Media
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Speeches
July 23, 2026
Introduction and the Ramsay legacy
Thank you very much for that kind introduction, Martin.
It is a pleasure to be here tonight with the Board, staff and your 2026 Scholars.
When I was first elected to the Senate, someone told me it was the best PhD scholarship going around.
It probably wasn’t intended as a compliment.
Senators are sometimes accused - unfairly, of course - of being too academic and aloof, in contrast to our practical and grounded House of Representatives colleagues.
I’m afraid I am going to affirm their prejudices tonight.
I am very envious because you are the recipients of what is actually the best postgraduate scholarship in Australia.
It is the best scholarship in Australia in part because it is generous and it helps facilitate access to the world’s finest academic institutions.
But it is special because it is a scholarship with a purpose.
While an ambitious student would be forgiven for happily accepting sponsorship from any source to further their studies, it says something about you that you sought and have been awarded a Ramsay scholarship.
The Ramsay Centre recognises that there is such a thing as Western Civilisation.
That it is worthy of serious examination.
That the ideals it encompasses should be understood, and even preserved for future generations.
In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke wrote:
[Society] is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
Institutions like Ramsay and scholars like you have a critical role to play in this partnership, which is a theme I will return to tonight.
When I was an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne 20 years ago, the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation did not yet exist.
So, it is a very happy coincidence that my Alma Mater just last week became the latest University to establish a partnership with Ramsay.
It is a positive development because it supports students financially who are interested in the study of Western Civilisation, no doubt making it possible for some for whom these studies are not an option without a scholarship.
It also sends a demand signal to universities that the study of Western Civilisation is valued and worthwhile.
It will hopefully broaden and enrich the humanities curriculum, which has withered at many Australian universities in recent decades.
It is also a welcome shift from the myopic debates of 2018 and 2019 where pitched battles were fought to keep Ramsay off-campus.But I was amused to read a media release from the student union, which derivatively complained that the Centre was “Eurocentric”, “right-wing” and warned the university’s integrity and independence may be compromised by the arrangement.
When Ramsay faced similar criticisms when it was first established, academic Andrew Gleeson, after analysing the draft reading list of the program mischievously argued:
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[it] reveals a cunning left-wing plot to subvert the established order of capitalism. Consider this selection from the curriculum’s texts. students are introduced to sexual politics through the notorious bawdy of Chaucer and Shakespeare. They also study John Milton, that infamous republican and revolutionary, whose greatest literary creation was an epic poem celebrating insurrection against the Christian God. In the study of the Enlightenment, pride of place is given to radically democratic and liberal figures like Locke and Kant, feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft, radicals like Rousseau ― an inspiring spirit of the French revolution ― and Thomas Paine, the nemesis of conservative hero Edmund Burke. As we reach the last couple of hundred years, the fig leaf of traditionalist appearances is shed to reveal an openly Bolshie syllabus: Nietzsche and Freud ― scourges of Christianity both ― black radicals like W.E.B. Du Bois, and even Marx and Foucault!
Of course, if you were genuinely worried about the integrity and independence of our universities, the Ramsay Centre wouldn’t be your primary concern.
For example, I searched for but couldn’t find any statements from the student union about Melbourne University’s Confucius Institute, which was only recently closed after operating for 17 years.
That institution was - charitably - a soft-power initiative by a foreign authoritarian government which has been accused by human rights groups and the United Nations of committing crimes against humanity targeting ethnic and religious minorities.
If anything has compromised the integrity and independence of Australian universities in recent decades it has been their dependence on the People’s Republic of China, not a donation from a deceased Australian businessman whose foundation supports the study of great books.
Paul Ramsay’s legacy is in fact one of the great acts of Australian philanthropy. He has auspiced an institution which will outlast us all.
I am taking it as a sign of progress that outside the narrow confines of some student unions, the study of Western Civilisation is not as triggering as it was only a few years ago.
It is not fashionable these days, but I remain a fan of the Spiderman theory of international relations - with great power comes great responsibility.
I much prefer it to the billiard-ball theory which argues that the only thing which matters is how states interact, not what happens inside them.
If we have the power to stop bad things from happening in the world, we should take reasonable steps to do so.
Australia is not a superpower. But we are not powerless either.
In our own region, our words and actions carry great weight.
Even globally, we can add our heft to the collective efforts of others to shape the behaviours of other states and help enforce norms which are consistent with our values and our interests.
It is particularly important we do so in an age of rising authoritarianism.
The unipolar moment after the end of the Cold War, when the United States was the pre-eminent global power able to uphold the liberal international order, is over.
International institutions are failing.
Great powers are thumbing their nose at conventions which at least sometimes restrained their excesses in the past.
We are now returning to a much more anarchic international system that has defined most of human history.
Many are pessimistic about the chances of liberal democracies prevailing in this environment.
I am more optimistic than that.
But it does require all states - including middle powers like Australia - to shoulder their fair share of the burden of upholding the international system as best as we can.
It’s why I championed the Magnitsky Human Rights sanctions regime which allows us to directly target foreign corrupt officials and rights abusers with personal financial consequences. It’s also why I remain an enthusiastic supporter of AUKUS, which if executed properly, will contribute to a collective deterrent effort to hopefully prevent war in our region and preserve peace and stability for all states in the Indo-Pacific.
These existential questions of international security are what normally absorb my attention every day as the Shadow Minister for Defence.
But they are not what I want to talk about tonight.
The institutions of Western Civilisation
The unique inheritance of Western Civilisation is not just the great books, art, music and science - although they certainly have shaped our culture, society and identity in a profound way.
It is the institutions of Western Civilisation, which we have inherited, that are truly unique and consequential.
Literal institutions like our Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, our common-law system of courts and an independent judiciary, and our universities.
But also intangible, philosophical institutions that underpin our tangible institutions - like the concept of individual rights and freedoms including free speech, religious liberty, property rights and pluralism. As the historian Niall Ferguson argues in Civilisation: The West and the Rest:
The multi-million-dollar question is why, beginning around 1500, did a few small polities on the western edge of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world?…It was not material wealth…It was an institutional package...the differential between the West and the Rest was institutional.
For Australia these institutions were primarily, though not exclusively, inherited, developed, and refined from the British, and translated to our continent at settlement.
As John Howard, founding chair of the Ramsay Centre, has said:
Whatever debates we may have in the future about the constitutional arrangements in this country, nothing can erase the debt we owe to our British legacy and inheritance. Nothing can alter the fact that the great institutions that we have derived from the British Isles - fashioned, tempered, altered and moulded to our own Australian purposes - but nonetheless that golden thread of association with parliamentary democracy developed according to the Westminster tradition...
Without these institutions Australia would not be the relatively prosperous, harmonious, tolerant liberal democracy it is today.
As David Kemp wrote in The Land of Dreams:
The idea that each individual human being is equally valuable and worthy of respect regardless of their beliefs, religion, social class, gender, nationality, race or ethnic group - and that society can and should be governed to recognise this - has not been a widely accepted idea in human history. Even less common has been the associated idea that each person has an equal right to pursue happiness or fulfilment in this world according to their own desires. Throughout most of history, and in much of this world today, these have been radical and, for many, almost absurd, unimaginable and unachievable ideals.
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 which 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
I appreciate the irony of speaking about the dangers of populism while dressed in black tie, in a magnificent venue like this and to a crowd of people who’ve just received generous scholarships to attend the world’s most elite universities.
Some would argue that a fitter and turner, gig-economy worker or fish and chip shop owner has more practical concerns than preserving the institutions of Western Civilisation, like the price of electricity.
And it is true that economic considerations are responsible for a lot of the legitimate grievances many Australians feel towards the status quo.
A poll this week laid bare the bleak outlook for our fellow citizens.
A record 68% believe our country is heading in the wrong direction.
44% say they are experiencing personal financial distress. 47% 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 five per cent since 2021, when the average OECD member has seen a five per cent increase.
It is understandable why distrust in our institutions rises when people feel like it is not delivering for them materially.
In fact a Kiel Institute study of 365 democratic elections since 1948 shows that there is a direct correlation between a spike in inflation and an increase in support for anti-establishment political parties.
But the danger is these anti-establishment 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.
And they are most often defined by their total lack of regard for our institutions more broadly.
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 authoritarian controlled applications to serve content which 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 which have underpinned our progress, prosperity and harmony for centuries.
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.
That’s a topic outside my portfolio and for another occasion.
Second, defend and, where necessary, reform the institutions of Western Civilisation so that they can survive this disrupted era to be passed on to future generations.
It is this second task that I will focus on tonight.
The most fundamental idea of the 'small c' conservative philosophy is that institutions must evolve gradually over time through the accumulation of wisdom.
It’s a sentiment expressed by many, but I particularly liked this framing from Thomas Jefferson in a letter he wrote in 1816:
I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions…But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times...
For the sake of brevity there are three institutions I will focus on tonight:
Universities. The rule of law. And pluralism. Although there are many more that are under assault and in need of reform to survive.
Universities
Given our reason for being here tonight, higher education is an obvious place to start.
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.
The medical advancements alone achieved thanks to research commenced in a university lab have profoundly transformed our lives for the better.
Right now though, many universities feel underfunded and under-appreciated.
They warn policy makers their business models are unsustainable and they lack sufficient public funding, and interventions like the Job-Ready Graduates Scheme are leading them to cut staff and courses, and hurting the research so critical to their international rankings and prestige.
I know many universities and their defenders believe that these policies are the cause of their current malaise.
But this gets their dilemma exactly backwards.
They are not the cause. They are the symptom.
The reason why universities are not better funded and supported by our political system is. because they have lost the broad social license to sustain public support throughout the political cycle.
And the reason for that is that a significant proportion of society - particularly those who identify with the centre-right of the ideological spectrum - 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.
A new paper by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in the US, using rich data available from disclosed political donations, shows the average American academic is, and I quote, “only slightly less left on the political spectrum than Bernie Sanders.”
A survey conducted by FIRE found that only 20 per cent of American academics believed a conservative would be welcome in their university department.
It’s gotten so bad that even mild-mannered moderates and American liberals like Jonathan Haidt think it is a crisis for universities:
The truth-seeking function of universities does not work properly without the presence of diverse viewpoints. This is especially true when it comes to contested social and political questions.
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Taboos, blind spots, groupthink and the politicization of scientific standards haven’t just made academic research narrower and worse, these trends have alienated the general public and reduced public confidence in higher education since 2015, not just on the right but across the ideological spectrum. Unsurprisingly, the increasing ideological conformity of the professoriate is reflected in the decreasing range of ideas that students encounter in the classroom. I don’t believe Cabinet would have agreed to a job-ready 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 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. They sometimes use the language of empiricism as a cloak, and claim to be “open-minded” but the truth is they are just seeking evidence which they can use to justify their prejudices. Universities should be alarmed that four years of centre-left government has seen no meaningful increase to their funding, no changes to the reviled job-ready graduates scheme, cuts to their international student numbers and a massively increased regulatory burden.The recent, troubling, antisemitism crisis on campus - in violation of all the stated principles universities espouse, has not helped. This is not a sector which enjoys a strong social licence. To address it, 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 was as underrepresented among their faculty as conservatives and classical liberals, every university would establish a working group, hold a symposium, host an international conference, impose quotas or targets and launch a new scholarship to fix it.
Second, prioritise research in the national interest and tell the Australian people who ultimately fund it about this critical contribution.
One of the most frustrating things I hear in my portfolio when speaking to academics and Vice-Chancellors is about all the wonderful defence and national security research they do that they can’t talk about.
If they couldn’t talk about it primarily because it was classified or sensitive that would be one thing.
But the reason they tell me they can’t promote this work is because it would be controversial among some staff and students.
This is not only weak, it is a fundamental breach of the principle of academic freedom.
The angriest student or the loudest colleague has no right to dictate what another academic researches.
Although I share many of the frustrations of my ideological fellow-travellers about our universities, I recognise it is not a good thing for our society or our civilisation if they become further marginalised and ostracised.
Strong universities with mainstream public support are critical to a healthy civil society.
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.
Without that, either criminality or vigilante justice prevails.
And yet, decisions of our justice system are more routinely becoming sensationalised.
As you know, there is a high-profile prosecution of a former Australian solider currently before the courts, following allegations of war crimes.
I have not ventured any opinion on the merits or otherwise of the case because, unlike some of my parliamentary colleagues, I do not want to run the risk of contempt of court.
Nor should any of us want to do anything which undermines the presumption of innocence or a fair trial.
But we have recently seen this case become so politicised - literally - that a photo of an accused person was displayed at polling booths as a tactic to generate votes.
To say this is a regrettable trend would be a gross understatement.
And the risks it poses to the administration of justice - which needs to not only be fair, but be seen to be fair - are serious.
But like universities, our institutions of justice are not beyond reproach nor immune from the case for reform.
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 in Australia, 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.
The Victorian government requested a review of parole laws following the tragic murder of Jill Meagher in 2012, because her murderer had been on parole at the time for other violent sexual offences against women.
He was subsequently convicted of sexual crimes against 12 people.I once heard an academic involved in sentencing reform speak at a conference about this case.
He claimed that the review concluded their work at a time that ensured it was considered by government away from the heat and anger of the Meagher case, so that they could come to an appropriately measured judgement.
But Victorians were right to be angry about this and other examples of women being failed by the justice system.
They were entitled then - as they are now - to swift action to reform our justice system on issues like parole and bail, to ensure they meet public expectations.
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.
Unless they want to see more and more proscriptive legislation which further curtails judicial discretion on things like mandatory minimum sentences and bail, those appointed to the courts would be wise to reflect on public sentiment in their decisions.
They would also be well advised to steer clear of political controversy.
A recent speech by a High Court Justice displayed a puzzling misapprehension about our democratic system of government and was an inappropriate intervention into political debate.
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 to address a growing lack of intellectual diversity at law faculties.
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.
This was necessary in her view - and mine - because the High Court had made contentious decisions which impinged on the Parliament’s ability to legislate, for example regarding citizenship in Love v Thoms.
For this, she is accused of “court stacking” and associated with a North Korean judicial college.
To justify his attack on an elected parliamentarian and a legal society, 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. This has made it my business and it has made it your business as custodians of the law; we are all interested in this, whether we like it or not. 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 their own colleagues.
But in a common-law democracy like ours, judicial appointments are solely a matter for the elected governments of this country, and it is perfectly appropriate for them to consider a range of qualifications for the bench, including judicial philosophy.
How much considerations like those should enter into decision making is properly a matter for political debate - reasonable people can differ, and political parties may disagree.
Judging by the debate that followed, if the Justice wants to politicise the court, he is going the right way about it.
Personally though, 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.
Nothing would further diminish the standing of our justice system in an era of populism than judges publicly weighing in to political debates.
Pluralism
Finally, one of those intangible, philosophical institutions which has been so critical to the functioning of our harmonious and free society is the principle of pluralism.
It is one of the essential features that distinguishes free societies of Western Civilisation to other systems.
It is grounded in the concepts of freedom of belief and conscience.
Although I am not personally religious, I acknowledge the Judeo-Christian origins of these ideas.The historian Tom Holland has argued these individual liberties are inseparable from a Christian worldview:
To live in a Western country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions… So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilisation that it has come to be hidden from view.
There has been a lot of debate in recent weeks about how we practice 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, which has been deeply suspicious of social engineering - whether practiced by the left or the right.
Equally, the moral relativism displayed by some on the left, who seem to believe the only distinctive feature of Australian culture is we have no culture at all, is not a recipe for a cohesive society.
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 which 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 let live 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, as Isaiah Berlin explained in his last essay for the New York Review of Books in 1998:
If pluralism is a valid view, and respect between systems of values which are not necessarily hostile to each other is possible, then toleration and liberal consequences follow, as they do not either from monism (only one set of values is true, all the others are false) or from relativism (my values are mine, yours are yours, and if we clash, too bad, neither of us can claim to be right).
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.
That includes especially respect for liberal democracy, the rule of law and the rights and freedoms of others - including religious liberty and freedom of speech.
If we don’t, we run the very serious risk of descending into a nation of tribes.
Without a common set of shared values - and a sense of unifying Australian identity - we can have no hope of sustaining the social cohesion we all aspire to.
That is why I would both 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 practice 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.
Your responsibility
I have no doubt every one of you has worked exceptionally hard to be here tonight.
Many of you would not have had easy starts in life, others I am sure have overcome serious challenges to receive this significant honour.But regardless of how you got here, the opportunity before you is an amazing privilege that most Australians could only ever dream of.
Although I am sadly not a Ramsay Scholar, I am very conscious of the privilege that comes with my position.
And just like Spiderman, with that privilege comes responsibility.
My appeal to you tonight is to accept your burden of responsibility.
In an era of disruption and populism, our institutions are under strain, and in some cases outright attack.
What really concerns me about the populist urge is that is the pursuit of power unfettered by principle or convention.
It can be sought by any means. And once obtained used for any purpose.
That is a starkly different vision for our country than one we have enjoyed in the past -whatever its faults.
We would find our country hard to recognise if this ever occurred.
No one is better placed than you to help defend and renew these institutions so that we can pass them down to the next generation.
You are students of our civilisation, and you are about to deepen your knowledge of our history and our culture and our story.
As the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton admonishes us:
We do not merely study the past: we inherit it, and inheritance brings with it not only the rights of ownership, but the duties of trusteeship. Things fought for and died for should not be idly squandered. For they are the property of others, who are not yet born.
Whether you share my particular brand of politics or not, I encourage you to take up this responsibility in whatever path you choose.
Whether you are in public life, the law, business, academia, science or the arts, you will have the opportunity to help sustain and strengthen our institutions for future generations.
Ultimately, I think our institutions are strong enough that they will prevail.
But I acknowledge that your generation will have to contend with obstacles previous ones did not.
There is in some quarters of public life today an open contempt for the truth, where every person gets to opt in to or fashion their own version of reality.
Some political actors don’t even feel compelled to take responsibility for the things they said yesterday.
And every charlatan and grifter sees an opportunity to monetise this.
Thanks to social media, they now have the channels to do so.
Thanks to generative AI, they can mass-produce it.
The only antidote to this is knowledge and perspective.
And you are about to acquire both in spades. I urge you to use it.
ENDS