CPAC SPEECH
SENATOR THE HON BRIDGET McKENZIE
LEADER OF THE NATIONALS IN THE SENATE
“Immigration, families and restoring the social contract”
September 19, 2025
Brisbane
Introduction
On my early morning walks in where I live in Wodonga, down in Victoria, I often head out to Bandiana Army Base, and depending on the time of day, I hear a bugler, a lone bugler, practising the Last Post.
In those moments, it takes me back to the cenotaphs that were built in every town around this great country of ours, in every capital city.
They are inscribed with the names of husbands, brothers, sons, fathers – often too many with the same surnames – of those who fought for us and our country and our values a long time ago.
But what if now in my street? In your street?
Who would stand up and fight?
Who would volunteer to defend our country, our values in the event of a war?
The answer to that question is incredibly complex – and more complex than we might first assume.
Because a nation’s story doesn’t tell itself.
It needs someone to tell it, someone to tend that story, or otherwise someone else gets to write it.
And we have an industry in our universities, our public service and elsewhere in our media devoted to deconstructing our national story and tearing it down.
One of the reasons that immigration has become such an incendiary issue is because nothing reshapes a national story more quickly than those who come to be part of our great country.
Whether you’ve been here for five weeks, five generations, or 50,000 years, all of us have bought some baggage along the way with us.
And it’s what we do with that baggage, once we arrive.
Is it going to positively contribute to this great country or is it going to undermine the very things that make us great?
Immigration & population
This is my third CPAC address, and it’s the third time I will be warning against an immigration program that is straining housing, infrastructure, services and social cohesion.
It is the third time that I’ll be discussing the excesses of greed and power, of big business, big government, and big tech, and the importance of critical importance as conservatives, of small business, localism, and traditional Judeo-Christian values.
For two elections now as a senior shadow cabinet minister, I have pushed for a population and settlement policy.
This country hasn’t done a green and white paper process on population in since Malcolm Fraser was in power, and we’ve seen the consequent result.
Congested cities, social cohesion fraying, and indeed Australians, as they did recently in many marches, standing up and saying: enough is enough.
We need to have that conversation to understand what do we want Australia to look like in 50 years’ time?
Do we build the inland cities, such as they have in the (United) States or in Europe? Or do we just keep jamming millions of people into Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne?
In Britain, the migration issue has gotten pretty real as (former UK Prime Minister) Liz Truss has attested to in her speech this morning.
The wide-open gate to illegal immigration in recent years has resulted in major social problems and justified serious civic unrest.
Here in Australia, due largely because of our geography but also some tough decisions made by previous Coalition Governments, the illegal immigrant problems are not experienced to the same extent.
But, if you look at the New South Wales data around languages spoken at home, nearly 40 per cent of kids in New South Wales government schools come from families where English isn’t the main language spoken at home for families.
To pretend we’re not to experiencing major social upheaval and change is to actually bury our heads in the sand.
Post-war social compact
The postwar compact of the need for migration has been broken because Australians rightfully see right through the self-interest of big business, boosting and needing their skilled workers, big universities, boosting their profits from international students to the detriment of domestic students, and big bureaucracy that happily keeps that headline GDP figure ticking along at what it needs to be.
Meanwhile, the individual GDP figures go backwards, and what that means is living standards, dropping.
I’m firmly at the view, like Tony Abbott, that you can be pro-migrant and be against aggressive immigration.
We need to be able to say, who can come and share this great experience and effort to build a safe, sustainable and prosperous Australia … who want to share our common values, who are prepared to stand under one flag, who know and respect our rule of law and who do not want to set up another side scheme.
We’ve got to manage the numbers so that we can plan for it, not just for our economy, but for our social cohesion going forward.
And who today says, welcoming Greeks and Italians from Europe, a war-torn Europe wasn’t a good thing? Who would say that now? No one.
Together we’ve been able to build a magnificent country, a huge success, but that’s because that wave of migrants, and the Vietnamese after them, chose to become Australians.
Chose to become Australians, and to share this common effort.
Because it’s hard to build a country and a nation state that we can all be proud of.
There are a few things that I think make Australia who we are: egalitarianism, service and sacrifice to each other and to our communities, making sure English is our common language, our love sport, community faith and family, and you’ve got to love hard work.
You’ve got to love it, and we need to keep rewarding it.
Last week I sat in Shepparton, and I sat with some Sikh farmers in that community.
They were orchardists. They come from the Punjab.
They love our country, they love the rule of law, they believe in liberal democracies, in peace and freedom, and they want to work hard.
These are exactly the people we need in this country.
We need more of them and we need fewer people who hate liberal democracies, who don’t want to see women in positions of power, who want to harm gay Australians, and who want to set up a separate legal system such as Sharia law.
We do not need Islamists in this country.
These are hard things to say.
They are going to be harder things to do because our mothers raised us to be polite, to love people, to care for our community.
But if we do not take a stand, what’s happening in Britain, what’s happening in Europe, will be happening right here.
Stake in Australia
To feel loyalty to your country, you have to feel ownership.
Your country has to have a stake in you, and you have to have a stake in your country.
And I’m not just referring to recently arrived migrants.
The average age of a person getting their first home in Australia right now is 36.
I know it, I was shocked, too, when I heard it.
That’s the age of my children.
But when you look at the data, the data doesn’t lie.
To purchase a home in Australia, the average house price has climbed to be 14 times what the average Australian wage is.
25 years ago, it was only six and a half times.
Where many of you would have bought your home, it would have been three times the price.
So, there is a real problem for young Australians.
The Bank of Mum and Dad, and I’m sure there’s a few bank managers here in the audience, is now the 11th largest lender in the country for the deposit gap, in particular.
And that’s if you’re lucky enough to have a Bank of Mum and Dad available to you.
The social consequences of these statistics are enormous.
Charlie Kirk, whilst embodying his Christian values in the way he took the fight up to the left, also warned about similar consequences in the US, of a credit-centric renter economy.
Charlie said, “You have a generation that is renting more than it is owning, so when you don’t own something, why would you defend it?
If you don’t own something, why would you defend it?
These are the real issues that we have to deal with as a movement.
If you’re not buying your home until you are 36, exactly at what point you settling down and having a family?
Starting a family is a period of great vulnerability, and so the stability and security of being in your own home is critical for making that a success.
Never mind the biology .. tick tock .. right? 36.
Family formation
I don’t think we’ve realised the sort of precipice we’re standing on as a society.
We now have a whole generation that’s choosing not to have children or putting off children when this should be the most natural human thing in the world to do.
The pressure on our young Australians including the soaring cost of rent and housing, HECS debts that take years to repay, and the diabolical choices, particularly for young women, about careers, childcare.
For the first time in history, they are choosing not to have children or to have fewer than they’d actually like to have, and they are having to make decisions that are not in the best interest of their child, and the well-being and development of their own children.
Whilst the factors have contributing to these are multiple and complex, there are cultural issues apply because government can’t do everything, and we shouldn’t expect them to.
But there are issues around childcare policy, and a consumerist a materialistic society that we’ve all contributed, myself included, and we’ve got to own that.
We’re now got a birth rate of 1.6, so couples are not even replacing themselves.
So, who is going to pay the taxes to deliver the services we expect? (And) we’re back to an immigration program.
So how did we get to this space within two generations?
And I think you’re hearing this weekend, there are issues that point to a much deeper malaise that’s infected Western society.
Liberalism versus conservatism
The question of whether this malaise is a spiritual crisis caused by liberalism, or whether liberalism has been caused by a spiritual crisis?
I don’t know, and I look forward to debating that and having that discussion over the coming days.
But what is it that both the spiritual crisis and neo-liberalism has brought us to this consequent place we’re at?
Some of us still like to say, you know: ‘I’m an economic liberal and social conservative’.
I’m now convinced that this country has papered over the large crack between liberalism and conservatism for too long.
We tried to make this unholy marriage survive for political expediency and no more.
No more.
Because what happens with excessive liberalism at its end point is self-autonomy that becomes the only form of morality.
The very things that maintain a good life, the family, the community, the nation state, are corroded.
There was once a time that we shared a moral framework, the Judeo-Christian ethos, if you’re not a Christian, Christian values, if you are, but that ethos is recognised as that humans are fallen beings, and they actually need non-government interventions of conscience, of family, of community, of agreed practises and beliefs as guardrails to keep them on the right track against the very worst (of our human tendencies).
But it also gave us a language, a Judeo-Christian language, around what was right and wrong, that there were limits to human behaviour.
There are, if you like, natural laws.
Post-Christian liberalism
That framework has absolutely collapsed, we are now in a post-Christian, post-truth reality.
People like our own Greg Sheridan have written that Christendom is gone and in its place are shifting and conflicting moralities, self- created truths, narcissism, and endless conflict.
And in a similar way, liberalism has proclaimed a world where there are no limits, no limits to the market, no limits to rapacious human appetite, no limits to consumption.
So, what is that world look like?
It looks like global entities, and take your pick, Google, Amazon, Meta, Blackrock.
It looks post-Westphalian, where there is no nation state.
There are no borders.
It looks like gender ideology where humans can literally not believe their eyes about this man and this woman.
You know, love the Scottish Enlightenment, love the scientific method, our senses are how humans have worked out what is true, what is good, what is beautiful, for our entire existence.
But in this moment, in this time, in this country, we are being told you can’t believe your eyes, you can’t believe your ears.
It looks like young boys who are addicted to porn before they’ve even had a conversation with a girl, let alone their first kiss.
And, it looks like where you disagree with someone, have a different opinion from someone, or someone hurts your feelings, you’re actually committing a crime; you can be cancelled – or killed.
Nihilism, man is God.
Every man, woman, a god unto themselves, and a vacuum of the former moral and ethical framework is replaced by a competition for raw power – and who gets to wield it.
We’re all for the small and medium enterprises and entrepreneurs, but commerce via supra-national platforms has extended its reach into our very habits.
Our very habits and our thoughts – our attention span is mined for profits, every single second, every day, every week, every year.
And guess what?
We’re all complicit. It’s so seductive, right?
Because it’s super convenient, super convenient.
Tight hips – that’s for the over 50s.
Big lips – that’s for the under 40s.
You name it, you can get it, we can get it for you quickly.
Different tribes, same machine.
This is the antithesis of conservatism.
And I know there are many champions of free speech in this room, and I respect that, and we need to do that.
But we are also trading our innate human desire for freedom for the convenience and entertainment to such an extent, we’re almost complicit in our own dehumanisation.
Does that make sense?
So, forget the Stasi coming to knock on your door!
They’re already in the house. And they’re in your kids’ ears and eyes.
It’s here.
We’re risking, losing our very humanity.
So, I’ve painted it terribly bleak picture.
What is to be done?
But we’re here and I love our theme this weekend – Engage, Unite, Act – because that’s exactly what we need to do.
The answer is what can we do?
A lot. Both as individuals in our own small platoon of our family, in our community, our sports clubs, our churches, our political parties, but also collectively and politically.
Firstly, we have to do everything in our power to re-enfranchise younger Australians because the longer they feel left out of our country, the more likely they are to look for easy answers in radical ideologies.
And, as we’ve seen overseas, and in the US particular, when truth is proclaimed without fear, young people have actually found it incredibly attractive.
So let’s do more of that.
Let’s be brave. Let’s also be respectful. Ears stay open to what we have to say.
Secondly, I think we need to think very serious about family policies.
We need to make the physical and emotional welfare of children, our first priority, not last on list.
Making our future, our precious future, you know something that is the work around for our self-centred lives, particularly in that first thousand days.
I’m not talking about walking back the clock to where Dad walks out, peck of the cheek, mum’s chained to the kitchen.
Those days are over! Sorry, guys.
But there is a way we can have a modern conversation about this so that our daughters and our sons can be magnificent parents and live the good life with our grandchildren in a safe, sustainable and prosperous country, but we need to get the policies right.
Thirdly, the centre right of politics, and that’s all of us has to stop fighting amongst ourselves.
Because how the enemy has done this to us, they are highly disciplined, very well-financed, very well-financed, and relentless, militant in their intent over time.
We tend to just bag each other out.
The stakes are too high.
They’ve dug in, they’re disciplined, well-financed, and strong.
And we also need to recognise that the solution to the breach of social contract that I spoke about between young people and our great country and the ownership, that we have inflicted on society, the solution to that lies in true conservatism.
In a Burkean conservatism, local community, family, faith, our small platoons.
We must be able to articulate our policies in a language that resonates with modern Australia and with actual actions. To live it out.
Let, like Charlie Kirk, let your actions show your value system.
It’s not the government’s problem to solve everything, the onus is on us.
We’re going to have to be counter cultural.
Now, his communism aside, let’s put on our Che Guevara t-shirts – he smokes cigars, he was a pretty good shot, my kind of guy.
But this is what is in front of us.
No more polite conversations to keep the peace at Christmas.
We have to tell truth to lies.
In the political field, I’m certain, ultimately, the answer to our problems don’t lie with political parties of protest.
Unlike the UK and the United States, we don’t have optional voting, we don’t have first past the post.
Everyone in Australia votes, and it’s a preferential system, and that is something we have to grapple with.
We need a party of government that rigorously applies its conservative values, consistently across the board so Australians can trust what those politicians say and what they’re going to do.
CONCLUSION
History reminds us that rights and revolutions can look a bit the same.
But some revolts have tipping points, so we’re watching that right now.
Has the US already had their tipping point? Is the UK about to?
Let’s put aside our differences.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
The stakes are too high.
Choose discomfort, over comfort.
Truth over lies, and let’s get in there and fight.
Thanks for having me.
Ends