Over the weekend, the Australian featured an article by Paul Kelly in which he reflected on the address Steven Lowy made when accepting an Honorary Doctorate bestowed on him by the University of New South Wales last Thursday.

The main thrust of his argument was that Australia had lost its way, was lacking in serious leadership, and didn’t reflect the value system that either he was born into or the community that his father, Sir Frank, moved to in the early 1950s.

I was shocked and excited. I was excited because someone of his standing – a business leader, philanthropist, and paradigm example of private wealth at work in the community – was finally challenging, not so much the prevailing epithets of modern of modern society, but recognising the total lack of any values that he, at least, could recognise in our leaders. I was shocked that such a person still existed outside of the more politically prominent personalities of Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer, who incidentally, I have a special place for in my heart, being at the vanguard of the fight against vacuous platitudes and slogans we live with today.

His speech drew attention to and was centred around the issue of rising anti-semitism as its core tenet. His remarks, while focused on the risible lack of leadership from our government (Dutton has been strong on this at least) on this problem, would be diminished in their broader context of the disease affecting our country (and the West) not just the symptoms of that, including anti-semitism.

He noted that two very great Australians:

Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs, GCB, GCMG, PC, KC, an Australian lawyer, politician, and judge who served as the ninth Governor-General of Australia, 1931-36. He had previously served on the High Court of Australia 1906-31, including as Chief Justice from 1930.

General Sir John Monash, GCMG, KCB, VD, who was an Australian civil engineer and military commander of the first world war. He commanded the 13th Infantry Brigade before the war and then, shortly after its outbreak, became commander of the 4th Brigade in Egypt, with whom he took part in the Gallipoli campaign.

For the record, both were Jewish

Sir Isaac served in the Protectionist party who formed government under both Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin with the support of the Labor Party.

Born in 1855 and 1865 respectively, they lived through some very difficult and challenging times but both lived by their values. Their Jewish heritage only mattered to them; it wasn’t a hallmark of something else.

It’s not difficult to join the dots, and it is little wonder the Legend of Anzac emerged after Gallipoli and the first world war with characters like this at the helm and was carried through to their deaths decades after. These men believed in something that was not driven by hatred and envy. These men were not formed by the political aspirations of their affiliations. They created those aspirations for their political parties and lived them.

In the absence of these values today, is this speech too late?

Well, I was surprised to see that coincidentally, the Chairman of the ABC, Kim Williams AM, delivered the Lowy Institute speech on September 25, the day before. Having welcomed everyone to our country and sanctimoniously recognised any and everybody else, he went to define that his address was to be on:

‘The vital importance of trustworthy news coverage about international affairs.It has a simple theme: The truth matters. And I mean really matters. Especially right now.’

The irony between the two speeches was not lost in the 24 hours that separated them. The one by Steven Lowy, a sad reflection of a degraded value system and leadership absent in our nation, the other, delivered at the very Institute established by the Lowys, dishonest at best and sneering at worst, reflecting all the disgrace that the ABC has brought upon itself over the last couple of decades, delivered by someone, who, on the face of it, doesn’t see too many issues if you are prepared to accept bare-faced lies and propaganda as the standard of news and journalism at the nation’s broadcaster.

It’s laughable that this pretence still exists when the opposite is so palpably true to most thinkers; And while it didn’t have the comedic value of Keir Starmer’s demands to return the ‘sausages’ was just as vapid.

It’s just so frustrating to see a mini breakthrough on the fundamental issues facing Australia, undermined almost simultaneously by the national broadcaster. I concede that this was highly unlikely to be intentional but the narrative remains the same and if we are, as Lowy suggests, to stare down this leadership vacuum, then we need an army of Lowy types pushing back. Perhaps this starts with the leader of the opposition; it certainly doesn’t start with focus groups or the views of marginal seats.

Yet it also begs the question, why it has taken so long for more mainstream public figures to push back? Why has it taken yet another assault on the Jews to say enough is enough? If we were pursuing the values of Gallipoli’s creed, Loyalty, Love of Country, Courage the values of Monash and Isaacs we would not have this full-scale immersion in anti-semitic rhetoric.

When we sacrifice our values, the results are always abrasive. The West has lived for 60 years or more with the values personified by the politics of Henry Kissinger; take the least evil option. This is not a system that easily sustains itself, because it’s predicated on the omission of doing and living by what promotes individual agency. It’s this very agency that fosters liberty and its liberty that fosters cooperation – think market economies.

The problem in the Middle East is not agency despite how it’s presented: both Gaza and Lebanon could be wealthy states, indeed Lebanon was, curiously when the French were there (surprise surprise eh). Think Singapore and Dubai.

The problem is that the agency that has been afforded to the players and not just the Palestinians, has been exercised very differently since the Sykes/ Picot agreement 1915.

For all its shortcomings, for all the meddling of the ‘Colonial’ states, both the Arabs and the Jews were handed their destiny. Disappointment, envy, and bitterness has reigned supreme since, but some states have got on with it, others descended into their own form of authoritarianism, religion ransacked others periodically and the likes of the Kurds and the Armenians have just had to cop it sweet. For example:

Jordan, a late political compromise itself, created a Monarchy, and a quarter of its citizens were Palestinian. Very few Jews other than the West Bank. It has in the last 40 years leveraged its wealth and lived in relative peace.

Israel created a democracy, a quarter of which are Arabs. It fought two wars to retain this status. It also leveraged its position successfully to become wealthy and

Pluralistic.

Mark Sykes did not set out to pit the Jews against the Arabs. The Ottomans had subjugated all parties for centuries. Mark Sykes and George Picot set out to carve up the Ottoman Empire according to their Nation’s interest. In retrospect, it was successful insofar as it dismantled the prevailing order, but it failed to deliver on every party’s demands.

Israel is no more or less the catalyst for the Middle Eastern geopolitical quagmire than the Pan Arabists opposed splitting up the mostly Arab-populated territories into separate countries, which they considered to be little more than imperialist impositions.

Moreover, the borders split up other contiguous populations, like the Kurds and the Druze, and left them as minority populations in several countries, depriving their communities of self-determination altogether.

An experiment in political union between two Arab countries, Egypt and Syria, in the form of the United Arab Republic (1958–61) was short-lived and disappointment in Pan-Arabism’s inability to effectuate lasting prosperity in the Arab world led to a rise in Islamism as an alternative.

Israel is the living example of what is possible. The Arabs have their own success stories; but to lump the deprivation of the Palestinians on the doorstep of Israel shows a decided lack of historical knowledge and political leadership.

Do we have any leaders that know and understand historical truths, believe in biological realities, and are not captured by the rent-seeking activities of the World Economic Forum?

Do we have any leaders?