Australian Polity, Volume 9 Number 3 - Digital Version

his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of
life, and next in those great occasional crises [and we
know a bit about that] which call for the heroic virtues.”
Together and individually we are each responsible for
building and sustaining community, and we each have
something unique to bring. Because community begins
with the individual, not the state, not the marketplace.
It begins with an appreciation of the unique dignity of
each human being. It recognises that each individual
has something to offer and that failure to appreciate and
realise this, as a community, means our community is
poorer and it is weaker. In short, to realise true community
we must first appreciate each individual human being
matters. You matter. You, individually.
happens when people are defined solely by the group
they belong to, or an attribute they have, or an identity
they possess. The Jewish community understands that
better than any in the world.
My message is simple: you matter, you make the difference,
you make community. And together with family and
marriage and the associations of clubs and community
groups, faith networks, indeed the organisations we’re
here celebrating tonight, and so much more, they are the
further building blocks of community on that individual,
providing the stability and the sinews of society that
bind us one to another. And upon that moral foundation
of community we build our institutions of state. Within
that moral context we operate our marketplace.
In this context I would also argue we must protect against
those forces that would undermine that in community,
and I don’t just mean, as I’ve recently remarked, the social
and moral corrosion caused by the misuse of social
media, and the abuse that occurs there. But I would say
it also includes the growing tendency to commodify
human beings through identity politics.
To your great credit, this event is an affirmation that
morality always starts with individuals seeing the dignity
and need in each other and deciding to act. You are
demonstrating by your own actions that morality can
never be outsourced, because when it is we rob ourselves
of that precious agency and we deny the strength and
goodwill that comes from building community.
We must never surrender the truth that the experience
and value of every human being is unique and personal.
You are more, we are more, individually, more than the
things others try to identify us by, you by, in this age of
identity politics. You are more than your gender, you are
more than your race, you are more than your sexuality,
you are more than your ethnicity, you are more than your
religion, your language group, your age.
You matter. Community matters. In a democracy, it matters
especially. It’s a tremendous source of strength and its
why foreign actors seek to sow discord online, in many
other ways, inflaming angers and hatreds and spreading
lies and disinformation. Of course, the right to disagree
peacefully is at the heart of democracy. But democracy
is a shared endeavour, and civility, trust and generosity
are the currency that mediates our differences.
All of these of course contribute to who we may be and
the incredible diversity of our society, particularly in this
country, and our place in the world. But of themselves
they are not the essence of our humanity. When we
reduce ourselves to a collection of attributes, or divide
ourselves, even worse, on this basis, we can lose sight
of who we actually are as individual human beings - in all
our complexity, in all our wholeness and in all our wonder.
We then define each other if we go down that other
path by the boxes we tick or don’t tick, rather than our
qualities, skills and character. And we fail to see the value
that other people hold as individuals, with real agency
and responsibility. Throughout history, we’ve seen what
The Hon Scott Morrison MP is the Prime Minister of Australia. This is
an edited extract of his address to the United Israel Appeal Dinner,
Randwick NSW, 29 April 2021.
“At the heart of our
Judeo-Christian heritage
are two words: Human
dignity. Everything else
flows from this.”
20 Australian Polity