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I grew up in a middle-class family with a father who was a lawyer and a mother working in welfare, both strong supporters of the Labor cause. My initiation into politics was via the enthusiasm and excitement in the household about the election of the Whitlam government in 1972.

I went to university in the Fraser years - 1980. I enrolled in arts/law as a Labor supporter and yet I emerged in 1984 as a political liberal succored by the great English liberal tradition of the 18th and 19th centuries. This transformation occurred largely because of the opportunity I had to study under a brilliant scholar, the then professor of politics at Monash, Hugh Emy. Emy exposed me to John Locke, Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill.

I discovered the intellectual riches of the liberal tradition. In those three seminal thinkers we have the value system that is pre-eminent in its respect for fundamental liberties and rights that must be the hallmark of any society that wants to be truly liberal and democratic.

And so what are the values that Locke, Burke and Mill bestowed? They are certainly not the mean-spirited, prejudiced, harsh policies such as mandatory sentencing, zero tolerance, inhuman conditions and detention without trial for "illegal immigrants", and attacks on the poor (for example, Minister Abbott's "job snobs" contribution) that have often characterised the record of Liberal or Coalition governments since the Liberal Party veered to the right after 1983.

The tradition of Locke, Burke and Mill stands for the following values:

• Respect for and belief in inalienable human rights and the sanctity of each and every individual in society.

• The right to basic freedoms such as liberty, free speech and freedom of movement.

• A constitutional framework that naturally progresses and enhances social cohesion but modernises itself in order to meet that obligation.

• The right to economic liberty tempered by the notion that the aim of greater opportunity to share in wealth must prevail.

Of course, each of these thinkers lived out these ideals in some way:

• Mill was a strong supporter of women's suffrage and prison reform.

• Burke agitated on behalf of the Irish Catholics when to do so in the English Parliament was regarded as eccentric at best and treasonous at worst - he also supported the American Revolution.

• Locke witnessed the beginnings of the shift from the agricultural age to the industrial age, and the need for good governance to ensure society remained cohesive.

The political cause of the Liberal Party is a noble one, but we have often subverted its value system by pandering to the politics of extremism and fashionable right-wing rhetoric, generally emanating from the United States or Britain. We have been guilty of not leading, looking as though we are buffeted from day to day by the nonsensical and illogical ravings and peculiar prejudices of "shock-jocks" such as Alan Jones.

We pursue a policy of mutual obligation - a liberal value - but allow ministers such as Tony Abbott to dress it up as a case of "getting the bludgers" to work and stopping all those "rorting single mothers".

We roll out the red carpet for migrants with wealth and skills, but lock away in the harsh interior of our land those who come to this country as victims of inhumanity and persecution in their own country.

This is not the liberal way - it is a political value system more akin to America's Deep South in the 1930s.

We must reclaim those who are disinterested and who have retreated from civic engagement - Labor has no monopoly on these people. We could do worse than start by showing leadership on two totemic issues - the republic and reconciliation.

Greg Barns, a Liberal Party member and former chief-of-staff to federal Liberal Minister John Fahey, is chairman of the Australian Republican Movement. This is an edited extract of his speech to a Young Liberal forum in Sydney on Tuesday night.

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