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History repeatingDear , 24 hours ago I was going to send out a simple email giving you links to the livestream of Tony Abbott’s speech on November 25, plus links to copies of Australia, his optimistic history of our country. But the massacre at Bondi cries out for attention, and that actually fits in with my original intention because the theme of Abbott’s Australia is that from unpromising beginnings a great country was built. This act of terrorism threatens to derail that thesis. I was horrified when I heard the news, and as the death count grew, but that horror is even greater today. Yesterday it seemed surreal. Now I accept it as fact. My heart goes out to our Jewish Australians, and Jews everywhere because its effects are being felt everywhere. But they should not feel disheartened. Hannukah celebrates a military victory in the second century BC by the Maccabees when they recaptured Jerusalem from the vastly superior forces of the Seleucid empire. It seems Israel has always been turning a weak hand into a strong one and surviving against impossible odds. As a result of yesterday’s outrage I think they will find they are not so outnumbered anymore. Just like the Muslim grocer, Ahmed al Ahmed, who disarmed one of the shooters, there are many Australians from all sorts of backgrounds, who will stand with their fellow Australians of Jewish descent. But we need more than shows of virtue. Australia needs to take concrete steps to tame the evil that is within. I noted the religion of the hero, because I wanted to underline that what I am about to say is not anti-Muslim. But it is anti-Islam. In his book Tony Abbott talks about the willingness of immigrants to accept Australian core beliefs. That means believing in and accepting democracy; human rights; and the separation of church and state. These beliefs derive from Christianity. That doesn’t mean we are a Christian nation, but it does mean that people with an Islamic belief system are going to have trouble signing the pledge of citizenship – the document which John Howard developed for immigrants to sign and which contains those beliefs I listed. Islam is an all-encompassing religion which requires the state to be under the rule of the theocracy, just as modern-day Iran is. There are some variants of Islam that do not hold this, like the Ahmadiyya, and there are some more or less successful Muslim democracies like Indonesia as well. But these are departures from strict Muslim teaching. It’s an unfortunate fact that many Islamic immigrants come here to change the country, not to be part of it, and the visible sign of this is that they congregate together in the same suburbs, like previous waves of migrants, but unlike them, they don’t tend to integrate. They also bring their own clerics with them, some of whom we know preach anti-Semitism and Jew hatred. This can’t be allowed to continue and fester. The solution to Bondi is not a matter of tightening surveillance, or gun laws, but of prevention at the source. There are classes of people, and the citizens of whole countries, who should not be allowed to be residents except in extraordinary circumstances. And when immigrants break the explicit compact of citizenship represented by the Pledge or commit a serious criminal offence they should be denied citizenship, and depending on circumstances, repatriated. Sharia law and Sharia courts can also have no place in Australia, because they are incompatible with its ethos. If you weren’t at the launch of Australia: How an ancient land became a great democracy then you missed a very good evening with more than 200 of us filling the grand ballroom at Tattersall’s. But you haven’t missed everything. You can see our Facebook live stream of the event by clicking here. You can also still order the book. We have 7 copies left. To order, click here and you have time to get your copy before Christmas. In fact, if you’re stuck for something to give for Christmas, why not check out the volumes in our online book store. We’ve got: The Dark Legacy of Daniel Andrews edited Morgan Begg The End of the World: Climate Change and Its Anxieties edited by Ian Plimer Skeptical Always: A View at Three Quarter Time by Ian Plimer The Battle for the Soul of Western Civilisation by Augusto Zimmerman and Gabriel A Moens AM Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade by John Newton We have nothing more planned for this year, but stay tuned for events starting next February. Our plan is to do a regular monthly event at a similar time and price to this Tony Abbott book launch. On a different note I thought you might also be interested in the attached article, which I had published today in The Spectator. It’s entitled “Trump for Dummies” and it starts out: The biggest threat to Australia’s security might not be its Keystone Cops military industrial complex, or its failing energy sector, but the misreporting, deliberate or otherwise, on its key security partner, the US, and its Commander-in-Chief, Donald J Trump. Our media, public intellectuals, and gas bags all seem determined to recycle Democrat talking points. The result? A precipitous decline in favourable perceptions of the US. For Australia, this is an existential problem as they provide our national security insurance that our government is not willing to self-insure. According to the Lowy Institute Poll 2025, only 36 per cent of Australians ‘trust the United States to act responsibly in the world’, and 72 per cent have no, or not too much, confidence in Donald Trump. This makes Trump statistically indistinguishable from Xi Jinping, who scores 71 per cent on the same measure. We plan to make geostrategic considerations a major theme next year, along with the housing crisis (a genuine crisis, not the usual fake type attached to the world), and electricity. He also have a Christmas stocking full of ideas for David Crisafulli, but you’ll have to wait a little longer for that. And much more. Kind regards, GRAHAM YOUNG 
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