Speakers at CPAC Australia grappled with issues like divisions in the centre-right Liberal Party, a simmering immigration debate, and the cost of net zero.
Just months after the Liberal-National Coalition’s bruising election defeat—and amid the resurgence of Trump’s MAGA movement and the shocking assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk—Australians gathered in Brisbane for CPAC, the country’s largest right-leaning conference.
Speakers at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Australia grappled with difficult issues like divisions in the centre-right Liberal Party, a simmering immigration debate, and the cost of net zero.
For many attendees, CPAC was an opportunity to share ideas and plot a path for the future of traditional and conservative values in the country.
Here are some of the key topics discussed.
Migration
Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott tackled one of the hottest issues in recent weeks: migration policy.
“Right now, sustained records of migration is putting downward pressure on wages, upward pressure on housing costs and serious strain on our social and physical infrastructure, we simply do not have the houses for a half a million newcomers every single year,” he told attendees.
“So what I say to my colleagues in Canberra is that numbers must come down, preferably to the levels of the Howard era, and we have to make it absolutely clear to every single person who comes here that you have to take seriously the words of the citizenship pledge under God’s people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect and whose laws I will uphold.”
His comments come after thousands of Australians took to the streets last month to protest current migration numbers.
Threat of the CCP Spotlighted
The inherent dangers of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was brought to the fore as Senator Jacinta Price accused the Albanese government of “silencing a candid national debate on the great danger of our age.”
“And that’s the danger posed by the Chinese military and its interference in our country,” she said.
Price made a distinction between the CCP and the Chinese people, including Australians of Chinese background.
She also warned Australia against burying its head in the sand, and said CCP activities like its naval circumnavigation around the continent as well as weapons test should be taken seriously.
“That wasn’t a benign exercise. That was a rehearsal the Chinese Communist Party wanted to show its ability to project power over us,” she said.
“Their missiles can strike Australian bases and civilian infrastructure. We were once largely protected by the tyranny of distance. Now, new weapons of war have turned safe distance into perilous proximity.”
Former Prime Minister Abbott was also concerned Australians were complacent about the CCP threat.
“Our strategic peril is deepening all the time as communist China continues the biggest and the fastest military build up in history,” he said.
