There’s something irresistible about a philosopher who gives his recreations in Debrett’s as ‘wine, women and song’. Ken Minogue, who died last week (aged 83) suddenly and in mid-sentence on a plane leaving Galapagos, appended this detail to his long list of academic honours and his equally long list of scholarly books and polemics. Ken was sui generis. It is no surprise that as a young man he pursued a literary career. He left Sydney in 1951, aged 20, as a cabin boy on a Russian cargo boat. Somehow he made his way from Odessa to London, where he settled as a writer. But he had only minor success and soon turned to his other muse, political philosophy. He enrolled at the London School of Economics where he came under the congenial influence of the great conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott, then the professor of political science. (In later years Ken held the same post at the LSE.) His adventures in a long scholarly career ranged from advising the Shah of Iran on university reform to his recent service as president of the liberal Mont Pelerin Society. He was part Tory wit, part philosopher, part journalist. But open any of his books and you will catch his voice still — urbane, learned, stylish, modest, conservative and libertarian.

Yes, I was wrong. I did not believe that Labor would ‘knife’ two prime ministers in three years. But it is clear what drove them on. There was no high principle. It was despair. They had a choice between Julia Gillard’s conviction politics without convictions (class war, gender war, xenophobia, stunts, broken promises) and Kevin Rudd’s consensus politics without beliefs, steadfastly for and against anything, depending on the occasion (emissions trading, free markets, border controls, conservative values). Labor had tried both and finally voted for the better campaigner.

Take Mr Rudd’s inaugural speech as restored prime minister. It would be hard to find, over the centuries, a manifesto so empty of ideas. As he ‘rocks around the place’, he declared, he sees the need for consensus rather than division, for meeting ‘the urgent challenges facing our country’, and, yes, for both economic growth and fair redistribution. If we can achieve that, ‘we can start cooking with gas’. In short he had absolutely nothing to say. At least Anthony Albanese, his new deputy, called unambiguously for more state control of our lives.

Rudd’s vacuity was the theme of Nick Cater’s address at the Quadrant dinner last week about the reception of his The Lucky Culture, the new guide book for conservatives. Two hundred years ago there were indeed ‘urgent challenges’ demanding state action — to end slavery, remove children from factories and get them into schools, provide healthcare and equal rights for women. But there is a law, Cater said, of diminishing returns on state reforms: ‘Progressives have to devise ever more contrived ways of perfecting society.’ The Human Rights Commission, for example, was established under Marcus Einfeld 30 years ago, but has yet to unearth convincing evidence of institutionalised discrimination in any layer of Australian public life. Progressivist causes are exhausted and their advocates are ‘clueless about where to go next’. Witness Prime Minister Rudd’s windbaggery.

But Cater has grounds for optimism. He remains convinced that reason can overcome demagoguery and dogma. It was reason that forced the Gillard government to withdraw its Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Status) Bill, which aimed to restrict freedom of speech. This triumph of common sense was largely due to the rational arguments advanced by Senator Brandis, ABC chairman James Spigelman, the Institute of Public Affairs and the Australian newspaper. This rationality is an omen of things to come.

Cater’s second appeal is to re-validate the ‘aspirationals’ still seeking ‘a higher standard of living’. At the end of his book Cater quotes an 1847 pamphlet published by an Adelaide editor urging Englishmen to come to South Australia where ‘everything is possible’ — for honest, sober and industrious men and women and their sturdy sons and daughters. R.G. Menzies took up the theme in his famous 1940s radio talks, ‘Forgotten People’, which Cater quoted the other night. Now Cater is here to say everything is still possible, if we rely on ourselves and not the state.

Hundreds of Egyptians — Muslim and Christian — turned up in Martin Place last Sunday to show support for the hundreds of thousands demonstrating in Cairo against President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, who have brought Egypt to the point of collapse. ‘Down with Morsi!’ they chanted, ‘Back off Obama!’ and ‘Stop slaughtering Christians!’ Laurie Ferguson was there representing the Labor government and Craig Kelly the Liberals. Paul Green MLC was there for the Christian Democrats. (There was no one from the Greens.) They all spoke up for the rights of minorities. Also there was Peter Day, whose book on the Egyptian crisis is due out later in the year. He was particularly scornful of Washington ‘experts’ including James Clapper, President Obama’s director of national intelligence, who told the world that the Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular and shuns violence! Day told me of his fear, soon to be fulfilled, that the army would take over again. But this time, he said, it won’t be temporary.