I want my children to inherit a country they can recognise and feel proud to belong to. A country where they can speak their minds, make their own choices and expect to be treated as equals. I also want them to understand that these freedoms have a history. They were built, argued over, defended and handed down. Their survival requires something from us.
That is what sits underneath much of my frustration with the ongoing culture war. We argue about pronouns, religious sensitivities, school policies and offensive opinions as though each dispute exists on its own. Beneath them is a larger question: what sort of society are we prepared to maintain, and what are we entitled to ask of one another?
For me, Australia’s old British inheritance is fundamental. Parliamentary government, common law, political opposition and the expectation that authority can be questioned are structural elements of the country. We have given that inheritance an Australian character: less deferential, suspicious of pretension, inclined to ask someone getting above themselves who they think they are. I value that. I want it to survive.
Australia’s character grew out of the meeting of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh traditions under very different conditions from those at home. Some people arrived in chains; others came freely, seeking land, work or a better life. They brought their accents, faiths, rivalries and customs, but life here gradually produced something distinct. We developed without a local hereditary aristocracy governing by birthright, although wealth and class certainly carried power. Working together, arguing together and building communities helped give substance to the Australian expectation that a person’s worth should depend on what they did, rather than the family they came from.
That common life did not require everyone to worship in the same church. Catholics, particularly the Irish, faced real prejudice, and the divisions could be bitter. Yet they helped build and reshape the same country through its workplaces, unions, businesses, schools and parliaments. Across the colonies, a broadly shared British legal and institutional inheritance provided a framework within which those differences were contested. Over time, common institutions and everyday practices helped people build an Australian identity without surrendering every distinction of origin or faith. That identity took shape as much through the ordinary business of earning a living and raising families as through laws and parliaments.
It is that everyday making of Australia I feel a deep attachment to: the work done in paddocks, behind pub counters, on factory floors and in service uniforms. A country is built and sustained by people getting on with things, often without much recognition. The freedoms we enjoy today carry the accumulated effort of lives that began long before ours.
That history belongs in our understanding of citizenship. I think of the old Saxon shield wall as a metaphor for shared responsibility. The person beside you matters because you depend on one another. In effect, you live and die by your ability to work together towards shared objectives. In our modern society, that person might be a nurse, a factory worker, a single parent or a soldier. Their contribution deserves respect. Nobody needs an approved vocabulary or fashionable opinions to possess equal worth. What we should expect of one another is a willingness to chip in as best we can. As they used to say in the Army, “Don’t be jack”: don’t look after yourself at your mates’ expense. There is an implied sense both of duty and fairness that is inherently valuable.
None of this requires a single ancestry. The people I love bring together different histories, traditions and ways of seeing the world. My children inherit more than one rich cultural story. I want them to enjoy those stories and understand where they came from. Above all, they are Australian. That shared identity should be substantial enough to hold their different inheritances together.
This is why I resist the suggestion that attachment to our foundations somehow excludes everyone who arrived later. An inheritance can be shared. People can adopt it, contribute to it and help carry it forward. But there must be something recognisable to join. A society needs common expectations, obligations and loyalties. Otherwise, what holds it together when individual preferences pull in different directions?
I worry that we are becoming reluctant to say what those expectations are. We can celebrate difference enthusiastically while appearing embarrassed by continuity. Yet it seems reasonable to expect respect for equal citizenship, freedom of conscience and open disagreement. I do not regard my daughter’s independence as a negotiable cultural preference. Her ability to work, vote, speak and choose her own life matters.
The everyday freedoms matter too. I like being able to have a beer, eat what I please, keep a dog and question a religious belief, or even scribble a cartoon that offends. Someone else is perfectly entitled to abstain, worship or disapprove. They can tell me they think I am wrong. But their convictions give them no authority over my conduct. Our society rests on foundations that, for me, are non-negotiable: equal citizenship, freedom of conscience, open disagreement and the right to live without religious or ideological coercion. People are welcome to bring different traditions into that shared life. They have no entitlement to impose beliefs alien to those principles and expect everyone else to submit. We have both the right and the responsibility to defend these foundations through our laws, institutions and willingness to speak plainly. Respect for difference must include respect for the freedoms that make difference possible.
The same principle applies beyond beliefs. I can have compassion for someone struggling with identity without accepting every explanation offered for that struggle. I can support their right to live peacefully while questioning policies or expectations promoted in their name. Those positions can coexist. An individual’s distress deserves a humane response; the wider institutional response remains a legitimate subject of argument.
The debate about transgender issues illustrates these wider tensions. It brings questions about parents, schools, expertise, language and authority into focus. Reducing all disagreement to prejudice avoids those questions. Reducing every transgender person to a political campaign is equally inadequate. People deserve to be encountered as individuals, and policies deserve to be examined on their merits.
Across the culture war, simplified talking points save everyone the trouble of thinking. One side invokes inclusion as though it resolves every competing claim. Another invokes tradition as though inherited practice can never be questioned. Institutions reach for approved language. Campaigners reach for outrage. Somewhere in this exchange, ordinary people are expected to choose a camp and repeat its lines.
I want the freedom to refuse that choice. Expertise should inform public debate, and experts should be answerable to questions. Compassion should influence policy, and policy should remain open to criticism. Tradition should receive serious consideration, and its defenders should explain its value. None of these principles works well when it becomes a device for ending discussion.
Change should happen through persuasion and democratic consent, within a firm commitment to the freedoms that make both possible. Policies and institutions can evolve, but equal citizenship, freedom of conscience and the right to disagree must remain secure. Those proposing change must explain how it respects these foundations and what consequences it carries. Good intentions are insufficient grounds for weakening the freedoms we hold in common. Indeed, good intentions in aggregate are the food that sustains bureaucracy and the general erosion of democratic principles.
Living by those principles carries a cost for all of us. A free society cannot guarantee that everyone will feel accepted by everyone else. People will encounter opinions they dislike, beliefs they find absurd and judgements they consider unfair. I accept that this applies to me. My attachment to Australia and its inherited institutions and cultural norms is open to criticism, and I expect the same freedom to answer back. Defending our foundations requires us to tolerate arguments against them while standing firm against attempts to deny others the freedoms they protect.
But disagreement and unequal citizenship are different things. Nobody should have to earn basic protection by becoming popular. Nor should someone acquire a right to command agreement because they belong to a minority. The question is what a particular demand requires of others, what freedom it protects and whether its burdens are justified.
I am particularly wary when a contested belief becomes an organisational requirement without proper debate. Who decided? What authority do they have? Can the decision be challenged without someone’s character being put on trial? Those seem like ordinary Australian questions. A society that loses the habit of asking them risks becoming deferential to precisely the sort of power it once enjoyed puncturing. The danger is a descent into a nameless, faceless, unaccountable bureaucratic hell, where everyone is expected to comply and nobody takes responsibility for the rules.
There are limits to any appeal to heritage, of course. Pride does not oblige us to defend every decision made by earlier generations. Their country contained injustices, and ours will have failures our children recognise more clearly than we do. We can acknowledge the histories and experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and the achievements of later arrivals, while retaining gratitude for the institutions and freedoms we inherited.
What concerns me is the assumption that belonging becomes more enlightened as it becomes less attached to anything particular. I do not believe that. People need reasons to care for their country beyond the services it provides. They need a sense that they are responsible for something extending beyond their own lives.
I want my children to feel that responsibility without embarrassment. They should be able to cherish their different family histories, argue freely about Australia’s future and stand alongside fellow citizens whose backgrounds differ from their own. The ground beneath them should be firm: equal citizenship, personal freedom, shared obligations and a country confident enough to remember how it was built.
That is an inheritance worth defending, improving and handing on.
