Turning the Page of Labor appeasement

What, historically, have they offered instead?

Abandoning both realism and idealism, they have too often plumped for immediate political advantage and to hell with the consequences. The Left in its various forms has always been more committed to equality than to liberty, especially economic, religious and cultural freedom.

Since World War II there has been a fairly consistent pattern of weak Labor leadership in Australia, particularly on the issues of appeasement, isolationism and shirking international treaty obligations.

In the Vietnam era, the war was lost - not on the battlefields but in the media and in the university campuses.

Whatever history's final judgment about that conflict, the Coalition decided that the freedom of the South Vietnamese people from Communist incursions from the North was worth fighting for. By contrast, Jim Cairns, later Deputy Prime Minister, led Moratorium marches in the streets.

Two highlights of the Whitlam Government deserve a mention here. Whitlam decided that Australia would be among the first nations of the free world formally to acknowledge the USSR's annexation of the Captive Nations, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. If ever there was a shameless sell-out of oppressed and helpless people this was it, yet to this day he remains unrepentant.

Then again, there was the infamous Iraqi breakfast, where he attempted to borrow money from the Baath Socialist government, to fund Labor's re-election campaign.

When the Howard Government challenged the status quo in East Timor, there was no support from the Labor leadership or even constructive criticism.

Rather than playing along with the Indonesian government of the day, we recommended a 10 year process to achieve self-determination, which we said could only be resolved by the East Timorese themselves. Australia's subsequent role, diplomatically and in forming and leading INTERFET, was crucial to preserving peace in the region and the liberation of East Timor.

In Timor, in the wars of liberation in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the overall war on terror, the Coalition has been sustained by the conviction that Australia is a significant country with international military and peace-keeping obligations.

Along with national capacity, we have a view of the national interest in which the successful prosecution of those conflicts and the success of diplomacy, in furthering the cause of freedom and democracy, is fundamentally important.

Our opponents disagree. In 1999 Kim Beazley's view of Australia's place in the world was this: "Let me tell you something I believe in intensely. We are a small country in a world of giants".