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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has accused Australia’s conservative parties of engaging in a “race to the bottom”, branding them the “axis of grievance”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has accused Australia’s conservative parties of engaging in a “race to the bottom”, branding them the “axis of grievance”.

At his keynote address to the NSW Labor Party conference on Sunday, Mr Albanese sharpened his political attack on the Coalition and One Nation.

“The Liberals think that the way forward is to change their name. Well, I’ve got news for them. The problem is not their brand, it is their product,” Mr Albanese said.

“It is not their sales pitch, it is their policies. It’s not what they call themselves, it who they are.

“It is the race to the bottom that all three right wing parties are caught up in. They are the axis of grievance.”

Mr Albanese has increasingly sought to politically link the Liberal Party, the Nationals and One Nation together.

“Our opponents only ever define themselves by who and what they are against. We are defined by what we are for,” he said.

In response to Mr Albanese's remarks, Nationals leader Matt Canavan told Sky News that the PM had a “tin ear”.

“For one, I think those comments… show how much of a tin ear this Prime Minister has,” Mr Canavan said.

“I mean, the Australian people do have some legitimate grievances under his watch. Real wages have dropped 15 years, back to 2011 levels.

“Under his watch energy prices have skyrocketed and we’ve lost our nickel (industry), our plastics (industry), our flat glass (industry).”

Australia News Politics Anthony Albanese brands right wing parties the ‘axis of grievance’ during address to NSW Labor Party conference Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has accused Australia’s conservative parties of engaging in a “race to the bottom”, branding them the “axis of grievance”.

‘Grim reality’ for Aussies post-Bondi

NSW Premier Chris Minns says the state faces a “grim” new reality in the wake of the Bondi terror attack, after a stark warning from Australia’s spy chief.

In his annual threat assessment released this week, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess described Australia’s security environment as “degraded”.

He said he was “gravely concerned” by the temperature and trajectory of the terrorism threat in Australia and warned the terror threat level – which was held at “probable” – did not tell the full story.

“We do know the environment is degrading and acts of politically motivated violence are becoming more likely than probable suggests,” he said.

“Either on the streets after someone’s decided to commit a terrorism event in Bondi or somewhere else, but also online and in our community.

“When racist, anti-Semitic abuse of behaviour is exhibited in our community, we need to confront it.

“All of us need to step up and say this is not acceptable … It can’t just rest on the shoulders of New South Wales Police or ASIO or the Jewish community of Sydney, who’ve frankly gone through enough.”

While there was a focus on militant Sunni Islamic extremism in the wake of the Bondi attack, Mr Burgess said ASIO had dealt with extremists “across the ideological spectrum” since then.

Including one who allegedly combined ideological and extreme Christian beliefs, and an individual allegedly inspired by an extreme left-wing ideology,” he said.

The spy chief also warned people were increasingly being radicalised alone and online rather than in groups or “in prayer halls”.

“And, instead of spending time and resources planning sophisticated attacks, radicalised individuals are moving to low-capability attacks with little or no warning,” Mr Burgess said.

“These dynamics make the contemporary terrorism environment different – and in some ways, more difficult – than we saw with al-Qaeda and ISIL.”

Mr Burgess said even a “vast army of ASIO case officers and surveillance officers” might not be enough to stop an individual radicalised online.

Sage advice for One Nation

What exactly does it mean to be Australian?

Damien Costas

They say the worst vice is advice. However, if I were advising Pauline Hanson or One Nation, my first piece of advice would be remarkably simple: *define your terms*…

Every high-school debater learns the same lesson. Before you can win an argument, you must first define the topic. The side that owns the definition often wins the debate before it has properly begun.

The same principle applies in law. It is not uncommon to watch senior counsel spend hours arguing over the meaning of a single word, phrase or constitutional provision. Definitions matter because words matter. In many cases, the argument itself is won or lost on their interpretation.

Which brings us to Pauline Hanson’s recent remarks about multiculturalism.

Hanson caused predictable outrage when she told the National Press Club that Australia should aspire to be a monoculture rather than a multicultural society. The reaction was immediate. Commentators accused her of wanting everyone to look the same, eat the same food, speak the same language, and abandon their heritage. Social media erupted. The usual battle lines were drawn.

Yet as I watched the debate unfold, I was struck by a different thought. I am no longer convinced that the people arguing about multiculturalism are actually talking about the same thing. In fact, I am not sure many of them know what the word means at all.

For decades, multiculturalism has been one of those concepts that everybody supports until they are asked to define it. Ask an Australian politician why multiculturalism is a good thing and the answer is usually some variation of the same theme: food. We are told multiculturalism gives us wonderful restaurants, diverse cuisines and the opportunity to experience different cultures through what we eat. That may all be true. It is also beside the point.

Food is not culture. At least not in the sense that matters politically. A society does not rise or fall because people enjoy different cuisines. Civilisations are not built upon recipes. Culture is something much deeper. It is a society’s collection of values, assumptions and beliefs about how life should be organised. It is what people regard as right and wrong. It is how they understand freedom, authority, responsibility, family, citizenship, law and community.

Politics, as the saying goes, is downstream from culture. But culture itself is downstream from values. That is where the current debate becomes confused. When Pauline Hanson speaks about a monoculture, many people hear ethnicity. What she appears to mean is values. Those are not the same thing.

The confusion is not entirely new. We have seen something similar before. For years, public debate over gender became bogged down because different people were using the same words to mean different things. What one side understood as biological sex, another understood as gender identity. Rather than beginning with definitions, we spent years arguing over conclusions. Much of the heat generated by that debate was the result of people talking past one another.

Something similar is now happening with multiculturalism. One side hears the word ‘culture’ and thinks of food, festivals, clothing, and language. The other hears ‘culture’ and thinks of values, institutions, and social norms. Unsurprisingly, they reach entirely different conclusions. Before we can decide whether Australia should be multicultural, monocultural, or something in between, we first need to decide what culture actually is.

Australia has never been ethnically homogeneous. Even before large-scale post-war migration, Australians came from English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, European, and countless other backgrounds. What united them was not ancestry but a broadly shared set of cultural assumptions: freedom of speech, equality before the law, parliamentary democracy, religious tolerance, personal responsibility, and a belief that one’s children should have a better life than oneself. People can debate that list, add to it or subtract from it, but few would deny that Australia possesses a distinct civic culture.

A Greek-Australian, an Indian-Australian, and a Chinese-Australian can all belong to the same culture if they share the same underlying values. Equally, two people of identical ethnic backgrounds can belong to very different cultures if they hold fundamentally different views about freedom, citizenship, the role of the state, or the relationship between the individual and society. Culture is not inherited in the same way ethnicity is. It is learned, transmitted, and shared.

The real question is whether newcomers are expected to adopt it. This is where the multicultural debate often becomes strangely evasive. If multiculturalism simply means that Australians are free to maintain elements of their heritage while embracing Australian values, then most Australians already support it. Indeed, that is precisely how successive generations of migrants successfully integrated into Australian society.

If, however, multiculturalism means that all cultural values are equally valid and that Australia should have no dominant culture of its own, then we are discussing something entirely different. That is not diversity. That is fragmentation. A nation cannot function without some common understanding of who it is. Every successful society possesses a core culture. The French have one. The Japanese have one. The Americans have one. Even countries that celebrate diversity maintain a set of values that newcomers are expected to embrace. Australia is no different.

Which is why the debate over multiculturalism is ultimately a debate about definitions. The argument is not really about food. It is not about race. It is not even about ethnicity. It is about whether Australia possesses a core set of values that deserve to be preserved, transmitted, and defended.

The tragedy of the current debate is that very few people seem interested in discussing that question honestly. Instead, we argue about words. We accuse one another of motives. We talk past each other. And we leave the most important question unanswered.

What exactly does it mean to be Australian?

Until we can answer that, the multiculturalism debate will continue generating more heat than light.

Which brings me back to my original advice.

If Pauline Hanson wants to win this argument, she should stop talking about multiculturalism and start talking about culture. She should stop talking about monocultures and start talking about values.

Because before Australians can decide whether they support multiculturalism, monoculturalism or something in between, they first need to agree on what culture means in the first place.

And in politics, as in debating, the side that defines the terms usually defines the outcome.