The National Conservatism Institute of Australia Podcast

Today I speak with Avik Roy who is a US conservative commentator, activist and founder of the foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity https://freopp.org/team/the-freopp-founders-avik-roy/

He has particular expertise in health care reform and has advised Mitt Romney and other Republican Presidential candidates in this area.

He has also been a prominent critic of the national conservative movement in the United States and was instrumental in pulling together something call "The Freedom Conservative Statement of Principles" found here: https://www.freedomconservatism.org/p/freedom-conservatism-a-statement

We talk briefly about health care in the United States, how concerns about Obamacare did not feature as much in the most recent Presidential election as they have in the past, and his view about what the appointments of RFK Jr and Jay Battachaya mean.

We then get in to national conservative v freedom conservative debate. His views on JD Vance, Trump and some of the key areas such as trade, foreign policy and immigration, where NatCons and his freedom cons have different approaches, and whether this is all just a rehash of what Disraeli and Gladstone were debating in the 19th Century.

Hope you enjoy.

Andrew is a Senior Policy Analyst in Trade Policy at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. Used to work for the British and American governments dealing with foreign policy and trade issues for many years.

We discuss:

1. Who is actually going to be in charge of trade policy under Trump 2.0?
2. What trade policies are likely to be actually implemented?
3. What will be the likely trading relationship between China and the US in future?
4. Will Australia receive or need an exemption from any new trade policies?
5. What should Australia's trade policy be going forward? Should we implement tariffs on China?

And much more.

Interview with Simon Hankinson - Senior Research Fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation

• How much of a focus immigration now is among think tanks in the US Capital and how much this has changed since the pre-Trump era

• What Trump's policy is likely to be with respect to legal immigration

• Why Tucker Carlson seems to like The Heritage Foundation rather than other DC think tanks
• How diversity, equity and inclusion programmes undermine US foreign policy

And much more

Jordan and Dan catch up Among other things we discuss:

- Reactions to immigration restriction speech by tech entrepreneur Matt Barrie

- Why the major parties in Australia aren't doing anything about mass immigration even though Kier Starmer and Justin Trudeau are making statements, at least in theory, saying numbers must be cut dramatically

- Why ABC Chairman Kim Williams and the mainstream media in Australia remain clueless about the new media environment

- Why are single women not voting for Trump unlike other demographic groups and what to do about it

- Why the reaction to the synagogue attack in Melbourne largely avoids the real issue of immigration

And much more

Gregory R. Copley is a strategic analyst who for over half century worked at the highest levels with various governments around the world.

He currently serves as President of the Washington-based International Strategic Studies Association and is editor-in-chief of the online journal Defence & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy. Born in Western Australia, he Member of the Order of Australia and is the author or co-author of over 35 books. Further information found here: https://www.strategicstudies.org/issa/GRCbio.htm

We discuss:

• How he ended up in Washington DC
• Why has detailed in-country knowledge been degraded and what it means
• How does one strike the balance between covert operations that a state needs to conduct to secure its interests and what its nations citizens should be entitled to know
• What should Australia's trade policy be with the United States and China going forward
• What lessons the Normans can teach us today
• What should Australia aspire to be as a nation in 50 years

And much more

My guest today is Dr Gordon Menzies. Gordon is an Associate Professor in Economics at the UTS Business School in Sydney.

He has had an illustrious academic career. Amongst other things he received his PhD from Oxford University and is a former economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia.

In 2021 he published a book “Western Fundamentalism – Democracy, Sex and the Liberation of Man”.

We discuss:

• Whether “liberalism” should be compared to a fundamentalist ideology
• How he now feels about the economic liberalisation of the 1980s in Australia in which he was deeply involved at a policy making level
• How economic liberal thinking has influenced modern relationship and has changed their nature
• What is wrong with the view that ever-increasing social, economic and sexual freedom will lead to greater happiness
• The problem of viewing traditional social institutions and customary restraints as simply individual choice within an overall liberal framework
• Whether there is cure for liberal fundamentalism

And much more.

Gray Connolly is a Barrister-at-Law in Coram Chambers in Sydney, Australia. His practice is mainly in constitutional law, public law, as well as corporations and resources law. Gray has advised the Australian Government on national security and public law matters.

Gray served previously as a naval intelligence officer in the Royal Australian Navy in the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Persian Gulf, East Timor, and the Middle East, including service in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gray also periodically writes on national security and governance matters from a conservative perspective. He keeps a blog at “Strategy Counsel” and his Twitter is @GrayConnolly

Wide-ranging discussion befitting a man with such deep and broad knowledge about so many things. We cover his political development, Ukraine, Middle East, China, Big Australia, and how close we are to our modern day Caesar crossing the Rubicon.

Virginia is a former ABC journalist and now freelance writer based on a farm in southern NSW where she lives there with her husband and four kids.

She is a regular contributor to The Australian, author of soon to be published book “All Mothers Work”, and founder of www.parentsworkcollective.org.au

She recently spoke at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship in Sydney where we met. In this interview we discuss:

• How we can improve the image of motherhood in the media, why this is necessary, and how this might be achieved
• What a sensible pro-natalist / family policy looks like and how we need to make parenting less of a heroic undertaking than it currently is
• What she makes of the "tradwife" phenomenon
• What single professional career-minded women do and don't understand about motherhood - pros and cons
• Whether she considers herself a feminist and her views on Simone De Beauvoir, Betty Friedan and others

And much more

I speak with UK academic Dr Daniel Pitt about his recent book on Post-liberalism and the Future of Conservatism. We discuss among other things:

• The situation in the UK today and why, despite having many erudite and interesting intellectuals, journalists, podcasters on the right, British politics is such a basket case at the moment
• How British conservatism differs from conservatism in the new world
• Whether and how liberals and conservatism should cooperate?
• Why Australia does not have the same intellectual tradition when it comes to "conservatism"
• What "national conservatism" actually means and how it differs (if at all) from past versions of conservatism
• Where "red toryism" and "blue labour" are now
• What a post-liberal and future conservative future looks like.

And much more.

My guest today is Tim Andrews is Director of Consumer Issues for Americans for Tax Reform based in Washington DC.

He was previously Executive Director of the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance is or has been on the boards of a host of free market think tanks globally including the HR Nicholls Society, and the Australian Libertarian Society. He previously ran the very successful Friedman Conferences in Sydney for many years.

We discussed:

• The current mood in Washington DC and how people are reacting
• His interpretation of Trump policy framework and whether it really differs from the previous Reagan centre-right Washington Consensus
• His views on Ukraine war
• His views on immigration and his personal experience with the Cronulla Riots in Sydney
• Our long standing argument on trade policy and why he still is in favour of free trade
• Whether if any of his policy positions have changed since Trump rise in 2015.
• How the Trump presidency could go wrong and whether the current national conservative moment could in turn followed by a more libertarian moment in due course

And much more.