Key Australian lobbyists and western cultural supremacy: the Australian Christian Lobby and paleoconservatism

The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) has been a peak religious interest group in Australia since its formation in 1995, playing a key role in debates over social issues. It has maintained access to the highest levels of Australian government over the past twenty-five years, developing relationships with multiple prime ministers and having a reported influence over all. In 2022, the organization was placed on an international list of far-right hate and extremist groups, while the year before it had characterized violence or revolution as ‘down the line’. Though ACL had historically been defined as a Christian Right organization, such comments and categorization were both indicative of the major shifts that were occurring under the leadership of its managing director, Martyn Iles, who headed the organization between 2018 and 2023. Watson's article examines ACL over this period in the context of two ideological influences, the Christian Right and paleoconservatism. He draws attention to the early and re-emergent literature on paleoconservatism while highlighting several of its key identifying features. He subsequently proposes a provisional framework for differentiating the two ideologies and applies this framework to ACL by analysing several of its publications, primary among them its broadcast The Truth of It. Watson argues that ACL increasingly has developed the hallmarks of a paleoconservative organization as it has shifted to advocacy for far-right, ethnocentric, anti-globalist and western supremacist political positions.