Georgiou desperately needs his own website where he can post his speeches and thoughts. His speech to the Murray Hill Society at Adelaide University is significant for a couple of reasons; from a policy perspective because he points out that citizenship test is bad policy and has no empirical grounding. He is also another voice concerned about the increasing control of executive (and party) discipline on legislative independence.

TheAustralian has reproduced the speech in full. To their credit they have a history of performing this service. I am reproducing it here as well so that it is not lost to Georgiou's lack of a website and mainstream newspaper websites having a speedy news cycle.

A couple of things to note. Judith Brett's interpretation of the schism between Watson's Labor and Deakin's and Cook's liberalism is now the accepted narrative. I agree with it too - that article being a discussion of Brett's thesis.

Like others he laments the increasing whip of the party room. Georgiou notes that under Menzies Senators crossed the floor 5% of the time, under Holt 11%, Gorton 7%, Fraser 6% and in the last two years 2.2% of the time. There is also a great deal of romanticism for Menzies which I don't think is justified either.

The policy significance of this speech is in Georgiou pointing out that the 'citizenship test' has no empirical value and is trying to solve a problem that does not exist. In other words it is pure politics, most likely electoral in target, and not good policy or legislation. Andrew Bartlett has asked similar questions as to the lack of empiricism in the testing policy.

This is Petro Georgiou's speech to to the Murray Hill Society at Adelaide Uni.

It is a privilege to be invited here this afternoon to deliver the inaugural Murray Hill lecture.

I would like to take this opportunity to canvass some thoughts about Liberal Party tradition, not least because Murray Hill exemplified one of its vital streams.

Hill was a strong believer in tolerance and personal liberty and in his political career acted to further those commitments.

In 1972, whilst Hill was a member of the Liberal and Country League, he introduced a private Member's bill in the South Australian parliament to decriminalise homosexuality in South Australia.

Speaking from personal experience, private Members' bills can be difficult creatures.

An amended version of Murray Hill's bill passed the South Australian parliament in 1972 providing for the first time in Australia that homosexual acts in private were made "if not exactly legal no longer entirely illegal."

It was a significant achievement for Murray Hill.

The pursuit of convictions, a strong commitment to tolerance and individual liberty places Hill firmly in the mould of the liberal tradition.

Hill was also a bearer of that tradition in the fundamental sense - he transmitted it by personal example in his public life and also to his offspring and through them to others.

After a quarter of a century as a Senator, Murray Hill's son, Senator Robert Hill, said in his valedictory speech that he had always leant to the liberal side of the Party:

"Maybe because my parents, while personally conservative were always tolerant of the choices of others."

Robert Hill's tentativeness about the sources of his commitment is characteristic of the frequent uncertainty surrounding the origins of traditions. But he does underscore tradition's importance to political parties.

Politicians and political parties are moulded by the inheritance of the past.

Traditions influence behaviour even if their force is not always recognised.

The images projected by history influence why people join one party rather than another. Political parties draw strength and direction from their past. Traditions influence how they behave and evaluate actions and their outcomes, what appropriate values are, how to judge achievements, failures and lost opportunities.

For those who doubt the power of tradition in a rationalist age consider briefly the Liberal party room at its simplest and most passionate.

New members uninformed about the rules of the tribe receive a rude lesson in the power of tradition if they sit in a seat that is "owned" by someone else.

There are no written rules for the conduct of the federal Liberal parliamentary party room.

Are there votes in the party room?

Does the party room have to agree to the introduction of private Members' bills?

Must the party room be advised if someone is going to cross the floor?

What do you do to have a leadership spill?

The answer to these and other basic questions is not always clear. Fundamentally, however, in the party room we do things the way we do them because we have always done them that way.

Traditions are powerful but they are not immutable.

Some of them are immensely beneficial. Others are not - Winston Churchill's dismissal of the traditions of the royal navy as "rum sodomy and the lash" springs to mind.

Yet I believe we need to try to understand our traditions in all their strengths and weaknesses.

We need to expound and defend the best of them. And we need to appreciate that what a tradition is can be highly contestable, and whether a tradition is good or bad can divide judgements.

In orienting ourselves we need to recognise the fate of some of the things that once appeared to be part of our political inheritance.

The white Australia handed down from Deakin through to Menzies - a legacy shared with the Labor Party - has been demolished by the hand of the Liberal Party.

The great public enterprises of which Menzies was so proud, have essentially been sold off. First of all by the Labor Party, and then by the coalition.

The social justice constantly proclaimed by Menzies as one of the Party's cornerstones has been forgotten by many members of the Liberal Party, and has been reviled by others.

Our traditions of civil liberty have been curtailed, and in some cases overturned, in pursuit of a war on terrorism.

In the recent past we lauded the liberal tradition as responsible for one of the world's most generous and compassionate responses to Vietnamese refugees arriving on our shores.

Today some still demand the utilization of every artifice to deny refugees arriving on the Australian mainland the protection of Australian law.

Traditions are not immutable. They are sometimes good and sometimes bad. The bad traditions do not necessarily submerge or sink under their own weight, and the good traditions do not defend themselves.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century the Liberal Party has to address its traditions, justify and defend them or dismiss them. What we should not do however, is to slide by them.

Today I would like to talk about a trinity of traditions which lie at the heart of our Party and I consider worth defending.

The first is the tradition of members of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party exercising their conscience on matters of principle.

The second is the Liberal Party's tradition of respecting its heritage of liberal philosophy.

And the third is the tradition of recognising social complexity and respecting institutions that work. My particular focus here is to examine the current discussion paper on citizenship.

The Liberal Party's traditions may have changed over the decades.

But enduring has been the right of members of the Liberal parliamentary party to differ from the majority of their colleagues on matters of principle and conscience. This of course extends to the expression of a different view on the floor of the parliament.

Indeed, the right to individual judgement was a primary rationale in the emergence of the Party.

When the Deakinites fused with the free trade conservatives to form the first precursor of the modern Liberal Party, a motivation was the rejection of Labor's demand that parliamentarians subordinate their individual judgement to the dictates of the caucus majority.

As Alfred Deakin put it

In Labor there is not a natural and real, but a narrow mechanical compulsory uniformity enforced by constant knee drill in caucus. They all stand alike and apart. The Liberal Party stands in broad unity, but individualities remain. In this government and in this Party no man has parted with his individual judgement or his responsibility to his constituents. We enjoy a proud sense of free union as free men in a free party.

This is not just a matter of a distant past. It has always been intrinsic to the Liberal Party's commitment to the responsible individual.

The individuals that comprise the Liberal Party today value unity, but they do not believe that parliamentarians should be clones.

The liberal commitment to the centrality of the individual's reason and responsibility distinguishes us from Labor's collectivism.

Labor still demands that its parliamentary members sign and adhere of to a pledge, "to vote as a majority of the parliamentary party may decide at a duly constituted caucus meeting"

Unlike Labor we recognise and respect that members of parliament can responsibly deviate from their party on the floor of the parliament.

The liberal tradition of respecting the principles of the individual has endured from Deakin through to Menzies, and to the present day.

The late Don Chipp described Menzies' embrace of the tradition.

In 1961 Don Chipp's principles prevented him from supporting a government bill that included provisions for capital punishment.

Chipp recalled that with the government only holding a majority of one seat, he went to see Menzies to explain that his conscience would prevent him from voting with the government.

"I couldn't possibly vote for the clause on capital punishment", said Chipp. "I was in a hell of a dilemma. I went to Menzies...in absolute terror I told him I could not vote for the bill expecting him to tear me to shreds, because his reputation as a sort of tyrant had preceded him.

On the contrary, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "My boy, thank God we've got people with courage like you in the Party ...you vote as you please."

Menzies apparent equanimity was very impressive. But then Menzies was in many ways unique as the founder of the modern Liberal Party in his appreciation of the need to continually defend the traditions which in turn defined the Liberal Party.

The tradition has endured long after Menzies' departure. Even in the midst of a tortured reappraisal following the 1983 loss of government, the Liberal Party reaffirmed that:

The Party's belief in the importance of individual conscience means that it accepts that there are occasions when a Liberal member of parliament may vote against his colleagues without incurring sanctions from the Party (or expulsion as in the Labor Party).

Expressing traditions in documents is important. But their vitality is reaffirmed in the party members' actions. The voting recorded in Hansard demonstrates that the tradition remains alive.

During the Menzies government, Members and Senators crossed the floor on 5 per cent of divisions.

Under Holt it was 11per cent; Under Gorton it was 7per cent, and under Fraser 6 per cent.

In the 41st Parliament, which has so far run from 16 November 2004 to 14 September 2006, government Members or Senators crossed the floor in 2.2 per cent of divisions.

16 Members of the coalition still in parliament at the beginning of this year had crossed the floor between 1 and ten times. A majority of those who crossed the floor became ministers, and 5 of them cabinet ministers.

Robert Hill was one of the most frequent floor-crossers with 10 occasions to his name.

As Robert was leaving the Senate, he reaffirmed the tradition, saying

For the Liberal Party, with its emphasis on an individual's freedoms rather than collective responsibility, the right to be guided by conscience remains vital. I (Hill) am proof that you can take a different view on certain issues and still succeed - although I would not encourage it too often.

Hill thinks ten times is not too often. In the future no doubt some political scientists will use regression analysis to test this.

Of course they will have to consider the parliamentary record of Senator Reg Wright.

Senator Wright was a delegate to the 1944 Canberra conference called by Menzies to form the Liberal Party. He sat in the parliament from 1949 to 1978, became a minister in the Gorton and McMahon governments, and he crossed the floor 150 times.

Wright was called a rebel by some. His response was illustrative of the very tradition that we are exploring.

To call me a rebel shows a pur-blind lack of understanding of what the parliament stands for...it demand(s) of each man that he exercises individual judgement...anybody worth his salt as a Liberal would never surrender his vote.

Only a few days ago, Wright's legacy was brought home to both me and my colleagues, Judi Moylan and Russell Broadbent.

Having recently crossed the floor on a matter of principle, we received an email from Janet Upcher, the daughter of the late Senator Wright.

The email in part read:

My late father Reg Wright crossed the floor numerous times on matters of principle, and as a young girl, I saw the struggle he underwent to maintain his conscience - for that he has my eternal admiration.

Whether it has been Robert Hill, Reg Wright, or any of the numerous members of the parliamentary Liberal Party, crossing the floor is a step that is taken with a great deal of gravity. And it also remains one of the strongest and most enduring traditions of the Party.

Recently a number of Liberal Members and Senators either declared their intention to cross the floor, or voted against the government on a bill to excise the Australian mainland and Tasmania from the Migration Act.

In accordance with tradition the MPs concerned advised both the Prime Minister and the party room of their intentions and the reason for their actions.

However, their actions were met with public attacks from some parliamentary colleagues.

The liberal tradition of voting according to principle was denounced by Liberal parliamentary party members as the acts of "heretics and anarchists".

"Unprincipled", "ridiculous" and "indefensible" railed one Liberal. "Flying in the face of democracy," declared another. Another Member had presaged this by calling the pursuit of a private Member's bill "political terrorism".

I do not believe these responses reflect the view of the entire Liberal parliamentary party, or the Party at large.

The essence of the tradition was best reflected intellectually by Peter Costello who, whilst not agreeing with those crossing the floor, said:

We are a party that believes in a strong nation. We are also the party of conscience. Where members of our party have deeply held positions, genuinely held and argued and defended, we respect their right to differ from our party. This is, after all, the Liberal Party.

It was similarly exemplified affectionately by Warren Entsch, who after the vote hugged Judi Moylan. Warren said: "I had different views of the issue but I'm proud of what she did...as a Liberal, I think that it is important to stick to our principles."

The danger that we need to appreciate, of course, is that even the most embedded of our traditions can be eroded. And that the challenge to those values and traditions can come from within our party as surely as it can from without.

Attacking and denigrating parliamentarians who differ from their party on principle is antithetical to the values of the Liberal Party.

The ethos of the Party is that those who cross the floor on a matter of principle are entitled and free to do so. They are entitled not only to freedom from sanction, but also to respect for their principles and beliefs.

I believe that this tradition of respect for individual principle is functional for good government.

The resolution of issues in the party room is fundamental to our system. Everyone sacrifices to achieve a consensus. On the overwhelming majority of issues, people do give way on the whole or part of their perspective in the interests of achieving common ground.

But where there are deep and genuine differences of principle that cannot be reconciled, responsible government, accountability and parliamentary democracy dictate that individual Members have the freedom to take the final step to manifest their position.

I also believe that this is a tradition Australians want to see upheld.

Australians expect discipline of their parliamentarians.

They do not particularly care for infighting or personal aggrandisement.

But equally, they want those whom they elect to stand up when they believe it is right to do so.

This brings me to the second great tradition of the Liberal Party which is worth defending - the respect for both the liberal and conservative strands of the Liberal Party.

Let us look briefly at the character of Menzies' liberalism. Consider the naming of the Liberal Party.

Menzies stated that "we took the name `Liberal' because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no way reactionary, but believing in the individual, his rights and his enterprise."

Paul Hasluck, an acute observer of men and affairs, believed that:

...although a traditionalist, Menzies was not a conservative in any doctrinal sense.

I do not know what part he had in choosing the name "Liberal" for the new party he formed but the name would certainly fit his political creed. His political thinking was in accord with the liberalism of Alfred Deakin...

Menzies' brand of liberalism was a particularly Australian one. It was not an import from conservative parties abroad, but rather a far more progressive and tolerant brand of liberalism reflecting the values of the Australian community.

I have outlined elsewhere my belief that Menzies' legacy has been distorted by some who have attacked the concept of social justice he constantly advanced.

The strength and pride of his commitment and his sense of achievement is reflected in this declaration, towards the end of his prime ministership:

We have greatly aided social justice, we have shown that industrial progress is not to be based on the poverty or despair of those who cannot compete. After fourteen consecutive years ...we can point to ...achievements in industrial justice and peace, in social services, in a growingly successful attack upon poverty in widely distributed rising standards of housing and living generally that can be matched by very few counties in the world.

Menzies' philosophical legacy was that Australian liberalism is a broad church. Within that church are two fundamental arches. Under one arch reside the market, free enterprise, opportunity and incentive.

Under the other arch shelter stability, security, social justice and equity. The cornerstone of the arches is the state. The state supports a free market society at the same time as it upholds its obligation to the weak, the sick and the unfortunate.

From another vantage point, I think John Howard is right that Menzies' legacy embraced the respect for the dualism of the liberal tradition. As he put it in his 1996 Menzies lecture "Menzies knew the importance for Australian liberalism to draw on the classical liberal as well as the conservative political tradition... that encompassed both Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill."

The philosophical strength of the Liberal Party lies in the coming together of both of those streams. A respect for the duality of streams is entrenched in the Party's ethos.

Indeed, as Peter Costello has said, "The Liberal Party is at its strongest when these two strands intertwine. Each complements the other and gives it greater strength."

To retain a philosophical balance in modern political parties takes constant reflection and appraisal. Indeed, there are inevitable tensions in all political organisations.

In the modern Liberal Party, conservative and liberal streams can and often do coexist in the same individual.

Indeed it is common for people to take the conservative side of one issue and the liberal side of another.

Equally however, there are those who are more consistently on one side or the other.

In this sense, I believe it is true to say that currently the liberals or moderates are not the overwhelming majority. Indeed Laurie Oakes, in an image that resonates, likens the liberals in the Party to an endangered species, the orange-bellied parrot.

Ultimately traditions are carried and conveyed by individuals, and if too many liberals flew into the political turbines it would weaken the continuation of the liberal tradition.

I believe that we need to be sensitive to this and to such manifestations as attacks on those who represent the liberal persuasion in the Party. I have already outlined public attacks on those who crossed the floor on the immigration bill. And we have observed renewed efforts to unseat Members of parliament because they represent the liberal stream of thought.

We have seen such intrusions into seats such as Pearce directed against Judi Moylan.

In NSW, some seem determined that the broad church would be better off if there were no liberals in the pews. Marise Payne bears the brunt of such targeting because of her positions on refugees, abortion and civil liberties.

It would be a tragedy for the Liberal Party and the parliament if a classic Millsian liberal who makes the enormous contribution that Senator Payne does is driven from our Party.

Ladies and gentleman, there is no broad church in the abstract.

There is only a broad church in the rich tapestry and duality of those that form our parliamentary party.

Their diversity of thought and the dual philosophical streams are what embody the notion of a broad church.

No one individual, and no one tendency, represent the diversity of the Party as a whole. I believe that the Liberal Party as a whole is committed to its tradition of respect for its philosophical duality. The reality is that, if a minority succeeds in attacking those who represent the liberal strand, the loser will be the Party that we have inherited.

I now turn to a third aspect of the liberal tradition, the balance between change and continuity. Sir Robert Menzies saw the Liberal Party as a progressive party, not averse to experiment; as a party that believes in state action to secure economic and social advancement and that embraces sensible parts of the Burkean understanding of society. One of these insights is that when you are dealing with social arrangements that have proved that they work, governments need to proceed with great care. There is a substantial burden of proof required to establish whether something needs to be changed, and that the changes proposed will achieve the desired outcome.

It is through this Burkean prism of the need to respect the complexity of social patterns, particularly successful ones, that I would like to contribute to the current debate about citizenship. In crude terms, what is broke and what needs fixing.

Let us look at our record. Since 1945, Australians have accepted 6 million migrants, an average of 1 million a decade. We have overcome our concerns about migrants coming from places other than the British Isles. We then overturned the white Australia policy which was for so long considered by both major political parties as essential to social harmony and cohesion. Today 28.2 per cent of our population was born overseas. Since 1949, 3.5 million Australians have become citizens by naturalisation.

By any standard, we are an exemplar of unity and respect for our multicultural diversity. We have, with remarkable success, brought together peoples of diverse nations, religions and cultures. Migrants to Australia have worked hard and committed themselves to this country. Through their efforts and initiative, and that of their children, and increasingly their grandchildren, they have profoundly enriched the Australian nation, of which they are an intrinsic part economically, socially, culturally and linguistically.

Until a few weeks ago, this was an article of faith on the part of every politician. Now we are told we need to make significant policy changes to address weaknesses in our citizenship laws.

What are the societal malfunctions that justify these changes?

I have looked closely at the federal government's discussion paper, Australian Citizenship: much more than just a ceremony, and, in what has been said and written in connection with the proposed tests, I can find no detailed, robust analysis of a problem, and no evidence of how the new measures would resolve a problem that has not been demonstrated.

There is no equivalent of the Galbally report, which thirty years ago provided a rigorous philosophical and evidential basis for the Fraser government's adoption of the policy of multiculturalism.

I have no doubt that more can and should be done to encourage immigrants to integrate effectively into the Australian community. But in order to do so sensibly, I would like to know pretty precisely what is the scale and nature of the issue. For example, how do we define integration and assess whether it is occurring? Who is not integrating and why is that so - are there attitudinal or language barriers or do they suffer from discriminatory barriers?

I am all in favour of encouraging non-English speaking immigrants to learn English - acceptance of English as the national language and promoting its acquisition have always been central tenets of multiculturalism. Where is the evidence showing who does not learn adequate English and the reasons for that? Do immigrants not want to learn or are they stymied by the lack of availability of classes or are they fully occupied in meeting other demands, such as employment and family responsibilities?

Instead, we are told that changes to the Citizenship Act are needed because the present system showers citizenship around like confetti - throwing citizenship at people who do not value it, in part, because it is so easy to get.

Such assertions are nowhere supported.

The discussion paper tells us that testing will "assist social cohesion and successful integration into the community". The implication is that this is not happening now. Yet there is no evidence provided for this - no research to support it.

We are told that people take out citizenship because it is easy. It is easy we are told because there is no "formal test" of English or suitability or commitment to our country. A hearsay anecdote is related about people leaving a citizenship ceremony before the singing of the national anthem. This, we are told, "suggests that there are many people who are taking out citizenship who may see it as no more than a passport."

The discussion paper proposes "formal", more difficult and more protracted tests before people become citizens. These will, the paper asserts, provide a strong incentive for people to learn English.

A number of underlying premises in the discussion paper are problematic. I will address three.

The first of these is that people take up citizenship without commitment because the requirements for English proficiency are so low. Yet it is those people most proficient in English who are the ones least likely to take out citizenship. The reality is that take up rates of citizenship are lowest amongst those who are English speakers - immigrants from the UK the USA and New Zealand.

The second underlying premise is that there are no existing tests, and no signatures of commitment. I have seen a recent poll that a significant proportion of Australians are in favour of the introduction of a formal citizenship test. The fact is that tests have long been in place.

I am not going to play a semantic game about when a test is formal or informal. What I can say is that following the requirements of the Australian Citizenship Act 1948, people are currently assessed on the following: basic English language knowledge; understanding the nature of the application and its meaning; and an adequate knowledge of the responsibilities and privileges of Australian citizenship.

This assessment is made during a compulsory, formal interview. Additionally, those seeking Australian citizenship are required to formally commit to citizenship by signing a declaration as part of the application. At the citizenship ceremony candidates are required to affirm their commitment to Australia in the words of the Australian citizenship pledge, and I quote:

From this time forward, (under God,) I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

The third premise is that somehow we have fallen behind other countries in the stringency of our requirements. The countries that we are falling behind are cited as the US, the UK, Canada and the Netherlands. Look at their record of harmony. Australia's record is second to none in multicultural harmony and integration. We are uniquely successful. Why should we emulate countries with a less distinguished record?

The discussion paper has had one unintended, and I believe beneficial effect. It has made many Australians reflect on the challenges that faced their parents and grandparents. For my part, my mother and father were among the many people who became Australians despite only limited fluency in English. My father was desperate to speak English properly - and thought he did - but he really didn't, because he worked two jobs for most of his life.

A recent letter published in The Age reflects the experience and the sentiment of hundreds of thousands of migrants to this country. Speaking of the Greek community, the author writes:

...older migrants were not subjected to an English-language test and, in many instances, they never did master the language of their new country. Finding work, establishing a home and family and ensuring a secure future for their children took all their energy and resolve. They did not underestimate the importance of developing knowledge of English and there was a sense of regret and sometimes despair that they needed to rely on others to ease their way in an English-speaking environment....

Reflecting on her personal experience she continues:

...My Greek migrant parents, relatives and friends who made it possible for me to develop into a tertiary-educated bilingual Australian, who nurtured me in my youth, set an example, and gave me a sense of responsibility towards others, were in many cases illiterate in English. They were, however, model Australian citizens and their loyalty to this country was rock-solid. Their own Greek-speaking community helped them adjust to their new country. (Nina Mills, Blairgowrie.)

Throughout our history, very many people have become citizens despite having little fluency in English.

But that did not prevent them from making substantial contributions to our society - people who worked hard in jobs that many English-speakers were loathe to take; people who obeyed the law, were good parents and fine neighbours.

Aren't such personal qualities the essence of good citizenship?

How can it be in the national interest to impose new barriers to citizenship, barriers which would have prevented its acquisition by so many who have demonstrably proven to be model citizens?

Ladies and gentlemen, the liberal tradition has facilitated the success of one of the most successful migration processes in modern history. That has been made possible because the Liberal Party was progressive and committed to nation building. There are no doubt many reasons why it has been a success. I believe it has something to do with the Australian character that is fundamentally tolerant and accepting of people trying to make a go of it, especially when they come to know them as individuals. I believe it is partly because of the openness of Australian society. I believe it is partly because of the policy of multiculturalism that embraces diversity as a value within a commitment to Australia. And I believe that it is due to the fact that we have sought to accept as Australian citizens those who made a real commitment to Australia, even if they spoke only basic English and probably couldn't answer many multiple choice questions about Australia.

But beyond this, as a liberal I am enough of a Burkean to know that recipes for social cohesion and commitment are complex and if the mix has succeeded, we need to have imperative, overriding reasons to change it. In my view, the discussion paper in no way demonstrates the need to change our longstanding processes, and the proposed new approach potentially undermines our unquestionable success.

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