Young Liberals Speech

27 January 2007

A Narrative of Success

When the great Sir Robert Menzies founded the Liberal Party he spoke famously about the "forgotten people".

He referred to them, even in our relatively classless society as the "Middle Class" - we might refer to them now as "aspirational voters".

Menzies said these people are "the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones" and he said we would "destroy them at our peril."

Menzies understood human nature and the market place.

He knew that the silent majority wanted neither to be mendicant or idly indulgent.

Rather most of us want to make good our own lives and those of our families.

Most of us are keen to work diligently and live responsibly so long as we can see worthwhile rewards for our efforts.
And most of us understand that through work and fair dealings we prosper as people and as a society.

And so, as conservative-minded people, we see individual freedom and responsibility and a focus on enterprise and initiative as driving forces of a just and prosperous community.

Where the so-called progressives, the Left, see that the role of Government is to create or shape a fair society - we conservatives believe Government needs primarily to allow a fair and prosperous society to flourish.

My point here is that conservative-minded people are, by our very nature, qualified optimists.

We are people who have and value realistic hope.

We are clear-eyed about human nature and human frailty.

But we understand the ability of individuals to fulfil their aspirations.

We are realistically optimistic about the ability of people to succeed provided they are given a reasonable opportunity. Menzies might well have added to "the strivers, the planners, the ambitious ones" an additional descriptor - the optimistic ones.

The Left, on the other hand, is either hopelessly pessimistic or wildly Utopian.

Leftists describe themselves as "progressives" or "reformers" - and this emphasis on the need for change betrays an unassuageable dissatisfaction about the status quo.

Leftists need to exaggerate problems to underpin their arguments for significant reform.

They promote wealth redistribution because they are pessimistic about the potential for people to accumulate their own and to make proper provision for their children.

They are drawn to a large welfare state because they don't have faith in people's ability to better themselves.

This clash between the qualified optimism of the Right and the extravagant unreason of the Left manifests itself in many ways.

The Labor Party, for instance, seems to have a very negative view of the Australian electorate.

According to their narrative, Labor never gets it wrong - the voters do.

Hence in 2001 Labor decreed that Tampa kept them out of office.

Their argument runs that a "dog-whistle" campaign of racist messages tapped into deep seated fears in the electorate and kept Labor out of office.

Apart from relieving Labor of any realistic accountability or responsibility for its own policy and campaign failures, think what that analysis says about the voters.

Labor has a very dismissive and unrealistic view of the electorate.

It suggests, effectively, that Australian voters are racist and easily manipulated.

In 2004 Labor blamed what it described as a dishonest interest rate scare campaign.

Again Labor exonerates itself of any blame.

The villains of the piece are the "evil conservatives" and, this time, apparently an economically illiterate and gullible public.

What a terribly sad and self defeating view of the people you seek to represent.

Labor's new Leader, Kevin Rudd, is yet to repudiate this narrative.

I think conservative-minded people have a much more realistic view of the Australian public.

Generally, we expect them to be able to make sound judgements.

We don't expect them en masse to be racist, overly greedy or gullible.

By and large we know them to be sensible and perceptive.

And we expect them to exercise a perfectly reasonable degree of self-interest which, more often than not, will match and nurture the national interest.

The Left's narrative has always been either post-revolutionary heaven on earth or this year's version of catastrophe.

When the United States approached the Cold War from a position of strength the Left argued we were marching towards a nuclear holocaust.

Of course, the strength of the West ensured we won the Cold War and greatly reduced the chance of a nuclear conflagration.

The Left argued we would kill the planet through over-population - that there wouldn't be enough food to go around.

But agricultural advances, international aid and microcredit put paid to all of that.

Conservatives look to the practical positives and attack the difficult issues confident in the knowledge that humans can generally muster the innovation and dedication to solve even the most pressing dilemmas.

To wallow in millennial gloom is simply to fudge on the action required to solve the problem.

Despite significant blots in modern history, including preventable genocides, the course of world history, especially since World War Two, is a positive story.

It is good news. But it is good news we seldom hear.

In a new Cato Institute publication "The improving state of the world" by economist Indur Goklany, some remarkable statistics are analysed.

Capitalism, free markets, technology and globalisation are combining to improve the lives of most people on the planet by most available measures.

Goklany wisely does not seek to downplay the immense challenges of poverty and deprivation - not to mention environmental degradation - which we still face today.

And none of us should do that.

But neither should we ignore the great progress that has been made.

To look at what's been achieved is to encourage hope for the future.

For instance in the second half of the 20th Century, improving agricultural practices and freer trade helped to reduce the real cost of food in poor countries by 75%.

Even though the populations of poor countries had grown by 83% in that period, there are fewer people hungry now than ever before.

In fact people's daily food intake in these countries has increased by almost 40%.

Goklany tells us that in 1820, 84 % of the world's population lived in absolute poverty whereas today that has been cut to about 20%.

Certainly we must aspire to eliminate poverty but to analyse what's already been achieved gives us high hopes.

And our futures are now much longer than they used to be.

In the middle-ages life expectancy in Britain averaged just 22 years.

Goklany tracks progress through the Industrial Revolution which saw the average increase to 36 years, then through to the 1950s when it reached 69 years, until now when life expectancy in Britain is almost 78 years (even higher in Australia).

Similar trends are now unfolding in the developing world - only they are even more dramatic.

In China life expectancy has gone from 41 years in the 1950s to 71 today - in India it has jumped from 39 years to 63.

And we are living better.

Global illiteracy has dropped from 46% in 1970 to 18% today.

Infectious diseases are being eradicated and treatments found for other ailments.

Children are far more likely to survive infancy now than ever before and then they are far more likely to go to school.

And while I will not downplay the serious challenge presented by global warming, the prevailing apocalyptic treatment of that issue has overshadowed our tremendous achievements on the environmental front.

Air pollution, especially from lead and sulphur dioxide has been massively reduced - through improved fuel and engine technology - leading to clearly discernible improvements in the quality of life in cities around the world.

Likewise many waterways have been cleaned up.

The pattern is quite clear - poor countries often damage and pollute their environments as they develop but as they prosper they are then able to remediate the damage.

Of course we should aim to prevent the pollution and damage in the in the first place - but the fact is that our economic success and technological innovation is delivering great benefits to the environment.

For this reason we have every right to be optimistic about our ability to tackle global warming diligently and successfully.

According to Goklany we should be optimistic about the world we live in.

On current rates of improvement, he says we can aspire to a world where "hunger and malnutrition have been virtually banished, where malaria, TB, AIDS and other infectious and parasitic diseases are distant memories…."

Isn't it great to hear some good news and have reason for hope?

And, of course, it is the sensible and rational approach. As conservatives we know that we should approach issues from a rational basis and from a pragmatic perspective rather than through an ideological prism.
So Goklany's rational and pragmatic assessment of global progress confirms what we conservatives feel instinctively - our liberal democratic institutions and market economies have delivered measurable benefits and promise even more.

This is the narrative of the right - a narrative of success and cautious optimism.

The current narrative of the Left is overwhelmingly depressing.

We were all going to be exploited by evil capitalists.

We were all going to be destroyed by a superpower nuclear arms race.

We were going to run out of oil.

We were going to choke on car fumes.

We were going to run out of food.

And globalisation was going to condemn the third world to poverty.

For the Left the doomsday clock is always at a minute to midnight and the greatest culprit is usually the United States.

In reality the remarkable successes of the past century have come about because of the strength of liberal democracies, led by the United States, to stand up strongly against the challenges of the times - from defeating the evil of Nazism, to seeing off the global spread of communism, to working against global poverty.

It was the political resolve, economic strength, technological expertise and military might of the United States and her allies that enabled the West to triumph in the Cold War.

It is difficult to overestimate the value of that victory and what it continues to mean for the spread of prosperity and political pluralism around the world.

Under the blanket of security provided by that hard-won victory, it is the economic strength, political will and technological know-how of the liberal democracies that are continuing to combat or eradicate diseases, improve agricultural productivity, increase energy efficiency and solve environmental problems today.

There are two vital lessons from this incontestable historical narrative.

First, while our successes and benefits have been many, functioning democracies have had to be immensely strong, fight hard and make huge sacrifices to protect our freedoms in order to deliver those gains.

Second, we can only face the future squarely if we recognise the new threats we face and are prepared to defeat them in order to continue this project of global improvement.

Our main challenge today is global Islamist extremism.

It aims to destroy democratic governments.

Its tactics are deplorable and deadly.

Its resolve is maniacal and it has immense patience.

The terrorists will kill innocents anywhere they believe they can create economic damage, political mischief or simply maximise terror.

Always the aim is to weaken moderate Muslim governments, damage the democratic ideal and undermine the West.

This enemy seeks no compromise and has no desire whatever to negotiate.

It aims only to destroy us and establish a global Islamist caliphate that would impose a Taliban-style oppressive regime.

To most of us that sounds fanciful. But it is only fanciful for as long as we understand the threat and commit to defeating it.

It is not difficult to think of scenarios that could see substantial progress in those terrible aims.

Imagine if you will what would transpire in Iraq and Afghanistan if Coalition forces were defeated.

Both countries could quite quickly fall under the control of terrorists, warlords and feuding sects of Islamist extremists.

Consider - standing between those two countries - the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iran.

What sort of societies would we see in those countries in five year's time?

What would their impact be on their neighbours like Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan and the central Asian countries like Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan in 10 years from now?

Would there be conflict between some of those countries?

How would Israel react?

What would unfold in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon?

A moment's thought tells you defeat is not an option.

Failure in Iraq would be catastrophic.

We would be leaving Iraq to the terrorists and insurgents who would seek to overturn the fledgling democracy and install an al-Qaeda inspired Taliban-style regime.

The consequences for the Iraqi people, the region, global security and the broader battle against Islamist extremism would be terrible.

The Left agrees with that same rationale as it applies to Afghanistan.

But for what are clearly political rather than strategic reasons - ignores its application to Iraq.

Historically the Left has always looked for soft options - from appeasement of Hitler, accommodation of communist expansionism and unilateral disarmament in the Cold War.

In pessimistic mode, the Left seems always to veer towards the seemingly easy option of avoiding conflict, negotiating concessions with the enemy and hoping the threat will disappear.

In each case it has been the wrong approach.

Weakness has often been provocative.

When we cede ground to our enemies it only emboldens them.

And in each case when we took up the challenge with resolve, we triumphed even against enormous odds.

The people who understand this history and this dynamic better than most are our enemies.

The insurgents and terrorists in Iraq, Jemmah Islamiah terror cells in South East Asia, Osama Bin Laden, the planners behind 9/11, the Madrid train blasts and the London tube bombings - they all know that their best route to victory is to weaken the political resolve of the West.

They sustain themselves on the belief that the West does not have the stomach for the fight.

In the West the political Left often exhibits a kind of self-loathing that argues we have brought this battle with terrorism upon ourselves.

After the Bali bombing killed 2002 innocents, including 88 Australians, Alison Broinowski wrote disapprovingly about the Howard Government's relationship with the United States and about the uncouth behaviour of Australian holidaymakers in Asia: reasons, she says, that the clubs in Kuta were targeted.

"I don't say the tourists deserved their fate," she said rather defensively, "but, with hindsight, what happened to them is predictable."

Other terror attacks have prompted the Left to point to a raft of grievances in the Middle East, starting with the Palestinian issue.

In one memorable rant against United States policy in the Middle East, Leftist journalist Robert Fisk asked: "What better recruiting sergeant could Bin Laden have than George Bush?"

He went on in the same article: "And still we have to kow-tow to this man. If we are struck by al-Qaeda it is our fault."

And yet the terrorists have made it clear they want no negotiated settlements, they want no deals, they want no compromise.

Nothing short of complete capitulation and massive conversion to Wahabism will do.

They want their extremist Islamist state and they embrace violence as the only way to achieve it.

An al Qaeda training manual discovered in Britain says: "The confrontation that Islam calls for with these godless and apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates, Platonic ideals nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it does know the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine-gun."

While the terrorists will use any issue - from Iraq, to Palestine, to East Timor - for propaganda purposes, their ideals are absolutist.

Their ideology is completely intolerant.

It is defined by its exclusion of all reason, all other faiths or ways.

The spritual leader of Jemmah Islamiah, Abu Baka Bashir, has made clear the aims of the terrorists and how they despise us unconditionally for our core values.

He says the West weakens the Muslim world with "ideas like secularism, liberalism and democracy" and that this is "all designed to contaminate our pure Islam."

Bashir says "the closest we ever got to an Islamic State was the Taliban government in Afghanistan."

Yet when they strike, there is always a Leftist in the West willing to provide a political justification for their attack.

In the wake of the London bombings, Martin Bell wrote in the Guardian that Britain had been targeted because of its policy alignment with the US, its policies on the Palestinian issue and its involvement in Iraq.

"Our moral authority scarcely exists," he wailed bizarrely. "Our people are the targets of terrorism and threats of terrorism wherever they are…Our government has endangered us. It is time we connected the dots."

That the terrorists can trigger this predictable self-loathing within the Left, that it runs prominently in the media, that it saps the public's appetite for the struggle, that it places pressure on politicians - none of this is an accident.

The terrorists' attacks and propaganda are designed to produce these debilitating debates in the West.

In a letter to the former al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Osama Bin Laden's deputy wrote: "More than half of this battle is taking place on the battlefield of the media."

British writer Martin Amis has despaired at the accommodating musings of his Leftist colleagues and how it places them in an unholy alliance with a pre-modern force for evil.

As he puts it: "People of liberal (or Leftist) sympathies, stupefied by relativism, have become the apologists for a creedal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperialist and genocidal."

Osama Bin Laden himself talks about how weakness is the ultimate provocation.

In the very video where he gloats over the 9/11 attacks he says "when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse."

Our response must be to ensure that ours is the position of strength.

As Tony Blair maintains, we must continue to pursue soft power through our use of diplomacy in this crucial battle of ideas but we must use hard power as well.

As he says: "Terrorism can't be defeated by military means alone. But it can't be defeated without it."

The Australian Labor Party is a world away from Blair's clear and assertive view of foreign policy.

Australian Labor wants to retreat to fortress Australia.

Its natural instinct has always been isolationism and its cut and run policy in Iraq is the latest incarnation of that tendency.

It is madness to think we can retreat from this crucial battle for civilisation and hope the terrorists will leave us alone.

The terrorists killed Australians long before the Iraq conflict.

They have killed and injured Australians in Bali, New York, London, Istanbul, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.

They have planned attacks on Australian soil.

They despise who we are and the freedom, tolerance and pluralism we stand for.

Their great ambition is the destruction of the established world order.

Even if we retreat, they will come after us.

So Labor's isolationism is pointless and self-defeating.

We must stay in the global struggle in a way that is calibrated to our capabilities but reflects our convictions.

We cannot in good conscience simply leave the struggle to others.

If the United States were to shrink back within its borders in a similar fashion the consequences for the war on terror and global stability would be dire.

Terrorists in every part of the world, including in our own region, would be emboldened.

Their warped narrative would gain more traction and their attacks would have greater effect.

We would be inviting the violence ever closer to our own homes.

Standing up for our values and supporting fledgling democracies is seldom easy.

The Australia military is using elements of "hard" power now in East Timor and Solomon Islands, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The risks are high, as are the costs. And we continue to work actively using the "soft" power of our diplomacy and our aid programs to support these same values.

We do this because we believe that people of any race or creed can better themselves if they are given the security and the freedom to do so. And we do this because the alternative of surrendering to totalitarianism or anarchy is too horrible to contemplate.