In Angus Taylor’s recent keynote speech on immigration, he repeatedly cited the experience of the UK and Europe as an example of precisely what we did not wish to replicate in Australia.

Somewhat oddly, Taylor cited 2015 – the year of the ‘Syrian’ refugee crisis – as when ‘sustained mass immigration’ began there. However, most observers would trace the problem of mass immigration back much further. In the UK, one key turning point was 1997 when Tony Blair’s government significantly increased numbers. But the roots go back even earlier.

The real problem with Taylor’s speech is that it included very little in style and substance that UK governments had not used in the past.

Indeed, while his speech was described by some in the Australian press as ‘hard-line’, the rhetoric was far weaker than has been used in Westminster.

Taylor stated that ‘immigration numbers are too high’ and that we needed to return to ‘sustainable levels of immigration’. But the British Conservatives when in government made repeated electoral commitments to reduce migration to the ‘tens of thousands not the hundreds of thousands’.

Those promises were famously not only broken but completely ignored. The post-Brexit, post-Covid ‘Boris-wave’ immigration surge further destroyed the party electorally and led to the rise of alternatives on the right.

Yet Taylor’s speech did not even provide any Tory-style aspirational targets.

Taylor offered indirect criticism of ‘multiculturalism’ stating that ‘past governments blindly repeated mantras about Australia being the world’s most successful multicultural society – and diversity being our strength’.

But UK leaders have been far blunter. David Cameron said back in 2011 that ‘state multiculturalism has failed’. The current leader of the UK Conservatives, Kemi Badenoch, recently reiterated that ‘multiculturalism does not work’. Nigel Farage said, ‘promoting multiculturalism is one of the biggest mistakes Britain has made’.

Spokespeople for Reform UK now talk openly about ‘remigration’ and ‘net zero immigration’. Rupert Lowe’s new Restore Britain party is even stronger, calling for ‘mass deportations’ and insisting that ‘millions must go’.

None of this type of language crossed Taylor’s lips.

The frustration with the Tories and other centre-right parties is that often tough language, rarely matched their actions.

But it was not as though the UK Conservatives did not take any action at all. They introduced all sorts of new screening and enforcement measures. Theresa May, for example, implemented a range of policies aimed at creating a ‘really hostile environment’ for illegal immigrants and those who overstay their visas.

It is at best debatable whether any of Taylor’s proposals will in practice deliver results materially different to those in the UK.

His speech contained the pithy slogan that there should be a ‘red light for radicals’. But for years successive governments in the UK have also pledged to ‘ban preachers of hate from coming to our country’ or similar. Today there are more radical imams than ever in Britain who continue with their inflammatory sermons. By contrast it is more often those complaining about mass immigration who are denied entry or prosecuted for their social media posts.

Taylor declared that ‘looking to parts of the UK and Europe, Australians see the erosion of national culture and the Balkanisation of communities that has come from immigration policies that have not prioritised values’.

But the idea that these adverse consequences have arisen because of a lack of an official emphasis on ‘values’ is almost laughable.

The UK has been banging on about the importance of ‘British values’ since at least the time of Tony Blair and David Cameron. British schoolchildren have long been taught to count out on their hands the five principles of ‘democracy, tolerance, respect, liberty, and the rule of law’ before often delighting in giving each other the finger to demonstrate their ‘respect’.

The real problem is that philosophically the idea that ‘values’ define a nation is fundamentally flawed. Nations are not really the creation of a shared ideology or a commitment to abstract principles. They are the product of a particular people.

France and Italy today might share the ‘values’ of freedom of speech and the like. But a Frenchman is not an Italian. A Swede is different from a Greek or a Spaniard. Queen Elizabeth I was just as English as Margaret Thatcher even though the former had very different views on democracy and freedom of religion.

India and Nigeria might use English, be democracies, and arguably share all the ‘Australian values’ outlined by Taylor. But Nigeria is not India. Neither is Australia.

Such an attitude does not imply any animus towards other peoples. It does not mean that ethnic minorities should not have their basic rights protected here. It is not to say people cannot come from different parts of the world and eventually become Australian. We all know friends and family who have done this.

But it is simply a recognition that becoming part of ‘us’ occurs far more gradually and is a more challenging project than policymakers throughout the West have in recent times assumed.

The necessary change tends to occur over generations, through intermarriage, by burying grandparents in the soil of a new country, and often a complete conversion of identity. ‘Your people shall be my people and your God my God,’ declares Ruth in the famous story of assimilation from the Old Testament.

Some may say that this seems all too hard and too dramatic a change; that it would be safer to simply follow the broad approach that others have taken. The problem is if you keep doing the same thing, you will get the same result – electoral oblivion for your political party, and far more importantly, the utter destruction of your nation.