Ralph Babet (Victoria, United Australia Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It may not be fashionable to say this, but we all know it to be true: Christianity is the foundation of Western civilisation. Our nation was built on two great assumptions—that every human being possesses inherent and equal dignity and that those in authority are accountable to a higher moral law. These principles are the very bedrock of our democracy and they did not appear out of thin air. They were not conceived by bureaucrats in Brussels; they are principles that come directly from the Bible.

Today, the West is slowly discovering what happens when it rejects Christianity—a vacuum is created, and that vacuum will always be filled but not by nothing. It won't be filled by materialism, socialism, environmentalism, capitalism or humanism. Do you know what can fill the void left by the rejection of the Christian faith? Something that's not very good. We can be sure of that. If you remove Christianity from the story of the West, you won't get a tolerant utopia. You'll get confusion in a world that's basically turned upside down with no true north. Even the right to disbelieve is itself a Christian idea. The atheists in my home state of Victoria and Melbourne, sipping a $7 soy latte, might like to pause and thank the Lord—that they don't even believe in—for that very freedom. That freedom is what comes with living in a Christian country. Try not believing in a non-Christian country and see how far you get. Our future depends on returning to our foundations of our Christian heritage, because if the root dies, the tree dies. I'm going to commit myself to calling on all Australians, believers and nonbelievers alike, to honour and respect that faith that gave us our freedom, our prosperity and our hope. That faith, of course, is the Christian faith.