‘To be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible … even among people who should and do know better.’ So wrote the great anti-totalitarian polemicist George Orwell in 1946, a year after Curtin’s death. Nearly three decades on from the end of the Cold War, authoritarianism, whether soft or hard, is on the rise. Russia, Turkey and China and its leaders Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdogan and Xi Jinping are the most prominent faces of this global club of strongmen leaders. The spectre of a resurgent far-right politics haunts Europe. Charismatic alt-right politicians are all the rage. Far-left demagogues are either challenging the leadership of social democratic parties or superseding them altogether. Granted, the majority of the world’s countries are governed by democratic regimes. But the percentage of the globe’s population living under autocratic or autocratic rule hovers around 4 billion. Still, for some pundits, democracy has become an intellectual fashion accessory, a luxury Gucci bag good enough for the citizens of the West but optional for the rest. The next Labor government must take an unequivocal stand on behalf of democracy in our region and the world over, no matter the noise generated by deeply-compromised former figures from both major parties. Which brings us to the long-running debate over Australia’s approach to the rise of China, and more recently, discussion around restoring real involvement with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with the US, India and Japan, or so-called ‘Quad’. The Quad is demonstrably in Australia’s interest, contrary to the claims of the Beijing ‘right or wrong’ lobby. It is not a form of US containment or tantamount to a formal military alliance. Australia’s involvement would not be acting contrary to its own interests, namely ignoring predictions that China’s economy will be double the size of the American economy in twenty years’ time. Responding to the challenge of China’s rise does not offer a simple either or choice. No serious leader or serious observer has ever argued as such. It is the inarguable basis of any realistic and well-balanced Australian foreign policy. The great democratic challenge of our time is reconciling the demands of Australia’s important economic relationship with China, our largest trading partner with our legitimate national security needs and relationship with the US, our largest strategic ally, one predicated on a joint, unshakeable commitment to democracy. It entails not ignoring China’s military build-up in the South China Sea. It demands we speak out against the threat of North Korea and China’s crucial role. It cannot mean uncritical support for Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative. Must we not be seen in company of democratic friends at the risk of causing imagined offence? Or is this the new orthodoxy, whereby Australian support for democratic principles and alliances is of itself unfashionable? Orwell knew a thing or two about such matters. The unwavering social democrat paid a price for not supporting Stalin’s regime in the 1940s, perceived to be the major opponent of Nazism: unemployment and exile from Britain’s literary class. Our John Curtin paid a higher price. His wartime sacrifice sent him to an early grave. To not defend democracy diminishes Curtin’s memory and the millions of ordinary Australians who fought and worked against the forces of oppression on his watch.

Australia has a historic opportunity to shape a new policy settlement which builds a modern, thriving and diverse economy that creates and sustains well-paid, secured jobs in a globalised world and ensures that our health and education sectors are world-class. The opportunity to redraw our national policy settlement present to very few generations. The settlement of the 1900s which saw the establishment of a living wage and our reputation as a beacon of progressive policy spread throughout the world. Or the great wartime and post-war reconstruction work of the 1940s Curtin and Chifley governments which laid the groundwork for a golden age – thirty years of prosperity with fairness. Or Hawke and Keating’s modernisation agenda of the 1980s and 90s which built a more open, dynamic and productive economy in tandem with a union movement which worked constructively with business and government, thus avoiding the worst excesses of Thatcherism Those settlements were spaced roughly forty years apart and responded to tumultuous events of the previous decade. Amid our own tumult, it is time, not for a new Moses, but an entire generation, through the power of their ideas and policies, to seize its moment to make Australia a richer, fairer, better place, and a beacon of democracy in times no less challenging than those confronting John Curtin.