Australia is a great nation. We mustn’t take that for granted

We will undoubtedly debate immigration policy from a position of strength, unlike our Western counterparts, as Australia’s island borders provide a natural barrier to irregular entry. And because the silent (but voting) majority punishes governments that squander this advantage. This is an underappreciated and often underutilized luxury that we can carefully avoid the immigrants we take in. Those who come from countries where corruption and violence are a daily reality must be explicitly taught the rules of tolerance, universality and etiquette that form the foundations of our high-trust society.

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Most Australians go about their days unaware of the framework of civil, political and legal freedoms that underpin our thriving coexistence in this jewel of Western liberal society. And that’s worth celebrating. The pinnacle of privilege is being blind to having it. But if I had the chance to make one wish this new year, it would be to share my travel-weary awe of “anything goes” with every Australian.

But of course it “just doesn’t work”. The fundamental characteristics of liberal democracies – individual rights, tolerance, impersonal trust based on strangers acting independently on behalf of our invisible social fabric, and laws that apply equally to all – are not a natural state of existence. People are instinctively tribal, tending to impose their own belief systems on others, eager to obtain benefits for themselves and their kin. Peaceful, multi-ethnic societies are built on the awareness that each day is a conscious effort to preserve a greater whole. They require everyone to sacrifice a little at the same time and to resist the temptation to seize for themselves what others have given up.

Following the Bondi attacks, some self-described progressive corners of the internet insisted that the gunmen were targeting Zionism and were therefore not religiously motivated. This is despite the fact that the gunmen were inspired by the Islamic State and apparently believed they were acting in the name of Islam, albeit a twisted form of the faith.

Accepting this distorted logic in the face of deliberate targeting of the Jewish community at a Jewish festival creates an opening for future religious violence.

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Sir John JenkinsThe former British diplomat of several Arab countries writes with particular insight into the intertwining of such Islamist discourse with Western post-liberal academia and traces how parallel preoccupations shape and nourish these attitudes. He sees a common goal among them in discrediting the West.