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Op-eds
July 24, 2026
The unique inheritance of Western civilisation is not just the great books, art, music and science, although they certainly have shaped our culture in a profound way. It is the institutions of Western civilisation that are truly unique and consequential. Institutions such as our Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, our common law system of courts and an independent judiciary, and our universities.
For Australia, these institutions were primarily, though not exclusively, inherited, developed, and refined from the British, and translated to our continent at settlement. We should never assume just because we inherited these remarkable institutions from previous generations that transferring them to future generations is assured.
Because we are living in an age of disruption and populism. And the institutions we may have taken for granted in the past do not have the near universal support and approval they might have once enjoyed.
They are fragile. In many quarters they are under outright attack.
The populist challenge A poll this week laid bare the bleak outlook for our fellow citizens. A record 68 per cent believe our country is heading in the wrong direction; 44 per cent say they are experiencing personal financial distress; 47 per cent believe they are worse off than their parents were at the same stage of life.
They are right to be angry. Australia's post-pandemic economic performance has been dismal. Real wages have fallen by 5 per cent since 2021, when the average OECD member has seen a 5 per cent increase. It is understandable why distrust in our institutions rises when people feel like it is not delivering for them materially. But the danger is these antiestablishment parties don't just mine grievance about poor economic performance. Whether on the populist left or right, they bring with them a much broader wagon of grudges and resentments.
Right now, they also have a helping hand from some foreign state and non-state actors, who see strategic advantage and even profit from weaponising our distrust and amplifying our divisions. It is easier than ever before for them to do so.
Once, they would have had to mount a sophisticated human intelligence operation to influence journalists, editors or producers who controlled access to the public square in democracies. Now they can pump our public square full of propaganda by hijacking Western-headquartered social media platforms using inauthentic accounts or by covertly paying mercenary influencers to promote their agenda.
Even easier is secretly putting their thumb on the scale of the algorithm of foreign authoritariancontrolled applications to serve content that divides and distracts us.
The risk today is that understandable discontent with Australia's recent economic performance a solvable policy problem is used as a vehicle to trash our political, legal and social institutions.
Australians struggling with the cost of living have not suddenly embraced conspiracy theories about chemtrails, the Federal Reserve, school shootings, 9/11 and pharmaceutical companies. But populism is a package deal.
Voting to express your reasonable frustrations with the established parties of government brings with it a lot of baggage. Those of us who want to preserve what is great about our Western society and way of life have two tasks.
First, address our economic underperformance to remove the main driver of populist discontent. Second, defend and, where necessary, reform the institutions of Western civilisation so they can survive this disrupted era.
The most fundamental idea of the "small c" conservative philosophy is that institutions must evolve gradually over time through the accumulation of wisdom. There are three institutions I will focus on: universities, the rule of law and pluralism.
Our universities There is no institution more critical to the progress and success of Western civilisation that is more vulnerable in a populist era than our universities. The prosperity, progress and advancement of our civilisation in science, art and culture cannot be separated from the teaching, research and thinking conducted in our universities over centuries.
Right now, though, many universities feel underfunded and under-appreciated. They warn policymakers their business models are unsustainable, and the lack of public funding and interventions such as the Job-Ready Graduates Scheme, are leading them to cut staff and courses. I know many universities and their defenders believe these policies are the cause of their current malaise.
But this gets their dilemma exactly backwards. The reason why universities are not better funded and supported by our political system is because they have lost the broad social licence to sustain public support. And the reason for that is that a significant proportion of society feel estranged from our system of higher education.
Classical liberals and conservatives believe their perspectives are unwelcome, at least in the humanities departments at universities across Australia. Australian data is limited, but there is no reason to think our universities differ much from American higher education, and there the data is stark and extensive. I don't believe cabinet would have agreed to a JobReady Graduates Scheme that deprioritised the teaching of humanities, or allowed their fees to rise significantly, if they felt that they had a stake in what is taught there. But most Coalition MPs would tell you they regard what is exclusively taught at universities as openly hostile to their beliefs, and many of their constituents agree.
And if universities think that's bad, the movement that seeks to replace centre-right politics in this country makes a Coalition government look like a walk in the park for higher education.
These are people who often display open contempt for expertise, and gleefully indulge in the most absurd conspiracy theories in the face of all evidence.
Universities should be alarmed that four years of centre-left government has seen no meaningful increase to their funding, no changes to the Job-Ready Graduates Scheme, cuts to their international student numbers and a massively increased regulatory burden. The recent, troubling antisemitism crisis on campus has not helped.
Universities need to do two things. First, make a meaningful attempt to ensure there is a diversity of views, especially in their humanities faculties. If any other group in society were as underrepresented among their faculty as conservatives and classical liberals, every university would establish a working group to fix it.
Second, prioritise research in the national interest, and tell the Australian people who ultimately fund it about this critical contribution.
The rule of law The second institution I am gravely concerned about is the rule of law. One of the few things that separates a free and ordered society from domestic anarchy is the belief that a justice system will ensure wrongdoers are punished fairly. And yet decisions of our justice system are more routinely becoming sensationalised.
As you know, there is a highprofile prosecution of a former Australian soldier currently before the courts, following allegations of war crimes. Unlike some of my parliamentary colleagues, I do not want to run the risk of contempt of court. But we have recently seen this case become so politicised that a photo of an accused person was displayed at polling booths as a tactic to generate votes.
Public support for the rule of law and, critically, an independent judiciary, is undermined when sentencing fails to meet community expectations. There have been too many cases, especially with violent and sexual crimes, where perpetrators are given light sentences. While we do not sentence criminals by opinion poll, and the individual circumstances of each case are relevant, too often the legal system appears out of touch with the people whose justice it is supposed to administer.
Nothing fuels populist discontent in our justice system more than the perception their justified outrage at its failings is being carefully managed to resist necessary reform.
In May, Justice Beech-Jones launched a bizarre attack on a small voluntary legal association, the Samuel Griffith Society, and its American equivalent, the Federalist Society. He accused the Society of misappropriating Samuel Griffith's legacy and being engaged in "ominous" activism on university campuses.
The Justice was particularly concerned about a paper presented to an SGS conference by my former Senate colleague, Amanda Stoker, who advocated taking greater care to consider the judicial philosophy of potential candidates for the bench before appointing them. For this, she is accused of "court stacking" and associated with a North Korean judicial college.
To justify his attack, Justice Beech-Jones commented extensively on US domestic public policy issues, including gun control, and said: "Ordinarily all this would be none of my business but these methods are being advocated for in Australia ... To adapt a phrase, they have driven into my lane and they have driven into yours. If anyone thinks this particular US style of court stacking and judicial decision-making is a good idea, then go and live there."
The problem, as the Justice surely knows, is that judicial appointments are not "his lane". He may wish to live in a country where a cozy club of judges chooses its own colleagues. But in a common law democracy such as ours, judicial appointments are solely a matter for the elected governments of this country. I don't want to live in a country where the decisions of judges begin to be called into question because of their unwise interventions into political debate.
Pluralism Another of those intangible, philosophical institutions that has been so critical to the functioning of our harmonious and free society is the principle of pluralism.
There has been a lot of debate in recent weeks about how we practise multiculturalism in Australia. Two things can be true at the same time: That Australia is a multicultural country. Also that it's reasonable to disagree about whether the policies that underpin multiculturalism are working well, or not. One thing that would be totally alien to our history and political culture would be a government-imposed monoculture. We should be very wary of those on the right who want to import foreign concepts of cultural uniformity to Australia.
This has never been part of the Australian tradition. I do not agree with those who argue that "diversity is our strength". Diversity in and of itself is not a strength. There are many diverse countries today that are not strong at all. Our strength is that despite our diversity, we have generally been a harmonious and cohesive society. This is thanks to pluralism. We have a live-and-letlive philosophy. Most Australians are comfortable that their neighbour may observe their own cultural traditions and have their own religious beliefs. But pluralism is not relativism.
In an Australian context, that means we can and should insist on the respect for and adherence to shared Australian values as part of any successful embrace of multiculturalism. If we don't, we run the very serious risk of descending into a nation of tribes.
That is why I would never support our migration system discriminating against someone on the basis of their race, religion or nationality, as some have advocated, and I am more than comfortable with it being discerning about their values.
Frankly, the explosion of antisemitism in Australia in recent years is partly because we have failed to do this. We cannot practise multiculturalism in a way that tears us apart. We should never be afraid to insist that people who make a life here be from among the many in the world who share our values and want to sustain them, not those who want to change them.
Senator James Paterson is opposition defence spokesman. This is an edited version of a speech he delivered to the Ramsay Centre on Thursday evening in Sydney.
Unlike some of my parliamentary colleagues, I do not want to run the risk of contempt of court. But we have recently seen this case become so politicised that a photo of an accused person was displayed at polling booths as a tactic to generate votes