And while I’m thinking of what to play at my final departure from this mortal coil, beyond Pete Seeger and Hey Djonkoye, there are a couple of classical pieces that might be included. The first is the theme that comes five minutes into the fourth movement of Brahms first symphony (5:14 to be exact in the video below).

It was the theme for a CBC radio programme when I was growing up – Music in the Morning. It would come on at 9:00 am so what made it particularly special was that I would only hear it when I was sick at home and being tended to by my Mother. The combination provided a special warmth that has stayed with me all my life.

Perhaps you need the five minute build up to make it really work but I don’t think so. I also heard the symphony performed in Melbourne with Zubin Mehta and the Israeli Philharmonic. The most transfixing moment in all of my concert-going life, which was not all that comprehensive but was not negligible either.

The second is the start to Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. It is impossible to believe how beautiful this is and how few people will ever have heard it. But there you are.

Life just goes by so quickly that you hardly notice. The video shows the same violinist playing the music both when he was young and then when he was old. Very interesting idea and sadly appropriate. But some music does make time stand still. There are no doubt other pieces I could add to this but these remain extraordinary in my life.

My article in the November Quadrant, Conservative Thought in the Time of Covid (Part II), has now been put online where anyone can read it. It is strictly a discussion of political philosophy from a conservative perspective, or from what I think ought to be a conservative perspective. This is not everyone’s interest since this is totally abstracted from any particular issue, but goes to the essence of what I think a conservative philosophy consists of.

This is the conclusion, but it comes at the end of more than 9000 words, which are found in the first instalment that was published in October and now the lead up to where I conclude with what I think is the core issue of conservatism.

Conservative thought is often seen as having originated within the historic traditions of our Western religious beliefs. And while there is a great deal of truth to this, it is not the essence of modern conservative thought. Modern conservatism is based on defending individual rights and personal freedoms, politically and in our economic relations. Freedom of religion is one part of these freedoms, but no particular religious belief is at the core of conservative thought. Any religion, and no religion at all, is potentially consistent with conservatism.

These are the elements of conservatism as it needs to be understood if we are to defend ourselves against the rising socialist beliefs that are its major political alternative.

1. An individual’s right to be left alone to live one’s own life as one pleases with no interference from government unless to prevent harm to others.
2. Absolute right to free speech—anyone can say or write anything about anything they like at any time as part of a public discussion.
3. Market economy—economic outcomes should be almost entirely based on individual personal decisions to produce. The government’s role in the creation of wealth is minimal.
4. Adherence to a legal and moral tradition with historic roots based on individual rights and freely determined religious beliefs so long as those beliefs are not imposed on others.

This is the War of the Worlds at the present time, as it has been since the middle of the eighteenth century as the first glimmers of communal prosperity began to emerge. The earliest and possibly the greatest philosophical defenders of this tradition were Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, both of whom wrote great treatises on economic theory. Both understood that at the centre of our contentment with life, along with our ability to produce, were personal freedoms and individual rights.

The great error in much of the writings on conservative thought since these times has been to separate out the role of the market economy as, at best, a minor element in the structure of conservative thought. In fact, it is at the very core of what must be understood and defended.

The first of the articles may be found here: Conservative Thought in the Time of Covid. These are the major battlelines of our time, which is a battle that will soon end unless the non-conservative side of politics actually takes full control, which is always a danger and a possibility.

There are people who are too little appreciated for what they have done, even though they have done a great deal. One of these is the just-departed former Chief Judge of Fair Work Australia, Geoff Guidice. I am devastated to learn he has now departed from this life.

I came to know him when I was writing economic submissions for the National Wage Case on behalf of Australian Employers. He became the advocate when our previous advocate, Colin Polites, who had also passed away at a depressingly early age, was appointed as a Deputy President on the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (the AIRC). Colin had been for many years a great comic tenor in a variety of Gilbert and Sullivan productions and brought the same colour to his oral submissions.

Geoff was a completely different kind of advocate which I grew to admire for its surprising effectiveness since it was such a contrast to Colin’s. He would calmly and in a low-key manner, read the lines into transcript, but every so often would stop, and say something like, “I would particularly like to emphasise this” and tap his pencil on the lectern. And that tap would sound like an explosion across the courtroom, as everyone bent forward to hear what these special words would be.

He was a great advocate, and following that, he was a great President firstly for the AIRC and then after that, as the first President of the newly formed Fair Work Australia. What was so important to myself, in presenting my own economic submissions after I had taken over from Geoff, but only for the economic submissions – not the parts dealing with industrial law – was that I knew he would be fair and balanced when the decision was finally crafted. That, perhaps surprisingly, is all that we on the employer side ever sought.

And with his having been our advocate in the past, there was never any doubt he knew what the issues were and what really mattered.

Oddly, after he had left Fair Work Australia and I had gone on to other endeavours, we would occasionally bump into each other just by chance, with the most astonishing such meeting at the National Gallery in London one day out of the blue.

He had the sunniest disposition and was always kind and gentle. It was always the greatest pleasure to meet up with him. He has departed from this life far too soon. But his was an eventful life, one whose achievements will, I fear, be much too little appreciated since they occurred in the midst of an arena whose importance remains all too little understood.