What Australians can learn from ARC
at a time where the prevailing cultural narrative is one of decline, it is important that we develop a positive story and hopeful vision for the future rooted in human flourishing and prosperity. by Freya Leach.
First published in the MRC’s Watercooler newsletter. Click here to sign up to the newsletter.
I recently had the opportunity to attend the inaugural Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) Conference. The Australian delegation comprised 150 business, faith, media and political leaders. We spent three days in London trying to answer the question; what’s the better story?
The goal of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship extends beyond partisan politics. At a time of anxiety where the prevailing cultural narrative is one of decline, ARC is committed to developing a better story and a hopeful vision for the future rooted in human flourishing and prosperity.
Stories are important.
Human beings have always been storytellers. The stories we tell ourselves shape us and the world around us. As Baroness Philippa Stroud, the CEO of ARC, said, “Our shared stories and values are the golden threads that bind our families, communities, and nations together, up and down the generations”.
As Australians, we know this all too well. There were essentially two competing stories during the recent referendum on the Voice. One story said, “Australia’s foundations are rotten with the disease of colonisation, and this rot persists today”. The other said, “There is a lot to be proud of in our country, and while injustices did occur, we live in a fair Australia”. My guess is your vote was largely determined by which of these stories you believe.
Stories matter.
But do we need a better story?
We have a better quality of life than at any other point in human history.
While it is a somewhat crude measure, real GDP per capita has soared.
Life expectancy at birth has increased for everyone, rich and poor.
The percentage of the world living in absolute poverty has collapsed from 94% in 1820 to 42% in 1981 to just 8.6% in 2018. Maintaining the current rate of poverty reduction would result in less than 5% of the world’s population living in absolute poverty in 2030.
Despite these remarkable advancements in human well-being, mental illness, loneliness and pessimism about the future are spiralling. Our lack of a common narrative has left us feeling disillusioned and disempowered despite living in a time of unprecedented material wealth and comfort. Without a story weaving us together, our civilisation has become destabilised.
In this destabilised context, we have faced a number of “cultural shakings”. The rise of China, the Russia-Ukraine War, COVID-19, the threat of climate change and economic slowdown have contributed to our feeling of being in permanent crisis - or “permacrisis”. Facing these challenges without a strong cultural narrative puts us at risk of losing confidence in our historic foundations of Judeo-Christian values, individual liberty, voluntary community and liberal democracy on which our prosperity has been built.
We are in a civilisational moment.
Os Guinness, in his ARC research paper articulated it best:
“The West is in the midst of a civilisational moment and a civilisational contest. A civilisational moment is a critical transition phase in the life of a civilisation, when it loses a decisive connection with the dynamic that inspired it. Such a moment must result in one of three broad options: a renewal of the dynamic that inspired the civilisation in the first place, a successful replacement of the original dynamic by another, or the decline of the civilisation. In sum, the issue for a civilisation in a civilisational moment is its vision of ultimate reality—is the civilisation in living touch with the ideas, ideals, and inspiration that created it, and which it needs to continue to flourish? Or, with its roots severed and no replacement in place, will it decline and die?”
From the Parthenon in Athens to the Colosseum in Rome, we can see the vestiges of great civilisations that have declined. The only way to avoid decline is by reconnecting with the ideas that created it or finding a replacement story. My takeaway from ARC is that we can do both. We must inspire my generation with the original values and philosophy that formed the West, but we must also refresh the narrative by addressing the challenges facing Australians today; spiralling cost of living, declining home ownership and economic stagnation.
At ARC, we tried to form our new story by answering these key questions.
Can we find a unifying story that will guide us as we make our way forward?
How do we facilitate the development of a responsible and educated citizenry?
What is the proper role for the family, the community, and the nation in creating the conditions for prosperity?
How do we govern our corporate, social and political organsations so that we promote free exchange and abundance while protecting ourselves against the ever-present danger of cronyism and corruption?
How do we provide the energy and other resources upon which all economies depend in a manner that is inexpensive, reliable, safe and efficient, including in the developing world?
How should we take the responsibility of environmental stewardship seriously?
What is the better story?
Ultimately, the ARC conference did not formulate a single story. Complex problems rarely have univariate solutions. As we looked across the fields of education, business, energy and faith, it became clear that hopelessness and decline are not inevitable. But it will take responsible citizens to lift us up towards the ideal. That is the role of every single one of us.
At home in Australia, the values of Menzies and the Liberal Party have already traced the outline of a better story. It is up to us to colour it in for the 21st century. The need for a better, more hopeful vision for Australia’s young people was what drove us to establish the Centre for Youth Policy at the MRC. In my Sydney Institute address I talked about Liberalism being a message of hope. The ARC conference confirmed our thinking and challenged us to think deeply about what the better story is.
The story that the Liberal Party tells has often been flattened into economic managerialism. This story of anchorless pragmatism assumes our Party’s ultimate objective should be the maximisation of Australia’s economic output. Instead, ARC has challenged us to see the goal of politics as maximising each Australian’s human flourishing.
Reacting against the rampant individualism of our culture, we’ve seen political movements like the Teals emerge. They promise the same economic results but in a more ‘moral’ way. The antidote to Teals and the social justice politics of the Left is to present an alternative story that has robust moral foundations and sees the goal of the Liberal Party as promoting human flourishing rather than pure economic self-interest.
“We are determined to help to bring about, in our land, a rapidly growing population of free people, rising production and social wealth, increasing skill and intellectual competence, with emphasis upon the individual and his dignity and independence and, through these priceless elements, the emergence of an Australia powerful and responsible, adequately furnished in material terms but even more richly furnished with those mental and spiritual qualities which have made our race great in the past and will make it greater in the future.”
- Robert Menzies, 1958
The innate human desire for a story has been found in the activism of the Greens, the ‘social justice’ of Labor, and the moralism of the Teals. But we believe there’s a better story. The Liberal story, defined by Menzies’ values and vision of Australia, sketches the narrative we need to re-articulate to Australia.
Freya Leach is the Director of the Centre for Youth Policy