A rallying call to the Quiet Australians
For every conservative Australian, leaning into culture is the key to turning our society around. By Amanda Stoker.
The following is an edited extract of a speech delivered by Amanda Stoker to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Sydney on Sunday.
Watch the full speech here
There are many people who believe that big-government, left-leaning thinking is in the ascendancy and there’s not much that can be done but to wait for it to pass.
It is lazy and wrong to simply wait until voters have felt the catastrophe that lies at the end of the socialist rainbow.
People who are conservative – that is, people who believe in small government, living within one’s means, the primacy of the family and fundamental freedoms – have a responsibility to do more than just wait and hope.
It is true that the dominant culture at present is about feeling rather than thinking, and increasingly about group identity rather than respect for the character, creativity and essence of the individual. These ideas are dangerous, because they divide and dehumanise while simultaneously destroying the institutions that allowed our nation’s rise to prosperity.
The rise of those ideas was relevant in the last election result, but it was not the only factor at play.
Equally responsible was too many Liberals’ willingness to go along with cultural movements that don’t align with the party’s values because they weren’t willing to take on the zeitgeist, or risk being pasted with a nasty label.
But if you don’t show up and make the case, you fail by default.
For every conservative Australian, leaning into culture is the key to turning our society around.
There is an old saying that politics is downstream from culture. I observed that it was often used with a shrug of the shoulders to justify the capitulation of Liberal colleagues to policies that reflected social change so fast that not even Labor would have contemplated it a decade ago.
Yes, politics is downstream from culture. That means the tactic of conservative people smashing the Liberal Party at the ballot box for failing to deliver sufficiently conservative policy is misguided, particularly if it is the only action taken. All that delivers is more fiercely radical left-leaning governments.
Culture is the problem at present, but it is also the solution.
That doesn’t just mean demanding that politicians stand up for more traditional values. It means making the space for them to confidently do so by being an active participant in shaping culture through civil society.
For every day, in our every choice, we are shaping culture. When we show up to the school board or P&F meeting and speak up, we change the character of our children’s schools. When we provide a common-sense voice in the office HR committee, we can end the pressure for staff to affirm political concepts to which they object. When we volunteer to help the footy or gymnastics team we provide support and role models for families going through tougher times. When we show up to church or turn sausages outside Bunnings for a service club, we are building the ties that bind a connected, strong social fabric.
Quiet Australians deserve politicians who will speak up for their beliefs. But they’re much more likely to get that when they are active participants in shaping culture – something that is determined less in the pages of a newspaper and more in the way we relate to our elders, our children and our neighbours.
There will be some understandable pushback against the idea that already stretched Australians must do more. The cost pressures on households are real, and raising a family is demanding. In all of the exhaustion, there’s a real temptation to spend rare rest time on the couch.
Yet, to paraphrase Edison, 90 per cent of success is effort. We have to be honest with ourselves: the march of radical and dangerous ideas through the institutions has only been possible because, over an extended period, conservatives either haven’t shown up, or have quietly acquiesced in things to which they object, giving in little by little like a salami of their beliefs being sliced.
There’s a lot of work to do, but this should also engender optimism. For Australians don’t just get what they vote for at the ballot box. We get the country we earn by every little decision we make, every day of our lives.
Amanda Stoker is a former LNP senator for Queensland and a distinguished fellow of the Menzies Research Centre. This is an edited extract of a speech delivered to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Sydney on Sunday.