Australia is Just Alright With Me

The Doobie Brothers performed the Art Reynolds song Jesus is Just Alright back in the early Seventies. One of the curious things about this version of the song was no members of the Doobie Brothers were devoutly Christian. The song was a lukewarm ode to a divinity they didn’t really believe in.

I have sometimes felt a similar lukewarmness about Australia. Our country was the Jesus to my Doobie Brothers. I liked it, but I probably took what I had for granted in a lukewarm fashion. No more. What we enjoy in this country constitutes something rather special. This has become even more apparent to me in recent days.

A few weeks ago, I went to London to attend the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). I went sightseeing prior to the conference with a friend who happened to be on the same flight into London. Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Whitehall, and Trafalgar Square never disappoint. They speak to the British soul of the Anglo-Saxon Australian, reminding us of the remarkable culture that we inherit and, in many ways, carry forward Down Under.

Our ongoing journey that day took us to Embankment Station on west side of the Thames, near Charing Cross and Great Scotland Yard. As we approached the station, we found our way blocked by thousands and thousands of protestors. I hesitate to say these people were exclusively of Middle Eastern ethnicity, but it certainly appeared that way. The sight was deeply unsettling.

We found a way through the throng and fought to the station platform against a similarly constituted crowd heading up the station stairs to join the pro-Palestine gathering. Green, red, black, and white were being carried left and right. The only Anglophone people I spotted nearby were local bobbies and some (to be frank) naive sexagenarian activists distributing pro-Palestine pamphlets at the station entrance.

The feeling in the air was that of a room full of powder kegs with someone threatening to light a match. It didn’t feel like the London that Australians have in their cultural memory. It became abundantly clear that Britain is facing an existential crisis, one which it seemingly lacks the will to overcome.

After the ARC conference, I traveled to Budapest, the serene and majestic capital of the Magyars. Here, I joined my colleagues at the Danube Institute, including Quadrant regulars David Martin Jones and John O’Sullivan, along with numerous scholars from across the world.

Hungary is well-known to be a bastion of conservatism and stability. One might even say it is an ark for conservatives. It is certainly a haven for European culture, which is rapidly degrading and being overrun by outsiders.

A French friend who I dined with in Budapest suggested his country faces a similar problem to Britain. An Irishman I met said the the country he lives in, Belgium, is unrecognizable as a European country outside the suburbs of the European Union elites in Brussels. Reports from places like Sweden evidence increasing civil disorder. It is not just Britain that feels like a powder keg.

The Orbán government, which has been in power in Hungary since 2010, has been a leading light for conservatives the world over. Hungary is not perfect. Inflation is running at over 20% and has done for some time. There is, by many reports, a prevalence of low-level corruption, something of a hangover from the Soviet era that simply won’t go away, regardless of which side of politics is in power.

Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz colleagues have done one thing very admirably: they have refused to bow to the globalist pro-immigration policies emanating from Brussels and Berlin. They protect their part of the European Union’s border. They refused to be overwhelmed by uncontrolled immigration flowing from the Middle East and Africa during the 2015 migration crisis. Like Australia, Hungary decides who comes into their country and the terms by which they come.

This Fidesz policy is being vindicated before our very eyes. The contrast I saw in Budapest with London said it all. The streets were peaceful and orderly. There is a stable multiculturalism in Hungary, with people from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, along with Europeans and Jews, all dwelling together peacefully. Nevertheless, the dominant culture is Magyar, and the Hungarians are proud of their heritage.

Not once was there a significant pro-Palestine protest while I was in Budapest. This is partly because the government refused to allow any mass protest in support of Hamas or their cause. I suspect that even if one was allowed, the size would be much smaller due to the nature of Hungary’s immigration policies over the past decade.

Where does this leave Australia? Since October 7, numerous cities around the country have been host to pro-Palestine activism, with some being outright anti-Semitic and anti-Western. However, the scale of this cultural and political challenge is small in comparison to that faced by Britain. There are real problems in our country, and, as I recently argued at Quadrant Online, Australia’s immigration policy needs to adjust to the geo-strategic realities of the new world (dis)order.

Yet, our isolation is a blessing. We are far from every current conflict and flashpoint. Even a war over Taiwan would be geographically remote. Our borders are extremely hard to reach. Our bipartisan policy on illegal and uncontrolled immigration is sensible. Despite our relatively high level of legal immigration, our national character and general civic order is mostly stable.

This is not to suggest that there are no problems. There are pockets of disorder, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney. My view is that the number of international students from China poses a security threat in the medium term. But my estimation of what we enjoy in Australia has grown in the past few weeks. We have a stable political culture, with an orderly cycle of government and opposition between the major political groupings. Most of our immigrants enjoy living here and want to assimilate. We are blessed to be a peaceful, prosperous nation.

All in all, Australia is just alright with me, but not in the fashion of the Doobie Brothers. It is alright in the fashion of the alternative rock band DC Talk, who really were enthusiastic Christians when they performed Jesus is Just Alright in the mid-1990s. For DC Talk, Jesus was more than alright. I feel the same about Australia. Things aren’t perfect. But having reflected on the woes of Europe from the vantage point of the UK, and then reacquainting myself with the right-wing lifeboat of Hungary, I feel warmly about our nation.

There is plenty to be concerned about. We should fight to retain the good that we have whilst recapturing the blessings we have lost our grip on. But compared to the existential crisis that is now obviously gripping much of western Europe since the cataclysm of October 7, Australia is a haven of sanity and stability. We have much to be thankful for.

Simon P. Kennedy is the Associate Editor of Quadrant. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute in Budapest and a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland