Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As we emerge from our present crisis, it inevitably raises questions about the course our country should take hereafter. Some celebrate a lessening of fiscal constraint and monetary policy as ushering in a new modern era of economic policy and wish to rebuild the economy and society on green foundations divorced from economic and human reality. In politics there will be others with their agendas but it should also give a moment of pause for those that hold the Liberal moniker to revisit our approach. Sailing across the sea of economic and geopolitical choppy waters, we need more than ever to find a safe harbour. We need a confident course lest we be overwhelmed by tides originating from beyond our shores.

In his essay, Why I am not a Conservative, Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek rejected the centre right political zeitgeist of his adopted homeland in the second half of the 20th century. He saw socialism on the advance and the deficiencies of conservatism but thought the viable alternative was moderation to merely slow socialism's advance. Hayek's observation was to recognise conservatism's inherent strengths and limitations. The spirit of his comments was reflected in my first speech in this place, that conservatism is a virtue not a vision; an anchor, not a compass.

Hayek argued conservatism's proper place is legitimate—probably necessary—and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change. However, by its very nature, it cannot offer an am alternate direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tenancies and slowing down undesirable developments but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction.

As progressivism is an accelerator to a car, but undirected, which can lead to a crash, conservatism is a brake that, unrelenting, ensures that you are only overtaken and, when other forces are applied, dragged slowly along. They are speeds, not directions, and there is no logic to defining yourself by your speed. To advance a nation's politics it is your competing destination that matters. Without a vision, you tacitly accept the one of those who have put one forward.

There are only two fundamental motivating principles in politics: power or ideas. Condemning ideology is celebrating politics for power, and politics for power only ever favours the few. Political ideologies are gravitational forces that centre the foundation of policy to improve humanity. Political ideologies often want central governments empowered and their pull strengthened so that they can be manipulated to the ends of the few at the expense of empowered citizens. The role of liberalism is to offer an alternative orbit for human progress. As Hayek also observed:

… I personally cannot be content with simply helping to apply the brake. What the liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move. In fact, he differs much more from the collectivist radical of today than does the conservative. While the last generally holds merely a mild and moderate version of the prejudices of his time, the liberal today must more positively oppose some of the basic conceptions which most conservatives share with the socialists.

While occasionally pitted against each other, in practice, moderation and conservatism alone achieve the same result: the drag of gravity to a centralist alternative. An ultimate gravitational force is required with enough strength to achieve rebalance and an alternative direction. This was expressed in the audacity of Sir Robert Menzies' speech at the 1965 federal conference of our party: 'The effect of this forward thinking, this liveliness, this being modern, being prepared to be a little adventurous … We have won because we have been the party of innovations. Not the party of the past, not the conservative party dying hard on the last barricade, but the party of innovations. … These were innovations, these were evidences of a lively mind and a forward-looking heart.'

In Australia, the challenge of politics is to appeal to ideas and ideals and to implement them practically using that power. In his seminal 'Forgotten people' radio broadcast, Menzies articulated the case for people because, without a constituency, ideas have no currency. Only people vote. Ideas are the foundation for those who practice the art of persuasion to sacrifice for what is right over the platitudes of the easy or the popular. The harshness of our continent has tempered our idealism, and the absence of revolutionary fire at the modern foundations of our nation has ensured our politics are anchored in the practical. Hence Australians will always choose the imperfection of lived experience over the purity of ideology. It's a world view consistent with Isaiah Berlin's message to the 21st century:

If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, …

Berlin's observation of history highlights the distinction of liberalism from other political ideologies. Others seek conformity to empower a common goal over people. Liberals seek structural pillars to empower a common people. There is not one vision, but many. And through empowerment of people and the stitches sewn in our soft economic and social fabric a mutualism is achieved which binds us together and which moderates our interactions through convention and expectation, compared to the sharp edges of bureaucracy and laws.

Adam Smith identified the strength of mutualism in his undercelebrated work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he observed that people measure their conduct to be held in the good standing of others. That is why, in a liberal democracy, a liberal's unyielding obligation is to confront emergent justifications to faddishly corrode the empowerment of the individual. We need, necessarily, to show courage and to stoke the torch of liberty often, especially when society is tempted down dark passages.

Courage matters to survive the darkness. That is why being moderate is equally deficient. We should not let the liberal flicker feint in moderation to succumb to the darkness. Moderation is the palliative ideas that underpin courage or conviction, which cannot exist without core belief. You cannot be passionate in your moderation; you can be in limited conservatism lest you risk becoming a reactionary and fail to heed Edmund Burke's warning that 'a state without the means of some change is without the means of its own conservation'.

Today there is an attempt to create an ideology around conservatism, but it will always be limited because it lacks a framing to consider the future beyond the conservation of the past for its benefits. As Orwell understood, he who controls the past controls the future; he who he controls the present controls the past. Therefore, the Left progressives seek to rewrite the past, and they do so to create the institutions of the 21st century—which would leave no-one surprised that some younger Australians are hypnotised by their agenda. And, as conservatism lacks a vision for the future, it cannot defend the past nor command present institutions. As alternative ideologies progress their agenda and the equity of institutions is eaten away, all that is left is indulging insecurities and pandering to prejudice.

An alternative is required: conservatism is management; liberalism requires leadership. A liberal understands that the sustainability of a society depends on building foundations for the nation. The foundation comes from the strength of its citizens, communities and commerce, and the future of the nation rests in driving the change to keep their power, not corporates, Canberra or state capitals. As outlined in the new social contract, what makes liberalism in Australia unique is that it is not a rebellion against an existing order, but the continuation of a truly democratic nation politically, socially and economically—a nation governed from the citizen up, not Canberra down, through the empowerment of Australians in the organic and proximate institutions they build: family, home, community, enterprise. Doing so decentralises and democratises multiple forms of power from the few to the many: rights and freedoms to the individual, for cultural and social power; private ownership and prices, for economic power; and the franchise for voting, for political power—to name but a few. While each may lack the gravity of a larger ideal, combined they create a different orbit for the practice for whom politics is there to serve: the Australian people and our shared mutual interest. And policy guided by these guard rails will bond and strengthen the nation.

That does not mean that there isn't a relationship between liberalism and conservatism. As an institutional conservative, I share a reluctance to recreate the architecture of our nation—our polity, economy and society. But that is because I am a liberal and they were evolved to empower people. While I accept that nationalism can rarely be decoupled from conservatism, my nationalism comes from my understanding that liberal ideas need the context of a legal, societal and economic Petri dish to germinate—and against those who would seek to undermine it, foreign and domestic, and with the aspiration that other societies will pursue these humanist ideals for themselves. So too, as a cultural conservative, I resist the ambition of the modern progressive socialist, who wants to shift our relationship to each other away from our common humanity—to group rights and identity bingo. But it is because I am a liberal, committed to formal equality before the law, whereas on economic and social issues I am liberally focused on doing what is necessary to keep policy focused on unpacking concentrations of power from monopoly Canberra to corporates. The opposite of a centralist state socialism and corporatism is not conservatism. The opposite is empowered, responsible liberal citizenship.

Liberalism necessitates persistence and to constantly reconsider what may be the accommodation of noble causes to advance empowerment: the freedom to choose universal education or health providers; taxes and regulations that are not a burden to equality of opportunity nor favour established operators; an environmental policy that fosters responsibility and stewardship, whether it be local litter or global gases. Hence I cannot identify as a conservative, and my liberalism does not come in moderation. Australia's success calls us to be confident, forward-looking, modern liberals.

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