In a thoughtful historical essay published on this blog, John Ruddick celebrated the British discovery of Australia. He detailed how Captain Cook, through a mix of science, navigation, and extraordinary luck, laid the foundation for modern Australia - a nation shaped by Western civilisation, built on exploration, liberty, and law.
“None could have done so much with it as the British,” Ruddick wrote, thanking Captain Cook and placing Australia within a proud tradition stretching back to Rome.
In that same piece, he highlighted the significance of ideas, of intellectual heritage, of the long arc of Western civilisation culminating - quite literally - on these shores.
And yet, in August 2025, that same John Ruddick praised the closure of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to allow a mass pro‑Palestinian march to proceed - a protest movement whose leading organisers have cheered on Hamas, and whose symbols are aligned with the very forces that oppose everything Ruddick once defended: Enlightenment values, classical liberalism, and ordered liberty.
How does a man go from quoting Roman philosophers and honouring Captain Cook... to waving through the disruption of a city in support of ideological chaos?
I was proud to march against COVID lockdowns.
— John Ruddick MLC (@JohnRuddick2) August 2, 2025
Tomorrow I’ll be proud to march against what can only be described as genocide.
See you tomorrow. It may be raining but don’t let that deter you (it’s raining bullets in Gaza). pic.twitter.com/GEDZ3kGuOs
Why have you done this? Why?
As John Ruddick said, for thousands of years, some of the world’s most brilliant explorers searched for Terra Australis - the great southern land. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish ... they came close. Some even touched its edges. But none found the vast eastern coastline Cook eventually charted.
Abel Tasman came within a whisper of discovering it but miscalculated. He turned back. And so, for centuries more, this land remained undisturbed — protected not by force, but by chance and providence.
Today, it seems we are undoing that protection, not by invasion, but by ideological surrender. What the greatest explorers in human history failed to seize, we are now handing over - not to nations, but to movements hostile to our values.
A Bridge Too Far?
On August 3rd, 2025, thousands of demonstrators marched across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge under the banner of the Palestine Action Group. The NSW Police objected. The Premier objected. Transport services warned of major disruption. And yet the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the protest, forcing a bridge closure from 11:30am to 4pm.
The protesters cheered. John Ruddick cheered with them.
Public protests are a form of free speech. We are not expected to agree with the messaging of every public protest (I often hate them).
— John Ruddick MLC (@JohnRuddick2) July 30, 2025
But, boil it down and we have a simple choice:
1. Let public protests take place ... and in some cases put up with some minor inconvenience.… pic.twitter.com/XCm9kcSvbP
But John, we don't march with them.
And Yet in 2021...
Where was that same enthusiasm when ordinary Australians - construction workers, small business owners, and working-class citizens - marched against vaccine mandates and lockdowns?
In 2021, during the peak of public dissent against government overreach, Victoria Police fired rubber bullets at citizens in the streets of Melbourne. Protesters were kettled, bashed, arrested. The media mocked them. Politicians condemned them. And very few public figures stood up to defend their rights.
One would have expected John Ruddick - libertarian, dissenter, champion of civil liberties - to roar in defence of those protesters. And yet... he was largely silent.
Selective freedom is not freedom. It’s factionalism.
The Principle Problem
The issue is not whether people should be allowed to protest. That’s a given in any democratic society. The issue is consistency. If a government-supported, ideologically charged movement can grind a city to a halt and be applauded for it, while peaceful opposition to state overreach is crushed with rubber bullets, we’re no longer living in a fair society.
We’re living in a two-tiered democracy - where some protests are righteous, and others are criminalised based on politics, not conduct.
And John Ruddick, once an articulate defender of our nation’s heritage and the values that built it, appears to have shifted with the wind.
From Terra Australis to Terra Absurdus
In his original article, Ruddick concluded:
“This continent was inevitably going to be colonised and none could have done so much with it as the British. Thank you Captain Cook.”
Indeed. But Captain Cook didn’t close bridges to honour violent ideologues. He mapped coastlines, opened trade routes, and spread knowledge. He stood for order, not chaos.
So how did the man who thanked Cook now thank the protestors whose banners, in some cases, glorify Hamas?
How did a defender of civilisation end up applauding a march that snarled one of its finest modern cities?
Closing Thought
Principles matter most when they cost you something - when defending them is uncomfortable. Ruddick once stood on the side of Western tradition, ordered liberty, and civil courage. Today, he stands in silence as those traditions are trampled on the very streets Cook once helped chart.
And as for the rest of us? We remember the man he used to be.
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