Bridget McKenzie calls for policy changes to university funding, immigration at Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event in London
London: National Senate leader Bridget McKenzie has issued a radical call to defend conservative values in Australian life, starting with policies to “demolish” universities that inculcate “white guilt” and “climate disaster” among students.
McKenzie told a major conservative conference in London that revitalizing Western values must be done by changing the funding model, including the way universities generate income from international students.
The Victorian senator and Coalition front-runner also called for a tougher approach to border policies to ensure immigrants are selected on their merits, saying belief in Islamic sharia law meant Australia was not for them.
He told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event in London: “I’m sure the same is true for liberal democracies around the world, where the left, through our universities, is trying to indoctrinate elites into a particular worldview.”
“But they also focused on training educators so that mass children could be brainwashed.”
McKenzie accused universities of spreading ideologies to teachers and passing those ideologies on to young students.
“If a student teacher spends four years talking about white guilt, victimization, climate disaster, and even antisemitism, that’s what gets conveyed behind the closed doors of the classroom,” he said.
“But Australia’s literacy and numeracy scores have been falling for years, and the education sector is responding by questioning whether the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) is using its methodology correctly.”
McKenzie addressed the latest controversy accusing universities of allowing antisemitism to spread unchecked, following reports that teachers were unsure about how to teach the Holocaust to children from Muslim families.
“Higher education in Australia is our fourth largest export sector. Do not underestimate the power of this sector,” he said at the meeting attended by approximately 4000 people at the summit venue and online.
“We need to ask the tough question here today: Is it worth preserving institutions that can no longer be reformed?”
“It is now my firm belief that the only way to reform higher education in Australia is to actually break that by ending the funding model through international students.”
His call drew sustained applause from the audience as he noted that fee-paying international students now make up a growing proportion of Australia’s population and that this number must be brought under control.
Following speakers including author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, McKenzie was given the opportunity to deliver a keynote speech of his own on the first day of the event. and ARC co-founder Paul Marshalland various panel sessions.
A former maths teacher, McKenzie was a university lecturer before entering the Senate in 2010, and later became a cabinet minister in the governments of Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison.
He has also been embroiled in scandals over the sports scandals issue, where he oversaw the financing of sports projects and used taxpayer-funded flights ahead of the 2019 elections.
Speaking at the meeting in London, he called for tighter controls on immigration, with social factors, including commitment to Australian values, determining whether people come to the country.
He argued that Australia had become “addicted” to immigration but that this would come at a social cost if it did not provide a fair outcome for families.
McKenzie said rising GDP made prime ministers and big businesses happy, but if GDP per household was not growing it was not a measure of the health of society.
“Homes are now unaffordable for young people in their 30s, putting pressure on them to delay having children,” he said.
“If you love your country and respect its history, you should not apologize for discriminating against who gets to live there, not on race, but on values.
“If you believe sharia law is superior to the laws we inherited from Britain, I’m afraid Australia is not for you.”
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David Crowe is the European correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect with: X or email.
