like Margaret Thatcher. We like Ronald Reagan. They were classical liberals. They did a good job. Okay. But they did reduce the size of the government. Thirty years later the government’s bigger than it was before Reagan and Thatcher. So, what Milei says is look he says look the government is actually a threat. It’s the biggest threat we’ve got. All the atrocities of history were caused by big government. So Milei is doing something very radical here and it’s wonderful to see the Argentine people rallying behind him. [End video]

Well, this is really significant in my view. He became president about two years ago in Argentina and there were wide predictions that his austerity measures, his radical libertarian approach was going to cause all kinds of hardship and disaster for the Argentine people. The reality of course is best known by the Argentine people and two years on they seem to be giving him a resounding vote of confidence. Can you help us to understand what is a midterm election that happens in a presidential system? We don’t have that here in Australia. What were these elections that just happened and what was the result for Javier Milei?

[From video]

Okay. So in the 1780s we all know that the Americans declared their independence from Britain and they wrote the US Constitution. Now then what happened within a generation very quickly afterwards every single Spanish colony in Latin America did the same thing and they got their independence. They became independent republics from Spain including Argentina. Now what those Latin American republics largely did was copy the US Constitution. So they have a president with a four-year term. They have a Senate with a six-year term just like America. But where it’s different, in America in the House of Representatives they have a two-year term. So 100% of them are elected every two years.

Now, in Argentina the members of what they call the Chamber of Deputies, which is the House of Representatives, the lower house, half of them are elected every two years. So, it’s a big litmus test. It’s halfway through the presidential election. It’s a big litmus test. What do we think of Milei? That’s what it was a referendum on Milei. Now the polling was saying that it wasn’t looking great. Okay. And the media commentators around the world were saying Milei‘s unpopular. So it was a very happy morning. We woke up yesterday morning and I was walking across the harbor bridge and I keep getting these messages on my phone and now the results come in and Milei’s party, LAAD, is killing it. So we’re this is just a terrific result.

Now look, it’s not just that he’s really helped turn Argentina around, which people are noticing it, okay? People’s lives are getting better. Thank you, Milei. I think obviously another big part of his success is he’s just so charismatic, you know? He’s like he’s crazy, you know? He’s highly intellectual. But he’s also he’s the chainsaws and the crazy hair and the I don’t know if you saw it, he was like singing at a heavy metal rock concert the other night. Okay. So he’s an unusual fellow but look he’s just so even if you’re disinterested in politics he’s very easy to like he’s a very unconventional politician so yes that’s why we’re following it so closely and we hope that there could be a Malay style revolution in Australia. [End video]

Now you mentioned Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan is a particularly instructive case when we’re looking at these presidential style systems because just because a president is elected doesn’t mean that they have a majority in their Congress or in their Senate. In Australia, what we’re used to is the prime minister automatically has support at the very minimum in the lower house because that’s how they become prime minister in the first place. In Javier Milei’s case, and I would say in Ronald Reagan’s case, after his first midterms, he didn’t actually have a majority and wasn’t able to get any reforms through. In Javier Milei’s case, he’s never had a majority. It’s always been a case of him having to negotiate with other parties in order to get legislation through. There’s no question that that has held back his legislative agenda and stopped him from moving perhaps as quickly as he would have liked to. Is that likely to change now as a result of this election?

[From video]

Oh, absolutely. Prior to the midterms, Milei’s party had roughly 20% of the Congress. After yesterday, he has roughly 40%. Now the socialists, the Peronists, they’ve crashed. They’ve crashed badly. Now there are other little parties in there. There’s the old center-right party which is reasonably pro-Milei. So what Milei has now, he doesn’t have a firm majority but he’s close to it. And he’ll be able to scoop up other votes. So this is very encouraging. Now the best part about it is Milei had tried to bring in some very radical economic reforms and the Congress, even though he only had 20% of it, to their credit somewhat did pass particularly in the early stages quite a few of his reforms but the more bolder reforms they would use their veto and they would strike down what the president had done. So the president has largely had his hands tied. What’s happened now is they need about 75% of the Congress to override a presidential executive order. Well, they’ve lost that. They no more vetos. Okay. So, the good stuff is we’re only just getting going and hopefully in two years’ time you and I will be talking here and Milei will be reelected and his party will have clear majorities in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. [End video]

It’s quite an astonishing thing that he’s achieved over 40% of the votes in this most recent round of elections. He actually his party actually won just over half of the available seats in the lower house that were up for re-election in this election. Same in their upper house, just over half of the available seats. But you mentioned earlier the media. I want to bring up one example here. The media really do seem to have been cheering for a Javier Milei failure. This is a headline from just what was it October 10th, just two weeks before the election. This was a big headline from Time magazine saying Javier Milei is losing his grip on Argentina. A very carefully curated photograph there showing Javier Milei as a very small little figure on a very blank and lonely image. This sort of tilting of the scales has certainly been prevalent in my view in the media. But we see that here in Australia, we see that in the UK with Reform, we’ve seen that with Trump. Why are the media so opposed to people that would seek to actually shrink the size of government and make some of the reforms like what Javier Milei has done?

[From video]

Look, we really are living through a bit of an extraordinary moment. Now, to the credit of the center right in the Western world, I’m talking about the Republican party, the UK Tories, the Liberal Party in Australia. To their credit, they did a very good job in the post–World War II era. We had this massive threat called the Soviet Union and they you know there was there was mistakes along the way but they basically you know defanged the Soviet Union that was good and we’ve generally enjoyed prosperity but I do believe that the old center-right parties are just running out of gas and we see this in Germany. Who’s leading in Germany? The AFD. Now we keep being told in the media, oh they’re neo-Nazis. That’s the biggest load of crap of all time. They’re very libertarian. Okay. But yeah, they’re pretty hardline on immigration. Okay. Well, I think that might be needed. You only have to look at social media for five minutes a day. Same in Scandinavia, France. Marine Le Pen, the Le Pen family has been around since the 70s. Always heard all these horrible things about them. She’s winning in the polls. Nigel Farage is winning in the polls. Donald Trump didn’t start his own party. He had a revolution within the Republican party, but he’s where are the Bushes and the Cheneys and the Romney now? They don’t even get invited to the convention. So, Trump has just reinvented the whole party.

So, I think what’s happened with the and look we’ve now got two forms of media. We have the traditional corporate media and we have social media. Okay. Now every day social media gets more powerful. The traditional media gets less powerful. We said every couple of years these major media organizations say oh we’ve had to sack a thousand people. And then they always say oh this is the last round of sacking. But two years later we need to sack more. So now the media did try prior to social media, the corporate media did strive to be impartial. Now, they were lefties, generally speaking, but they really did try to appear to be impartial. But what’s happening is as their power and their influence declines their true self is coming out and that is that they’re leftwing activists and people are starting to see through it in a big way. [End video]

Well we’re seeing a movement around the world. You mentioned a couple of countries there. I would add to that list Italy with Giorgia Meloni and also now Japan with their new female prime minister who is somehow proof that Japan still has a misogyny problem. I haven’t quite been able to wrap my head around those headlines. They put forward a female prime minister but somehow that’s proof that they’re all misogynists. I’m quite confused by that one. But anyway, that’s not what this interview is about. We are seeing a moment happening around the world right now. Are we going to see that here in Australia? I’m aware that Javier Milei is an honorary member of the Australian Libertarian Party. You and I and Javier Milei are at least to a very large degree ideological bedfellows as libertarians. Are we likely to see that kind of a movement happen here in Australia or is there some reason why that can’t?

[From video]

Our mutual very good friend Dr. John Humphrey, the founder of the Libertarian Party, he has made this point a number of times. He says, “Look, the old center right is imploding, okay, before our eyes, but it’s being replaced by different versions of a right-wing alternative.” So sometimes it is Marine Le Pen, okay, who’s pretty, you know, borderline socialist on a lot of these economic issues, you know, on the cultural stuff, immigration stuff. I probably agree with her. So they’re all a bit and Milei, you know, is very different to Giorgia Meloni and Trump. Okay. So now what we as libertarians believe we believe that the people will maximize the happiness of the people if we have a libertarian style government. Look I much prefer all these radical, these alternative right-wing versions of the old center right. I think what’s happened with the center right they were so successful particularly after the cold war. I mean the center right won the cold war.

Our parents and even you and I as teenagers were fearful of a nuclear war. It was really possible. Well, we diffused that. And then the rest of the world basically by and large followed democracy and free enterprise. That’s largely what’s happened. Thank you, center. But I think because they’ve been so successful, what they have become is they’ve become magnets for careerists, people who want to join these parties because they want to get something out of it. Now that’s probably somewhat applicable to varying degrees for everyone in the political process. But there should be the ideal politician is someone who says, “I want to get involved in politics because I care about the next generation and the next generation after that. I want to make right decisions so we get on the right track.” That’s what we should be thinking. But the careerist says, “Wow, look at that Liberal Party. It’s so successful. It’s in government everywhere. They’ve been in government for so long. If I join it, I might become a member of parliament, might become a staffer, I might become a lobbyist, I might just get some sort of social gravitas.”

So, people have overwhelmingly joined it. And this is particularly the activist. The membership is still very good, very solid. The average Liberal Party member is a very very good person and true believer. But the people who really pour their life in it still lots of very good people in that position you and I know them. But there’s a predominance of what I call careerists. And that’s what and therefore they don’t want to take any risks. I saw a very interesting interview last week with Dr. Henry Kissinger who, you know, died recently but he’s a smart dude, he’d seen everything, okay? And he said, “Look, you don’t need a high intellect to be politically successful but you do need courage and you need vision.” Okay. Now that really applies to Donald Trump. We all know he’s not an intellectual, okay, but has he had courage? He’s had a ton of it. Has he had vision? He has had a ton of vision. When before Trump jumped into the 2016 presidential race all the Republican establishment said, “Oh, we’ve just got to be pro open borders here. We’ve got to win the Latino vote. We’re losing without them. So let’s say they can all come in.” That was what they were saying the Mitt Romney, George Bush type of people. Trump just comes along and says, “No, no, no, no, no. I want to build a wall.” And everyone was shocked. This is outrageous. You can’t say that. You can’t say that. Well, he’s won three elections in a row. He’s had a higher Latino vote, I think, than any Republican in history. Maybe Reagan beat him because 60% voted for Reagan the whole country. So yes, courage and vision are the two things that you need. Now, the great thing about Milei is he’s got the courage. He’s got the vision. And guess what? He’s also got the intellect. He’s written 50 academic papers on economic stuff. So, you know smart guy. [End video]

It’s an astonishing moment to be alive and to actually see that freedom is catching on again. I concur with your assessment. In the post–cold war era, I think we got a little bit too fat and happy. Our success went to our heads and we thought that this was the natural state of mankind and that we could afford little luxuries like a little increase in government over here and a little increase in socialist welfare over there and we allowed ourselves to indulge a lot of special interest groups and so forth and really allowed in my opinion these are my words not yours but allowed very mediocre people to rise to the top in politics.

Are we likely to see, if I can ask you to look into your crystal ball for a moment, we’re watching a bit of a civil war happen in the Liberal National Party at the moment over the issue of net zero? And if ever there was courage needed, it would be on the rejection of net zero on the basis that it is just economic suicide as well as being environmentally harmful if you actually look at the entire context of things and not just CO2 emissions. And we’re going to put that aside for a second. Do you believe that we’re going to see an emergence of courage at the top levels of the Liberal National Party or do we need to see a replacement of them? And I guess the question I’m asking is are we going to see a Trump-style reinvention of an existing party or a UK Reform-style replacement?

[From video]

Yeah. Well, that that’s how you boil this is a complicated situation. It’s an important situation, but that’s how I boil it down. There’s two ways and I don’t know how it’s going to unfold, but there’s two ways that we can turn the country around. One of them is going to happen. I’m pretty confident. Yes, we have a revolution within the Liberal Party like Trump did to the Republican party. And what would be that revolution? Let the membership vote for the parliamentary leader. Okay, I wrote a book about it. Make the Liberal Party Great Again. Your viewers can download it for free. You don’t even have to give me your email address. Just download the PDF on my website, johnruddickmlc.com. Read the book. It’s all about saying the members should vote for the leader. And I really hope the Liberal Party does that.

Now what happened? You know there’s no country on earth, Topher, that is more constitutionally similar to Australia than Canada. We’re twins. We’ve got a similar economy, similar population, similar history, similar demographics. And in the 1890s when the Australians were writing our constitution, we are told, oh well, it’s a combination of the British Constitution, which does not have one, and the US Constitution. No, not true. I’ve read all the papers from the 1890s. They copied what the Canadians did in the 1860s because it was the same thing, right? Constitutional monarchy by camel. So we’re very similar. However, the Canadian Conservative Party has got 700,000 members. And the Liberal Party is not too far behind. And you know what? It costs $15 to join the Canadian Conservative Party. And that gets you a vote on who’s going to be the leader. You don’t have to be a member for three months. You don’t have to be a member for two years. What happens when there’s a leadership challenge in Canada? People go around knocking on doors just to the general public saying hey if it was let’s say it was the same I use an Australian saying people knock on the door say hi are you Liberal party voter I say yeah say do you like Malcolm Turbo or Tony I hate Malcolm Turbo I much prefer Tony say well sign this form pay 15 bucks and you get to have a vote for him people say that’s a good idea I’m in right now what’s the membership of the Liberal party in Australia no one knows it’s opaque they don’t want to tell you it was we’re all guessing I reckon 25,000. Okay.

Best case, look, I hear rumors the New South Wales levels are down about five. Okay, now but no one knows. They keep it very if they were proud of their numbers, they’d be telling us. So, they’re obviously not proud. Okay, now now why is that? Because you’re joining, you don’t get anything out of it. Now, if the I hope the Liberal Party, I hope the Liberal Party can bring in this reform. Okay, now they might make it. All right. Now, now and and then what would then happen is we could have a big tent party and we’d have and and you know these Canadians, when they choose their parliamentary leaders, this is all the parties, not just the conservatives, goes on for five months. They have TV debates, they come on shows like this, they have TV ads, they have like five or six TV debates. It’s similar to a US primary. But look, the difference is in the US, to vote in a primary, you don’t have to be a member of the party. Okay? You have to be registered, but that’s easy. Doesn’t have to pay money. Uh, but in in the Canada and under a Westminster system, that’s you’re going to need to do what they do in the Canada.

So, that’s option one, that the Liberals at some point bring about that reform. And to bring about that reform, you actually need someone prominent already in parliament to champion it. And this is how it came about in the UK Conservative Party. William Hague did it after Margaret Thatcher. Now, that’s option one. And I’ll be thrilled if it happens. Option two is yes, the Farage option. Start again. Start from scratch. And you can’t argue with what Farage is doing. You know, it’s pretty good. And while Australia might have a lot in common with Canada, most Australians don’t know much about Canadian politics, but most politically interested Australians are quite attuned with British politics. Obviously, they’re still our mother country. Like it or not, they’re our mother country. And of course, we are more in touch with the British. Well, this is the Westminster standard now. They have people that have the members vote, okay, for the leader. But then Farage, look at him. Every year ago the polls were looking good for him, but every time you see the Farage polls it just gets better. They had an election in Wales the other day. The Tories got 4% of the vote, Topher.

So, now what’s the key ingredient for that? You need someone who’s like super duper cool and likable and courageous and has vision like Nigel Farage. Okay. He’s the one that came he used to go to meetings for many years. Nigel Farage would go to a community hall meeting or something in the pub. There’d be seven people there, might be ten people there, might be three the next week. He’d run in elections, he’d get 1%, he’d get 3%, back to 1%. That’s what happened for years. But he had the courage and the vision said we need to get out of the EU. Okay. So good on him. So it’s very exciting. Unfortunately, we have to wait three and a half years for the next British election. I can’t see Keir Starmer bringing on this election early. But we wait when Farage is in number 10 we will then say these five year terms are fantastic. Don’t have to worry about election for five years. [End video]

Look, it is a fascinating time to be alive and I’m really excited to see what is happening around the world. I just have a little part of me that wishes we would hurry up here in Australia and begin to have some of these same epiphanies. But hopefully the example of what we’re watching unfold in Argentina is going to make things hurry up a little bit over here. Well, John Ruddick MP, thank you so much for joining me once again on the Topher project.

[From video] Great. Nice to see you, Topher. Thanks for having me. [End video]

Thank you for watching that interview with John Ruddick MP. It’s very exciting to see what’s happening in Argentina and indeed in so many other parts of the world. But I do wait with bated breath to see what’s Australia going to do. Are we going to have our Javier Milei Argentina moment? Will it be a UKIP moment? Will it be a Trump moment? Or will we slide into oblivion? I certainly hope not. And I’ll do my best to make sure that that doesn’t happen. My name is Topher Field. This is the Topher Project, and I’m 100% viewer supported. So, if you appreciate what I’m doing, then please buy me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net to help me to keep bringing you stories and interviews like this one.

And once again, if you appreciate my videos and my interviews, then you’re going to love my books. There’s Good People Break Bad Laws. This is my best-selling book about civil disobedience in the modern age. There’s Good Christians Break Bad Laws. This is my also best-selling book about the theology of civil disobedience. Then there’s the DVD of my multi-award-winning documentary, Battleground Melbourne. Now, you can watch this for free at battlegroundmelbourne.com. But if you’d like a copy to put on your shelf, it is available from my store as well as my t-shirts, my hoodies in a range of different designs. And all of that’s available at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.

Thank you so much for watching all the way to the end. I really appreciate it. The algorithm loves you and so do I. Please like, comment. What do you think’s going to happen in Australia? Are we going to see the Liberal Party reform and take that leadership position the way that we saw Trump do with the Republican party in the US, or do they need to be entirely replaced, aka what reform are doing in the UK? Let me know what you think in the comments. Make sure you’ve subscribed,

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