Why I am not a conservative

When it comes to values, I am an old fashioned liberal. My support for individual liberties, for the values of what is now called civil society, is profound. But it also reflects my fairly limited but still influential study of ethics as part of Philosophy I at New England.

Take a question that I have not discussed on this blog, my views on gay marriage.

I support civil unions for gays. I support legal recognition of the joint rights of gay couples. I do not support gay marriage because the term "marriage" carries very specific connotations linked back to our Christian heritage, so that the application of the term "marriage" creates tensions and problems among much larger groups in society.

This may change. But for the present, my view is that we need to find a solution that gives gays the legal and indeed symbolic things that they need, while recognising the views of the larger group.

I have a profound love of and respect for our core institutions. Perhaps I can be classified as a conservative in this area, although the views I hold are very much minority views even among those classified as "conservative".

I have a profound respect for Parliamentary government. To me, Parliament along with the courts are key institutions in our system.

Too many of our current politicians see Parliament as a hoop to be gone through on the way to power and control. Here they are no different from the divine right monarchists. I see little difference between King Charles and his views of the divine right of executive Government and current Australian Governments, although we can at least still get rid of these.

The NSW Country Party leader Mick Bruxner articulated this well in his belief that when you became an MP you had an obligation to Parliament as an institution.

So far as the courts are concerned, lawyers and the legal system are the independent umpires standing between us and the unbridled exercise of executive power. If you look at Hicks and more recently Haneef, the legal profession has played a powerful role in forcing us to look at questions of liberty and principle.

Turning now to my continued focus on our history and the need to understand this.

My argument here is simple. If Australians are cut off from their broader past, then they lose sight of the very foundations of our civil society. In so doing, they risk becoming victims of those who wish to use the past to support their current nostrums. And I put the citizenship test in this class.

To finish with Ted Wheelwright, the part subject of my last post.

I did not start preparing a post on Ted because I agreed with him. I do not, although I accept that he was a gifted teacher. But I also accept that he occupied a valuable and legitimate place in Australian thinking. I accept that that place needs to be explained.

And I find it sad that I, who did not generally agree with him, should be more worried about preserving his place in the history of Australian thought than those who I would have expected to articulate the story.