ANDREW COOPER, Founder & National Director of the CPAC.network, in this letter to its followers, reveals how sometimes secret manoeuvres by Labor forced the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) out of Sydney….for now.
Holding a conference sounds simple, right? Well, not if it’s CPAC. From the very outset, CPAC has been subject to the most aggressive and egregious form of cancel culture.
When we started CPAC in 2019, little did we know the lengths that the “left” would go to try and shut us down. The current Prime Minister but then opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, described CPAC as a “parade of right wing nutters“. Labor senator Kristina Keneally described CPAC as a “talkfest of hate” and Penny Wong said “We do not need to import its (CPAC’s) antisemitism, white supremacy and bigotry to Australia”. During the conference, Antifa protested CPAC, shutting down streets in the Sydney CBD as they tried to shut down CPAC itself.
Protests and parliamentary speeches are all forms of free speech, and while we laugh at the drivel these authoritarians espouse, we defend their right to speak it. But where we must draw the line is when government power is harnessed to shut down political opponents.
The current Attorney General, but then shadow AG, Mark Dreyfus, sought to harness that power by secretly backgrounding officers in Christian Porter’s Attorney General’s department to use the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme laws against CPAC, Tony Abbott and me. That eventually led to a threat of jail time against me and a nearly three-year legal battle in the High Court defending our right to free speech. CPAC Sponsor and supporter, the Institutue of Public Affairs, performed great work exposing the existence of over 1,300 documents held by the AG’s department with my name, CPAC’s and other CPAC speakers’ names on them. Deep state surveillance at its worst.
There was even a time when I prepared my children to deal with the possibility that their father might be sent to jail if he did not submit to demands that he could not meet. It was an upsetting time, to say the least.
Is it easy to run a conference? No, not if it’s conservative.
In NSW, CPAC is regularly harassed by the “events ” division of the NSW Police. From what I can gather, their job is to approach conservative conference holders at the last minute and demand that outrageous “security” charges be paid to protect patrons from protesters. If one refuses to pay, they will invariably threaten to shut down the conference. I paid once but never again. We have yet to be shut down, but the threat is ever-present regardless of whether protesters turn up.
Why am I sharing this with you? Well, I know that thousands of CPAC supporters in Sydney miss the conference being held there, and I wanted to explain why it’s so difficult to be there at this time. The suffocating political correctness and institutionalised cancel culture just make Sydney too difficult (and dangerous). So we will be holding CPAC in Brisbane again in 2025 (19-20th September).
Queensland has proven itself to be Australia’s most conservative state, almost like Australia’s own version of Florida. The recently elected conservative government has led the way in pushing back against controversial gender treatment by pausing puberty blockers. It is also the home of opposition leader Peter Dutton, National Party leader David Littleproud and outspoken Nationals senator and CPAC favourite Matt Canavan. The last CPAC conference in Brisbane was a great success; this year will be no exception.
Still, we intend to bring CPAC back to Sydney—possibly as soon as next year. We know you want more from CPAC and how important it is to have a strong conservative presence in Australia’s biggest city. While the challenges remain, we are committed to finding a way forward and making CPAC Sydney a reality again.
That said, CPAC cannot be just one big event a year. It is time to expand beyond Brisbane and take CPAC to every major city in Australia. Our vision is to build a nationwide movement, ensuring that conservatives in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth do not miss out on the world-class speakers and momentum we bring.
We want CPAC so big that it can never be cancelled!
Andrew Cooper, CPAC