Cory Bernardi

For all the advances in technology, science and communications, there are signs that we are failing in areas where it matters most: our personal relationships and society in general. The atomisation of society evidenced by the startling increase in recent decades of single person households and the identification of loneliness and isolation as one of our most pressing new social problems, should give us cause for concern.

The quest to remove all inequality is the deadening hand of socialism and results in social stagnation.

In a hyper materialist environment where everything is reduced to mere economic considerations, what we deem to be important is often trivial, a temporary fix for deeper and more profound yearnings.This has given rise to what some may describe as a unique pathology common to modern wealthy societies: moral and spiritual emptiness among opulence and material luxury.

Today, despite different backgrounds, those of us who are willing to respect the traditions and history of this country can join together under one national banner as Australians. This is the kind of unity that the conservative will embrace, not the superficial and divisive 'diversity' talk of the radical, who prefers to constantly re-create the nation according to some momentary fashionable utopian image and denounces all patriotic sentiment as jingoist and bigoted.

Community is like a garden, it is an organic living thing; if it is neglected, it can overgrow with weeds and suffer decline. Communities must be actively maintained... all this activity is the lifeblood of culture, and this is where the essence of patriotic spirit and a sense of togetherness is born.

Where there is true variety, there will be inevitable 'inequality' - that is simply the result of human nature and the pluralism that defines us as a people.

Freedom is inextricably linked to sacrifice and compromise.

Society will always do better where citizens have a belief in justice, honour and private morality. Where individuals are reduced to the satisfaction of personal appetites society will decline. The need to preserve society is at the very heart of conservatism and the absolute moral truths that are required for this preservation are not subject to change.