What is a Mother?

At one time in Australia’s history, it was accepted government policy to remove the babies of young, single mothers at birth and give them up for adoption. In 2013, Julia Gillard apologised on behalf of the Australian government to those women. She recognised that these policies – which had the best interests of the child at heart – “struck at the most primal and sacred bond there is: the bond between a mother and her baby.”

In 2013, the definition of “mother” – like the definition of “woman” – still had a simple answer. A mother was someone who conceives and gives birth to a baby. Since then, more widespread use of assisted reproductive technology has introduced complexity. It is now possible for a woman to carry and give birth to a baby who is, genetically speaking, unrelated to her. Is she still that child’s mother?

The cultural fascination with erasing male/female difference has also changed the way parents are recognised. Birth certificates that once identified a child’s “mother” and “father” now list “parent 1” and “parent 2.” Some Australian schools are following suit, their websites erasing the terms “mother” and “father.” Herald Sun columnist, Susie O’Brien, assured us some years back that despite our instinctive misgivings, the official erasure of gendered parenting was one crucial step on the march to Progress: “Sure, it feels challenging, but it makes sense. Parent one and two is much more appropriate for same-sex parents or those who have a fluid, transitioning or diverse gender identity. We need to be more inclusive in order to properly reflect the diversity of families today.” Similarly, at a school in NSW’s Hunter Valley renamed a Mother’s Day stall to “Family Gift Stall”, the grammar school Principal, Rebecca Butterworth, assured concerned mothers that the “intention in renaming the stall was to ensure that the children in our school who don’t have a mother in their home feel welcome and supported as they purchase an item from the stall.”

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The 27th May marks the beginning of Reconciliation Week in Australia, something we commemorate annually. This was the date in 1967 when around 91% of Australians voted overwhelmingly in favour of allowing the federal government to make laws for the well-being of Aboriginal Australians, something previously left exclusively to the states. It marks a moment of greater integration of Aboriginal Australia into mainstream Australia. It was, in fact, a grand rejection of separatism, and an affirmation of real national inclusion.

It’s remarkable to think that the next national referendum exclusively on Aboriginal Australia was a proposal to politically distinguish Aboriginal people from the rest of Australia and create their own quasi-executive arm in the federal parliament. A return to separatism. Thankfully Australians again did the right thing and voted against the so-called Indigenous Voice to Parliament, albeit at a much-reduced majority of 60%.

For many Australians the impulse to help the minority of Aboriginal people who are suffering in terrible living conditions is powerful. Arguably it is an expression of that natural capacity that the overwhelming number of human beings have – empathy. Australians see their Aboriginal co-nationals struggling and they imagine themselves in the same situation and feel an urge to do something to alleviate the situation. This is partly why many Australians feel that the date of Australia Day must be changed, support a treaty, voted in favour of the so-called Voice to Parliament, and for whom the annual Sorry Day as well as Reconciliation Week has much appeal. They feel sorry for Indigenous Australians and support whatever the most vocal activists claim will alleviate suffering.

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Our boys are in trouble, and the Federal Education Minister has finally noticed. Jason Clare recently announced a parliamentary inquiry that will focus on educational attainment and why boys are struggling at school. This is a welcome move by the Albanese Government, as education is the canary in the coal mine for boys and young men.

As my recent policy paper with the Page Research Centre shows, the problems start in school. As recent data shows, boys are falling behind in literacy indicators at school. Well over 30% of boys fail reading across Years 3, 7 and 9, and NAPLAN data shows boys are struggling in writing as well.

Recent analysis by the Kathleen Burrows Research Institute further shows that boys continue to fall behind in later years of school. Focusing on the New South Wales HSC results in 2023, the report shows that girls were found to be more likely to receive an ATAR of over 90 than boys. And despite being over 50% of NSW’s senior secondary population, only 48% of boys were awarded their HSC.

This gap between boys and girls continues into university. In 2024, over 61% of commencing students at Australia’s universities were women. Even in vocational training, the numbers are skewed towards women, who made up 54% of enrolments in the same year. The issue is systemic. The ABS Census in 2021 revealed that of the 30-year-olds who held at least a Bachelor degree, only 41% were men. For 25-year-olds, the percentage of men is slightly higher at 44%. For 22-year-olds, it drops again to 39%.

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This picture isn’t pretty. Boys are struggling at school. Young men are participating less in university education and vocational education than women. This educational inequality is likely leading to other inequalities and imbalances, both economically and socially. We are already seeing these inequalities start to play out.

The number of young men ‘Not in Employment, Education or Training’ (NEETs) has grown significantly over the past couple of decades. There are now well over 100,000 young men not working or engaging in education. The factors feeding into this trend are numerous, but one is likely to be related to perceived prospects for men.

Research from the e61 Institute shows that Australia’s economy is rapidly shifting in ways that are detrimental to employment prospects for young men. Four decades ago, men outnumbered women 3 to 1 in the biggest industry in Australia – manufacturing. Today, women outnumber men by the same factor, but this time it’s the caring sector that dominates.

This is compounded by the fact that wage growth has been predominantly in sectors of the economy where females are prevalent. Young men are, therefore, facing a double-barrelled problem: sectors where they traditionally find work are both shrinking and paying less in real terms. No wonder young men are struggling to engage.

If the fact that increasing numbers of young men are failing to get educated and engage in the economy wasn’t already grim enough, the social milieu adds another layer of complexity. Young men live in a society where masculinity is often viewed negatively. Traditional masculine norms are under considerable cultural pressure as different societal and cultural expectations emerge, creating social stigma.

That social stigma is driving men to seek community and understanding online. The rise of the ‘man-o-sphere’ and online influencers is a significant phenomenon of recent years that has led to growing criticism of modern social norms like feminism and egalitarianism. Young men feel simultaneously ostracised from, and hostile towards, our society.

This division between young men and the rest of society will only hasten trends that are already undermining social cohesion. Fewer people are getting married, fewer people are having children, and people are waiting longer than ever to begin family formation. In other words, young men are increasingly failing to leave home, find a wife, and have children.

In sum, young men are in crisis. They are falling behind at school, disengaging from the economy, and failing to attain basic social milestones like starting a family. Fewer marriages means lower fertility. Fewer workers means less economic activity and decreasing tax receipts. We are looking at a crisis with political, social, and economic ramifications.

This is why it is good to see the Education Minister initiating a parliamentary inquiry into educational attainment. Boys are clearly struggling. What needs further investigation and action is the fact that those boys grow to be men who are struggling. And those struggling men will be a drag on Australia’s economy and social cohesion.

We need to learn more about this problem and take effective actions at community and government levels. I have made a start in a my policy paper with the Page Research Centre. The federal government should consider widening the education inquiry, or else initiate a separate inquiry into the plight of young men more broadly.

As we discuss and act on this issue, we must be careful not to pathologise the crisis. Our young men need our help and encouragement, rather than our condemnation. They already have enough of the latter.

Simon P. Kennedy is a Senior Research Fellow at Alphacrucis University College, and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Queensland. He is also a Non-resident Fellow at the Danube Institute. This article is based on a policy paper published through the Page Research Centre.

Yes, there has been a tragedy—the recent loss of an innocent five-year-old Aboriginal girl in Alice Springs. Is the fact that she is Aboriginal relevant? Shouldn’t it just matter that she was an Australian girl? Well, her cultural heritage is relevant here because it is well documented that Aboriginal children are more likely to be neglected, abused, and live in unsafe environments, than other children. Since this tragic case, we have already heard of more allegations of neglect. Last week, The Australian told the story of how an Aboriginal boy was ordered by the court to be removed from his (non-Aboriginal) carer and returned to remote Northern Territory community, where there are serious concerns about the boy’s safety, should he be returned to that community. This is despite claims that the boy wished to remain with the carer.

I do not wish to sensationalise or politicalise this recent tragedy. And while I can’t control people’s reactions to what they read here, I hope this article doesn’t become an opportunity for those living in echo chambers to engage in a pile-on, where they complain about every problem associated with Aboriginal Australia. For such people, I am not saying your complaints or criticisms are not valid, only that they are far too often misplaced.

Rather, in this article I discuss a problem that has been around for as long as I can remember, and one I believe was a significant contributor to the death of this little Aboriginal girl and many other hardships endured by Aboriginal people. Address this problem properly and we will begin to see the gap close. I am talking about the idea of ‘self-determination.’

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Immigration is out of control in Australia, and the government’s budget just confirmed it. The government admitted this week that net overseas migration this financial year will exceed planning estimates by 35,000 people, or 13.5%.

Those estimates, by the way, were confirmed just four months ago.

When immigration gets out of control in America, it’s due to mismanagement at the southern border. When problems arise in Britain, it’s down to a wave of boat arrivals from continental Europe.

How does an island continent with essentially zero illegal immigration manage to get things so wrong?

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Last ANZAC Day while Australians debated all day whether or not Welcomes to Country have a place at Dawn Services, a 5-year old girl was abducted from a notoriously unsafe Indigenous camp in Alice Springs and murdered.

Australians are shocked and appalled by the murder of Kumanjayi Little Baby, but those who know what the conditions are like in many remote Aboriginal communities are appalled, but far from shocked. The murderer, recently released from prison, had previous convictions of physical assault. No doubt over time our many questions will be answered, the most important being: Why was he walking the streets?

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Presumably those activists who complain of high-rates of Indigenous incarceration will say that this child murderer is an exception – he should have been incarcerated. And yet for anyone who knows the truly appalling rates of domestic and child abuse in remote indigenous communities, there are many, many such exceptions. Activists who do not live in these communities may be scandalised by the high rates of Indigenous incarceration, but the women and children who do live in them might enjoy one night’s sound sleep knowing their attacker cannot get to them, at least for the time being.

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When Donald Trump assumed office for the second time on January 20, 2025, I have it on good authority that he surveyed the list of over thirty formal American allies to assess their worthiness according to whether they were a net benefit for the advancement of American security. Israel, some countries in the Middle East, the Baltic states, and perhaps Japan were identified as those able or willing to pull their weight. Most were marked down as free-riders or shirkers.

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Iran and the Straits of Hormuz

This brings us to the current situation in Iran and the Straits of Hormuz in particular. It is true that Trump initiated an attack without consulting any allies except for Israel. It is also probably true that he underestimated the resilience of the Iranian regime even if his confidence that the US will overwhelmingly win the military contest was correct.

To be fair to Trump, had he consulted far flung allies before any hostilities, the latter would have most likely disagreed with any American and Israeli intention to attack Iran. Information leaks might have also meant the precious element of surprise might well have been lost. For these reasons and determined to ensure the Iranian regime cannot develop nuclear weapons, the attack occurred.

Leaders of so-called middle powers, such as Anthony Albanese, argue that international law should not be disregarded lightly. And the American/Israeli attack against Iran is of questionable legality. Even so, even Australia must admit that it is a dangerous fantasy to rely too heavily on law in international politics. After all, Iran’s four-decade old nuclear program is an illicit and probably illegal one yet international law was powerless to stop it. International law was silent on Iran conducting terrorist activities around the world and funding proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas to do the same. Twentieth century international law has not evolved to address major threats to states and societies.

The point is that every American ally would view the Iranian possession of a nuclear weapon as a catastrophic strategic development, and for countries such as Israel, an existential one. Up to 2024, Iran was the world’s foremost sponsor of state and non-state terrorism. The current American and Israeli actions against Iran have severely dented Tehran’s nuclear and terrorist sponsoring activities.

Allies complain that the US under his administration has become unreliable. Trump now justifiably makes that same charge about us. Trump 2.0 has used force against what American allies would agree are terrorist entities and targets in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, and of course Iran. The regime in Venezuela under Nicolas Maduro was no friend of America’s allies. In other words, countries declaring the inviolability of international law nevertheless depend on America to push or break these same laws to protect them from nefarious and pariah entities with little or non-existent regard for international law.

Facing Reality on Australia’s Security

The current instability in the Straits of Hormuz is a direct result of the war against Iran. Even if one disagrees with the initial American/Israeli martial action, all American allies still have a deep self interest in preventing Iran from using the Straits of Hormuz to hold the global economy to ransom. This is the context for Trump recently giving European and Asian allies, including Australia, a serve for sitting on the sidelines rather than assisting the United States to protect shipping transiting through the Straits of Hormuz.

Let’s focus on Australia. Some commentators such as former Prime Minister Paul Keating argue we are over reliant on America and too compliant. It is true that our treaty with America does not guarantee that it will come to our defence – just as we are clearly not legally bound to join it in any war. However, the most reliable currency in international politics is not legal obligation but national and geopolitical interest. The more important and integral we are to American regional and global objectives, the higher the likelihood the US will come to our aid.

The determination to assist a junior ally is unavoidably a subjective one. Like Joe Biden, Barack Obama and George W Bush, Donald Trump will make the same kind of calculation even if they will have different thresholds of when the US ought to render assistance. What is clear is that Australia sitting on the sidelines and pursuing a far more independent posture based on minimal (or non-existing) commitments to America will leave us more vulnerable.

This is the case for several reasons. It greatly diminishes the prospects of America coming to our defence and creates greater licence for countries like China to issue ever more serious threats against us. A similar logic applies to assessments of when and whether American extended nuclear deterrence covers weapons of mass destruction attacks against Australia.

Moreover, and as a response to those moving away from an integrated military-industrial-technological base with America, doing that will severely limit what hard power we can develop or acquire for ourselves. It leads to greater impotence and isolation in strategic terms because a diminution in national hard power and lack of alignment with great powers such as America will make us less relevant and more exposed in a region which pays homage to hard power.

Keeping the Alliance Strong

In our region, the evidence is that much of East Asia doesn’t operate according to heroic or charitable principles. When China was imposing economically coercive measures against Australia, almost every neighbour was silent. The few advocating for our cause included the US and Japan. Intimidating Chinese actions against Philippine ships in the South China Sea are now commonplace. These same two countries have stood by Manila while South-East Asian neighbours, and ASEAN as an organisation, remain tight-lipped. In a world defined by hard power, would a more independent but less capable Australia really enhance our security or improve our ability to behave as a creative middle power in the region?

Inevitably, the sovereign decision to ask and receive more from the US will mean the latter might ask more from us. But this is no different from any meaningful alliance in history. The alternative is to bear the immediate and longer-term risks and costs to Australia of walking back the alliance or opting out altogether.

This leads us back to the Straits of Hormuz. As the late and legendary American Secretary of State Richard Armitage said about allies, they “bleed for each other.” Armitage was an old-fashioned Republican internationalist which is the kind many allies yearn for. But Trump didn’t ask allies to join it in the bombing campaign against Iran. He did ask for assistance in stabilizing the Straits of Hormuz.

Alliances are not social gatherings but necessarily transactional and underpinned by common interest. Few allies heeded the call even thought they have a common interest in shipping passing safely through the Straits of Hormuz. If we didn’t heed the call of America asking for assistance in a relatively safe undertaking, why do we expect America will respond in our time of need?

Dr. John Lee is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC. From 2016-18, he was senior adviser to the Australian Foreign Minister.

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The Web of Long-Haul Shipping

Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz and President Donald Trump’s seeming retreat from securing global shipping routes has exposed how fragile global supply chains are, but also how irresponsible Australia’s leaders have been in making our fuel capabilities largely dependent on them.

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Around 90% of our refined fuel comes to us through long-haul shipping, mainly from Asia. But around 50%-60% of this refined fuel originates from oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz. While the international situation is stable, Australia’s high standard of living seems as guaranteed as our sunny weather. But the stability of this web of shipping has been shown to be something of an illusion.

Imagine a web in a cabin in the bush, with a storm raging outside. While the cabin stands, the web’s little inhabitants believe the little civilisation they have built is resilient and permanent. But when the cabin is blown apart, the true fragility of this complex web is mercilessly exposed. So it is with the civilisation we have constructed since World War Two.

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Welcome to my Substack, which I’ve called ‘Our Civilisational Moment’.

What will this Substack be about? Well, I particularly want to explore the most pressing issues facing Western Civilisation, and how they impact Australia. This Substack will offer my own thoughts on events and trends, as well as contributions from some very knowledgeable friends of mine from time to time.

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Os Guinness calls the modern West a “cut-flower civilisation”, and I am yet to hear a better metaphor for our times. Like a freshly cut flower, there is still evidence of its beauty and vitality, and yet it is rapidly wilting. I will return to this later.

It’s no mere conceit to suggest that Australia was the greatest achievement of the British Enlightenment.

By the mid-nineteenth century we had the highest living standards in the world. Melbourne for a time was the world’s wealthiest city. Our wool was the most sought-after in the world. Colonial governments had also built thousands of churches and schools that were full. And by the end of the 1860s almost all men, including Aboriginal men, had a right to vote in colonial elections.

This all culminated in 1901 in what Australians at the time called “the miracle” of Federation, the peaceful birth of a nation.

Indeed, Australia’s prosperity, national solidarity, sense of fairness, and general happiness made us one of the greatest countries in the world to live in. And make no mistake, Australia still is one of the greatest countries in the world. But for how long?

There are five future-defining issues that will form the primary concern of this Substack going forward.

Foundational Freedoms

Freedom is at the heart of Western Civilisation. And yet over the past generation a kind of managerial totalitarianism has been descending on the West, stripping us of our freedoms and prosperity in the name of safety, security, equity, diversity and inclusion.

Alfred Deakin, our second Prime Minister, exclaimed about our constitution that he helped draft, “What a charter of liberty is embraced within this Bill – of political liberty and religious liberty….” And yet we are rapidly going down the path of England as our freedoms of speech, conscience, religion, and association become ever-more fragile.

Although the Liberals managed to improve Labor’s recent Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026, the original draft, with its deliberate lack of focus, shows how strong the appetite is within the Labor Party to whittle away Australians’ freedoms of speech and association.

Disgracefully the Greens wanted to include so-called hate speech against LGBTQ people in the legislation, a cynical attempt to take advantage of the Bondi massacre for their own ideological ends.

Australians still do not have a robust religious freedom bill, which was promised to them after the same-sex marriage plebiscite. In the meantime many Australians, particularly Christians, face discrimination because of their religious views.

As I said, this is usually done in the name of public safety and diversity, equity, and inclusion. But in reality a lot of this is just a power-grab by ideological elites to shape a society in their own image, whether Australians want it or not.

Social Fabric

Australia was once a happy, unified, and peaceful nation. But lately Australians have watched their country change rapidly and become fragmented under a reckless immigration system.

Time Magazine reported back in 2014 that Australia had produced more foreign fighters travelling to join ISIS than any other country per capita. The Islamist threat in Australia recently culminated in the abominable murder of 15 Jewish Australians at Bondi beach, with around 40 seriously injured. This was the most recent of a series of Islamist terror attacks in Australia, with many others thwarted by Australian intelligence over the years.

And yet while Islamist terrorist attacks are the most obvious evils of a poorly managed immigration system, there is a deeper threat to Australia that is harder to measure but felt by many. A sense of alienation as major cities in Australia lose a common Australian culture and increasingly become archipelagos of ethnic enclaves. This cannot be good for our national cohesion and, I’d suggest, our national security in the long run.

As former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has recently shown in his timely history of Australia, Australia’s cultural foundation and most powerful cultural force until very recently was Anglo-Celtic. Arguably Australia, like Western civilisation in general, is a flower in the process of being cut from its own heritage. I submit that Australia needs a revival of interest in and appreciation of our Anglo-Celtic cultural heritage. Crucially, this should be accompanied by an immigration policy that complements Australia’s cultural heritage; not one that effectively undermines it.

Economy and Housing

House and property ownership has always been intrinsic to what we might call the Australian dream.

Foundational to Australia’s historical uniqueness was our high rates of home ownership. While most ordinary people throughout Britain and Ireland were locked out of property ownership in the nineteenth century, emancipated convicts and many settlers were given grants of land with the understanding that they would make the best of the opportunity by starting farms. They did and the rest is history.

And yet by all measures the median house price across our combined capital cities is predicted to hit around $1.3 million by the end of 2026, with Sydney’s median prices expecting to reach $1.9 million. The median salary in Australia is around $72,000 p/a, or $1396 a week. Younger Australians have almost lost sight of the great Australian dream of home ownership.

On top of this, Australians have been dealing with inflation to the point that the cost of living is utterly prohibitive. Wages have not increased in keeping with inflation, and the single biggest household expense – rent or mortgage payments – have proven almost crippling for many Australians, especially over the past 4 years under the Labor government.

One of the most destabilising trends that can happen in a country is when the younger generations feel there is no future for them. No meaningful jobs, no chance of owning their own property, no chance of saving, and worst of all, no chance of raising families of their own.

Just as bad is when they perceive that the older generation has borrowed against them to maintain their own high living standard and financial security, younger generations become resentful as victims of intergenerational theft.

Resentment and disenfranchisement is plaguing Australia now and it must be any government’s priority to resolve this crisis of spirit. It’s at this point that the lure of false, socialist utopias becomes most powerful.

Energy and Environment

Australia’s annual domestic carbon emissions make up 1% of the global total; on its own an insignificant amount. And yet we are hurtling down a renewables revolution path as though reducing global warming was entirely dependent on us.

The simple fact is that our elites’ renewables obsession is driven by politics and greed, not science or care for the climate.

Global renewables oligarchs fund environmentalist organisations to pressure governments to invest in and subsidise renewables, pumping billions of dollars into the pockets of renewables barons while Australians’ power bills increase. Worse than this, the breathtaking Australian landscape is evermore mutilated and outraged by unsightly wind turbines, not to mention the destruction of Australia’s beloved, unique native wildlife.

Australia has some of the world’s largest deposits of coal, gas, iron ore, lithium, gold, uranium, and other critical minerals. Given our comparatively small population, Australians should be paying the lowest energy prices in the world while profiting from exporting. And yet recently the Australia Energy Market Commission recently confirmed that Australians’ energy prices will go up over the next decade.

All the while, to add insult to injury, it’s common knowledge that China, whose annual emissions are a whopping 32.88%, openly plans to build many more coal stations. China’s projected carbon emissions are hard to gauge, with some saying that they will peak towards the end of this decade, and others saying they have peaked already. What no one is saying is that China’s emissions are definitely going to dramatically drop over the coming years.

In other words, our elites know that they are putting Australians through much pain with this energy revolution full-well knowing that it will actually do nothing to reduce global warming.

There are signs that much of the world is now backing away from the climate hysteria that has characterised much public policy in Australia over the past twenty years. The question is whether Australia will wake up to this disastrous policy or continue down the path of energy and economic self-sabotage.

Geopolitics

Finally, the world has entered a new period of global uncertainty as the post-Cold War US-dominated system has given way to a new order with China and the US as bipolar rivals. Some like historian Niall Fergusson call this Cold War II.

Whether we like it or not, Australia is caught in the middle as a nation within the Asian region, and therefore highly susceptible to China’s regional assertiveness, and as a long-time military ally of the US.

Realist analysis tells us that at least one state will stamp its influence on the world order, and in our context the choices are the US or China. Put another way, Australia has a choice of whether to grow close to a communist regime well-known for its brutality to its own people, or to the US, whose own political and cultural heritage springs from the same well as Australia’s.

We have three security imperatives. First and foremost, we must build up our own military capabilities in terms of military hardware and personnel. Second, as explored in a recent conversation with energy and security expert Dr. John Coyne, Australia needs to boost its liquid fuel reserves from the paltry current reserve of 34 days to a minimum of 90 days – especially our diesel reserves. The current war in Iran has shown how fragile the global fuel supply chains are, and Australia, as one of the world’s highest consumers of liquid fuel, is uniquely vulnerable. As long as we rely heavily on outside sources for fuel we are extremely vulnerable in terms of security but also producing and transporting food around our massive continent.

Third, it is an inescapable reality that cultivate our relationship with the US, assuring our American friends that we take our own defence seriously and that we are a valuable enough ally to protect. Australia must play a key role in what US Under Secretary for Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby calls the “strategy of denial”.

National security also touches the economic issue, demanding that Australia continue to diversify its trading partners away from the domination of China over our economy and therefore regaining our ability to make decisions in our own interest as a sovereign nation state.

We must be realistic and understand that without a strong US alliance, Australia with its great wealth finds itself very vulnerable in an increasingly predatory international order in which raw power is increasingly becoming the measure of right.

I quoted Os Guinness at the beginning, who likened modern Western Civilisation to a cut flower. The task ahead is not just economic and military, it is spiritual. We must identify the nutrient-rich soil in which our wilting flower once grew. I believe this soil was Christianity, which was once, believe it or not, even very powerful in Australia.

This doesn’t demand that my readers must believe in the truth-claims of Christianity, as I do. Perhaps though, some will come to conclude that the reason Christianity had such a salutary influence on Western civilisation was not merely because it was good and beautiful, but also because it is true.

So once again, welcome to this Substack. Please subscribe and share our essays with your friends and family, and don’t forget to redeem your one free month by clicking on the button below.

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Let’s do everything we can to make Australia once again represent everything great about Western Civilisation, so we can hand a better country down to our children and grandchildren.

Like all Western countries, we are increasingly atomised, divided and distrustful of one another, and it is beyond doubt that the Bondi terrorist attack reveals a serious escalation of our fraying national fabric.

Inadequate and misguided leadership from Anthony Albanese and his senior ministers has contributed to the rapid rise in anti-Semitism that we’ve witnessed, especially since October 7, 2023. Now we see the results of the permission structure that has allowed for, even facilitated, the dreadful rise in anti-Semitism in a country that has rapidly changed from one of the safest democracies for Jews to one of the least safe.

Yet it’s increasingly evident that, just as the truly bitter fruit of these failures crystallises, the Prime Minister will fail the test of leadership again and in so doing hand further opportunity to those in our midst who hate our way of life. For that is what the pivot to gun laws as the primary response to the Bondi atrocity will do. The fact is that the higher priorities must be to address both anti-Semitism and its chief driver in this country, radical political Islam.

As a senior minister in government at the time of the introduction of the national gun laws in 1996, I acknowledge there is always a need to keep a watching brief on how “fit for purpose” any laws are, and it beggars belief that the perpetrators of the latest outrage were licensed to possess guns – many of them.

However, there are several significant differences between the actions we took in response to horrors such as the Hoddle Street and Port Arthur massacres. We were addressing an emerging gun culture in parts of Australia that was, typically, making it to easy for lone-wolf operators, almost invariably disturbed young men from dysfunctional home backgrounds, to obtain firearms and engage in the indiscriminate slaughter of other Australians regardless of their ethnicity, religion or skin colour. It was also facilitating those who in moments of despair were intent upon taking their own lives.

What we now see is something else. We have people in our midst who are not suffering so much from mental health or tendencies to self-harm, but rather people deeply committed to the persecution, the murder, the very elimination of a whole race in particular – the Jews.

We are confronted with the truly perverted logic that Jews are accused of attempting genocide in the Middle East, while in truth it is Jews who face well-organised, well-resourced and deeply ideologically driven individuals, organisations and, in the case of Iran, nation-states that are quite open about their desire to obliterate their race.

Guns may occasionally be the means by which evil ends are achieved, but the problem now – the one the PM and too many others do not want to address – is that we have people in this country who simply reject our way of life and have evil objectives in mind.

This is widely recognised in the broader community, and I can reliably report that in the rural communities I move in, there is a palpable anger at the denial by our leaders of the need to discuss the real problems. That frustration is mounting rapidly as good citizens who live with and need firearms sense that the shadows of suspicion and distrust will fall on them rather than on those who really should be exposed.

‘That’s just not accurate’: PM rejects report he ducked anti-Semitism push at national cabinet

The Prime Minister rejects a report in The Australian that state leaders were forced to push him for...

It is entirely possible, given the current government’s ineptness and lack of a moral compass, that it will manage to encourage an unhealthy gun culture whereby people will argue that if the real “bad guys” are not going to be restrained, they need to be able to protect themselves. That would encourage the very attitudes progressives say they hate about Americans – guns are needed for self-defence, and citizens retain the right to take the law into their own hands.

Our reluctance to stand up for our “Aussie values” is troubling at two very important levels. The first is that conviction will win over doubt and vacillation every time. We see raw, horrible conviction on the part of Jew-haters every day. Does the nation’s current leadership possess any real convictions of its own – apart perhaps from wanting (at any price) to establish the Labor Party as the natural party of government in Australia?

The second arises out of that lack of conviction. We lack conviction because we don’t understand what we have or how it came to us. Perhaps American economist Thomas Sowell put it best when he reminded us: “Civilisation doesn’t sustain itself. It has to be built, maintained, defended and, most importantly, understood. When that understanding is lost, decline is not just unlikely, it becomes inevitable. And that’s the illusion we’re living under today – that civilisation is permanent – but it isn’t.”

As a nation, we need – and the PM especially needs – to understand the wellsprings of our own culture and that of radical Islam, because the two are not compatible; and to pretend they are is to paper over the differences by the naive insistence that multiculturalism must never be examined, let alone questioned.

For centuries we have been building our cherished way of life on the ideal that every citizen enjoys equality, as Robert Menzies put it, and that all souls are equal in the eyes of heaven. We have lost sight of that great and critical key to our relative success as a land of fairness, freedom and opportunity, and so have been blinded to the reality that we have in our midst people who not only reject the ideal but seek to destroy it.

Put simply, we are confronted by people in our country who are wilfully and determinedly committed to the notion that some Australians – namely Jews – are nothing less than subhuman, and it is a good thing to kill them simply because they are Jewish. As Albanese’s predecessor, Bob Hawke, understood, when the bell tolls for Israel, it tolls for all mankind.

Australia now – right now – needs a PM who understands, has deep conviction and is possessed of great courage.

The comments by the chairman of the ABC about Joe Rogan make you wonder whether he is another prime example of a disconnected elite. Is Williams unaware of what normal citizens are seeking, of the shortcomings of the organisation he oversees, and indeed, unaware of what alternatives to the establishment media really entail?

Did he accidentally mistake Rogan for Andrew Tate, or someone else he’s heard of second-hand, as he decried “people like Mr Rogan” whose actions in the media space he finds “deeply repulsive”?

The most anticipated interview of the US election was Donald Trump sitting down with Rogan for a long three-hour chat about the state of America. Not CNN, not FOX, not MSNBC – but a former comedian and TV show host who talks to retired professional fighters, social media commentators, and contrarian scientists about anything ranging from the perfect grappling technique, whether dragons ever existed, to how safe and effective the COVID-19 vaccinations were.

Amidst this variety, Rogan earnestly addresses serious questions of policy and culture, at a level unseen in the mainstream media, or MSM. Perhaps more importantly, he encourages the sifting of a range of views on contentious topics so that his viewers can then make up their own minds.

How different things might be if the ABC were to similarly appreciate viewpoint diversity.

The Trump-Rogan interview got nearly 40 million views on YouTube alone in its first three days. There can be little doubt that it contributed to Trump’s convincing win, for he was not preaching only to the converted on Rogan’s show.

Joe Rogan has 65 million subscribers across multiple platforms, 80 per cent of them male. Research suggests his audience is young, averaging between 18 and 34 years. Most importantly for Trump, 32 per cent of Rogan’s listeners identify as Republican, 27 per cent identify as Democrat, and the rest are undecided or independent.

Ours is the age of the podcast.

In Australia, men and women have different podcast habits. Unlike in America, where a slim majority of podcast listeners are male, the majority of listeners in Australia – 60 per cent – are female, according to research carried out by Podcast Services Australia.

But the preferred genres are very different between the sexes. According to a YouGov survey last year, Australian men are significantly more likely than women to listen to podcasts about news and politics (21 per cent of male listeners to 12 per cent of female). Women are more likely than men to listen to health and living podcasts (14 per cent to 11 per cent), not to mention true-crime podcasts. Men are also much more likely to listen to podcasts on sport and business.

Why has there been a shift away from MSM to the world of podcasts? There are multiple reasons, but I’d focus on the increasing superficiality of MSM content and the flagrant ideological bias of much of it. The MSM trades on soundbites and fast, superficial interviews. Podcasts typically can range from 15 minutes to three hours or more in duration, taking “deep dives” into any topic you can imagine.

Perhaps equally significant, in general, the ideological slant of the MSM does not reflect the demographic reality among Australians, or Americans for that matter.

For example, the visual media in Australia – and especially the ABC – was overwhelmingly in favour of the Voice. Yet the Voice proposal was overwhelmingly defeated by Australians with a fraction over 60 per cent saying “no”. In other words, the message coming from the MSM was completely at odds with how most Australians thought and felt.

According to our in-house analysis at John Anderson Media, our videos and interviews on the Voice, which questioned the mainstream narrative, were the third most watched videos on the issue during the campaign period – well ahead of the ABC.

Much of the same MSM bias characterised the recent US election, in contrast to the way people actually voted. In other words, there’s a disconnect between the MSM and real people.

If the Voice is one example, looking back, I wonder if the approach to renewables will be another case where the MSM ends up being clearly at odds with the people who are increasingly better informed by fact-based analysis from non-MSM sources such as the Centre for Independent Studies. Time will tell.

Speaking personally, I am an Australian podcaster with a YouTube subscription base of 685,000 subscribers and over 230 million content views. While the ABC generally was interviewing people hostile to Donald Trump in the lead-up and aftermath of the last US election, I interviewed Victor Davis Hanson, esteemed American historian and author of The Case for Donald Trump. As of now, that interview has had 3.1 million views.

What was the most liked comment in the comments section? “This 71-minute video is more educational than 10 straight years of watching mainstream media.” Many in the MSM need to display sufficient humility to reflect on their professionalism.

Australians aren’t as passionate about their politics as Americans, so I’m not sure whether there will be a “Joe Rogan moment” in Australian politics that impacts an election. There are certainly obvious lessons for the MSM though: don’t underestimate your audience’s desire for deep analysis and viewpoint diversity, and stop thinking you can fool people that ideologically biased news is neutral.

As recent history has shown with the Voice referendum and the US election, the new media is here to stay, and long may it be a force to be reckoned with.

“Woolworths loves Australia, and love being Australian.” So say the websites of several Woolworths locations. And yet Woolworths, along with Big W, Kmart and Aldi, is refusing to stock Australia Day paraphernalia. Mixed messaging much?

One spokesman for Woolworths explained it was partly because “there’s been broader discussion about January 26 and what it means to different parts of the community”.

Sure, so why not just stock the merchandise and let the customer decide? Coles will stock Australiana merchandise, but it assured Australians it was not specifically for Australia Day. Phew!

Ironically, I can buy all my Australia Day gear at The Reject Shop.

Of course, it’s the right of any private business to stock whatever it likes, and Woolworths and other retailers are exercising this right. But this whole business is strange because the retailers are taking a moral stance on an issue that really has nothing to do with them, as though they are churches offering moral guidance.

It would seem many major corporations are increasingly (over)run by agonised souls who on the one hand are climbing the ladder of ruthless, lucrative careerism, while atoning for it by trying to turn profit-driven corporations into beacons of righteousness.

If there was one lesson from the voice referendum, it was that Australians don’t like major corporations preaching about national issues, and especially trying to use their bottomless pit of resources to try to influence the outcome of a national debate.

These retailers have the right to sell what they like, and Australians have the right to avoid them in favour of small businesses to buy everything they need for Australia Day, meat and all.

But the oikophobia – or fear of one’s own nation – on display every Australia Day is not trivial. We are raising a generation in a way that can only be detrimental to the nation in the long run. We are clearly not inculcating a sufficient gratitude for Australia or Western civilisation in our education system, certainly not a sufficient love for democracy over tyranny and terror.

The protests against Israel immediately after October 7 show the dire state of our education system. Amazingly, a “week of action” in schools in support of Palestine was endorsed by several regions of the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union. Many teachers planned to turn up to class wearing pro-Palestinian paraphernalia.

An open letter to the Victorian government signed by hundreds of Victorian teachers and school staff denouncing Israeli human rights abuses continues to gather signatures. Nowhere does the letter condemn the actions of Hamas or demand that Hamas return any Israeli hostages. Nowhere. It’s as though evil Israel just launched a campaign into Gaza for no reason whatsoever. School students began rallying in support of Palestine against Israel soon after the attacks. This is their right, but one must ask whether they are being told both sides of the story.

Israel is a multiracial, multiethnic democracy established as a safe haven for millions of Jews to flee genocide after World War II. It has an Arab minority of roughly 20 per cent that has the same legal rights as Jewish Israelis. It sits in the midst of a region where it is no exaggeration to say millions of its enemies would like to see it destroyed.

Indeed, it would seem many young Australians would like to see it destroyed as well, or at least unwittingly call for its destruction. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is chanted at the protests. It literally calls for the erasure of the state of Israel. How could such a chant be fulfilled except through violence; that is, genocide?

In 2022 the Sydney University Students’ Representative Council passed a motion condemning Israel as an apartheid state. It was titled “From the River to the Sea”.

Many of those same chanters accuse Israel of genocide against the Gazans as Israel does nothing more than seek to remove those in Gaza who would seek a repeat of October 7.

Indeed, innocent people in Gaza are being killed, but perhaps Israel’s critics might consider the people to blame are those who deliberately use Gazans as human shields by launching attacks from built-up urban areas. For Israel to desist from retaliatory action that would take innocent lives would be to sit back and allow Hamas terrorists, and sympathisers, to launch attacks until, as the chant goes, Israel has been obliterated “from the river to the sea”.

If Gaza is to have any future then Hamas must be destroyed, and, atrociously, it fully intends to bring many innocent Gazans down with it. As the Hamas Covenant of 1988 had it, “death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its (the movement’s) wishes.”

How can so many Australians, particularly young Australians, be so blind as to see Israel as the oppressor here? Sadly, it’s pretty clear too many teachers, themselves products of a very one-sided university education, are reluctant to teach both sides of the story.

Many young Australians seem to feel the West and its satellite allies, such as Israel, are at best hopelessly flawed, and at worst positively wicked. This uninformed cynicism has the pernicious effect of muting our national solidarity with Israel, a democracy amid authoritarian regimes, and established in defiance of actual genocide.

The seriousness of a lack of enthusiasm for celebrating Australia Day is not really about flags and bucket hats, it is linked with the ever-growing cynicism towards Western civilisation in general.

We must do more than merely publicly disapprove of retailers who seem to have jumped on the cynical bandwagon. We must demand that some in our national legislature have the courage to stand up and fight for an education system premised on gratitude for Western civilisation and the historically unprecedented free and prosperous lives it has afforded all of us in this great land. Not to mention the promise it holds for millions of outsiders who aspire for something better. This is what we celebrate on January 26.

This article first appeared in The Australian on 22 Jan 2024.

After a lifetime on the land, I’ve seen what happens when a once-thriving farm starts to fall apart. The fences sag, the crops thin out, and soon, the very soil that sustained generations becomes fragile.

It’s tough to admit when things are slipping, but without the hard work of restoring what’s been lost, it only gets worse. Australia today is not much different. The country is showing signs of what could become a prolonged economic and social decline.

The so-called “cost-of-living crisis” is just the first symptom of a deeper, more troubling regression. Our productivity is dropping, our energy systems are mismanaged, and our key industries, mostly based in the regions, are struggling to stay afloat. As any farmer knows, when the land isn’t productive, everything else suffers. The same goes for Australia.

When the regions are strong, the whole nation prospers. It’s easy for city-dwellers to forget, but we would be massively impoverished without the food, fibre and export income generated by regional Australia.

The National Party has long championed the regions, and while no party is without fault, it has much it can be proud of.

As party leader and deputy prime minister, I experienced how working as a serious partner in government with John Howard’s Liberals was a real “force multiplier” for good national policy, and good regional policy.

Those experiences do compel me to urge that today’s Nats do not allow themselves the indulgence of appeals to populism, tempting as it often is, for the simple reasons that the times are too serious for distractions, and the need for powerful advocacy about the real interests of the country is so great.

Our agricultural sector is extraordinarily productive – the NFF now estimates that one farmer feeds 600 people locally and internationally.

Our farmers, miners, and tourism operators are the backbone of the economy. They produce the food, resources, and services that not only keep us going, but also allow Australia to punch above its weight on the global stage.

Australia’s position as the 12th largest economy in the world, despite our modest population of only 27 million, is largely thanks to the regions. However, we will not remain a global economic player if current trends continue.

Labor policies show a fundamental hostility to the kind of wealth creation that the regions excel at.

Unfortunately, the current government in Canberra now seems more interested in redistributing the shrinking wealth pie than growing it.

Their policies show a fundamental hostility to the kind of wealth creation that the regions excel at. They’re focused on immediate fixes, filling the gap between income and expenditure with borrowed money, all the while building a debt burden that will be passed on to our children and grandchildren.

This has created a trajectory of ever poorer economic management, excessive government expenditure driving inflation, hostility to investment and the export sector, and increasingly unreliable and unpriceable electricity.

This is paired with an utterly irresponsible desire to pander to union leaders whose economic illiteracy threatens the well-being of the very workers they claim to represent.

Even more concerning, there has been an unforgivable failure to walk the talk on our national security. And this neglect is felt acutely in the regions, which are dependent upon national resilience.

Our supply chains, especially fuel reserves, have not been secured. Astonishingly, despite the lip service paid to the need for an Australian merchant shipping fleet, we now don’t have a single Australian-flagged ship ready to keep our energy and trade flowing if sea lanes to our north are disrupted.

Much of this stems from the influence of inner-city green luxury beliefs, which seems disconnected from the realities of economic sustainability. Worse, the next election may well see the drivers of our structural decline being ramped up, if, as many are predicting, we elect a minority Labor government beholden to Greens and independents.

This is why the National Party must lead with courage, imagination, determination and grit that the best of the bush is renowned for. Those who represent the party – and those who will in time serve at the cabinet table – must work hard to restore the nation’s finances, improve productivity, and reform our taxation system.

Most urgently, they will need to recognise that the first responsibility of the Commonwealth government is our national security in these dangerous times. At this point the interest of the nation and the interests of the regions coincide perfectly.

It’s important to remember that regional Australia has specific needs – communications, healthcare, education and infrastructure, both for societal equity and their continued productivity – but none of this can be built on a shaky foundation. A farm can’t thrive without healthy soil, and our regions can’t thrive without a secure, investment-friendly national economy.

The National Party has the opportunity – and the responsibility – to provide that foundation.

Australia’s path back to prosperity won’t be easy. Restoring our finances, fixing productivity, and securing the future of the regions will require bold action.

Regional Australians are familiar with the hard work of rebuilding, and they’re looking for leaders who are willing to do the same for the nation. They’re ready for leadership that’s prepared to make the hard calls, even if it requires some sacrifices along the way.

Just like restoring a farm, rebuilding Australia’s prosperity will take time, effort, and a commitment to doing what’s right for the long term.

The task ahead won’t be simple, but just as a well-run farm can thrive for generations, a strong, secure, and productive Australia can ensure prosperity for generations to come.

This articles first appeared in The Australian Financial Review on 24 Sep 2024.

Across the West today there is a growing sense of decline, division and anxiety.

The words permacrisis and polycrisis are starting to be heard. Too many people have lost trust in the values and institutions that are the bedrock of our civilisation, feel disenfranchised and left behind, and do not remember – or, worse, reject or rewrite – our history. Too many people no longer know where they have come from, who they are or where they are going.

The West is weak: culturally, we are witnessing the deconstruction of the value system that laid the foundations of our freedom, prosperity and, in Australia, our valued egalitarianism.

This has been facilitated and enabled too often by political leaders who have lacked the courage to push back or, worse, have actively pushed a deconstructionist agenda. Politically, we are polarised and divided. Socially, we are unstable, confused and incoherent.

These feed the policy sclerosis that is weakening our economies and in turn reducing the prosperity that is so desirable for human flourishing, at the same time as building unconscionable debt burdens for our children, born and unborn.

In the words of our friend, social critic Os Guinness, we are at a “civilisational moment”. A critical turning point where the choices we make now will define the world our children grow up in.

Some would argue that decline is inevitable. They say there is nothing that can be done, that every civilisation has a cycle and we just happen to be on the downswing. Oswald Spengler was the most famous proponent of this story of the rise and fall of civilisations. His story says great civilisations start with the pioneers, whose initial outburst of courageous exploration pave the way for expansion and growth.

This leads eventually to development, affluence and flourishing. But affluence is a double-edged sword. It not only enables wealth but seeds a complacency that over time leads to overexpansion, overcomplexity and decline marked by decadence, cynicism and pessimism.

There will be some who look at Australia, and the West writ large, today and see that story of decline.

There are many who believe that is it, and there is nothing that can be done, or they think the tired source of civilisational inspiration must be replaced.

But we believe decline is not inevitable and there is hope for renewal. The choice is in our hands and it is our responsibility not only to tell a better story but to build a better story.

We have studied great movements of history and what sits behind an upswing: historian Niall Ferguson calls it the power of dense networks of senior leaders; philosopher Arnold Toynbee called it the gathering of a creative minority who will live differently.

That is why we established the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship and convened 1500 leaders from across the world in an extraordinarily successful conference in London last year.

And that is why we are bringing together more than 600 people at the ARC Australia conference in Sydney this month. We believe a true in-country and international network of courageous, adventurous people who believe in staring down challenges rather than being defeated by the prevailing darkness is not only possible but is the only alternative to the zeitgeist. People are looking for leadership and hope.

Almost 200 years ago, political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville observed that what made democracy work was the importance of robust institutions and a strong civil society, with people voluntarily joining with one another to strengthen the social fabric.

That is what is required today. Good policy cannot be developed from bad or silenced debate. That is why we believe in providing a platform for the free exchange and exploration of ideas, bringing together people of courage from across the world in politics, industry, academia, the arts and media. People who will create and not simply complain, build rather than tear down, and – through relationships – work for long-term change.

At ARC’s Australia conference we will explore “the better story”, by reminding ourselves of Australia’s incredible history, with the hope of restoring belief in our core values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and human dignity, and trust in the institutions that defend them.

We will examine our social fabric and why strengthening it matters profoundly to our society and economy. Whether it is family breakdown, identity politics, demographic changes or the mental health epidemic, we face grave challenges with serious implications for our wider prosperity.

And we will seek to promote solutions that will serve the prosperity of all Australians: from asking how we can provide a pathway for young people to have a greater stake in this society to underlining that our way of life is sustained by affordable energy.

The West is at a defining moment with some clear choices before us. Do we rediscover, re-lay and renew our values and vision, drawing inspiration from our past as we work for a better future; or decline in the face of threats, internal and external, to those values?

Australia has a vital role to play in this existential debate.

Baroness Philippa Stroud is co-founder and chief executive of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. John Anderson is a co-founder of ARC and a former deputy prime minister of Australia.

This article first appeared in The Australian on the 19th of October, 2024.

“Know yourself”, advised the ancient Oracle of Delphi. For if we lack the courage to be honest about ourselves as individuals, nations, and as a human race, then we are entirely unprepared for an unforgiving reality ahead.

The violent anti-Israel protest in Melbourne two weeks ago was highly instructive in terms of the state of Australia and the current debate on national security.

In many ways it clearly displayed human nature and our need for both national cohesion and a plan for national defence. The protest was ostensibly for peace in the Middle East. It was a protest against violence and bloodshed. And yet within only a couple of hours many of the peace protesters themselves became violent and shedders of blood.

Police officers who have dedicated their lives to protecting fellow citizens were savagely ass­aulted with rocks, bottles and acid, not to mention urine and horse manure.

Police Association of Victoria secretary Wayne Gatt said some officers in hospital testified they had “never in their careers … confronted more violence” than they did at the hands of these “peace” activists.

Then there was the abuse of animals, with police horses having an irritant squirted up their nostrils. If anyone was to commit such a deed to a horse at any other time they’d be condemned for animal cruelty. But apparently cruelty against ­animals is fine if it’s in the cause of peace.

We must also address what has animated much of the apparent concern for Palestinian Muslims over the past year.

Muslims residing in China, known as Uyghurs, have been subject to torture, forced sterilisation, murder, and removal to concentration camps for decades now. Muslims have been slaughtered en masse in Myanmar and India.

More than 300,000 ­Syrians were killed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria in his crackdown on democracy, the overwhelming majority of whom were fellow Muslims, who make up around 90 per cent of the population.

Yemen is 99 per cent Muslim, and in the civil war, also involving Saudi Arabia and Iran, more than 377,000 Muslims have died, with millions more displaced. The overwhelming majority of Muslims killed in recent years have been killed by other Muslims.

Who remembers a single protest on the streets of Australia over the past 10 years for these Muslim lives? It seems that it’s not really the fact that thousands of Muslims are being killed in Gaza that’s the problem for protesters; it’s that they are being killed by Jews.

As seen in the post-October 7 protests around Australia, a vicious tribalism has emerged in this country, undoubtedly caused by a range of things, including irresponsible immigration and irresponsible universities that have allowed rabid anti-Israel prejudice to fester in their humanities departments for decades. In this respect, the radical secular left has found a cosy bedfellow with Islamic Jew hatred.

There is a Solzhenitsynian lesson in realism here, especially to be learned by those sympathetic with left-wing peace movements but who would not themselves resort to violence. As the Russian seer said, “The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.” The potential for prejudice, cruelty and violence resides in every human heart, even those who make a display of standing against prejudice, cruelty and violence.

The challenges Australia faces from within and without require not simply intelligent leadership, but courageous, moral leadership. Our leaders must make two things issues of national priority. The cultivation of national unity and patriotism, and the pursuit of international security through military strength and strategic alliances.

In the midst of WWII, Robert Menzies warned us that, “There can be no passionate patriotism or willing self-sacrifice unless we know … we are fighting for good things.” Australia recently rose against the challenge of division by voting No to the voice referendum. The so-called voice to parliament would have done little more than fan the flames of national division and anger, as well as been a distraction from real Indigenous suffering. What the referendum showed is that Australia may not be hopelessly divided. That is, beneath the culture wars and the increasingly evident ethnic fissures there is a broad sense of Australianness and a desire for deep unity. Much as John Howard cultivated a sense of Australian unity and pride by reinvigorating the ANZAC heritage and civics education, so we need political leaders to bravely cultivate Australian unity and pride again.

I say “bravely” because any leader who goes down this path will be, like Howard, confronted by a barrage of ­accusations of racism, jingoism, and historical denialism from the Labor left, journalists, the ABC, the Greens, and outraged humanities academics.

Indeed, universities are some of the most prolific contributors to this hatred of Australia and recent ugly anti-Israel, Jew-hating tribalism. It’s hard to believe that children can be led to chant “Intifada! Intifada! Intifada!” on the Sydney University campus without any objection from its leadership. Would they have been so accommodating if those children were told of the thousands of Christians being slaughtered by Muslims in Africa, and then led to chant “Crusade! Crusade! Crusade!”?

Apparently, encouraging children to chant “Intifada” on the Sydney University campus is fine, but establishing the Ramsay Centre for the Study of Western Civilisation is racist and dangerous. Such is the twisted logic of so many in ­academia.

Much as individuals and crowds have the capacity for violence, even those who define themselves as peace-seeking, so can states, as history testifies. As John Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato point out in their book How States Think, unlike life in a well-ordered country like Australia, “uncertainty is the defining feature of international politics”. If those who are bent on peace in a safe and ordered society like Australia will not hesitate to use violence, how much more will those bent on conquest, or simply national self-interest in a world in which, to quote Carl von Clausewitz, “all information and assumptions are open to doubt”?

Australia lies in a potential theatre of war as China becomes increasingly assertive and the world over the past four years has become increasingly dangerous. Australia must be a part of what the American security expert Elbridge Colby calls a “strategy of denial”: an Asian-American alliance to dissuade and contain Chinese expansion.

But this means Australia must have something to offer, namely military might, and a population unified and patriotic enough to be willing to mobilise. Countries will not risk their soldiers for us if we lack the military hardware and personnel to fight for them in turn.

To return to the Delphic Oracle, knowing ourselves means, as Solzhenitsyn said, knowing that we as individuals and collectives are capable of the very crimes and sins of which we so self-righteously accuse others. The protests against alleged Israeli atrocities, protests that themselves turned violent – not to mention their glorification of terrorism – demonstrated this uncomfortable reality. But this must lead us to recognise that we live in a world that is dangerous, not to mention a region with the only global actor with the capacity to rival our closest ally the US.

The instability globally – and, to some extent, nationally over the past 12 months – calls for courageous leadership that recognises the need for military strength, and for a level of national unity that may itself function as a disincentive for other nations to behave aggressively towards us.

These are two major projects that we all – not just our governments – must play a major role in. The defeat of the voice referendum shows that a large deposit of national pride and unity still exists. It only awaits leaders, educators and citizens at large with the courage to cultivate it again.

This article first appeared in The Australian on the 21st of September 2024

The so-called voice to parliament, enshrined in the much-praised Uluru Statement from the Heart, claims to establish a constitutionally guaranteed Indigenous voice in our legislative and executive arms of government. This, according to its advocates, will ensure that the plight of Indigenous Australians is impossible to ignore.

By saying so-called voice, I mean no disrespect, but it is misleading to suggest that Indigenous Australians currently have no voice to parliament when each Indigenous Australian has an equal vote to anyone else and, importantly, each state and territory has a minister for Aboriginal affairs, and federally we have a minister for Indigenous Australians.

These portfolios liaise directly with many Indigenous stakeholders. Indigenous Australians, like all Australians, have many voices to parliament already.

I and many others am simply not convinced that this so-called voice will achieve anything positive beyond a very short-lived rush of joy for those in favour of it.

More seriously, though, I think the voice to parliament will actually prove to be detrimental to the cause of Indigenous disadvantage, for it will beget divisiveness and cynicism, and its politics will prove to be a distraction from the very practical challenges of closing the gaps in health, education, domestic violence, substance abuse, employment and income.

Other countries that have adopted similar approaches have borne bad fruit.

Take the Waitangi Tribunal in New Zealand, which has direct veto power over certain legislation. This discriminatory innovation to the New Zealand government system has expanded over time and has contributed to divisive racial politics. We’ve got to be wiser here.

Despite the near-universal praise heaped on the Uluru Statement from the Heart, its words, if they were to be taken seriously by Indigenous Australians, are actually misleading and highly detrimental. Most notably, the document declares Indigenous Australians to be “powerless”, and that “constitutional reforms” are the only way to “empower our people”, and that Indigenous Australians currently do not have “power over our destiny”.

It is bad enough to be saying to a generation of Indigenous Australians that they currently have no control over their destiny, but what are Indigenous youths to conclude about their agency over their future if the referendum fails? Inseparable from the voice to parliament is the question of a treaty, and treaties very often involve the establishment of separate, autonomous Indigenous territories with massive taxpayer funding.

Certainly this has been the case with Australian discussions of a treaty – we are talking about a radical move.

The Uluru Statement itself calls for a “better future based on … self-determination”. The phrase self-determination is a barely veiled reference to a treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Indeed, the Uluru Statement calls for a “Makarrata Commission”, Makarrata being a term historically referring to a treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

In 2021 Anthony Albanese, now the major champion of the voice to parliament, said: “The voice is the bedrock upon which we must build. I want a voice and truth, then treaty.” I think we need to take the Prime Minister at his word. I also believe he should, in the interests of transparency, explain exactly what that three-step process of voice, treaty and truth-telling will be, and how he believes it will “close the gap” rather than widen divisions.

If the voice is step one on this path to a treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, then we can rightly expect a perpetual call for a such a treaty. And given that most Australians will not be sympathetic to such an extreme reform, how will this not beget perpetual grievance and cynicism among many Aboriginal Australians? All the while the gaps between Indigenous Australians will remain, with the politics of the voice overshadowing the everyday needs of Indigenous Australians much as today the question of changing the date of Australia Day gets far more media attention than the horrific rates of domestic violence and child abuse in remote communities. We don’t need more distractions from the real issues.

I am encouraged by Indigenous Australians such as senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, businessman Nyunggai Warren Mundine and academic Anthony Dillon, whose passion for Indigenous welfare is undeniable yet who prefer practical and tried public policy as the best means to close the gap.

For example, in 2003 alcohol restrictions were introduced to the Aurukun region in western Cape York in far north Queensland, resulting in a sharp decline in murders and suicides, and a 90 per cent decline in people presenting in hospitals for suturing for injuries sustained in fights.

But the current government scrapped the cashless welfare card in many dysfunctional communities that prevented money from being spent on alcohol (and gambling) rather than food for families. It was scrapped despite earnest Indigenous voices – led by Price – crying out for its continuation.

In The Politics of Suffering, a classic discussion of Indigenous policy in Australia, anthropologist and linguist Peter Sutton regretfully wrote of “an apparent correlation between the progressiveness of policy and the degree of (Indigenous) community disaster”. I’m sorry to say that I foresee much the same for this so-called voice to parliament: it will further entrench a sense of irresolvable grievance among many Indigenous Australians and, worse, become a distraction from the real problems that require practical policy initiatives.

This article was originally published in The Australian on the 17th of June 2023.

At a time when the West faces serious challenges from outside and within, we need to return to our roots and remember why Western culture is worth defending.

Without self-confidence, we’ll never see off the menace of totalitarian regimes such as those endured by the Russian and Chinese people. Those regimes hate our way of life. But throughout our own culture it seems our message to ourselves is that we’re evil, or doomed, or both. I want to see us regain our optimism, which means rediscovering what made our nations so great to begin with.

The West has created a peace and prosperity unlike any other time in history, but that is no accident. It is thanks to Western institutions and values such as democracy, the free market, and the rule of law. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 because people were tired of totalitarian, communist governments. They wanted what the West had. In the 1990s the victory looked absolute and perhaps that made us complacent: we thought it would go on forever.

But we are not in a good place and, to return to a better place, we need to re-find our fundamental freedoms, which have been the engine for our progress. These are freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of belief and conscience, and freedom to own private property. Together they are four legs of a stool – if you weaken one, all are compromised.

So why do they matter? Freedom of speech means the right to have a healthy, contested debate to encourage critical thinking and good ideas. It also means the right not to speak about certain matters, or use certain words. When we lose freedom of speech, we lose open, honest discussion and we threaten the marginalised and the voiceless.

It is through freedom of speech that we defend all other freedoms, so I am alarmed by the recent trend towards cancelling others, or engaging with our emotions rather than clear thinking.

But freedom of speech can’t exist without freedom of association, which protects our natural desire to collaborate with, or employ, the people we choose. When I was deputy prime minister, I hand-picked my team because I wanted people I could trust, people I knew were on-board with where we were going. Yet even this right has recently come under attack in our own country by legislators and vocal activists who don’t think it’s right, for example, for faith organisations to employ people who support their creed. This sets a dangerous precedent for rights we once took for granted.

Freedom of belief and conscience, I would argue, is even more fundamental because it starts with our minds – what kind of thoughts we have and whether we can act in accordance with them. Without the right to live lives of integrity, in accordance with our consciences, we aren’t free to flourish as humans. We need freedom to seek answers to life’s great questions: who am I, do I have value or purpose?

Finally, I want to unpack the freedom to own private property, because I’m convinced of its centrality to human flourishing. Its intellectual roots stretch back to biblical times. The Ten Commandments mention private property twice. And in the 15th century an English lawyer named John Fortescue connected people’s freedoms with the right to private property. So it’s not a modern, libertarian idea but an ancient right that encouraged productivity, individual responsibility and stability. If the state can’t guarantee our land, our house, our business or our resources are ours – worse, if it tries to take them for itself – the incentive for us to be good citizens is profoundly compromised.

We see this with our housing crisis; so many young people are disconnected from politics or want to tear the old economic system down because they don’t have a stake in society. Home ownership naturally makes us value what we have and want to defend it.

There’s a brilliant film called The Castle, which you ought to watch if you haven’t, that revolves around a husband willing to give everything to defend his house – just a small, ramshackle house on the edge of the city – from being bulldozed. Why? Because, as he says to the judge when fighting his case, “It’s not a house, it’s a home”.

I’m a believer in the right to private property because I think it makes us all better, more conscientious, community-minded citizens. It also remains the key to building prosperity and giving us lives that aren’t “nasty, brutish and short”.

Countless men and women have sacrificed their lives for these freedoms, or died because they lacked them.

Today, as much as ever, there are people dying for the kind of life we in the West take for granted – 30 years after the Berlin Wall fell, Russia has invaded Ukraine to prevent Western influence. China is setting up a consciously different model to Western governance based on state surveillance and mass social engineering. And in Iran, dozens of civilians have been executed for daring to stand up to the government. The common theme of these countries is that their governments don’t care about individuals. People can be sacrificed for some higher ideal.

Governments don’t create our freedoms but we need governments to defend them. The West relies on good leaders committed to serving the nation rather than themselves. We should support our governments for their role in protecting us, but also must watch out for governments starting to infringe on our basic freedoms.

And to do that, we must shoulder responsibility rather than seeing freedom as permission to do whatever we like. American founding father John Adams famously said: “Our constitution is made only for a moral and religious people.” When our society loses its faith and virtues, it starts to disintegrate, and that’s what we’re seeing today. Too many people now confuse liberty with licence. Liberty needs to be accompanied by wisdom and virtue. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean spreading misinformation. Freedom to own private property brings a responsibility to give generously to the needs of others. We won’t truly understand our freedoms unless we see the responsibilities that accompany them.

So let’s celebrate the freedoms we enjoy in the West and not take them for granted. They were hard won, but they’ll easily be lost if we don’t regain our self-confidence and live as responsible, virtuous citizens in our communities.

This article was first published in The Australian on the 3rd of June 2023.

We are living in a civilisational moment. Our way of life, of freedom and prosperity, is facing serious challenges from within and without. The threat from the regimes that loathe the “decadent West” is obvious and powerful, but it could well be argued that our internal crisis of self-belief and confidence in our democratic traditions is the greatest danger we face.

Having forgotten and even rejected the lessons of our own history, we are increasingly distrustful not only of one another – and our leaders in particular – but also of the institutions that have undergirded our freedom and prosperity. Most frighteningly, we are casting aside the underlying beliefs and values that have given rise to our society.

Every civilisation throughout history has been driven by powerful ideas and fuelled by an ongoing sense of purpose. Ours is no different. When this fuel runs low, one of three things must happen. The fuel is renewed, an alternative fuel is found, or, as history too often shows us, the civilisation fades away and is supplanted – usually after great suffering by the citizenry.

The West is now clearly turning away from the sources of energy which built and sustained it. The rejection of virtually every tenet of Christianity has not led to its replacement by viable alternative narratives. Deconstructionist theories abound, but far from building societies seem only to pull them down in the pursuit of utopian visions.

It is unsurprising that our young people are blighted by unprecedented levels of anxiety and depression. They increasingly do not believe in the ability of democratic capitalism to deliver for them, and see themselves as the inheritors of a nightmarish culture which is not worth defending. In this, they mirror a broader society which is becoming divided, polarised, and distrustful to the point where serious observers ask whether we might become ungovernable.

We have witnessed the displacement of the role of ordinary citizens in favour of “expertocracy”, where democracy itself is seen as an obstacle to progress by those who would direct society from the top down. Public trust in elected representatives is waning as the loud claims of experts and bureaucrats seek to hold the centre, offering one-size-fits-all solutions over relationship-based governance within communities.

Open and fruitful dialogue is being stifled under the immense pressure to boycott and cancel, to see your fellow man not as your neighbour but as a potential enemy belonging to the wrong tribe. Social media increasingly rewards shorter attention spans and provocative content, while enabling the worst forms of anonymous cruelty.

This is greatly intensified by corporations hitching their wagons to divisive causes. We are now in a self perpetuating spiral as they pour billions of dollars into social activism to defend their profit margins. This presents deeply challenging conditions for civil discourse as more and more topics cannot be properly discussed in public.

Unless we find a way to take people with us, casting a clear vision based on proven wisdom, we will continue to experience breakdown in families, domestic institutions and the international landscape. In these circumstances we must reinvigorate our sense of citizenship and encourage one another to step up and lead with courage and a deep commitment to others, wherever and whenever the need arises.

We must turn our creative gifts to do what we can do to restore secure bonds within our societies, to return to the honest truth that without a healthy attitude to civic duty, we simply will not save what we have built and enjoyed for centuries. We must redouble our commitment to our foundational freedoms, the importance of the family and civil society, the scientific method, equitable market-based economies, the free exchange of ideas, realist geostrategy and a shared concern for those in need.

The ARC network that I am a part of will seek to address these goals and more. United the West may yet stand, but divided we will surely fall.

This article was first published in The Telegraph (UK) on the 23rd of March 2023

A 2019 Australian National University study showed that trust in our institutions and satisfaction with our democracy has hit an all-time low. In 2007 there was a record high level of satisfaction in how well Australia’s democracy was working – 86 per cent. But in 2019 it had nosedived to 59 per cent. Most worryingly, in another ANU survey, trust in our parliamentary system itself has halved from 56 per cent in 1981 to 28 per cent in 2018.

No modern society – certainly not one as multicultural as ­Australia – is going to have uniformity of thinking on the big questions of life and justice, but it is an existential imperative that we do agree on the procedure with which we work through our disagreements. Our procedure is parliamentary democracy. What is its alternative other than tyranny or civil violence?

In his most recent book The Magna Carta of Liberty, author Os Guinness runs through a list of steps that have led us to our present situation.

First, there was a shift in our moral centre of gravity after World War II. Because we defeated tyranny and began to enjoy a historically unprecedented economic boom, the meaning of life became liberty and prosperity, and increasingly less our duties to family, country, and God.

Citizenship in the West became less about what we could do for our country, and more about what our country could do for us. I think it is fair to read Menzies’ immortal Forgotten People speech – 80 years old this year – as largely a rallying cry to not let this spirit of duty die.

Second, is a lack of emphasis in our educational system not just on civic understanding – how our political society works – but on civic appreciation – why we should love our political system, notwithstanding its flaws. If the thought of our teachers teaching children to love our political system strikes us as quaint, this demonstrates how powerful the forces of ideological cynicism have been in our education system.

Third, our historical amnesia. Australians have a deep appreciation of the Anzac heritage, but beyond that, things get vague. We do have an education system that is obsessed with our history, but only the worst aspects of it. ­Google-search what education officials and policymakers have said about historical ignorance among Australians and you’ll find that they’re solely concerned with Indigenous history and massacres. The ruthless focus on the darker moments of our history, with no attempt to explain the positive achievements, has the effect of encouraging our children to believe that they are the inheritors of a nightmarish culture that is not worth defending, in the view of sociologist Frank Furedi.

Fourth, the growing generational and economic divide. Sound economic management is a highly moral imperative if we are to avoid intergenerational injustice. In March 1996, John Howard told the incoming cabinet that we were going to pay down the national debt and end the intergenerational theft. I well recall the moment of dread when I realised that in addition to Peter Costello, John Fahey, Jim Short and Michael Wooldridge, I was to be a member of that razor gang. The work was grinding beyond belief, but Australia continues to live off the balance sheet that we bequeathed the nation.

I believe that Western governments, cowering before our ­culturally polarised societies empowered by social media, have responded poorly to the GFC and Covid. We are now are in danger of doing the same in response to climate change, in that those policies have rewarded asset-holders and the wealthy over the young and more vulnerable members in our societies.

In the Australian context, for example, a serious housing affordability crisis has developed, increasingly turning the Australian dream into a fantasy. This crisis has profound knock-on effects on family formation and the quality of care that children receive in their early years.

In an essay entitled Welcome to the End of Democracy, American demographer Joel Kotkin singles out Australia in particular for once being uniquely egalitarian in terms of home and land ownership. But now Kotkin reports a sharp decline in home ownership for 24 to 35-year-olds from 60 per cent to 45 per cent between 1981 and 2016. And we know what ­direction things have gone in since 2016.

These same young Australians were also forced to make tremendous sacrifices for the older generation during the Covid pandemic. They will be left with the economic cost of the lockdowns. What effect will this have on young citizens’ esteem for the institutions under which they live? Just like the cynicism generated by the Vietnam War was easily exploited by neo-Marxists, so today’s downward social mobility will be an opportunity to sell statist fantasies like Universal Basic Incomes and the raft of policies that roughly make up what many call the Great Reset.

On top of all this, surveys suggest that around half of all young people think the planet is doomed by climate change.

Fifth, the rise of neo-Marxist and postmodern ideology – often called “wokeness”. Wokeness is a direct attack on what Churchill called “variety”, that is, different ways of thinking and living.

Guinness catalogues the development of this ideology which came to dominate our universities and then shape culture more broadly. Centrally, he notes the evolution of Marxist theory from primarily economic to cultural; going from calling for an economic revolution to overthrow capitalism, to a cultural Marxist-postmodern revolution to overthrow Western civilisation via universities and other culture-shaping institutions.

The buzzwords of this Great Awokening, “inclusivity” and “diversity”, turn out in reality mean their exact opposite. Let’s take the recent Manly Sea Eagles controversy. The Manly management wanted the team to be inclusive. Well, the way to be inclusive is to simply not exclude. It’s not rocket science. Notice how in all of this there was not one person who said they had been excluded from the team on the grounds of his sexuality. Not one. By the normal meaning of inclusive the Manly Sea Eagles were, in fact, already inclusive.

But the actions of the team’s management showed that woke inclusivity is actually to exclude and to impose uniformity over genuine diversity, thereby destroying what Churchill called variety. Remember, Manly were already a team of genuine racial, religious, and intellectual diversity: some players agreed with LGBT ideology, and some did not.

What was the result of this initiative of “diversity” and “inclusivity”? Seven players who were never ever accused of excluding or discriminating against anyone were excluded from playing because they did not want to celebrate this particular ideology. In other words, the team that ended up playing was not diverse at all, it was made up only of those who submitted to mandatory ideological uniformity.

Woke diversity and inclusivity is not about rights, or freedom, or diversity or inclusivity: in true Marxist-postmodern fashion, it’s about power. It’s about forcing a uniformity of thinking and acting on a whole culture through schools, corporations, universities, and, increasingly sports: the so-called “long march through the institutions”.

Where will this all go?

One plausible scenario is that social polarisation will die down as people’s basic needs are met and can perpetually indulge in sufficiently stimulating or numbing, distractions.

Leaning on Aldous Huxley a bit, Kotkin wonders whether the future will be people working part- time in a gig economy while being subsidised by some form of Universal Basic Income, spending their lives for the most part consuming videos, drugs, or whatever keeps the dopamine levels high. We become pigs satisfied rather than Socrates dissatisfied, to borrow a phrase from John Stuart Mill. Technology, not religion, becomes the opiate of the masses. This is not that far fetched.

Rod Dreher, in his latest work Live Not By Lies, drawing on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, contends that the most subversive act against the emerging soft totalitarianism is simply to tell the truth. Jordan Peterson has the same message. And famously, Jesus Christ said “the truth will set you free”.

When we are told that there is a climate catastrophe, we say ‘climate challenge, yes, climate catastrophe, no’. To say that there is a climate catastrophe such that we must rapidly revolutionise our economy and energy at great pain to those who can least bear it is, plainly and simply, dangerous. Bad policy, as Sri Lanka should demonstrate, may lead to nothing less than starvation.

When we are told that there is no objective distinction between men and women, or that someone who simply identifies as one or the other is by virtue of that fact one or the other, we say no. We don’t say no because we feel differently, we say no because science and brute reality deems it not true.

When we are told that Western civilisation is little more than a series of crimes against all who are not white, heterosexual males, we say no. Again, we say no not because of how we feel, but because history tells a much more interesting story of a civilisation like any individual of any race, deeply flawed yet capable of tremendous good.

When we are told that Indigenous Australians currently have no real voice and no real agency without some constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament – as the Uluru Statement from the Heart irresponsibly and demoralisingly states – we say no.

Telling the truth requires moral courage, and courage culture is the only effective weapon against woke cancel culture. Cancel culture thrives when those who have the power to stop bullies don’t speak out. To speak out, of course, we have to turn up.

It will not just be a matter of telling the truth that forms part of the resistance. We live in an age of astonishing disengagement by far too many good citizens in the life of our nation. I suspect that without compulsory voting we’d have up to half the electorate not bothering to vote at all. I constantly meet disillusioned citizens who have belonged to political parties in the past that now say they do not want to be involved.

If we are to have our say, we will only be credible when we remember that freedom also demands from us responsibility: the responsibility – the duty – to live in such a way that our actions don’t result in the social problems that become a pretext for the state to expand into all areas of our lives to “save” us from ourselves. In other words, freedom cannot simply be doing what we want. It cannot even merely be defined as doing whatever we like as long as we don’t harm others, because we have an almost infinite capacity to convince ourselves that our actions are harmless, when in fact they are not.

This article was first published in The Australian on the 28th of August 2022.