Why we need a 'conservative spring'

Many conservatives feel more comfortable talking about the past, rather than focusing the future. We need to paint a compelling vision of a conservative future – and bring people with us on the journey.

And it must be built on our values of freedom, opportunity and human dignity.

A vision is more than just the economy – it is a picture of the type of society we want.When there is no vision, the saying goes, the people perish.

The real crisis in conservative politics is our unwillingness to engage in the battle of ideas, to take up the challenge intellectually to our opponents.As John Howard has said "It is not just important to win elections, it is also important to win arguments."

Too often we accept without question the ideological premises of the Left, unwilling to mount a counter-argument. This is why, often even when we are in government, we are rarely in power.

We need an "ideas boom" in the conservative movement. It must be proactive and call for things, not merely reacting to the ideas of others.

And there must be a moral energy to our cause where we talk about values, not just policies.

This cannot just be an abstract exercise.

We must look to the work of reform conservatives who are relating conservative values to the practical realities of everyday life.

Our poverty of ideas is reflected in a poverty of language.We used terms like "lifters and leaners". The "taxed and taxed nots". These might go down well at a Liberal SEC meeting – but they don't resonate with the general public and strike the average punter as sterile and heartless.

The Left talk about emotion, fairness, hope, change – and we talk about economies, tax rates and GDP. We are not just an economy – we are a community, a nation, a people – but listening to us speak, people may think money is all we care about.

By only talking in economic terms, we risk being seen as just the clean-up crew for Labor's economic mess.And all we become is nothing more than the funding arm for Labor's cultural Marxism.