On December 3, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute hosted a private event in Toronto with Tony Abbott, the former prime minister of Australia and a visiting senior fellow at MLI, and Brian Lee Crowley, MLI’s founder and managing director.
The following is a transcription of their remarks. It has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Brian Lee Crowley: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome.
On October 7 a year ago, the world witnessed the worst pogrom since the end of the Second World War. My Jewish friends and neighbours then found their businesses boycotted and vandalised, their schools shot up, their synagogues firebombed, their neighbourhoods besieged and their children accosted on campus. The universities, those places hitherto devoted to what Milton called “beholding the bright countenance of truth in the still and quiet air of delightful studies,” suddenly erupted in outpourings of vilification of Israel and the Jews and the celebration of cruel and heartless acts of terrorism while the cowed administrators, with a few honourable exceptions that prove the deplorable rule, stood by and did nothing. Many in the media aided and abetted the terrorism abroad and the bullying and thuggery at home.
My colleagues and I at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute asked ourselves what we were going to do to fight back. The result is the Promised Land project, aiming to delegitimise and defeat anti-Semitism and extremism here at home and tendentious interpretations of the history and the politics of the Middle East and Israel.
This is what we decided to do. We were not just going to wring our hands and call on Canadians not to be mean but to be nicer to one another, we were not going meekly to ask the universities to enforce the rules of civility and mutual respect and intellectual diversity that used to be their hallmark. We were not merely going to ask the police and others charged with our safety to enforce the law and make ALL citizens feel safe even when we might disagree on matters of opinion and policy.
Instead, we decided to take up the cudgels on behalf of those values that made Canada the envy of the world before they were so cavalierly abandoned. We are starting the battle to reclaim the universities by challenging the lies and half-truths of those cultural Marxists who have made these vital institutions their intellectual preserves. We are filling the media, including social media, with those inconvenient truths which our intellectual class has so successfully made into bywords for ignorance and lack of sophistication. We are responding to the desperate cries for truth and reason that I hear from our young people every day as they leave universities not as educated citizens but semi-indoctrinated culture warriors.
We are holding politicians accountable for the perversion of our immigration system that has brought thousands of barely vetted Hamas sympathisers to this country to parade in the streets and bully our citizens at a time when the Arab states of the Middle East are curiously quiescent. The Arab street in Toronto and Montreal and Vancouver is aflame, while the Arab street in Damascus and Cairo and Beirut has other preoccupations. Yet no one asks why. We ask why.
We are building coalitions with Christians, Muslims, Jews and people of no religious faith, who cannot abide the scapegoating of Jews in their midst, with Iranians and Pakistanis and Afghans and Syrians who have come to Canada to avoid the sectarian strife and tribalism that disfigure their societies of origin.
This may seem like a pipedream to you, but my colleagues and I are already well on our way to achieve what I have described. Our published work already appears in the Globe, the Post, Newsweek, the BBC, the Jerusalem Post, the Times of Israel and elsewhere. Powerful voices flock to be on our platform, such as Douglas Murray, Einat Wilf, Chris Rufo, Bari Weiss and John Spencer. Today we are pleased and honoured to add the voice of former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to that list, and I will ask Tony to speak in a moment.
Our coalition on anti-semitism and anti-extremism already includes all the people I have mentioned plus experts on national security, deradicalisation, immigration reform, the history of the Middle East and more.
Our social media on these issues has already reached hundreds of thousands of people, 300,000 for the Douglas Murray video alone. We are at the centre of an international coalition of think tanks that are tackling all these issues here, in the other countries I mentioned, and farther afield. And we have done this on a shoestring because it must be done and no one else will do it. We are no longer waiting for others to step up. We are stepping up.
The battle over the future of Canada is first and foremost a battle of ideas and we can no longer let one side appear to have all the weapons. It has taken decades for the universities and the media and law enforcement and the foreign policy establishment to fall victim to the terrible ideas that now predominate there, and it will take decades to turn that ship around. We have, however, waited too long and the hour is late. We need to roll up our sleeves and dig in.
And there is no one better suited to inspire us in this work than Tony Abbott, the much-admired former prime minister of Australia and a Visiting Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. I asked Tony to join us today so that he can speak to us about his thoughts about the moral challenge that the events of the 7th of October and what followed pose a moral challenge to the West in general and Canada in particular and how important it is that we not shirk or fail before that challenge.
Tony, for those of you who have not had the pleasure, as I have, to get to know him, is a former long-time member of the Australian parliament, cabinet minister in several Liberal governments and was Prime Minister from 2013-2015.
A recent profile in the Wall Street Journal, Tony Abbott, a Fighter in the Cold War With China, described Mr. Abbott as “a fighter as well as a thinker,” and fight he does, against China and Russia’s tyranny, against climate change alarmism, and for the moral soul of the Western world.
At the end of last year at a forum in Washington he boldly implored the Speaker Mike Johnson, “Please don’t go home for Christmas without at least giving the Ukrainians what they need to fight for their freedom.”
Tony speaks his mind. He is recognised as a strong, principled political leader throughout the Anglosphere. We were pleased to welcome him to the Institute as a Visiting Fellow and to bring him here today to share his views about the moral imperative of standing up for Israel, for our Jewish friends and neighbours, and for the foundational principles of Western societies, including Canada. Tony, the floor is yours.
Tony Abbott: Thank you for your wonderful summation of the issues facing us in response to the atrocity of October 7th. It’s great to see the Macdonald Laurier Institute doing so much good work in this space.
I could go on at great length about all the good things that Australia has done over the years, including the contribution of the Australian Light Horse Brigade to the liberation of Jerusalem and Damascus in the Great War, and their charge at Beersheba, which was a decisive moment in that campaign. That charge is thought to have emboldened the British government to make the Balfour Declaration, which was central to the establishment of modern Israel.
But I won’t go on about how wonderful Australia has been because post-October 7th, the Albanese Labour government in Australia has been disappointing, to put it at its mildest, when it comes to supporting Israel and voting in the United Nations on various resolutions.
Let me begin with the tale of two demonstrations in Australia’s streets that you may or may not have seen towards the end of 2021 at the tail end of the pandemic. Belatedly, I thought to demand the freedom of Victorians living in Melbourne [as they endured] some of the longest lockdowns in the world outside of China. Those demonstrations were suppressed and crushed with extraordinary severity. For instance, at one demonstration at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, a few hundred freedom demonstrators were surrounded by riot police dressed up like storm troopers and were eventually dispersed with volley after volley of rubber bullets and tear gas. And that was typical of the response by Australian police forces to demonstrations in favour of the freedoms that should be at the heart of the Australian project.
Now, contrast that with the response of the police starting on October 9th [2023], demonstrations in favour of Hamas and Palestine more broadly. I suspect you will have seen this, because on October 9th the bodies were not yet cold and several thousand Australians, many of them of Middle Eastern background, assembled at the Sydney Town Hall. They were then shifted by police to the Sydney Opera House, which the New South Wales government was lighting up that night with the Israeli flag as a sign of solidarity with the people of Israel and with Jewish people everywhere. These demonstrators proceeded to set off fireworks, to vandalize the building or aspects of the building, and to chant slogans such as “f* the Jews” and what sounded to all the world like “gas the Jews,” although New South Wales police [dispute that]. They reckon they subjected the tape to forensic analysis which supposedly showed that what was really said was, “where’s the Jews?” As if this was somehow innocent where saying “gas the Jews” was not.
So you have the ruthless crushing of demonstrations in favour of traditional Australian freedom [on the one hand], and the toleration, and even encouragement, of demonstrations against traditional Australian tolerance [on the other] – a shocking double standard. The footage of that demonstration outside the Opera House on October 9th flashed around the world, and it was for us an absolute Day of Infamy, a moment of total national shame, but not, it seems, shame felt by our government. [In fact], our government has consistently either abstained or voted in favour of pro-Palestinian resolutions at the UN since then, effectively rewarding what Hamas did and reversing the positions of previous Australian governments, including previous Australian Labour governments, whose greatest leader was Bob Hawke. Some of you might remember one of Bob Hawke’s more memorable statements was, “If the bell tolls for Israel, it does not just toll for Israel. It tolls for all mankind.” So the current Australian Labour government has, in this as in many other respects, betrayed the legacy of their greatest leader ever, Bob Hawke. Why this double standard?
I think there’s two reasons. The first is the long march of the left through the institutions in the West. Part of the left’s long march has been to see Israel not as a brave outlier of freedom and liberality in a very difficult part of the world, but rather to associate Israel with White privilege and “settler” privilege. To the cultural Marxists who have increasingly dominated our discourse, egged on by the old Soviet Union and today by the so-called Global South, Israel is seen as a nasty example of white privilege and settler privilege. I think that’s one explanation.
Another explanation, more prosaic but in a sense no less distressing, is ethnic politics. In Australia we now have about a million Australians of the Muslim faith, probably a third of them of Middle Eastern background. Many of them have been brought up from early infancy to hate Israel, to think ill of Jews. And of course, many of their fellow co-religionists see things through a religious prism rather than through an economic or a societal prism. And if you go to the websites of the Australian versions of organizations like the Muslim Vote, they basically say that what matters most to Australian Muslims is not roads, rights, and rubbish; it’s not the cost of living; it’s not better infrastructure in Western Sydney; it’s not higher wages; but it’s what’s happening in Palestine and Gaza. Too many of our cabinet ministers in seats with substantial Muslim populations would rather pander to these crass electoral considerations than pursue [policies] that are in accordance with Australia’s long term national interests – and certainly in accordance with Australia’s fundamental national values. Those values are to support the flourishing of the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, whose fate is so important to the fate of liberal democracy everywhere.
So what do we do about this? Well, first, we have to reverse the long march of the left through the institutions. There has to be, if you like, a long counter-march through those institutions. I imagine that many of us around this table will have mixed views about the [forthcoming] change of administration in the United States. But I was quietly buoyed – perhaps more than quietly buoyed; I was rather exhilarated by the result – because this is such a rebuff to the politics of climate and identity that are so corrosive to our economies and our societies. I like to think that this time – unlike Trump Mark One, unlike Brexit, unlike the recent rebuff in Australia to the politics of separatism in the defeat of our referendum on a separate, Indigenous voice – this time the voice of common sense might be more heated than it has been in the past, and we might actually be at the [turning] point, reaching peak woke. And by God, we sure need to be at that point.
The other thing I think we need to do is better manage immigration and integration. Now, Australia is a central [inclusive] society, as is Canada. One of the glories of Australia is that over the last 200-odd years, people have been able to come to our country from all over the world and swiftly become first-class Australians and make a better life for themselves and their children. Long may that continue to be the case.
However, this pernicious doctrine of multiculturalism (regrettably originating here) has become extremely pervasive in our country. We do have a citizenship test, which all migrants who are becoming Australian citizens are supposed to pass, and it includes some questions on Australian values. No one who successfully passed the citizenship test could then, in good conscience, have gone on these pro-Hamas, new Holocaust-style demonstrations in favour of Gaza and against Israel. Nevertheless, the reality is that we do have this eruption of unAustralian values in our midst. So we really need to be more careful about who comes to Australia. And there are all sorts of issues involved in that, including getting our overseas student population under better management.
But once people come here from other countries, there has to be a strong stress on integration and, ultimately, assimilation. Everyone coming to our country from overseas needs to be reminded again and again and again that they are expected to join Team Australia, not simply to live in Hotel Australia. They are no longer Palestinians living in Australia. They are Australians who happen to be from a Palestinian background. And that means, as far as you humanly can, leaving behind the hatreds of the past and looking forward to a future where people are judged, to use Martin Luther King’s phrase, not by the color of their skin or the nature of their faith, but by the content of their character.
In order to do that, there needs to be a recovery of the self-belief that we had so strongly a generation ago. However, partly due to the long march of the left through our institutions, we have very substantially lost [that self-belief] in more recent times. The fact that people from all over the world are desperate to come to countries like Australia and Canada, the fact that so many people are voting with their feet [to join] us, should be a reminder to the doubters, the skeptics, and the cynics, that for all our current imperfections and failures, we are still wonderful countries. We are still wonderful countries and we should see in ourselves what other people see in us.
I love quoting Churchill’s phrase from the peroration in his speech in response to the Munich sellout. Churchill struck a very lonely figure at that time, given the relief the British people felt at avoiding what they thought was a conflict. Churchill stood up in the House of Commons and said, Britain “has sustained a defeat without a war… but this is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup that will be proffered to us year by year, unless by a supreme recovery of our moral health and martial vigour, we rise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden times.”
These times are harrowing and difficult. The West is confronted with enormous challenges that we could hardly have imagined just a few years ago. The hour is late, and yet, because our values are good and our cause is right, I think we can and will recover. But it will only be because decent people stand up for our countries and our civilization in a way that we haven’t done adequately in recent times.
Tony Abbott is the former Prime Minister of Australia (2013-2015) and a visiting senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
Brian Lee Crowley is the managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
