So I took it as a badge of honour when left-wing activists tried to cancel the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, held last weekend in Sydney. The organisers had to change venues at the last minute because their original hosts surrendered to the pressure campaign.

CPAC started in the United States in 1974 while the conservative party in the US, the Republican party, was at a low ebb during the Watergate scandal. Its first keynote speaker was Ronald Reagan and they helped launch his Presidential career and a conservative revival.

While it started in America, this year's event in Sydney was dominated by Australian speakers. Jacinta Price, a proud Celtic-Aboriginal Senator from the Northern Territory, spoke about the risks of dividing our society into black and white groups, including through the proposal of the Voice to Parliament. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott spoke about how Australians should not be "morally bullied" into disrespecting the achievements of our history. And, John Howard spoke of the need for us to maintain our adherence to our values.

In my contribution, I concentrated on why we must have the courage to speak the truth. We live in an environment where there is so much pressure to suppress views not seen as welcome in polite society. Suppression of debate is a sure way for us to sleepwalk into major mistakes.

Take Europe's energy situation. Europe has not had a proper political debate about the merits of net zero emissions and now it is paying the price.

The UK Government is spending more on subsidising energy bills than they spent on COVID relief, the Spanish Government has introduced mandatory temperature controls in buildings, whole forests are being felled for firewood, the Eiffel Tower is going dark earlier than normal and some German towns have cancelled Christmas lights this year.

Our core problem is that we are letting people who have no idea how the world works dominate our political debate and make world changing decisions.

We have morons gluing themselves to streets to protest against fossil fuels yet they use adhesives that are made from petrochemicals.

We have protestors holding signs saying you can't eat fossil fuels, when more than half of the world's food is grown only thanks to fertilisers made from natural gas.

Some are unconcerned about coal fired power stations closing because they get their electricity from the switch on the wall. They are like the apocryphal mother during the war who said she was unconcerned about a possible shortage of bread because she always eats toast!

Our country is hurtling down the same European path. The new Labor Government wants more than 80 per cent of Australia's electricity to come from weather dependent electricity. Europe is in an energy crisis with less than 50 per cent of electricity coming from weather dependent electricity.

Not everyone agrees with the views of those speaking at CPAC this year. But we live in a democracy and so that is ok. If we suppress the views we do not like we will just increase the chances we make stupid decisions.