Hastie makes a stand for our core values

Andrew Hastie’s resignation from the opposition frontbench opens up a struggle for the soul of the Liberal Party.

If we can’t debate the big issues facing our society, we can’t adequately deal with them; and if neither political party will challenge contemporary left orthodoxy, it won’t be debated publicly.

Instead, concerns will fester below the radar until they erupt – often in ugly ways – as we have seen around the Western world. That’s the reality; if mainstream political parties refuse to respond to voter concerns, sooner or later new voices emerge that will.

The reason there has been no real debate about mass immigration and multiculturalism, despite the challenge they pose to prosperity and social cohesion, is that neither party has as yet been prepared to listen to what Australians are telling them: Labor because it is ambivalent about our history and wants to dilute our core Anglo-Celtic culture; and the Coalition because it’s frightened of being labelled “racist” or to risk losing the votes of migrants despite the fact most migrants want people to come here “the right way” and to do “the right thing” once here.

At one level, Andrew Hastie’s resignation from the opposition frontbench opens up a struggle for the soul of the Liberal Party. At a deeper level, though, it’s really a struggle for the soul of Australia, because if we continue on the present policy trajectory we will soon be a very different country.

Far from being some sort of populist “Trumpian outbreak”, Hastie’s eagerness to rethink mass migration and multiculturalism (and ditch net zero) is more a return to the old Howard formula of “economic liberalism and social conservatism”; the only formula, I might add, that has delivered landslide Liberal wins under him and, later, under Tony Abbott.

For a long time it has been virtually impossible to debate either the size or the composition of Western countries’ immigration intakes without being labelled an economic troglodyte or an out-and-out racist.

For years, the Treasury line to government ministers (on both sides of politics) has been that immigration boosts economic growth, and therefore the tax take, so any reduction in immigration must be accompanied by politically difficult spending cuts.

But while immigration boosts overall economic growth, it doesn’t necessarily boost growth per capita, and it enables lazy governments to mask their inability to lift productivity.

Given all the players that feed off the migrant intake – the universities and colleges with overseas students as their business model and enterprises seeking cheap labour – only the very determined can take them on.

Graffiti on a billboard in Brunswick Street in Fitzroy Picture: NewsWire

Add in the community leaders eager to encourage chain migration to give their enclaves more clout with local MPs, especially those who’ve used local ethnic leaders to boost their factional numbers, and there’s the explanation for the bipartisan cone of silence.

All of these powerful and vocal lobbies have a vested interest in shutting down debate: even though sustained record migration is undeniably pushing down wages because it’s boosting supply, pushing up housing costs because it’s boosting demand, and putting immense strain on physical and social infrastructure because it’s boosting usage.

Then there’s the fact, demonstrated by attendees at pro-Hamas rallies, that at least some of our recent migrants have not left tribal hatreds behind. While post-war migrants were encouraged to integrate and then assimilate, more recent migrants have been encouraged to remain distinctively different, under the doctrine of multiculturalism and the unlikely notion that diversity is strength.

Multiculturalism has fostered the impression that, at least as far as officialdom is concerned, we have no culture of our own worth cherishing and protecting, as other nations like France and Japan protect their identities.

It’s way past time for a serious national figure from within one of the parties of government to call for this to be re-examined. Yet Hastie’s reward for wanting a fundamental rethink of Coalition policy (despite the hollow words of the leader who says she wants all policies reviewed) was to have his portfolio gutted and then be white-anted by colleagues adept at leaks but little else that involves the intellectual hard yards needed to get out of opposition.

The difference between Hastie and most of his colleagues is that he is a believer in a certain sort of Australia: one that is open and welcoming, sure, but also one that is recognisably the country he was willing to die to defend. Let that sink in before you question his motivations.

As a university student, he was so moved by the Islamist attacks on 9/11 that he changed the direction of his life to become a soldier for our country: first in the regular army, then in the SAS, and now in the parliament. For him, politics is not a matter of working out what people want and giving it to them; it’s more a matter of working out what people need, and what Australia needs, and then fighting to win them over.

Cartoon: John Spooner.

And yes, he appreciates that pushing against several decades of leftist indoctrination won’t be easy; but soldier that he is, he’d rather fight the good fight than die wondering. Importantly, and this is what most of the commentariat have missed, given they’re almost all observers rather than participants with a deep vocational call to politics, Hastie can see the popular revolt that’s happening in the US and Britain and wants to head it off before rusted-on Liberals give up on their party as recent polls suggest may already be under way.

The multiculturalism that pervades official thinking is an abandonment of the Anglo-Celtic core culture and the Judeo-Christian ethos that have made our country great – and, indeed, are what have made it so attractive to migrants.

Hastie gets, in a way that few of the careerists who now fill the Liberal ranks do, that a growing Muslim population unable to leave their hatreds behind are a challenge to the character of our society – not because Muslims are inherently bad people but because their religion is very hard to reconcile with the pluralism and individualism that have long been at the heart of the West.

I can’t put it any plainer than this. Radical Islamism is the challenge of our times, and we need to be upfront about that if we are to have any chance of ensuring that Australia stays peaceful and cohesive. Other countries have missed opportunities to deal with this issue and may have saddled themselves with social problems that are close to insoluble. We still have a small window of time to learn from their mistakes; and most critically, their denial of what was happening and their silencing of anyone speaking out.

If Muslims are to be good citizens in a country like Australia, they must face up to the evil that has been done in the name of their faith – in the same way, I suppose, that Catholics like me have had to face up to and disown the epidemic of clerical sex abuse. Because it wasn’t Jews who flew planes into the World Trade Centre and killed almost 3000 people. It wasn’t Christian suicide bombers in 2005 who blew up the London Underground, killing 52. It isn’t Buddhists who have murdered 7000 Christians in Nigeria this year alone. Or cut the throats of priests saying mass in France. Or murdered journalists over a cartoon. Or abducted schoolgirls because females getting an education so offended Boko Haram. Or burnt alive a Jordanian pilot in an Islamic State cage. Or bombed nightclubs in Bali, killing 202 including – as we know – 88 Australians.

The difference between Hastie and many of his so-called moderate colleagues is that he has the honesty to admit this and the guts to have a debate about it before we sleepwalk into disaster. If the debate that Hastie wants the Coalition to have is prematurely shut down, it won’t just be the Coalition that’s the loser but all the Australians worried that our country has lost its way.