RUTHFULLY YOURS

THESE ARE EXCERPTS FROM JOSH FRYDENBERG’S IMPRESSIVE FIRST SPEECH AS AN ELECTED OFFICIAL IN 2010

Standing before the parliament of our great country, I see my journey to this place in the continuum of my family’s story.

My grandparents on both sides were migrants from Europe. In the late 1930s Morrie and Leah Frydenberg came from Poland to Australia to seek a better life. They arrived while Europe was plunging into darkness.

The experience was different for my maternal grandparents, Sam and Ethel Strauss, and their young daughters, including my mother, who were interned in the Budapest ghetto by the Hungarian fascists. They survived and eventually made their way through displaced persons camps to Australia.

My great‐grandparents, and many relatives on both sides, perished in the Holocaust, but one who survived is with us today.

My great‐aunt Mary Frydenberg spent two years at Auschwitz. She was transferred back to Germany by the Nazis and then sent on a death march, but she escaped with the assistance of a humane German guard. In her run for freedom, she was given shelter by a Catholic priest—at great risk to him—before making her way to Australia.

Mary’s story serves us all as a constant reminder of hope, even in the presence of tragedy.

What drives us as Liberals are notions of individual liberty, individual responsibility and a fairness borne out of a particular kind of equality.

The equality which Liberals seek in a society is the equality of opportunity, not the other kind of equality—the equality of outcomes.

By mandating outcomes, the state removes responsibility from individuals and denies the worker, the student and the patient the opportunity to be the best that they can be. It seems to me that these two notions of equality reflect the fundamental fault lines between us and the members opposite. It is not a thin divide.

“How can we all be better off when the government targets independent and Catholic schools merely because parents are exercising choice?”

“The opportunity to prosper is given its best chance through competitive markets—the insight reached by Adam Smith more than two centuries ago.”

“It may appear a paradox but the first of my large thoughts is that we need to limit the government. Our government is too big.”

“We must always remember that whenever we create a new arm of bureaucracy or expand a field of activity, we are not spending our own money; we are spending the money of our citizens who look to us as the guardians of their wealth.”

“The reduction of our per capita consumption of energy and non‐renewable resources is necessary … but part of being responsible is knowing what it will cost, who it will impact and how communities and businesses will need to react.”

“There has never been a better time for innovative technologies, practices and solutions.It seems inexplicable that in Australia we have yet to have a constructive and thorough debate about nuclear power, the only baseload, carbon neutral energy source.”

“How can we all be better off when the government discourages private health insurance at a time when the public system is overburdened?

“Our alliance with the United States is the cornerstone of our national security strategy. It must be protected and defended by both sides of the House.Our friendship and common purpose rests upon more than Realpolitik; it reflects our values, traditions and commitment to the democratic ideal.”

My vision is to achieve what Menzies termed ‘civilised capitalism’, unleashing the power of the individual and his enterprise while always providing a safety net for those who despite their best efforts are unable to cope.

These are my motivations, my cause and my way, and they not negotiable.

In its effort to gather evidence against the Burmese government for its ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, the international community must not let the dire circumstances of the Hindu Rohingyas go unnoticed.

On March 11, 2018, the UN Special Advisor on Genocide Prevention told the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission of Bangladesh that the United Nations is planning to amass evidence of genocide against the Rohingyas in Myanmar (formerly Burma) through a judicial investigation.

The persecution of Muslims in Myanmar has been condemned by Western policymakers, international human rights organizations and the United Nations for the past year. Since August alone, more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh to escape atrocities committed against them by the Burmese army.

During the same period, however, more than 100,000 Hindu Rohingyas have also sought refuge in Bangladesh, but for a different reason: to escape the brutality of the members of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a Muslim terrorist outfit fighting against the Myanmar government.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria—Boko Haram insurgents launched coordinated assaults on a Nigerian military base and villages close to this regional capital on Monday, a brazen operation that left at least 20 people dead just weeks after the government confirmed it was in talks with a breakaway faction of the extremist group.

The dawn raids—which saw insurgents deploy suicide bombers, mortars and truck-mounted machine guns—sparked a protracted battle with Nigerian soldiers at a military base on the edge of Maiduguri, an army spokesman said. Local officials, still tallying the dead and injured Monday afternoon, said the jihadists were attempting to infiltrate the city.

The attack left at least 20 people dead and 63 injured, according to Kashim Shettima, the governor of surrounding Borno State. “We will continue to intensify our efforts to safeguard lives and properties,” Mr. Shettima said. “Terrorists bask in the oxygen of publicity, they are aiming at soft targets and senselessly opening fire on innocent citizens, but we will stop them.”

The brazen operation came after Nigeria’s government revealed it was in peace talks with a Boko Haram breakaway faction allied with the Islamic State terror group and led by a mysterious young commander called Abu Musab al-Barnawi. CONTINUE AT SITE