Where our freedoms die.

Australia's civics and citizenship education is destroying democracy.

Within these circles, Australia is best known for its strict response to the pandemic, as well as new hate speech laws and the Australian government's tendency to refuse visas to people who may be planning to utter controversial statements on Australian soil. Many attendees regarded Australia as something verging on an island prison…

'While it's not fully true, it's the general perception: the Australian government is seen as a proto-fascist state that does not care about the rights of their own citizens.'

That's from a news story a few days ago by Michael Koziol, the North American correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald. The quote is from one of the attendees. Koziol was reporting on the annual meeting of thousands of American conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference held last week outside Washington. According to Koziol, 'Throughout the three days, each speaker fawned over Trump so fulsomely that by the time the man arrived on Saturday afternoon, it was something of an anti-climax… Only at the very end did Trump really rouse the crowd with a quote borrowed from Revolutionary War naval commander John Paul Jones. 'I have not yet begun to fight,' he said. 'And neither have you.' '

Predictably, the second-biggest round of applause was for J.D.Vance.

'Don't allow this broken culture to send you a message that you are a bad person because you are a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends, because you're competitive,' he said, adding this same culture 'wants to turn everybody whether male or female into androgynous idiots who think the same, talk the same and act the same.'

But back to Australia. You don't need to subscribe to the idea the country is 'a proto-fascist state that does not care about the rights of its own citizens' to feel that whatever culture of freedom once existed in Australia is slowly (or not so slowly) dissolving. During last year's US election campaign, issues around freedom of speech, government censorship, and the intolerance of diversity of opinion featured prominently. A few hours after he was sworn in for his second term as president, Trump signed an Executive Order - 'RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP'. It's so good I'll quote the first two sections.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Purpose.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference.

Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans' speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.

Under the guise of combatting 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' and 'malinformation', the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government's preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.

Section 2. Policy.

It is the policy of the United States to:

(a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;

(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;

(c) ensure that no taxpayer resources are used to engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; and

(d) identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.

Don't worry if you can't imagine any future Liberal prime minister (let alone a Labor one) issuing such an order. I can't either. The Liberal Party gave us the eSafety Commissioner, and the first draft of Labor's now-abandoned 'misinformation' laws, while Labor gave us the under-16 social media ban (which the Liberals supported).

The historian John Hirst argued that Australians as happy-go-lucky and freedom-loving is a myth. We're actually 'a very obedient people' although we like to tell ourselves the opposite. According to Hirst, Australians,

…love a larrikin. Their most revered national hero is a criminal outlaw, the bushranger Ned Kelly. Their unofficial national anthem honours an unemployed vagrant who commits suicide rather than be taken by the police troopers for stealing a sheep.

To Hirst it was a puzzle that 'the Australian people despise politicians, but politicians can extract an amazing degree of obedience from the people, while the people themselves believe they are anti-authority.' He wrote that in 2004, and he died in 2016. The Covid experience that was to come a few years after this death was to prove him absolutely right. Hirst believed that part of the reason why Australians were so obedient to government was because government in this country was reasonably efficient, levied low taxes, and was not oppressive. Australians didn't feel threatened by the government, because the government didn't threaten them.

In 2002 Hirst wrote 'Australia's Democracy - A Short History' as part of the federal government's civics education program for school students, developed during the Howard government, by the education minister, David Kemp (my former boss). 'Australia's Democracy' tells the story of Australia's development into a successful democracy. How our British heritage gave us the concept of our human rights, such as freedom of speech, and how the economic and social conditions of the nineteenth century came together to produce what was, on many measures, the world's most democratic country. In Australia, women got the vote in national elections in 1902, in America in 1920, and in Britain in 1928.

This is how chapter one of 'Australia's Democracy' begins:

…Australia was colonised by people from Britain, which was the first country in Europe to have a government that respected rights and liberties. In Britain there was a king, but unlike other monarchs he had to rule through a parliament. Yet Britain was not a democracy; at the time Britain settled in Australia only one man in ten had the right to vote, and no woman had the franchise. Voters were men possessing a certain amount of property.

Though political rights were restricted, every man and woman in England, rich and poor, had the same legal rights. Their homes could not be invaded by the police, unless the police had a warrant from a court; if they were arrested they had to be put on trial in open court; and if they were to be punished severely they had to be found guilty by a jury. Everyone had the right to petition the king for mercy.

Ordinary English people knew their rights and were proud of them.

[Whether Australians today know their rights and are proud of them is an open question. Even if Australians do know their rights, they all too often seem all too eager to give them away.]

Twenty years ago that's what Australian students were studying in the civics and citizenship courses. Today not a trace of it remains. Civics and citizenship education in 2025 in Australia ignores the country's proud democratic history and instead repeats left-wing lore.

Last week the results of nationwide tests of Australian students' knowledge of civics and citizenship were released. The ABC reported, 'Australian students record worst ever civics result with 72 per cent not understanding the basics of democracy'.

Australian students' proficiency levels in civics and citizenship have fallen to their lowest level in two decades, according to 2024 exam results released today by ACARA.

Just 28 per cent of year 10 students met the proficiency standards compared to 38 per cent when the last test was taken in 2019. Students in year 6 were also tested. Forty-three per cent rated proficient in 2024 compared to 53 per cent in 2019.

Experts have warned this means students have failed to grasp basic concepts about Australian democracy and institutions, leaving them vulnerable to foreign interference when they become voters.

(If young Australians know nothing about Australian democracy, having them 'vulnerable to foreign interference' will be the least of our problems. A survey commissioned by the IPA in 2022 showed that only 32% of Australians aged 18-24 would stay and fight for their country if it was attacked. 40% said they'd leave.)

In fact, those test results reveal very little about students' knowledge of civics and citizenship, because the questions were not about civics and citizenship, they were about political ideology, and students were expected to give answers fitting the progressive narrative of the National Curriculum.

Janet Albrechtsen had a brilliant column about the test results in The Australian this morning.

Too many Australian students are leaving school with little understanding of the grand civilisational battles fought over centuries to secure fundamental values that empower us to be free and prosperous. Too few understand that every single generation must carry the torch for the next generation. When the torch is dropped, expect darkness.

I took the test. Here are my conclusions. Question one asks 15 and 16-year-old students which of the following is the task of a local council: look after parks and gardens; set up schools, run hospitals; or take part in parliament. Enough said there.

Question two is even more shallow. It asks why a group of university students - called Student Action for Aborigines - was able to protest for better outcomes for Aboriginal people in 1965. Answer: 'In Australia, people have the right to organise legal forms of protest.'

This is a case of the ideological tail wagging the dog. Those who wrote this civics question can tick the box - they have indeed addressed the first of three 'mandatory cross-curriculum priorities' of the Australian National Curriculum - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures.

But have they taught students about why freedom of speech matters in a free country? Where it comes from? That it's not given to us by the government or the UN? That freedom of expression emerged from our long, long, history, from an age of reason and a period of Enlightenment?

I also took the test. The important thing to know about the test is that the questions are set according to what students are taught in the National Curriculum. The test for Year 10 students had fifteen sample questions. The questions and their expected answers were either so simple as to be practically meaningless, or they were ideologically loaded - just like the National Curriculum itself. Four questions were about racism in Australia, three were about multiculturalism and the rights of minorities, two were about the role of local councils, one was about foreign aid, one was about the jury system, and four were about parliament.

And some of the questions and answers would be beyond the comprehension of a professor of politics or any politician. This is the foreign aid question.

Australia gives aid to a number of countries throughout the world. The Australian Government provided approximately $4 billion in Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2015-16. Why would the Australian Government choose to provide $4 billion in foreign aid?

a - The Australian Government does not need the money for anything else.

b - The Australian Government wants to control the countries that accept Australian aid.

c - The Australian Government believes in the value of helping people in need throughout the world.

d - The Australian Government wants to prove to the rest of the world that Australia is a rich and powerful nation.

You could mount a good argument that all those possible answers are correct. (The 'official' correct answer is c.) Likewise the one of the multiculturalism questions has at least two and possibly three correct answers.

Why did Australia move from a policy of assimilation to one of multiculturalism?

a - Australia did not have an identifiable culture of its own.

b - The government found it too difficult to force people to assimilate.

c - The diversity of immigrants coming to live in Australia needed to be recognised. (That's the 'official' correct answer.)

d - The government wanted equal number of immigrants from a variety of countries.

The test for Year 6 students is truly frightening. Students are asked to recite arguments AGAINST freedom of speech. Remember if the question is being tested, it's something students would have been taught in class. Here's the question:

Sophie says: 'I can say whatever I like. This is a democratic country.'

Maria says: 'Yes, you can say whatever you like, as long as you don't say things that insult people on the grounds of race, culture or religion. That's an important aspect of democracy.'

Give a reason to support Maria's opinion.

This is what we're teaching/indoctrinating eleven-year-olds? You could write a book about everything wrong with that question and all the assumptions embedded in it. Without freedom of speech, democracy is impossible.

In her piece today Albrechtsen asked:

Are [students] taught that without free speech there is no marketplace of ideas capable of identifying the best ideas and getting rid of the worst ideas? Are students taught that the friction of freedom means defending those with whom you disagree, and that without free speech other freedoms can't exist?

The answer is no - they're not. In Australia's classrooms our freedoms go to die.