The idea that humans can utterly reinvent themselves, while an ancient desire, is reaching its apex in this era of artificial intelligence. And unlike the past, our modern efforts are unfettered in their progress.

In the past such breaking of illicit boundaries came with salutary warnings. Icarus’ lofty ambitions to loose himself from the surly bonds of earth result in him taking a fatal tumble.

In the Biblical narrative, the tower of Babel – reaching as it does for the heavens – results in God’s curse and the confusion of language in order to restrain unfettered, godlike progress (Genesis 11).

Pride comes before a fall. Religious humility, coupled with societal disapproval of breaking one’s boundaries, served as ethical barriers to our efforts, while science was restricted by its own limitations.

Such things are no longer the case. With rampant materialism, a transgressive ethical culture steeped in queer theory, and soaring ambition and achievements in the technological realm in the past fifty years, the sky is no longer the limit. The sun’s fire – and ire - has been tamed.

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Shock Immigration

This number should shock you: in the year to December 2025, Australia’s population grew by 412,500 people, and net overseas migration accounted for 301,000 of that. That’s not natural growth. That’s not Australians having more babies. That’s a policy choice, made by people who never asked you if you actually wanted it.

Let’s start with the scale of what’s happened since COVID, because the Government is currently trying very hard to convince you it’s “got migration under control.”

Net overseas migration hit a record 538,000 in 2022–23. It fell to 429,000 the year after. Then 306,000 in 2024–25. The Government is trying to spin this as a win for them, as though they’re getting numbers under control.

But the truth is, immigration is still more than 50% above the pre-COVID average of roughly 190,000 people per year. And Treasury itself forecasts migration will settle near 225,000 by 2026–27, still well above that pre-COVID baseline.

So what’s actually happened isn’t “control.” Immigration will just be permanently higher. We are bringing in a new Hobart’s worth of people, every single year, indefinitely and being told that’s apparently the responsible option.

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Last week at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London, I had that feeling you get when you’re watching a movie with friends. You know the one. You have seen the movie before, but they have not. You know the funny part is coming up. They do not. Oh, the delicious tension!

So as Australia’s own Sall Grover strode confidently across the stage in front of thousands to deliver what was one of the speeches of the conference, I was watching everyone else watching her. She did not disappoint.

For those who do not know, Sall is the brave woman who, after rejecting a female-identifying man from her women-only social media app – Giggle for Girls -, found herself in an appalling Kafka-esque legal nightmare in Australia that has seen her lose, not once, but twice, in the Federal court under Australia’s anti-discrimination legislation.

So what was the funny part? Sall simply announced the name of the case, “Giggle versus Tickle”, which set everyone off. As it should.

Yet the deep irony of the case is that it is no laughing matter. A man who has renamed himself Roxanne Tickle has now successfully sued a woman in the courts – not once but twice, on the basis that to block him from membership is in violation of the changes to the Sex Discrimination Act, made in 2013.

Those changes were pushed through by Australia’s only female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who herself is viewed as a women’s rights champion in many quarters for standing up to misogyny.

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After riding the tube from Heathrow, I boarded a bus to my London hotel only to enter a confronting scene: an unkempt gentleman who decided to lecture his fellow passengers about the evils of Western civilisation.

Announcing his immigrant bona fides, he proceeded to rail against colonisation and white supremacy, before singling out a young Chinese woman, a native British couple and yours truly for a side of race-based insults — all the while assuring his shell-shocked audience that he wasn’t a racist himself.

My mind replaying the recent murder of Henry Nowak, I kept my head low and couldn’t get off that bus quickly enough.

I was well aware of the deteriorating social milieu in the UK before flying in for ARC 2026 but I wasn’t quite prepared to taste it first-hand so soon after arriving.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Walking to the conference on the first day, I was forced to slip sideways through a crowd of anti-Jewish protestors shouting ‘FASCISTS!’ at those of us brave enough to attend.

Mercifully, the atmosphere inside ARC was far more pleasant.

Needless to say that the event’s premise — that the West is in the throes of its own self-demolition and is sorely in need of renaissance — hardly needed to be underscored.

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Iran has attempted to develop nuclear weapons ever since the Ayatollah seized power in the 1979 revolution.

On 28th February, Donald Trump joined Israel in attacking Iran based on assessments that Tehran had enriched uranium to 60 percent which is a short technical step away from achieving the weapons’ grade level of 90 percent.

If true, Iran was only weeks away from developing a rudimentary but destructive nuclear bomb. For this reason, Trump should be commended for drawing an urgent redline of no nuclear weapons for Iran and responding firmly when the possibility of it being crossed was real and imminent.

We now have what appears to be a tenuous ceasefire based on conditions which fall well short of what Trump’s supporters and detractors would like when it comes to putting significant and enduring constraints on Tehran. It is too early to conclude whether Trump has meekly folded in what is still a drawn-out negotiation with Tehran.

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Mainstream Australia is at last hearing of the travails of one Sall Grover.

A young Sydney mum and entrepreneur, Sall created a women’s-only social networking app called Giggle for Girls, and was subsequently sued by a bloke in a frock for discrimination.

Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act — and the courts that interpreted it — decided that no, women don’t deserve their own spaces, and yes, men can be women too.

Sall is down at least a million dollars for her trouble, has shed many tears, and still has a High Court challenge ahead of her.

As heroic as Sall Grover is — and I commend her — she happens to be collateral in a much larger war raging. I’m not talking about a culture war but a theological one.

Since the 1960s, Australia, like the rest of the West, has set about unshackling itself from the transcendent norms upon which our civilisation was built: in a word, Christianity.

This began as a game of subtraction: a stripping away of taboos, sexual boundaries and cultural confines. But nature abhors a vacuum, and one set of values will inevitably give way to another. Set aside one theology and a novel one will always take its place.

The subset of theology known as anthropology — what it means to be human — marks the frontline of this theological war.

Under Christianity, there were two sexes: male and female. Marriage and family formed naturally, and only, from this pairing. Sex was sacred and reserved for matrimony. Life was sacred too, from the womb to the tomb.

Australia didn’t just subtract those Christian beliefs. We substituted them. Under the new woo-woo anthropology, our desires are our identity, sex is a spectrum, a child can be born in the wrong body, and life begins only when it’s wanted.

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“We just got attacked racially by some white person.” These were the first words the Hampshire police heard as a murderer’s brother called them to report a crime that never happened. As we will see, the criminals knew exactly what they were doing in setting up the scene for the police with these words.

Few of us who watched the footage of Henry Nowak dying in Hampshire police custody will forget the harrowing image. A teenager pleading to the police for help, only to be called a liar, and then dragged along the ground, handcuffed, and read his rights, all before he died.

This is not about knives. It is not even about the right of Sikh people to carry a kirpan. This is about a whole police establishment, indeed, the culture-shaping institutions of a whole society, being taken over by a fatal ideology. It is about a country whose elites have drunk deeply from the cup of cultural Marxist critical race theory. These elites have created laws, policies, procedures, and institutions to ensure that in the course of justice, white Britons are considered racist by default, and all others are presumed to be their victims.

Henry Nowak, sober and completely unarmed, was stabbed five times. His attacker, Vickrum Digwa, actually filmed him trying to flee, and even filmed Henry as he lay dying. The murderer stole Henry’s phone, preventing him from being able to call an ambulance. The murderer’s brother called the Hampshire police to lie about Henry having racially abused and assaulted his brother. He repeatedly lied when asked whether weapons were involved. He never mentioned that Henry was gravely injured from a stab wound. The mother hid the murder weapon. No one called an ambulance as Henry lay dying. If they had, perhaps Henry could have been saved.

When the Hampshire police arrived there was no question in their mind that Henry had committed a race hate crime. Henry pleaded with the police that he had been stabbed and that he couldn’t breathe. The police dismissed his claim of being stabbed and ignored the nine occasion when he said “I can’t breathe”. Imagine the relief Henry must have felt when the police arrived, thinking they would save him, only to be called a liar. Unlike George Floyd, at no point did Henry resist arrest. He was already lying on the ground helpless and, as it turns out, dying. One English news presenter asked “why anyone with a sane mind would behave the way the officers behaved?” The answer is unsurprising. The UK police has been taken over by an anti-Britain, and it must be said, anti-white ideology that masquerades under the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

The UK police has an “anti-racism commitment”, which sounds good until we realise that so-called “anti-racism” is actually “critical race theory”, a cultural Marxist ideology that teaches that white people are by definition racist, and even that non-whites cannot actually be racist. Anti-racism emphasises systemic and institutional racism as well as “unconscious bias”. The “anti-racism commitment” policy includes “responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances and experiences, with understanding that these will be racialised….” It explicitly says “It does not mean treating everyone ‘the same’ or being ‘colour blind’”. The current police “race action plan” promises to increase “the awareness and understanding of every officer and member of staff of racism, anti-racism, Black history and its connection to policing….” Essentially, police around the UK have now been trained for years to treat allegations and crime scenes involving minorities and accusations of racism differently to the rest. For many UK police officers, the biggest fear they have is being vexatiously accused of racism.

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Speed running is what Usain Bolt is famous for. But “speedrunning” is what kids do when they compete to finish a video game in the fastest possible time. For example, the current world record for speedrunning the popular children’s game Minecraft is 6 minutes, 50 seconds from start to finish.

True lovers of the game can spend a lifetime playing it, but for those in a hurry, there’s always a shortcut.

It’s the same with education. True lovers of learning can spend a lifetime reading books and accumulating degrees, but educational speedrunners can now finish an online Bachelor’s degree in under eight weeks, then do Master’s in another five.

And no, university speedrunning is not limited to dodgy, unaccredited degree mills.

In the US, many reputable public universities offer online degrees that are designed to be completed “at your own pace.” Most don’t publish statistics, but one—the University of Maine at Presque Isle—was brave enough to divulge its completion rates to the Washington Post.

Out of a recent cohort of 291 undergraduates in UMPI’s “YourPace” program, 27% finished within 8 weeks and 49% within 16 weeks of starting. Over 90% finished their four-year Bachelor’s degrees in under 1 year.

Nor is the 123-year-old UMPI the only American public university to offer such degree pathways. Purdue University in Indiana and Western Governor’s University in Utah are both well-known for letting students finish as quickly as they can turn in the work.

In less entrepreneurial countries like Australia, it might take you a whole year to finish your Bachelor’s degree. That’s the snail’s pace advertised by Open Universities Australia, the online front door for 26 accredited Australian universities.

Most Australian universities now offer “accelerated” 2-year Bachelor’s pathways, with the degrees only taking so long because they won’t let you register for enough classes to finish any faster. But Open Universities offers a helpful work-around to that limit. They suggest that students simply register to study at multiple universities at the same time. Through their own online portal, of course.

Where there’s a will (and a dollar), there’s a way.

Large language degrees

How is it possible to finish a Bachelor’s degree in a year? While working full-time? Amusingly, not having time to attend school due to conflicting work commitments is the number one reason students give for speedrunning these online degrees.

Obviously, the answer is that the students are cheating. They’re not really studying at all. They’re letting AI do all the work for them.

What most of us call AI (artificial intelligence) is actually a class of online tools known as “large language models.” These models include ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and dozens of others.

Large language models are essentially writing agents. They scan the internet for examples of writing that they can mimic on demand. Tell them the topic, and they can instantly deliver high-quality, fully-referenced university research papers to suit any need.

The more examples there are online of any particular kind of writing, the better these AI agents can write it for you.

Thus with literally millions of university students taking basically the same subjects and writing similar papers all over the world, AI writing agents can churn out first-class essay answers on any likely assignment topic. What’s more, the inherent randomness of large language models means that every essay they write is unique.

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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.