Lachlan Murdoch's speech at the launch of The Centre for the Australian Way of Life

And of course I agreed immediately to launch it back then. Australia was world renowned for brilliantly navigating the COVID pandemic, relatively free of infection and lockdowns, and the envy of the world through rigorous quarantines. We kept our society open, healthy, and free while overseas infections skyrocketed and whole cities were shut down. Our constitution, for instance, is a melding of the Westminster system and the American federation, the best of... While our nation was forged with a frontier attitude reminiscent of the US drive westwards, with strong veins of optimism and self-reliance. But as America expanded west, their explorers and pioneers found rich plains, vast rivers, and mountains; we found a far harsher and more difficult environment. Perhaps this added to our sense of irony; it certainly added to our enduring resilience. When my father delivered his first Warrior lecture nearly 13 years ago, he referenced a favorite Russell Drysdale painting: burdened by the hardships of the past, weathered by the harshness of their environment, but with eyes cast hopefully to the future. Our national character should never lose that steeliness. 'Steeliness' — it's a good word, isn't it? It's a better quality, and one that Australians have displayed handily throughout the past. Identity is like a long rope made up of hundreds of woven strands of shorter individual fibers, but the strands at the beginning of the rope are entirely different from the strands at the end. We are not who we were a hundred years ago, or who we might become a hundred years from now. Culture and identity are not, and cannot be, frozen in time. It is this fluid aspect of identity that makes the center of the Australian way of life such an inspired idea. Understanding first what characteristics make us unique and what shared... Or much of the media elite is to hear about a uniquely racist, selfish, slavish, and monochromatic country. The reality could not be more different. We are one of the most tolerant, generous, independent, and multicultural countries in human history. Not without fault, but without peer. How can we expect people to defend the values... Them with false ideological narratives. We have a visceral sense of what we call a 'fair go.' This is our own idea, an antipodean concept, a deeply rooted understanding that whatever our circumstances, we deserve the same opportunities, the same respect, the same fair go. It is why we welcome immigrants, embrace aspirations, and scoff at class-based deference. Former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke wrote of a national character that 'adapted a class-ridden tradition to produce in this vast continent a people with a...' This is not a line of resignation or 'near enough is good enough'; it is a unique Australian combination of optimism and stoicism — stoic optimism, steeliness in a fraught world. We need to draw on our characteristic strengths to protect ourselves and our future. What is confronting, though, is when our way of life is challenged from the most trusted and even benign of sources. One year ago, who would have believed that in Australia, a pregnant mother would be arrested for questioning a government lockdown? Surrendering personal liberties, accepting government interventions, and absorbing record financial hardships were literally unquestionable burdens, at risk of fines or imprisonment. Australia did well to turn the tyranny of distance into a temporary pandemic advantage, using maritime borders and hotel quarantine as a moat against the virus until vaccines were developed. The federal JobKeeper scheme provided a financial lifeline that kept employees linked to their workplaces. Our spirit of mateship shone through at street level, with people checking on the welfare of... No doubt was fueled by the alarmist language and fear-mongering of politicians and much of the media. But it's the media's job to question these policies, to examine their consequences, and to ultimately hold our elected officials to account. That's our job. Decades ago, George Orwell pointed out how language is not only shaped by politics but is used to fabricate new realities. Debates around virus treatments, mass effectiveness, the human and economic cost... It can be uncomfortable, but it is the media's key role in our system. Toeing one orthodoxy does not allow this and is not the media's role. Infamously, YouTube then Sky News Australia — based on YouTube's own judgments and changing standards about a handful of pandemic-related videos — initially YouTube justified this censorship by stating, quote, 'YouTube does not allow for content that denies the existence of COVID-19,' end quote. But when challenged, they could not find a single instance of Sky ever denying... Allow medical disinformation about COVID-19 that poses a serious health risk or harm, or that is in contradiction with local and global health authorities' guidelines. Apart from being an obvious and blunt cudgel to Australia's freedom of speech, this standard was impossible to adhere to. Which health guidelines do you use? YouTube says local and global guidelines. YouTube used the World Health Organization as its fact-checking guide, a body that was late to declare the pandemic, quick to admonish Australia for closing its international border. Well, no. It's an election year and the politics have changed. What YouTube and other members of the tech sensor class are doing, at least when dealing with the media, is not protecting viewers from dangerous views or opinions, but rather ensuring that only the current orthodox view is allowed. Unfortunately for them, these orthodox views often turn out to be wrong. We should be wary of those who deny this freedom and call for less debate, less openness, and less diversity of opinion.