Dan Ryan is a commercial and technology lawyer with over 20 years of high-level advisory and transactional experience. He has worked as general counsel for technology companies based across the globe and has particular expertise in China and tech in the Asian region. He speaks Mandarin and is a former board member of the Australia-China Council

Dan is also Executive Director of the National Conservatist’s Institute of Australia. 

NatCon’s are critical of aspects of classical liberalism and the dominant worldview which over-emphasises the sovereign individual, rather than the family, the nation, and our religious traditions as the source of our prosperity and freedoms. 

Perhaps the most obvious areas where national conservatives differ from the current centre-right are in relation to immigration, trade, and foreign policy.

The idea, so beloved by The Economist, that it should be as easy to import manufactured goods from China to Australia as it is to import the same from England to France needs, according to NatCons, to be consigned to the ash heap of history.

And for Foreign Policy, “Large numbers of our people are simply sick to the back teeth of endless and pointless wars in places like Somalia, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere”

But if there is one theme that unites this movement, it is that they are anti-utopian. “The left were in the past the utopian ones, the ones who liked per John Lennon ‘imagine there are no countries’. But since the great victory in the Cold War the centre-right has also become increasingly started to believe the same thing. It has become un-moored from reality.”

Dan will speak on “What is the National Conservative Movement and what does it mean for Australia”.  This will surely be an intriguing and perhaps provocative evening but ideal for the Brisbane Dialogue where civil discourse about all issues is welcome.

More about Dan and the National Conservatists HERE