I am now in my eightieth year and remain a loyal and grateful Australian. As others have rightfully said, “To be born Australian is akin to winning the Lotto”. But being Australian has become more problematic in recent decades.

As a young man, I and my peers were unabashedly patriotic. Sometimes our beliefs might have been unfounded or a little exaggerated. Nevertheless we were proud of our achievements as a nation and idolised our high achieving sportsmen and women. We had no doubt that those who fought in the Australian uniform were the finest and bravest in the world. We accepted that he horrible loss of life suffered at Gallipoli by the first ANZACs heralded our coming of age as a significant world player.

I had learnt that it was erroneous to say that I was proud to be Australian because being Australian wasn’t anything I could take credit for. It was merely an accident of birth like my brown eyes or my male gender. But nevertheless it was a great boon to be born into a free democratic society where there were endless opportunities to realise my potential as a human being. We took pride in Australian “mateship”, our uncompromising egalitarianism and insistence on a “fair go”. We acknowledged the courage and the hardships endured by Australia’s early settlers.

So in my youth we were all unashamedly patriots, sure of our identity and grateful for our opportunities. Perhaps we were naïve, but being Australian provided a stronger sense of identity than anything else. Being Australian usurped the validity of all the various differences that today’s identity politics seeks to highlight.

I well remember mingling with Italian and Greek migrants that were keen to assume a part of the Australian culture. They assimilated into our society and enriched it. This was multiculturalism at its best. Wherever these immigrants came from, in the end we were all one and learnt from and appreciated each other’s cultures.

It was telling, I think, that we used to refer to these immigrants as “New Australians”. Neither the existing population nor the new-comers had any doubt that these wonderful people, who enhanced our economy and enriched our culture, had come to Australia with any other ambition than to be “Australian”.

But then things seemed to change. Suddenly being Australian was not a cause for gratitude but attracted opprobrium. Whereas in my youth we celebrated our history and admired those brave folk who had settled and developed this somewhat hostile land, now they were labelled colonisers and oppressors who had stolen Australia from a noble, ancient and defenceless people!

The Left has cast the colonisers as evil people who were intent on eradicating the indigenous people from their homeland. They relied on a version of Australian history that eminent historian, Geoffrey Blainey, in his 1993 John Latham Memorial Lecture, first called the “Black Armband” view of history.

Blainey argued that despite occasional appalling treatment of the indigenous peoples, this notion was largely false. But the notion was seized upon by black activists to demand that all sorts of reparations were warranted as a result of colonisation but even more, indigenous people are still suffering from colonisation  This reinforced the notion of victimhood by indigenous people who claim that even today a chief cause of indigenous disadvantage is colonisation.

So from this distortion of Australian history arose two fundamental problems.

Firstly as mentioned, a sense of indigenous victimhood has developed which has become a major impediment in resolving indigenous disadvantage.

And secondly, there is a diminution of our sense of national worth and national achievement. This has eroded the very foundations of who we think we are as Australians. In time we have begun to disparage our heritage and instead of being something to celebrate being Australian is seen by many as a term of disparagement.

There is another manifestation of this watering down of our Australian identity that I should also mention.

In the past migrants flocked to Australia with the resolute ambition of wanting to become Australian citizens. Today far fewer have that ambition. They merely want to live in Australia and enjoy the benefits of our welfare system, our peace and freedom and opportunities to advance without committing themselves to citizenship.

It is not surprising then that as Australians are becoming more unsure about their identity as Australians, fewer migrants are seeking to gain citizenship. Statistics show that more than a fifth if migrants who are permanent residents don’t bother to become Australian citizens. What’s more, about 11% of Australia’s population are here on temporary visas.

Consequently a large part of Australia’s migrant population is not here to contribute to Australia but to take advantage of Australia’s generosity to serve their own personal ends with little concern for how they might make a positive contribution to the host nation. Putting it bluntly, they don’t want to be Australians; they just want to live in Australia.

Surely Australia would be a stronger nation if those who we allowed to settle here were prepared to integrate into the community and share the Australian Ethos?

In May 2017, bestselling author, Douglas Murray published a book titled The Strange Death of Europe. In this book he forecast the erosion of traditional European values and cultures by the unfettered mass migration of Muslims, mainly from Africa and the Middle East, into Europe.

Murray was indeed very prescient in the thesis of his book. We have seen great turmoil in Europe as a result of this unrestricted immigration which indeed has had a major impact on European culture. You would think the Australian government might have learnt from the European experience.

But it seems that immigration is a subject almost impossible to discuss with politicians for the fear that they might be termed racist! But if the goal is to successfully integrate immigrants into Australian society and not create cultural ghettoes where Western culture and ideals are despised, then surely we must pay attention not only to the numbers of immigrants we choose to allow in to Australia but also to the belief systems of those immigrants.

Again most politicians are reluctant to concede this, but the belief system most antithetical to Western values is radical Islam. Most of the terrorist activity around the world in recent decades can be laid at the feet of the radical Islamists. They are intolerant of other faiths and are so insecure about maintaining their own beliefs that they advocate among their own adherents death for apostasy.

Democracy is an anathema to them. For them there is no separation between church and state and their ideal for government is an international Caliphate where Sharia Law applies. They seek to return civilisation to the state which prevailed in the Arab world in the sixth century AD at the time of the Prophet.

These beliefs are anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and anti-democratic. They also seek to subjugate women and persecute homosexuals.

Let me hasten to add that moderate Muslims don’t share these extreme views and have in general assimilated well into the Australian culture.

But if we are seeking to preserve our Western, democratic ideals we must strive to ensure that not a single proponent of radical Islam is allowed to migrate to Australia. In Europe, enclaves of such people have gained the right to govern their communities with Sharia law and not the law of the land. Unless curtailed this surely portends the end of democracy!

The Labor Government doesn’t appear to share these concerns. The underlying belief system of Hamas in Palestine is radical Islam. Yet Australia has allowed several thousand refugees from Gaza into Australia without reasonable vetting.

They have also allowed a return of the so-called ISIS brides. Now these women went off to cohabit with ISIS terrorists that promoted radical Islam. Allowing such people back into Australia presents a significant cultural and security threat.

In fact it often appears that the immigrants that Tony Burke favours most are anti-Semitic folk who most probably would vote for Labor at the next election! It is a terrible indictment that the government seems willing to jeopardise our traditional values for some puny electoral advantage.

Now I am a realist. There is little likelihood that Australia will ever again capture the same sense of commonality of values that we shared fifty or sixty years ago. But it still seems to me that Australia would be a stronger nation if more of the people living here permanently had signed up properly to Australian values. And I don’t think we should be defensive about ensuring new immigrants are likely to embrace those values.

I am told that the citizenship test immigrants must complete before being considered for citizenship is ridiculously easy. As I intimated at the beginning, becoming Australian should be viewed as a unique privilege and we are surely justified in trying to be certain those joining us in citizenship should at least be able to affirm our basic values.

It is neither racist nor xenophobic to ensure those who wish to take up Australian citizenship at least share our core beliefs!