Julian Brazier MP

Julian is shadow minister for Home Affairs where he has responsibility for drugs and aspects of security.

Julian is recognised as an excellent public speaker. In 1996, he won the coveted Spectator "Backbencher of the Year" Award. He loves Australia and has visited many times both to speak to business groups, universities and clubs in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra as well as to visit family, exchange ideas with political friends and on business. He has also extensively lectured to business and academic audiences in America.

He is also a prolific writer; the Evening Standard described one pamphlet as "a direct hit on the soft underbelly of the Ministry of Defence". The London Times said of his work on societal breakdown: "Julian Brazier rejects the libertarian ideas of the New Right and New Left and maintains that the self-help ethos of Disraeli and Burke offers the best hope..." the Wall Street Journal described a book, co-authored by Julian, on the degradation of military discipline and fighting spirit by political interference as "a must read".

Julian was a scholar in Mathematics at Oxford University. Before entering politics he worked for the Anglo-American group in economics and finance. Next he spent three years as an international management consultant with assignments on four continents. At the same time, he served as an officer in the Territorial Army for thirteen years, six of them in Airborne Forces. A practising Christian (R.C.), he is married to Katharine and they have three sons.

Elected to Parliament in 1987, his political career got off to a stormy start when he visited the embattled free enclave of Lebanon in the middle of the fighting of 1990. In 1996 he went back to Beirut to help organise a conference, held in defiance of the Lebanese and Syrian authorities attended by the US, UK and EU ambassadors. He served from 1990 -92 as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Treasury and the Department of Employment.

From 1997 to 2001 he was a member of the Defence Select Committee, visiting Moscow, Kiev, Washington, Sarajevo and Pristina. In 2001 he was appointed an opposition whip and since 2002 he has been Shadow Minister of Work. He has a particular interest in illegal working, and population movements. He has championed the Australian immigration model for the UK.

"All those who attended Julian’s presentations agreed that he is a first-rate speaker. Not only is his delivery clear, concise and always entertaining, but he is a true polymath. His presentations combine the parliamentarian’s flair for dissecting detail with a broad and incisive understanding of the issues. At a time of significant global change, Julian is able to make a valuable contribution to public debate. I offer him the highest recommendation." - Alan Ryan, Senior Research Fellow, Land Warfare Studies Centre, DUNTROON ACT

Topics

Clash of Civilisations: Challenges for the West in Central Asia and the Middle East

In the interlocking regions at the heart of the World's principal landmass, a series of dangerous forces are at play, forces which gave birth to the horrible events of September 11th and the Bali outrage. The heightening of the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict, the break-up of the former Soviet Union in Asia, the rise of Islam and of Arab nationalism, the spread of nuclear weapons and running sores of, the Balkans, Chechnia and Kashmir all interact in complex and challenging ways.

The West is challenged at several different levels - how is it to respond? Military and diplomatic questions surrounding past and present interventions in the Gulf, Middle East and Afghanistan are embedded in wider issues. With the globalisation of communications and the move towards multiculturalism in Western countries, further questions are posed. How can we respond to threats of asymmetric terrorism without destroying the very liberal structures we wish to uphold? How can we maintain, indeed restore, a unified sense of national identity in which all citizens feel they are stakeholders, especially at a time when many of the newer entrants to Western countries come from these troubled regions?

Drawing on his extensive political, commercial, military and family connections with the region, Julian's presentation is in three sections: a historical overview, a strategic appraisal and policy goals for long-term peace and stability.

The Pen and the Sword: Evolution and Revolution from Alfred the Great to Alta Vista.

Business today is shaped more than ever before by laws and regulations - on everything from the structure of pension funds to handling waste products. All too often law-makers take no account of the concerns of those who will have to implement the measures. Why? Because businesses, voluntary organisations and individuals fail to understand the political system. Yet that system is remarkably similar in all the main English-speaking countries and the understanding of where to get ideas, how to package them and who pass them on to can often allow an energetic individual a disproportionate influence on the legislative outcome.

Julian will show how many of the features we take for granted in most English-speaking countries, from local government structures to the jury system, owe their origin to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Dark Age England. He will illustrate how the virtual destruction of these structures at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 was reversed -first on another battlefield in the 12th century then by Chaucer when he chose English rather than Norman French for his fourteenth-century Blockbuster "the Canterbury Tales".

The presentation will illustrate how the two main models which form the basis for all the major English-speaking countries developed from the original structures.

Julian will argue that today, in a number of ways, Australia offers a better model of those inherited structures than the UK. He will demonstrate the central role of the English language in globalisation . Indeed the process which started with Geoffrey Chaucer is accelerating today as language moves from being a medium of transaction to being the key component of more and more of the products from television programmes to computer software.

The presentation will provide an insight into how businesses and individuals can play a greatly enhanced role in shaping the political and social environments they operate in, not just in Australia but in many other parts of the world that they may do business in.

"When a minister hears that Julian Brazier is taking an interest in a bill he pours himself a stiff whisky and sends for the parliamentary draftsman" the Spectator magazine in their citation for Julian's Backbencher of the Year award.

Looking Over the Edge: The Demographic Crisis in the Western World

Most of us hope to enjoy a reasonable standard of living in retirement. Over the last few years the media have started to talk more and more about the problems of the demographic trough. The birth rate has declined and is still declining in most Western countries.

Drawing on material from around the developed world, Julian will show how the decline in the birth rate severely threatens the economic prosperity of the developed world and that the demographic crisis is both closer and more serious than most economic commentators acknowledge.

He will carefully examine the two panaceas usually cited as the solutions to the problem: moving to a system of greater funding for pensions and increasing immigration of younger workers. He will show how neither of these can solve the problem in the long run and how each of them is already throwing up considerable problems on the economic front.

In suggesting a number of ways of tackling the problem, Julian will look around the world to see what lessons can be drawn from those countries where the problems are worst and those which seemed to be addressing it.

Although Julian is a scholar in mathematics and worked in economic research, the presentation will be strictly for the generalist and will tackle some of the most intractable problems of our era head on. In his current position as Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions in the UK, it is part of Julian's job to think the unthinkable in the social security arena.

A Beacon for Our Times: The Real Thomas More

In 1535 Thomas More mounted the scaffold with his old friend, the Lieutenant of the Tower. He remarked with characteristic wit: "I pray you, see me safe up - and for my coming down, let me shift for myself." His execution stunned Christendom then. In recent years, the British Law Society has proclaimed Thomas More to be Lawyer of the Millennium, Mikhail Gorbachev has supported the Pope's declaration of More as patron saint of politicians and Congress invoked his image in trying to impeach President Clinton.

Yet from his death Thomas More has been a controversial figure. He is painted as a villain in Foxe's Book of Martyrs part of the Tudor propaganda against More. Shakespeare collaborated in a brave attempt to write a play defending More's life only to see it suppressed by the Elizabethan censors.

Jonathan Swift described Thomas More was the greater statesman since that classical era. Samuel Johnson,, in his history of the English language, devoted twice as much space to More's writings as he did to those of Chaucer. Yet today authors, journalists and documentary makers frequently present More as a vicious tyrannical bigot. Are More's views on an over-mighty executive, traditional structures, public order and even the danger from militant Islam still a threat to the politically correct today?

Visitors to the Westminster Parliament still pass the fading mural of More as a young Speaker in 1523, defying Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, in the Chamber of the Commons - bravely asserting that the king could not raise money without debate, one of Parliament's defining moments.

A lifelong admirer of Thomas More, Julian Brazier gives a gripping portrait of this remarkable man, who made such a large mark as statesmen, lawyer and scholar. He brings the man alive not as a plaster saint but as a remarkable, brave and brilliant man. In defending Thomas More, Julian carefully examines the case against him and demolishes it rigorously and robustly. "Above all, Thomas More founded our national myth of the charming Englishman who goes to his death with a quiet heart and a jest on his lips"