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Neo-conservatism's implosion.

Article Excerpt
In his speech to the National Press Club on Australia Day eve last year, Prime Minister John Howard reflected on what he called the 'irony' of people wanting to become Australians in citizenship ceremonies when there is no agreed-upon definition of 'Australianness'. In Mr Howard's words, 'no institution or code lays down a test of Australianness. Such is the nature of our free society'.

This aversion to defining Australianness has been a theme of Mr Howard's prime ministership. In his 1997 Australia Day speech, for example, Howard criticised national navel-gazing as an arrogant past-time of an out of touch elite:

The symbols we hold dear as Australians and the beliefs that we have about what it is to be an Australian are not things that can ever be imposed from above by political leaders of any persuasion. They are not things that can be generated by [a] self-appointed cultural elite who seek to tell us what our identity ought to be. Rather they are feelings and attitudes that grow out of the spirit of the people.

The recently proposed citizenship test, suggests a change of heart on the part of the prime minister. Freedom,...

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