Pat Conroy’s speech at the National Press Club was not a convincing presentation of the ALP’s record on defence.

The Minister for Defence Industry, Pat Conroy, can rightly claim an unenviable spot in the lower ranks of the debauched world of contemporary political chatter. On 2 July he solidified that status in a speech at the National Press Club titled “Progressive Patriotism”. It is a masterpiece of befuddling cliché, historical distortion and the gratuitous use of complimentary superlatives, including about himself. The speech is a little better than his smearing of Sir Robert Menzies in off-the-cuff comments at the Press Club, although not by much.

Conroy kicks off by saying that “progressive patriotism…is confidence in, and celebration of, what our national project has built”, adding that it “means backing Australian workers and Australian industry to make and sustain our critical defence capabilities…growing our self-reliance and strengthening our sovereignty…[and] investing in the areas of domestic industry we need…”.

How AUKUS is strengthening sovereignty is not clear.

The quandary of meaning is not eased when Conroy links “progressive patriotism” to his government’s “Future Made in Australia” laws, which have spawned a program weighed down with another meaningless label and under which billions are being doled out on projects whose internal rates of return, if they’ve been........

© Pearls and Irritations