Although we were unsure here at Advance for a while, federal Education Minister Alan Tudge is a great Australian who clearly loves our country and our children.

As reported two weeks ago, Mr Tudge rejected the new ‘woke’ national curriculum after Advance:

• Made sure hundreds of thousands of Aussies saw our ads in The Australian and the Australian Financial Review which asked the Morrison government to address the “faddish and shallow” new curriculum that “abolishes Australian citizenship” and “pushes radical racial theory”.
• Sent thousands of personal emails to the Prime Minister, Tudge and education ministers around the country, imploring them to stand up to the bureaucrats who want to indoctrinate our children.
• Supported online ads which were shown 1.4 million times to 324,000 people.
• Published an eBook with the Institute of Public Affairs that was downloaded 10,000 times and was sent to more than 150,000 people.
• Coordinated 1000 Advance volunteers to pump hundreds of phone calls directly into Tudge’s office, so you could tell him directly what you thought of the proposed changes.

Ever since, Tudge has been on a roll.

In an interview with Hack earlier this week, he directly and proudly stressed the need for a balanced view of Australia.

“We've got a lot to be proud of, and we should be teaching the great things that have happened in Australia, as much as we should our weaknesses and flaws and some of the historical wrongs,” he said.

“So, I want to make sure there's a balance, but I want people to come out having learnt about a country with a love of it, rather than a hatred.

“Of course, we should be teaching an accurate version of our history... it is important to reflect upon the Indigenous perspective along the way, and that has been incorporated into the draft. That's a good thing.

“My overall view, though, is that the balance is out of whack in terms of downplaying modern Australia, downplaying Western civilization, downplaying our liberal democracy, which has created so much wealth and opportunity.”

Using the example of Anzac Day, Mr Tudge said the new curriculum presents it as a “contested” day.

As part of the changes, students are asked to debate the difference between commemorating and celebrating it.

“This country is a magnet for millions of people who want to come. Now, why is that? It's not because we're this horrible, terrible, racist, sexist country. It's because we're one of the greatest egalitarian, free countries in the world.”

Bloody good job, mate.

We Aussies have every right to be proud of our country and we cannot let our educators take that right away from our children.

Afterall, Australia has the highest human development index in the world outside of Europe.

Our government spends more than double the amount of money on our Indigenous population than our non-Indigenous population.

We have one of the highest per capita immigration intakes in the world after the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland (note: the high rate of immigration for Saudi Arabia and the Emirates is derived from their use of Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani slave labour in their construction and mining industries).

Our life expectancy ranks 7th highest in the world thanks to our generous public healthcare system which even international visitors have access to.

While our young men have fought – and given their lives – in every major conflict since the Boer War even though our shores were only rarely directly threatened.

Not a bad human rights record if you ask most…!

Great to see the Morrison government standing up for it.