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Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is warning against complacency in the face of “creeping wokeness”.

The conservative PM, who ousted grandiose leftwing populist Kevin “07” Rudd, made the comments in response to Ireland’s recent referendum results.

Two woke referendum proposals were defeated after Irish voters shunned changes to the definition of marriage, and gender-specific care.

The “family” – or “durable relationships” – amendment sought to extend the definition of marriage to include de facto relationships.

The “care” – or gender-neutral – amendment would have replaced “woman” with far-left terminology like ‘chest-feeding’, and ‘birth parent.’

For instance, this statement:

“The State should try to make it so that women are not forced to do any work ‘to the neglect of their duties in the home.”

would have been replaced with the vague, and convoluted:

“The State recognises that the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them, gives to society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, and shall strive to support such provision.”

67% voted no to the first amendment proposal. A landslide 74% rejected the second.

In his State of the Nation discussion with the Institute of Public Affairs deputy Daniel Wild, Abbott said the referendum result was encouraging.

“The people of Ireland have overwhelmingly rejected a woke-inspired change.

“What it says is that on topics where you ask the people [their point of view], you’re going to get a fairly conservative response.”

Progressive Takeover

This win doesn’t mean we should be complacent, he warned, adding,

“Much of what happens, happens regardless of the people.

“So many of the big social changes of recent times in Australia, haven’t even been driven by the parliament, let alone by the people.”

Those changes, Abbott recounted, have been slammed through by the “long march of the left through the institutions.”

Examples include:

• the “decolonisation” of the school curriculum.
• The near-universal flying of the Indigenous flag, co-equally with the national flag.

Australians have never voted for these things, he told IPA.

Another example is the enforcement of ‘Acknowledgement to Country’, “as if it belongs to some of us, not all of us.”

These things “have all been brought in without the parliament ever being asked, let alone the people.”

“What we’ve seen in Ireland,” the former PM said, is what we’ve seen happen in Australia with the Voice.

The public is “being appropriately careful, and cautious about change which might have long-running ramifications for society.”

The outcome of The Voice referendum was a vote against separatism, Abbott said.

“It wasn’t just the detail or lack of detail… it was a vote against race-based or ancestry-based separatism.”

The Ireland vote is similar.

It’s a vote in favour of the importance of marriage in the role of keeping families together.

While “we should be encouraged by the Ireland referendum outcome,” he said, the win shouldn’t make us complacent.

Australians need “more people in leadership positions, prepared to stand for the enduring values of our culture and our civilisation.”

This is because, “It’s the creeping wokeness that doesn’t get put to a vote, which has been the real problem over the last couple of decades.”

Niceness, and a lack of conviction in those who should be standing up for Western tradition, institutions, and values, has landed Australia in the divisive woke mire it is in today.

Abbott then reasserted,

“A majority that stays silent does not long remain a majority.

“Too many Australians have been too quiet for too long, either through politeness or lack of conviction.”

Basic Freedom

Building on his support for Irish “no” voters, Abbott said he was opposed to Albanese administration proposals to police speech during elections.

“Freedom of speech is fundamental,” he asserted.

This kind of proposed legislation threatens free speech.

It belittles the public’s intelligence by assuming they’re not capable of “seeing through hypocrisy, humbug,” and deception.

To this, Abbott emphasised discernment, “The best antidote to falsehood is truth.”

Policing speech around elections or referendums (through the Australian Electoral Commission) puts a “godlike” stamp on the AEC.

It stomps on the “good sense of Australians,” who are capable of sifting fact from fiction.

For this reason, he’s against what would be the political weaponisation of the AEC.

Clarifying his position on free speech, Tony Abbott said, not all speech is free.

He’s not against defamation laws that encourage individual responsibility.

What he is against is the idea that there should be some “Godlike authority accountable ultimately to no one,” policing speech.

Using pro-democracy killing CCP-19 censorship as an anchor point, Abbott argued, “many of the things that would have been branded misinformation, we now know to be true.”

Consider how much worse the consequences would have had there been some big Australian bureaucracy doing what Big Tech was doing.

Australia “needs more democracy, not less,” he concluded.

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Republished with thanks to Caldron Pool.