Guess What Shocked 4000 Right-wingers In London About Australia

This article was originally published in Australian Financial Review on or about 24 February 2025 and was written by the author in their capacity as a contributor for that publication. 

It has been republished on the IPA website with permission. The views expressed are those of the author alone.

The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference displayed the growing confidence of conservatives, showing the shift in the Western intellectual landscape.

One way to measure the rightward “vibe shift” throughout the English-speaking world is the size of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London.

In 2023, at its first meeting, there were 1500 people. At this year’s meeting, held last week, there were 4000 people. The event was sold out.

Described as a “right-wing Davos” or “Woodstock for conservatives”, ARC brought together the rock stars of the alternative zeitgeist – people such as Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Niall Ferguson, Michael Shellenberger, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. On ARC’s advisory committee are Australians John Howard, Tony Abbott, Jacinta Price, Andrew Hastie and Amanda Stoker.

While politics might be downstream of culture, it still matters. Donald Trump’s election and the beginnings of the retreat of DEI, ESG, and other woke acronyms of recent years definitely put a spring in the steps of the participants. The conference concluded before the public announcement of Trump’s apparent concessions to Russia on Ukraine.

Some key themes emerged from among the 150 speakers: the loss of and the search for meaning and purpose in the 21st century; the attack by governments around the world on freedom of speech; and a topic that resonated strongly throughout the conference that is not discussed much these days – the restoration and the pivotal role of family, which many orators argued was crucial for rebuilding a stable and prosperous society.

Inevitably a meeting of thousands of people ranging on the political spectrum from Christian Nationalist to anarcho-capitalist will produce contradictions and differences of opinion. Half of the attendees would probably applaud the decision of an increasing number of governments around the world to ban children from social media. The other half would say it is hypocritical to talk about the importance of the family when politicians were being encouraged to usurp the role of parents.

A keynote speaker at the 2023 ARC event was left-leaning social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who was largely responsible for the worldwide push to take smartphones out of the hands of young people.

Attendees at ARC were astonished to be told that Australia’s eSafety commissioner was a position established by a conservative government.

Tariffs and trade protection are an emerging fault line on the right. A highlight of the conference was the debate “That protectionism makes us poorer” between Tony Abbott and Daniel Hannan arguing for free trade, and Michael Gove and Oren Cass against it. A vote at the end saw 46 per cent of the audience agreeing with the proposition, 45 per cent disagreeing and 9 per cent undecided, which underscored a forum to confront and discuss complex issues with open minds.

A constant refrain from speakers was the need to restore “merit” as a principle in the West in place of “equity”, “equality”, and the demonisation of men. The plight of boys, and young men, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, is a major theme of ARC.

The debate on energy dominated the policy aspects of the conference. Net zero policies and the ideology behind them were heavily criticised, and all were concerned about the consequences of the so-called “transition”. The sentiment was succinctly captured in the statement: “The solution to climate change cannot be poverty.”

Australians offered a large contingent of attendees to the conference. The reason for the heavy representation of “our friends from Down Under”, as the British annoyingly said, was the subject of much discussion. One reason is the leadership of the former deputy prime minister John Anderson, one of the founders of ARC. His Conversations podcast has a global reach.

Another reason why Australians flocked to London was because ARC provides somewhat of a home for a broad cross-section of centre-right thinking that doesn’t exist in this country. In Australia, the left has, for example, their writers’ festivals, ABC’s Radio National, and any university conference you can think of.

The conference displayed the growing confidence of conservative thought, blending discussion and cultural expression in a way that signals a significant shift in the intellectual landscape of the West.

Until recently, political parties in the Anglosphere were playing catch up with this shift. It’s a shift that most obviously has hit the Republican Party in the United States and also the Conservative Party of Canada under Pierre Poilievre.

It remains to be seen what influence, if any, the sorts of discussions taking place at ARC will have on the conservative parties in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. At this stage, it’s difficult to imagine if Peter Dutton becomes prime minister one of his first actions in office will be, for example, to declare, as Trump did, that only biological females can play women’s sport.

Similarly, the Liberal Party has displayed little interest in prosecuting the case for freedom of speech with anywhere the enthusiasm of J.D. Vance, the US vice president. Attendees at ARC were astonished to be told that Australia’s eSafety commissioner was a position established by a conservative government.