A Time For Consequences - 17 July, 2026

[00:00:00]Good morning. Back on the farm.

[00:00:03]Back in the rain.

[00:00:04]Barnaby Joyce had some interesting things yesterday when asked about the use of the word monoculture as Pauline Hanson did at that now famous National Press Club address a little time ago.

[00:00:18]I remember saying the day after that on one of these chats that it would be deliberately misinterpreted and that her opponents would use it to try to make political gain and of course they did that.

[00:00:29]I mean Pauline's message was clear. It was the song of you are I am we are Australian. It was the it was the it was the message of the Blue Mink all those years ago. You know, what we need is a great big melting pot. What the speech was about was Australia embracing all kinds of cultures under the umbrella of one culture.

[00:00:49]The Australian culture. A wonderful culture.

[00:00:53]Yesterday Barnaby Joyce was asked about it and he said this.

[00:00:56]Let's define what mono means and it means the Australian culture.

[00:01:00]It is one culture, the Australian culture, that it encompasses your capacity to have different beliefs, different creeds, different races, but you must abide by the guardrails of the Australian culture.

[00:01:12]Now, you can agree or disagree with that.

[00:01:15]But as was obviously going to be the case, so many twisted it and turned it and were absolutely dishonest about it.

[00:01:21]I remember one journalist at the time saying apropos the the World Cup in America, look at the Australian team.

[00:01:30]Are they proof of how multiculturalism works?

[00:01:34]And then had a shot at Pauline Hanson.

[00:01:37]Whilst totally missing the obvious point. He was making the point that all our players come from here, they come from there, they come from all around the place. We've got this religion and that religion.

[00:01:47]That's multiculturalism.

[00:01:49]It is also the one culture that Pauline Hanson was talking about.

[00:01:54]It's it's a play with words in a sense because as we said then and as Barnaby said yesterday, they come from everywhere and they play for that one wonderful gold strip, the Australian strip. We all play for team Australia.

[00:02:12]But not everybody does. I don't know how much attention you're paying to the Royal Commission into anti-Semitism and social cohesion. What a stupid name. The lack of social cohesion comes directly from the anti-Semitism that they're investigating.

[00:02:28]And so much of what they're investigating and so much of the testimony is really, really ugly stuff.

[00:02:33]It's got nothing to do with the Australian culture. It's It's horrible stuff.

[00:02:38]Because the same as they And this is apart the the irony, the sad irony, that so many of these people who run around yelling for intifadas and claiming their right to free speech would deny Jewish students, Jewish professors, Jewish artists the right simply to live their lives.

[00:02:59]Because their right to free speech, the advocates that is, the activists, their right to free speech ends when it gets in the way of our right to live our life freely, to play sport, to sing, to study.

[00:03:14]And then you hear some of the testimony of the vice-chancellors of the universities.

[00:03:20]Just shocking. It's hard to know what to make of them. Are they just cowards?

[00:03:23]Are they incompetent in being able to understand the balance of free speech?

[00:03:30]Because far too much was allowed to go unchecked. And this kind of stuff has been building, building for a long time.

[00:03:36]Anti-Semitism just doesn't knock on the door and walk in one day. It's allowed to build. It's been allowed to build in many of our institutions, including sadly our universities.

[00:03:46]So that when I heard the testimony of the vice-chancellor of one of the Melbourne universities being asked to explain a professor who was whose office was stormed by a large group.

[00:03:59]And virtually took over his room. And the professor wanted the names of those activists released. He wanted them made public.

[00:04:07]Now, in America there's been a lot of this garbage carrying on as well.

[00:04:12]And a lot of the activists or many of them have been wearing masks.

[00:04:17]Well, they found out who were hiding behind the the masks. These cowards behind the masks. And many of the legal firms, top companies in America said, "Don't bother sending an application for a job. You're not getting it. We don't hire anti-Semites." Now, people are free and they're free to protest the Israeli government's activities in the Middle East.

[00:04:38]Everybody's free to do that. Everybody has a point of view.

[00:04:42]You're not free to extrapolate from that anti-Semitism.

[00:04:47]Because you're against the government's policy, you should not be anti-Jewish.

[00:04:52]Anymore than people should be anti-Australian because we disagree with this government's policies.

[00:04:58]It's an absurd proposition, but the vice chancellor at the university didn't release the names because he didn't want those students' records marked for the rest of their lives.

[00:05:09]Well, if they want to act irresponsibly like that, these are not children. These are young adults. And they need to know that not only does freedom of speech have limits, it also has consequences. We're free to say what we want and then we need to accept the the consequences for it.

[00:05:26]And I think it's about time some of them started facing a few consequences.

[00:05:32]Have a good day and a good weekend.