7 November 2024 Published in The Australian. —— Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, the president of the US is the leader of the free world and therefore our president too. That’s why it’s the job of the Australian prime minister to work as closely as possible with the president of the day…
5 November 2024 Published in The Daily Telegraph. —— When I gave the first Bradfield lecture ten years back, Sydney was a city choking on its own traffic thanks to inadequate expressways that didn’t join up. Thanks largely to the initiatives of the Abbott federal government, embraced by the O’Farrell and Baird NSW governments and…
Originally delivered to the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship at the International Convention Center, Sydney Revised version published in The Australian. E&OE —— It’s good that ARC is here in Australia telling a better story, because we sure need a better story told, and we sure have a better story to tell. Australia is one of…
26 September 2024 Originally published in the Hungarian Conservative — A land-locked country of under ten million people would not normally figure very much in the global order, other than as a member of a larger alliance or a network of nations. But under Viktor Orban, one of the world’s most politically successful and culturally…
Published in The Australian — It says something about the mindset of the modern Labor Party that not a single federal Labor MP turned up at the weekend’s 70th anniversary celebration of our largest gas exporter. Gas is our second-largest export earner, the essential feedstock for the fertiliser and chemical industries absolutely needed for modern…
Originally published in the National Post. E&OE — When Australia, Britain and the US recently came together in a trilateral defence and security agreement, there was one conspicuous absentee: Canada, the country that had had the world’s third largest navy and fourth largest airforce at the end of the Second World War; and which, as…
15 June 2024 ADDRESS TO THE BLACK SEA SECURITY FORUM Given in Odesa, Ukraine E&OE Amended version published in The Australian —— Ladies and gentlemen, it is an honour to be here. Even though Australia is a far away country, but I will take every chance I can, to be here in Ukraine, to show…
SYMPOSIUM ADDRESS, WIN OR LOSE: THE STRANGE SURVIVAL OF CONSERVATISM 10 June 2024 Originally published in The Times. Given at The In and Out Naval and Military Club, London E&OE —— Whatever this election’s ultimate result, it won’t be improved by defeatism and declinism about the Conservative Party and about Britain itself. Sure, it’s a…
10 June 2024 ADDRESS to FRIENDS OF CANZUK The Carlton Club, London E&OE As any battlefield pilgrim would tell, there have been no closer comrades-in-arms than the soldiers of Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. When the Great War broke out, the three dominions all pledged to stand behind the mother country, in Australia’s case,…
27 May 2024 The Danube Institute, Budapest, Hungary E&OE —— In simpler times, at least in the leading democracies, it was the government that ran the country, the parliament that made the laws, and the courts that decided what was illegal. And yes, in Westminster systems, the executive was formed in the legislature and generally…