Prof. Martin Krygier: From Hanson to Hanson - What a difference 20 years makes

In 1997, law professor Martin Krygier delivered his Boyer lectures, Between Fear and Hope: Hybrid Thoughts on Public Values. Then Professor of Law at UNSW, he finished his sixth lecture with a call for his listeners to enroll in the Conservative-Liberal-Republican-Communitarian-SocialDemocratic International Party (Sydney branch) – a tolerant multi-ideological party that he believed could cope with a turbulent multicultural Australia. Twenty years later membership of that party still hovers around one, but the problems Professor Krygier foresaw then – national narcissism, doctrinal rigidity, populist despotism, ethnic exclusiveness, willed blindness to injustice and humiliation – have indeed come to pass. Chancers and confidence tricksters still hawk s...