Mark Steyn - Speech to the IPA's Gala Dinner in Melbourne 2016

thank thank you thank you very much for the Allen was too generous it's a it's a great honor to be introduced by Allen Jones you know Allen and I have something in common when we go on the ABC they they put a health warning on us controversial conservative Alan Jones controversial conservative marks 9 you know and frankly there's a lot of people in Melbourne who think we shouldn't be here tonight so I was very touched this morning passing the Melbourne Arts Center to see that some ladies had climbed up the spire and hug a big banner saying let them stay Alan Alan and I Ellen and I thank you that was that was very moving and if those ladies are here tonight because I understand they came down from the tower about 40 minutes before we came in here I'd like to thank you very much for the lovely lovely sentiment thank you it's great to be back with John Roskam and the rest of the gang at the IPA and I thank them very much the IPA as we've heard are in the freedom business and we need more people in the freedom business in Australia and the rest of the West I was I was last here for prime ministers ago so so that's about six months it was before Malcolm knife Tony and back when either Julia was knifing Kevin or Kevin was knifing Julia a video which it was and it's a sobering thought that until kevin rudd if I'd said I was last here for Prime Minister's ago we'd have been back to Sir Robert Menzies it's a John Howard a Bob Hawke Malcolm Fraser yeah I intentionally left out Paul Keating and so should you Gough Whitlam and I think I left out the the fella who left his clothes on the beach how old but we're in the ballpark and I'd like I'd like actually I'd like Kevin and Julia to leave their clothes on the beach and just like swim out to sea punching each other in the kisser and and and spilling each other as the waves wash over them on the far horizon last time I spoke in Melbourne at the IPA I spoke actually when I was on stage I shared the stage with Tony Abbott and he was the coming man back then and you know so I put him in the old rolodex useful useful chap to know and in between my two melbourne appearances the coming man came and went somebody a bob day said that i'd compared australia to the soviet union which i don't think i i i don't think i actually did but there's a line in the fred astaire movie silk socket silk stockings in which one soviet commissar is discussing with another soviet thomas our what's happened to a third soviet commissar and he says I'll look him up in who's still who and that's Australian politics I'll look him up in who's still who I also I also should thank Bob day for his commitment to rid the world of section 18c which again is what I was speaking about you know before one speaks to an audience such as yourselves a prudent man goes to the library and looks up ten can't-miss tips for public speakers and right up at the front they advise you to open up with a light-hearted observation so people know it's not going to be a lot of heavy stuff and that's what Professor Tim hunt fellow of the Royal Society did last year he's a Nobel laureate he's a genuine one not a pretend one like the guy who's suing me the hockey the hockey stick inventor who's whose name escapes me because frankly with my legal bills I have a right to forget his name for anything and last year Sir Tim was in Seoul South Korea for some science conference and he was required to make a few remarks so he began with an ill-advised attempt at warming up the room quote let me tell you about my trouble with girls three things happen when they are in the lab you fall in love with them they fall in love with you and when you criticize them they cry not the funniest joke in the world that's why you should hire professional and not try it yourself but the the genius of a scientist is often inversely proportional to his social ease so Sir Tim did not anticipate that a throwaway line about how girls are so emotional about these things would result in the girls getting so emotional about these things while he was on the flight back to London his life was destroyed over he lost everything his professorship his Royal Society Committee ships all of it gone because of 12 seconds in a glorious half-century of scientific brilliance there's a there's a section in one of my books called last laughs in which I write about a novel called the joke Milan Kundera's great tale of the pitfalls of ideologically unsound gags in communist Eastern Europe in which a man makes a very mild flow away joke and his entire life is ruined and that's how we in the free world used to think about the Communist world they were the guys who police jokes at the time of Stalin's death in 1953 there were over 200,000 prisoners in Soviet labor camps who'd been convicted of telling jokes of which the regime did not approve and we laughed because we're free and they're not but in fact the world of Milan Kundera in which a guy's life is destroyed for the wrong joke is alive and well in the supposed free West we don't send you to labor camp for the joke not yet but we are willing to destroy your life completely for a non ideologically compliant gag as has happened to Sir Tim Hunt and others there's something oddly and tyrannous in the air and I don't use that term lightly 50 years ago everyone was hopping mad because in the American South they had separate drinking fountains and bus seats for blacks and whites now we've got rid of all that bad segregation and we have good segregation at the Queensland University of Technology we have separate computer labs for aboriginals because apparently they have a separate Windows operating program that non aboriginals couldn't possibly figure out I don't know what I don't know what that is but the we have a British municipal swimming baths we have sex segregated swimming sessions for Muslims and the British Labour Party hosts events where the men and women sit in separate sections and if you make an offhand gag about any of this you will be investigated as these Queen laps Queensland students are currently being following a complaint made under section 18c the law the bobbed a spoke about tyranny is always capricious and you can fall afoul of it no matter how hard you try to keep up at Wellesley College in Massachusetts a girl student who identifies as a quote masculine of Center genderqueer unquote named Timothy by the way are there any masculine of Center gender quiz here tonight yes you met him at the back with the full bed a masculine of Center gender queer named Timothy who prefers to be referred to by male pronouns and she was told she could no longer run for coordinator of the school office of Multicultural Affairs because she was now a white male and therefore insufficiently diverse to be a diversity officer which which is which is tough on a masculine of Center genderqueer she'd she diversified a wee bit too far and diversified herself right out of the diversity business and round the back into the dead white male business social over you were you you can laugh but no one who matters in our society is laughing there are no jokes in it in Islam Ayatollah Khomeini sternly warned that as Tim hunt and those queensland students and many others have discovered there were fewer jokes outside islam to my driver while I was in Cloncurry was a chap called David and he was talking about how touchy people are today they want a hair-trigger ready to find a fence wherever they can and he mentioned a famous All Bran advertisement that most of you have seen over the years in which they're in the office and some guys sitting in his cubicle and says all bran is delicious and immediately a very tall lady pops up above the cubical partition and says I heard that you said tall Jan is malicious I prefer Sir Tim Hunt's comedy stylings myself it's not the greatest line and unlike Sir Tim all brand paid the most expensive geniuses in the advertising world a gazillion dollars to come up with that but it skewers the touchiness of the world we live in today where people have been incentivized to take offence and then given the state the power to adjudicate that offense which is really what 18c and andrew bolts case was was all about so it was inevitable that an ad about how touchy people take offence over nothing cause some touchy people to take offence over nothing and to complain to Australia's Advertising Standards Bureau quote there exists a widespread general prejudice towards tall young women which irrationally has something to do with the notion that males must be taller than their female partners this ad would be particularly hurtful to many young and older tall women who have frequently experienced slights relating to their height the ad is thereby singling out and lampooning in a cruel way a vulnerable group of people are there any tall women here tonight so naturally Kellogg's was tied up for months trying to explain that the purpose of the ad was to promote the idea that All Bran is delicious and not that tall women are malicious because they're in the business of selling breakfast cereal not short women you know as far as I know I mean I don't know whether they you know got some speciality service going on the side if you're looking for a woman under 4 foot 11 or something and so a bunch of bureaucrats solemnly investigated all this height ISM for a few months and racked up enough overtime to remodel their vacation homes and best of all Australia pioneered a whole new victim group which is great because the trick is to find exciting new victim groups for the same old first shrinking oppressor group of white men to discriminate against a joke a joke is the smallest indicator and most reliable indicator of liberty so live it up while you can because there will be no jokes in the future now it will be a wasteland of plunking earnestness during the final stages of nelson mandela's slowly deteriorating health Neil Phillips who runs the crumbs sandwich shop in the English town of Rugeley went online and tweeted my PC takes so long to shut down I've decided to call it Nelson Mandela the the the Staffordshire Constabulary arrested him seized his computers and in the course of an eight-hour detention fingerprinted and DNA swapped him eight hours in a jail cell for a joke not in communist Czechoslovakia but in England the Staffordshire Constabulary is joke investigation took so long to shut down I decided to call it Nelson Mandela you can laugh but no one who matters is laughing we now live in an age of state ideology there's a correct position on certain subjects and it's an ever-growing list same-sex marriage climate change transgender rights Muslim immigration millions and millions of people across the Western world now think it perfectly normal that free speech does not extend to these areas that on these subjects there's only the approved party line and dissenting views not only can't be heard in public but should not even be expressed in private and if you're found have expressed them it's entirely reasonable that you should lose your job and if necessary your Liberty Bernie Sanders who may be the next president of the United States if the as as Tony Jones assured me this is one of those scientifically balanced audiences now I don't like apostasy laws whether it's for Sharia or for climate Sharia which are actually remarkably similar religions Barack Obama promises to lower the oceans Isis promises a global Caliphate so far they're doing a better job than here's the Guardian says Australia will be entirely uninhabitable habitable within a few years they said this a few years ago so you may leave the Park Hyatt and find it's all been washed away while we're having dinner so The Guardian says Australia Antoni uninhabitable Islam for UK says Britain will be under Sharia within a few years as mayor of Tehran Mahmoud Ahmed in egad had the streets of the city widened for the imminent return to earth of the 12th Imam as heir to the throne the Prince of Wales declared the planet is doomed in 96 months unless humanity abandons the evils of capitalism and quote the age of convenience he then got back in his limo and was driven to his other palace by the way that ninety six months business he said that seventy nine months ago so the bad news is we've got less than a year and a half to go the good news is that's probably only enough time for another five or six australian prime ministers a couple a couple of months before saying that the jig would be up for us in 96 months His Royal Highness predicted that the red squirrel would be extinct within ten years which would be April 2019 so if you've got your long-range diary with you global civilization will collapse in July 2017 and then the red squirrel will get to gamble and frolic in the ruins and rubble for another two years before he's coupled it's it's like Planet of the squirrels they'll be they'll be they'll be Kevin the squirrel and Julia the squirrel and Tony the squirrel and Malcolm the squirrel holding bushy-tailed spills for each other's nuts in the rubble of Canberra you know on balance predicting the return of the 12th mm seems marginally less nutty than predicting the end of the world next summer what's the difference between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Prince of Wales one's a deranged millenarian apocalyptic loon and the others a respected former President of Iran a joke a joke is a small thing but a large profound loss and we are living in the dawn of a new age the end of argument people no longer want to win the debate they want to prevent the debate that's true for Islam and it's true for climate change so the science is settled the theology is settled and if you disagree you need to be as the Guardian recommends for climate deniers quote silence and if you can't talk about something honestly eventually you lose even the language with which to express a thought about it the most famous Australian primary school boy on the planet is the seven-year-old boy he must have turned eight by now who starred in a tweet from Syria that went viral and neatly summed up the dead end of diversity as the Australian reported it quote khaled sharrouf son a child raised in the suburbs of Sydney struggles with both arms to hold up the decapitated head of a slain Syrian soldier a seven-year-old boy Australian born and bred but he's proudly holding up the latest severed head in his dad's collection mr. Sharif was supposed to been droned last year but apparently he's been calling pals in Australia from Syria in recent weeks to complain about the government seizing his house in Sydney he's he's off beheading people so it's now a lucrative rental property and he can use it for negative gearing and with the tax savings he can buy machetes and scimitars and that's seriously negative gear so you can see the pressure to reform negative gearing because of every Isis jihadist buys a rental property in Sydney the entire Australian Treasury will collapse anyway if you think if you think the pictures are appalling consider the Australian establishments reaction Bill Shorten thinks it's a parenting issue quote as a parent I have no idea how you could ever let your child be in that situation I think that's shocking the opposition leader said it's a it's a parenting issue to Bill Shorten he doesn't let his seven-year-old play with play with severed head C's he's Labour Party leaders he's got a closet that's filled with him he's got Kevin's and Julia's in there but he knows you don't let your kid play with the severed head until he's at least 12 or 13 it's a parenting issue it's a parenting issue you know what matters in any society is is is who makes the noise who makes the running a mr. shortened also cautioned against attaching any particular significance that photograph quote I would be careful about using that shocking image that shocking evil image and trying to use it for purposes which it shouldn't be used for it's faster than dating to me this this is an extraordinary image of Australia Australia to present to the world in the Year 2015 a 7 year old boy raised in the Sydney suburbs holding up this head and the leader of the opposition's first reaction is to say don't talk about it be careful what you say about it because the government backed off repealing section 18c and he's warning you that if you know what's best for you you'll think twice before suggesting seven-year-old Australian citizens waving around severed heads might be indicative of any broader issues what matters in any society is who makes the running and the subtext of that pathetic awful reaction of Bill Shorten is to tell you that he's scared too he's not an idiot he's leader of the Labour Party but he's not an idiot and and and he and he understands deep down somewhere that what he's saying about parenting federal mandatory parenting to tell you about the right age appropriate head to let your child play with he knows that's not what it's about that his first reaction on seeing that picture is to tell mr. and mrs. Australia don't say a word on the subject if you know what's good for you don't say a word on the subject and he's telling you something about where society is headed and where it's headed in the long run is Cologne on New Year's Eve where mass sexual assault takes place in the main square in the heart of town and for over a week every lever of German power federal politicians local politicians law enforcement state and private media lie to the citizenry and pretend that no such mass sexual assault ever took place because as with Sir Tim Hunt's joke the reality of that mass sexual assault is at odds with state ideology almost every real issue facing us today is hedged in by these considerations we drift about on the flotsam and jetsam of subjects we never address the real subjects because we're constrained by Bill Shorten and the rest of the political class telling us to be very careful about the bounds between which we hold these conversations in the old days we we were a culturally confident civilization we use the expression Western civilization and we meant it as Martin meant it when he spoke earlier mostly on the media it occurs now as a as a parodic term people if you if you go on public radio in the United States and people get to call in and you and you've mentioned Western civilization they always quote the famous gondola when he was asked what he thought of Western civilization and he said he thought it would be a good thing and that was Gandhi's funniest gag and and all these all these public radio listeners they use it as if they think it's the most original line in the world cuz Gandhi said it Gandhi was very lucky because he was up against British civil servants which you know when you're when you're playing video board games of who the really mean villains are the kids don't say all this time I want to be the British civil servants the fact is that in the old days we used to we used to export progress and prosperity to the rest of the world and these days we are in great danger of the of the rest of the world exporting tribalism and impoverishment to us and that's a free speech issue to ultimately that's a free speech issue it's interesting to me that there's a big by the way just with just with this refugee thing I'm amazed I've been watching this let them stay let them stay Nauru PNG Manus Island Nauru Manus Island you know nobody ever talks about the fact that this is a business and is a terrific business model I don't know what it is to get to Australia but the standard fee for getting someone from the Afghan border to Calais in France whether the big jungle encampment at the mouth of the Channel Tunnel Stan a fee is $10,000 u.s. that's to get you through to Peshawar and Pakistan then over the border into Iran then up into Turkey then over to Greece then over to Italy into Francis people making money all all along the way ten thousand dollars per person there's people getting rich on it and I would like to see on the ABC and other Australian media I would like to see some profiles of the people who are getting rich on it the network's are fairly well known they're fairly open if you go and hang around in a bazaar in Peshawar they'll introduce you to the people who this kind of stuff it's a business and the and and it's a business as long as we're incentivizing that business people are going to come as long as Western leaders are talking about how it's a sign of their moral virtue to let them stay you know it's interesting to me there's a big fuss at the moment about why there are no black people at the Oscars this year I've heard all these arguments all my life and I couldn't be more bored so if we're going to have all these - too many white people in popular culture controversies let's at least get a new wrinkle on them you know they're all these zombie movies these days four years ago there was a film called cockneys vs. zombies featuring a zombie invasion of the East End and the cockney push back you know I confess I don't know whether zombies exist but I know for sure that cockneys don't zombies are the undead cockneys are dead there's like you know a hand a hand full of any what they call them 10-pound palms here tonight if you're if you're here from the East End you're the last cockneys on earth in the between 1971 and 2011 the white British share of London's population fell from 86 percent to 45 percent 86 percent now if you've been told that the population of say Nigeria it had fallen you know if you were told that Rwanda had fallen the Hutus or Tutsis had fallen from 86 percent to 45 percent you'd have thought that they'd gotten out the old machetes and done something on a scale that made what they did in the 90s look like a picnic but in the Cockney East End the Cockney share of the population has fallen either further the rich in the middle class hanging on in West London and the outer suburbs but the cockney working-class has fallen by almost three-quarters of a million since the beginning of this century so just to keep the accusations of racism at for a couple of minutes let's keep it all Caucasian actually literally Caucasian because there's some Chechens in this mix too and maybe even a couple of dagestanis too the only young white people in the East End today are Romanians Albanians and other Eastern Europeans the only companies left are very old some of you will have seen the BBC's number one soap opera EastEnders where it's still all cockney matriarch sand community life is centered around the pub the Queen Vic and it's all about our you know I fancied a bit of the old slap and tickle and how's your father and I was thinking strong it might Bob's your uncle let's all go down the Strand have a banana but the old trouble and strife fell down the apples and pears landed on our Bristol's in the real world in the real life fest end that life is only in the graveyards the pubs are closed the Duke of Kent is a mosque the chippies are gone in the real life bar where EastEnders is set white British are down to about 15% this this show is ridiculous instead of complaining about no black people at the Oscars people should be claiming about excess white people on sentimental BBC creepy race race television shows some of you may remember the sitcom Only Fools and Horses which the ABC showed in the 80s and 90s Steve Carell the big Hollywood star still wants to do a US version of that show it's gone instead ben-judah in a fascinating new book on London demography points out that in Peckham where that book is set the white British population is down to 10% and they're all very old a real-life EastEnders would be about turf wars between Muslims and Romanians but even our pop culture is dishonest you know if the cog nice perro was an actual sparrow he'd be on the endangered species list today in Sydney I was interviewed a week ago about the discrepancies in birth rates between certain certain suburbs Surry Hills is a fertility rate of a about not 0.78% of a baby per couple in Loch ember it's four babies per couple so you're not going to need to have to worry about lockout laws in Sydney in two generations because there won't be any pubs good luck trying to get a drink at 3:00 in the afternoon never mind 3:00 in the morning this is the biggest story of our time and it's politically incorrect to bring it up Britain Germany Italy Japan Russia are all in steep demographic decline Japan now sells as many adult nappies as baby nappies a poll of British Muslims found that 27% had some sympathy for the motives behind the Shelly Abdul attacks no way that's only 3/4 of a million people without adding in the 2% who refused to answer but let's assume you know they've just got some mild kind of passive sympathy you know they're like a lot of us they're sympathetic but they don't want to actually get off the sofa and do anything about it if France reaches 20% Muslim population as it will within a few years you're going to have to get the support of three-quarters of the people who are left to have even a bare minimum support in favor of free speech in France that's the challenge that's the challenge we face it's a free speech issue that too many of us will decide to bite our tongues about this and climate change and all the other issues that face us today because we don't want to get cold racists or deniers or sexist or transphobic or tall blonde phobic or whatever the nice next category that's made up these are the habits of litte liberty and many people seem happy to surrender Liberty as long as it's incremental and at least initially painless and there's very little pretense that we're operating from first principles here the same people who say that race is a social construct demand Aboriginal only computer lads people who say you can't change your sexual orientation say you can say you change your gender the same people who say mocking Christianity is a sign of a healthy transgressive culture say mocking Islam is grossly culturally insensitive it's not about a coherent worldview it's about power it's about naked power it's as the French theologian Jacques Bening busway the Bishop of Mo said way back in 1691 I have the right to persecute you because I am right and you are wrong and that is why the Catholic Church in Tasmania has been brought before the Human Rights Commission for teaching a Catholic Church teaching Catholic doctrine to Catholics is brought before the Tasmanian Human Rights Commission for the same reason that the bishop mo brought it back in 1691 because these days the church is wrong and their new tormenters are right it's not about expanding rights is about something much cruder you know the failure of mr. Abbott's ministry on section 18c reminds us of an important truth of Milton Friedman's Milton used to say don't wait to elect the right politician to do the right thing create the conditions whereby the wrong politicians a force to do the right thing and that's what happened to me when I ran afoul of Canada's Human Rights Commission's a few years ago my predicament was apparently discussed in cabinet and cabinet all agreed that I was certain to lose because that law that John mentioned had a 100 percent conviction rate 100 percent Kim jong-un was envious of it he said why can't our courts be like these Canadian courts ah I like those odds and we push back against those human rights commissions and we gave them the worst two years publicity in their history and by the end of it it took a long time and I'd love to have those years of my life back but section 13 got repealed the political not-not-not thanks to the government but thanks to a private member's bill like like Bob day and so there are happy endings out here they're hard-fought rod Kemp mentioned that that at my table this evening lady Potter is is sitting with us whose husband was the first director of the IPA and I'm sure you know everybody thinks when something like the IPA is formed that all will all have a bit of fun for a couple of years and then freedom is will be secured and you know we can all go back to watching the telly and it's not like this it never is like that freedom requires eternal vigilance and is always there to be fought for and I've I learned a big lesson from my fight against section 13 that if you push back as hard as the Left pushes for its causes your course can be one you can reframe the debate on your terms and you can put them on the defensive and they are the ones who are saying no you can't say that they're the ones saying no that's not funny they're the ones saying you have to be banned you have to be silenced they're not yet not yet going into the offices as they did with Charlie Hebdo and gunning down everybody but they're on the same continuum of the people who are always arguing for why you have less freedom why you have to shut up why you have to be quiet and why you have to crawl into silence while they get to impose their world on you and it doesn't have to be like that that it starts at your level and it starts with your friends and neighbors and it starts at the municipal level and it starts at the primary school level and and only ultimately does it percolate up to the national and international level so if all of you vow not to surrender the habits of liberty to speak freely to act freely to live freely they cannot prosecute us all and if they decide to go full charlie Abdo they cannot kill us all every one of us every one of us is isolated until he free until he finds that the neighbor across the street agrees with him or the the lady at the parent-teacher conference agrees with them and we won't know as long as they're just trying to make us all fall silent and not talk about it when you can speak up when you can speak freely you are free to persuade you are free to find allies and that is what I learned in my battle of Canada and that is what I commend to Andrew and to Bob day and to the others fighting to drive a stake through 18c and if they do decide to ruin the lives of those students of Queensland University technology or of the Catholic Church in Tasmania who are doing nothing other than asking for the right turn to to make the same comments and the same observations that the gay movement and the climate change movement and all the other guys use all the time if they are foolish enough to ruin their lives then I'm happy to come back and do to those guys what we did to section 13 in Canada if you live freely if you speak freely if you act freely it does not depend on a piece of paper from the government of Australia or any other government those are inalienable right use them use them every day live with them every day live them live your life in freedom and in liberty and no stupid act of some transient government can ever take them away from you thank you very much indeed you

Channel: Institute of Public Affairs

Views: 260,659

Keywords: Mark Steyn, IPA, Institute of Public Affairs, freedom of speech, climate change, western civilisation

Id: _hCtuGNRN1U

Length: 41min 18sec (2478 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 30 2016