On Thursday night, two Sydney Morning Herald reporters attended a fundraising dinner for far-right group The Q Society at North Ryde in Sydney's north-west.
The dinner raised funds for members of the Society, including Kirralie Smith, who is being sued for claiming Halal certification funds terrorism.
Several speeches were made, including by former Liberal minister Ross Cameron and cartoonist Larry Pickering.
The speeches attracted controversy when excerpts were published on Friday. Here is a full transcript of their remarks.
Ross Cameron
Ross Cameron speaks at a fundraiser for Kirralie Smith at the North Ryde RSL on Thursday. Photo: Wolter Peeters
This week, I was reminded of the importance of knowing whether the microphone is on or off. Pleased we've got it going, got it working.
I feel a bit humbled, humbled, being in the presence of, we've got really - in Debbie and Kirralie, I feel like we've got, sort of [unclear]. Cowan and Troy.
And then to Paul Zanetti and Larry Pickering, I could suspect there are less than 10 Australians who earn their coin full-time writing jokes. The kind of genius required is one in 2.5 million. We've got two of them in the room tonight. I just want to say, we salute you. The thing is, there is a special genius required to encapsulate the image and the ideas with maybe one sentence that just - bang. Just hits the audience right between the eyes. It requires a kind of, you know, a kind of subversive mind, which we Deplorables are very attracted to.
Just want to acknowledge and welcome a couple of representatives from the fourth estate, Nick O'Malley and Jacqueline Maley here, up the back, from the Sydney Morning Homosexual. Sorry, the, um. It's great to have you guys on this side of the Harbour Bridge. I know you probably needed a GPS to, you know, you probably haven't even seen this suburb before. But it's great to have you with us.
I do want to acknowledge the fact that Nick O'Malley wrote a piece about Kirralie two weeks ago, and I'm going to be absolutely fair and square, a fair and balanced citizen. Nick, I thought - and Kirralie agrees - it was not a hatchet job. It was a very fair job. It was professional journalism. So I just want to acknowledge that. We appreciate that the Herald has an editorial view. And that editorial view is that 'you guys are a bunch of racists'. But, but, but but but, I will say, Nick and Jacqueline are here tonight, you know. They've made the effort to come, at least to come and listen, and I want to, as one - you know I'm not really a journalist, in the way that they are - I am among amateur who Sky makes the mistake of handing the microphone to. And I think, well, if you're going to give me the microphone, you're going to get whatever you deserve. That's my approach. I want to say to this audience here, my self-interested remark that, just between us, you know - don't tell anyone - but The Outsiders, in its third-ever edition ranked, because of you, the number one show on Sky.
I do say that sort of seriously, because The Outsiders - Rowan Dean, Mark Latham, Ross Cameron, three deplorables - it exists because the audience of Sky really demanded it. And I walked in on the day after the first episode, and all of these young staffers at Sky were basically saying Ross we are shocked that by the end of that show, the emails started coming in to Sky like someone had just hit the jackpot at the RSL and it was going 'bing bing bing bing bing bing, more of this, more of this, we want more of this'. And that's because of you. I know there's tens of thousands of you out there supporting Kirralie and Debbie and other good causes on Facebook and Twitter and elsewhere. I just want you to know, on behalf of certainly me and Mark and Rowan, we appreciate the fact that you have created us, and we couldn't do it without- now Sky has got no choice but to leave us on. Even if all their fair instincts are saying [exhales loudly].
Ross Cameron embraces Kirralie Smith after his speech. Photo: Wolter Peeters
Look, what are we here for? What do we share in common? What is our purpose? Tonight, well I think Angry Anderson pretty well nailed it. We are here tonight because, my instinct, I have it, my duty, we obey our wives. I mean, that is the basic deal. Trigger warning for the Herald, there are some heterosexuals in this room. I'm not going to name them. I don't want you to be offended by that, but there are some males who are attracted to females in this room. I want to say, I'm probably not, I'm not really that anti-gay in the sense that, we know, you know, there has been an association in history - I'm a student of history.
You take someone like Socrates, a captain of free speech. You know, according to some historians might have had an attraction. Might have had a bit of same-sex attraction to some of his students. Hadrian, who build 'the wall'. Hadrian built the wall. You know, he was on the right track. Hadrian fell in love with a young Greek boy, Antinous, who fell off the back of a barge and drowned. I'm sure they were probably snorting coke at the time. And Hadrian was so heartbroken by this experience that he made Antinous a god and made statues of him all over the Roman empire. They're still being discovered to this day - one of the most common artifacts. Now, I know, the NSW division of the Liberal Party is basically a gay club. And I don't mind that most of our parliamentary class is gay. I just wish, like Hadrian, they'd build a damn wall. That would be my preference.
I want to say- what do I want to say? Well let's go back to Socrates. You know, Socrates, according to Plato, said we should follow the argument wherever it leads, like a vessel on the ocean breeze. We should follow the argument. We should follow the facts where they take us. However uncomfortable the destination may be, the Greek revolution was, when in doubt, take comfort in the facts. The Greek revolution was observational. The Greeks came out of the Peloponnesian Wars with the Carthaginians who had some extraordinary achievements, the Carthaginians, but they were pretty heavily into child sacrifice. And the Greeks said you know what, we're not sure that's such a great idea, right.
But the Sydney Morning Herald editorial board of the Carthaginians, I'm telling you, they would've been all over it, right. There would've been no room for dissent. If you had said, you know, you had some [unclear] about child sacrifice in Carthage, I think you would've felt the wrath of politically correct opinion. They would say 'don't you understand' as they took the child out of the mother's arms. 'If we don't sacrifice this baby the gods are going to be angry and there's going to be no harvest'. The Greeks said uh, no no no no, no no no. Maybe this child sacrifice thing's not such a good idea. And Socrates, who in the end made a big prize, he was prized for his willingness to be un-PC, but he left quite a substantial legacy. And that is our inheritance.
That was the beginning of the scientific method, where up until that time, we talked about the Romans, Marcus Aurelius, the voice of the stoics. The sort of pre-Christian Roman empire. So Marcus Aurelius said that there was a hierarchy between things that exist at the bottom. The first test was do you exist or not exist. And that was the first test. Marcus Aurelius was un-PC enough to say it's better to exist than not to exist. Bloody dumbarse, didn't know a thing, did he? Better to exist. It's one of the reasons why I'm quite attracted to heterosexuality, you know? It's better to exist than not to exist. Then he said the second layer was matter, insensate matter, like a stone or a brick. And something living. Something living which was capable of reproducing itself. According to Marcus Aurelius, I'm sure he would offend 40 or so in university faculties of the arts, if you are a living thing, you are superior to a mere stone. Okay?
Former Liberal MP and Sky News host Ross Cameron. Photo: Wolter Peeters
This is 1160 AD, and there Marcus Aurelius said, once you're in the category of the living thing, there are plants and there are animals. And according to the Roman logic, the animal is superior to the plant, because it's a more sophisticated organism, and the animal has a capacity - the constraints on its existence are less. And so therefore, it's a superior organism in the hierarchy of the Roman pre-Christian mind. And then on top of that, he said among the animals, the human is superior to the other animals because the human has the greatest power to exercise reason over otherwise habituated instinct. And he, Marcus Aurelius, said the most effective thing for which he would have been hounded out of the Sydney Morning Herald's editorial board, after he was chased with a pitchfork out of The Guardian's editorial board. After he was tarred and feathered by the ABC's editorial board, Marcus Aurelius would have said that this capacity to reason is the thing that makes us effectively human as opposed to the other primates, the gorillas, the chimpanzees, the orangutans.
And look, I'm quite attracted to the Orca, to be honest with you. I like the marine mammals. I like 'em all. I'm open-minded. I'm open-minded about the native title right to kill the Dugong. I don't have a strong view about it. No strong view about it. Should the Aborigines want to kill the Dugong, I'm open-minded. But I'm glad to be human, you know. There is something special about being human. And the most special thing about it is the capacity to reason. So Marcus Aurelius says, to anyone who struggles to get out of bed in the morning, right - which I do at times - Marcus Aurelius would say 'get out of bed', because the other animals sleep as well, right. There's nothing special about sleeping. You don't get any extra marks for sleeping. You get extra marks, as a human, for using your fuckin' brain. Which is what makes us different, you know.
And so, this Ancient Roman wisdom, I want to pay a tribute to the stoics, of which Marcus Aurelius' Meditations- he's written seven books, he didn't even have a title, he wrote it for himself, not for publication. I would say a long drive in the car, and, uh, you know, you don't have the blessing of a beautiful female companion, you should listen on YouTube to Meditations, Marcus Aurelius - it won't do you any harm at all. But the stoics were open to the argument.
There's a beautiful story from the New Testament, about the apostle Paul in the book of Acts. Paul was a Jew, but a Roman citizen, a lawyer. And he - Time Magazine didn't - in running the most influential figures in history, there was some controversy that Jesus didn't make number one, because they formed the view that Jesus without Paul would not have had the impact that he had. So it was Jesus at 2, 3 I think was the argument. The point is when Paul was in Athens, he was going around evangelising, because that was at the time that the Christian church still believed in God. When the Pope, you know, even the bloody Pope believed in God back then. And there were two main groups there in Athens, in the Roman empire - there were the Epicureans and the stoics. And the Epicureans were the pleasure-lovers. They were the foodies. They would've been buying the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide. And then there was the stoics, who were the believers in honour, in duty, in the sense of hierarchy. So they're at opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum. They disagreed about everything. But they heard Saul of Tarsus, this Roman Jew, going on about Jesus Nazareth. And I just want to pay a compliment in the same way we honour the great cultural- you know.
If we had a mountain where we carve the face of the former presidents in it, I would have Paul Zanetti and Larry Pickering up there, probably one and two. But the Epicureans and the stoics - and I'm actually going to read it to you, if I can find it. This passage from Act. So the beautiful passage, from the- we're talking about 30, 35 AD, maybe later. Could've been 40AD, something like that. Paul was in full flight. And, uh, where are we here. I can't even find it. Ah, here we go. Acts 17. It's a freedom of opinion. This is about the willingness to tolerate diversity of opinion, not just to tolerate but to celebrate different views. The stoics and the Epicureans at either end of the spectrum, in the most powerful empire in the history of the world.
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned. He used his brain, you know. He didn't just enforce the state ideology. Climate change, gay marriage. He reasoned. He said, A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. So the ancient world, I mean I don't think I have seen a debate on the ABC since the ancient world. They said, uh, what is this guy saying? A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate. "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because he was preaching about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and invited him to a meeting at the Areopagus. It's still there today if you want to see it. It's a magnificent architectural feature of the ancient world. And this is the question they asked. "May we know what this teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean."
I just want to say, you know, I wish we had a little bit more of the ancient world. I wish we were not so fearful of anyone who doesn't mouth the orthodoxy. And in particular the mechanism which irritates me the most is the preferred method to shut down debate is to say the person who disagrees with me is a bad, evil, bigoted, redneck, racist xenophobe. Okay? And, you know, I'm going to wind up in a minute. But you know, you look at someone like Aristotle, the student of Plato, gave the first real attempt to systematise knowledge. And he made a best guess at the fundamental elements of the universe. He thought they were earth, wind, fire and water. Okay, now Aristotle- I would have even put Aristotle next to Paul Zanetti and Larry Pickering on Mount Rushmore. I would have put him that high. That high in the order, okay. But he was wrong. He was wrong, because he said there were his elements - here were the table of elements, that was his best guess. And then his mates Euclid and Ptolemy, they developed their best guess at the understanding of the universe, which was the earth was at the centre, and everything else was revolving around the earth. And Ptolemy, a kind genius. But that mistake lasted for 1450 years until Copernicus, because of a lack of dissent. Because of a lack of freedom of opinion. Because of a powerful orthodoxy supported by a big propaganda machine of largely taxpayer-funded money. Up until this Polish priest came along and said boys and girls, I don't think this whole operation revolves around the earth. I think it might revolve around the sun.
Ross Cameron appears on Sky News on Friday to defend his speech. Photo: Sky News
And Copernicus did not - according to history, there is some argument about it but it seems to be the case that Copernicus did not see a copy of his Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres until he was on his death bed, just before he took his last breath. Because he was fearful of publishing, because he said I'll get hissed and booed off the stage. This is, as Marcus Aurelius says in his Meditations, the human is both a reasoning animal, but also a social animal. And we strongly want to be welcome and included and not to be booed and hissed off the stage. One of the things you need in political leadership is a group of leaders who want something more than to be applauded on the stage.
That, in the end, is what I admire the most about Debbie and Kirralie and Bill Leak, and you know, Paul Zanetti, Larry Pickering, Cory Bernardi, whatever. These people are not, you know, none of them- I'm the only perfect person I've ever met. Everyone else has got some flaw, some problem. Some issue. None of them get it perfectly right. Do you say to me, do I think Kirralie has got it perfectly right in her approach? Right? You know, but the thing I love with Kirralie Smith, the first time I saw her on television I thought there could not be a more authentic expression of the goodness of Australia than Kirralie Smith.
And I just want to say that I reject, you know, you don't have to be a hate-filled bigoted xenophobic racist redneck low-information bogan to have some concerns about Islam. It's not required. I will, at some stage in the not-too-distant future, really make my case in relation to Islam. I will do it with the Muslim community. I think you guys are too nice. You're too much of a soft target, too much of a supportive. I think for me, right, if I'm going to articulate my concerns, I should do it with them and to them, rather than in this particular environment. But I just say, I don't think- If you were new to society in Athens in 40AD, my feeling is the Epicureans and the stoics and the Jews and the Christians would all say to you, come down to the Areopagus because you're talking a strange message and we want to understand it, you know. We want to understand it. We respect you enough to understand. None of us have got [audio briefly cuts out]. All of us need to hear, you know, the other arguments. And I'll just say the human race, Socrates, Copernicus, Galileo, Charles Darwin, all of these people were outsiders. All of them were dissidents. All of them took the risk of telling the truth according to the light that guided them in good faith. All of them moved mankind forward, long may it remain so.
Larry Pickering
Larry Pickering speaks at a fundraiser for Kirralie Smith on Thursday. Photo: Wolter Peeters
It's great to be here. The only way I would've been here is Kirralie asked me to be here. Because she's true. She really is. I don't know if many people know just how good she is.
She's battled with Halal choices thing, which is awful thing that's going on. This 13- or is it 3 trillion dollar business they've got. Let's be honest, I can't stand muslims, right? I just can't stand 'em. If they're in the same street as me, I start shaking. I've gotta go home and do a cartoon on 'em. But they're not all bad, they do chuck pillow-biters off buildings, I 'spose.
I mean, I was brought up very religiously, so I, you know, I- not that I'm religious. I mean, I'm not. But, uh, you know, they made me read the Bible every night, and I thought it was a load of shit, to tell you the truth. But when you look at Islam, that goes a lot worse than a load of shit. This is really bad stuff.
I'm lucky that I'm not working for a major newspaper now, because I can do what I damn well like. I can write what I damn well like. And I try, try so hard, to write what the truth is. Because no major newspaper today seems to tell you that. They seem to dodge what's going on. And I sense for the first time in my life a quantum change. Something is happening. Something is moving. There's a tectonic movement somewhere, with Brexit and Trump and what's happening here. What happened yesterday with Cory Bernardi. What happened to- It was lovely to see Turnbull shit himself and come up with something- a good speech for once. But there is something that's happening, and the reason that it's happening is a lot of people like Kirralie, Paul and all you people here, you just didn't come here for fun, you come here because you believe in something.
Cartoonist Larry Pickering at the fundraiser. Photo: Wolter Peeters
I really think that we are starting to make headway. For the first time. I found out about Islam ten years ago. I didn't know anything about it before then. But when I found out about it, I thought Jesus, I'm not putting my kids up in this shit. This is wrong, this is bad, this is unAustralian, we can't have these people here if they believe that. I don't care who they are, I care what they believe. So it's not Muslim that we should be against, it should be Islam. Because it could be an Aborigine who believes in Islam. He's just as bad. So it's the belief system that's wrong. It's unAustralian, it's not us. It has no place here.
I honestly can thank you people, every single person here, for making the effort to come and contribute to what is happening and be part of it. I thank you and I thank Kirralie. Thank you.
