It is great to return Down Under after first coming here in 2019 to start trade talks. We closed the deal in 2021 and Australia is now teeming with young Brits on new working holiday visas – no longer having to toil at farms in the Outback as part of the conditions. Tariffs have been removed, righting the wrong of Britain leaving Australia in the lurch to join the European Economic Community in 1973. It wasn’t easy getting the deal past Whitehall bureaucrats who were fanatical about net zero. There were also attempts at sabotage by Conservative cabinet ministers. Graphic pictures of sheep mulesing were circulated to try to denigrate Australian animal welfare standards. But ultimately our unique historical connection clinched it. When it was pointed out that what had by then evolved into the European Union already had the access that Australia was poised to get, Boris Johnson said, ‘Who was on our side at Gallipoli?’ The deal was done.

The deal put the UK on the path to joining CPTPP – the Trans Pacific Partnership. As well as taking on China through defence agreements like Aukus, we also need to challenge its economic power. China has been getting away with intellectual property theft and gargantuan state subsidies that undermine industry in the free democratic world. CPTPP is a bulwark against these practices. Australia, the UK and allies like Japan are showing the way. The EU and US should follow.

I’m here for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Brisbane, masterminded by Andrew Cooper. It’s a pleasant 30-degree respite from rainy Britain. Leading No campaigner from the Voice referendum and CPAC board chairman Warren Mundine is also speaking. He says that 60 per cent of Australians are natural conservatives, as they voted No in the referendum. I quip that the situation is more parlous in the UK where only 52 per cent voted to leave the EU in our Brexit referendum. Nevertheless, both of our countries have a majority that, when given the opportunity, vote against identity politics and unaccountable elites telling them what to do. These voters are ready to vote for the conservative cause – less immigration, less wokery and lower costs. The problem is that too many politicians on the conservative side are chasing after the voters who have left us. We are no longer the establishment. The establishment are left-wing and those voters are not coming back – at least not in the numbers they did before. Conservatives need to turn our attention from the so-called ‘teals’ and liberal democrats towards patriotic working-class voters in industrial towns and rural areas.

A big champion of rural Australia is Nationals party Senator Bridget Mackenzie who gives a firecracking speech about Waltzing Matilda. I learn what a billabong is. Bridget is a top shot. We vow to go shooting in England – before Keir Starmer tries to ban it!

In Canberra, I attend Question Time, which for the Prime Minister is more frequent and less raucous than the UK version. I sympathise with Anthony Albanese about having to appear daily. I think even once a week takes too much time out of the prime ministerial diary! It was good to see leader of the opposition Peter Dutton, who is demonstrating strong leadership on nuclear power and taking on wokery. He must prevail in 2025.

The West is run by the left and it is weakening us. We need to start turning the tide. Keir Starmer is running Britain into the ground. In only 100 days he has given away the Chagos Islands – a vital strategic British interest, let criminals out of jail early and taken away heating allowances from the elderly. Debt is over 100 per cent of GDP for the first time since the 1960s, we have the world’s highest rate of millionaires leaving the country and the highest energy bills in the developed world. We’re not talking about the last one to leave Britain turning off the lights as there won’t be any lights to turn off.

Although Tony Abbott can’t compete with me for shortness of time as prime minister, he too wasn’t in office nearly long enough. He is a true conservative and prepared to do the tough stuff. At the Australian launch of my book Ten Years to Save the West in Sydney we talked about the challenge posed by conservatives in name only in our own parties and leftist institutions. I saw this in ten years as a government minister and as prime minister. After fourteen years of Conservative rule, taxes were at a 70-year high, immigration was at record levels and the state was spending 45 per cent of GDP. When I tried to change things in 2022 in the Mini-Budget by allowing fracking, keeping taxes low and restricting increases in welfare, I faced a huge backlash from the leftist economic establishment.

The day before the Mini-Budget, the Bank of England announced the sale of £40 billion of gilts and did not inform us about pension funds’ exposure to LDIs, derivatives that depended on interest rates staying low. There was then a spike in the gilt market which required intervention. The Bank of England subsequently admitted that two-thirds of the spike in gilts was down to trading in LDIs, for which they had oversight responsibility. By then it was too late. My government had been forced from office.

Having gone through this, I am now convinced that in order to get conservative change we are going to have to change the system. We have to drain the billabong.