Dr. Thomas Brough Interview

By John Ogilvie

Dr. Thomas Brough is a councillor for the City of Albany, an emergency medicine doctor, and a former Australian Army medical officer. He also runs Public Record, an independent publication focused on institutional analysis in Australia. I recently interviewed Tom via email, where he shared insightful commentary on the shifting landscape of Australian politics and society, drawing from his unique blend of clinical, military, and personal experiences.

Australian politics is in flux, marked by ideological drifts, institutional challenges, and a search for authentic leadership. Tom’s perspectives, particularly his thermostat analogy for understanding political dysfunction and the need for moral clarity, offer a compelling framework to make sense of these changes.

Interview with Dr. Thomas Brough

Tell us a bit about yourself “I’m an elected councillor in Albany, WA. I served overseas as a medical officer in the Australian Army and now work clinically in the state health system. I also run Public Record, an independent editorial publication focused on institutional analysis—particularly where Australian institutions aren’t working the way they claim to. I’m a practicing Christian, 39 years old, blessed with a wonderful Mum and Dad and brothers and sisters, a loving wife, three wonderful kids and another on the way.”

What made you interested in politics? “I was always curious. I was fascinated by the allure of left-wing totalitarian ideology in high school – the outward grandeur was seductive (and no one seriously challenged it during my formative years). I settled into modern materialist cultural life in my twenties, then was disabused of leftism and secular materialism in my thirties while listening to Jordan Peterson podcasts whilst spraying out pasture and spreading fertiliser on our forestry plantation for hours on end. I started going back to Church.

I joined the Liberal Party after the defeat of the Morrison government. I was concerned that further drift away from first principles in centre-right institutions—in the face of ascendant coercive leftism—would pave the way for national atrophy. I wanted to be part of the solution rather than just a spectator. One thing leads to another, next minute you’re reading Hayek and National Review.”

You recently wrote an opinion piece where you discussed the current state of centre-right politics in Australia using a thermostat analogy. Can you please expand on this idea? “It’s an imperfect analogy—you don’t need to read too much into it. I spend a lot of time educating worried parents that a fever in a sick child is not intrinsically dangerous—it’s a symptom of illness and part of the body’s innate defence against disease. The dysfunctional hypothalamus and cold sepsis image was a creative hook to get people to see that the problems run deep.

I’ve been frustrated by the Liberal Party outwardly projecting “everything is fine” while running from every opportunity to make a stand for what party membership purportedly entails. If you don’t want to fight for a cause, don’t join the army—go be a commentator. If you’re serious about your vision for governing Australia, don’t put a bushel over your ideas. The Liberal Party has become adept at exactly this. The membership may have changed, but the stated values haven’t. The disconnect is the problem.

The comparator to One Nation is instructive because there is coherence between One Nation’s stated vision and their actions. The Liberals seem to have imitative political instincts—modelling themselves on left-wing political jostling rather than articulating their own position.

Since publication of my thermostat article, the WA Opposition Leader celebrated India Republic Day on Australia Day and promulgated it on his socials. This is a broken hypothalamus and a failure to read the room. The fix is simple: make your actions instantiate your stated beliefs.

Regarding Labor—I expect less from them because they’ve embraced the relativism of leftism. Thermostatic behaviour minus a thermometer is more understandable. And the party has the rat-cunning that comes from embracing dialectical politics.”

Why is One Nation succeeding where Palmer United failed? “Authenticity versus transaction.

No one doubts Ralph Babet’s authenticity, and he’s extremely effective in his political craftsmanship. But from a party perspective, UAP lacks credibility – the organisational substructure is lacking. People want a piece of the action rather than a billionaire picking winners—even if the winners are excellent and people can get behind them. If One Nation is to prosper, it will need to evolve the party governance structure so people can get that piece of the action they want.

One Nation has institutional persistence. That makes them more credible than UAP’s flash in the pan. They’ve survived leadership crises, defections, scandals—thirty years of it. There’s actual organisational infrastructure there. Clive might have been better pairing with One Nation rather than competing with them.”

What would you recommend for political parties? “For the Liberals: read your own credo. It begins “We believe in the great human freedoms: to worship, to think, to speak, to choose.” Act like it. This week Scott Morrison proposed that government dictate how people worship. Says it all. If a former Liberal Prime Minister doesn’t act like it, the sickness in the party runs deep. Voters leaving aren’t rejecting Liberal values—they’re looking for an institution that still holds them. Stop treating the thermometer as broken.

For Labor: your coalition of progressive activists and working-class battlers cannot hold forever. At some point you have to choose between your Greens-adjacent inner-city base and your outer-suburban and regional constituencies. Immigration, housing, and energy costs are making that tension increasingly difficult to manage.

For One Nation: policy depth. You’ve proven you can read the room. The question is whether you can govern. Develop policy platforms—not just complaints—and sell them. If you can’t make the transition from thermometer to thermostat, you’ll remain a protest vehicle rather than a governing option. I am bullish on the idea that One Nation will make that transition.

For all parties: stop treating voters as consumers to be marketed to and start treating them as citizens to be represented.”

How does the model apply to historical figures like Reagan or Menzies? “Reagan had moral clarity. He knew the Soviet Union was an evil empire. He knew big government wasn’t the answer. He knew capitalism was the best economic system to create prosperity. And he didn’t apologise for American greatness.

He also broke down the stickiness of established thinking. Détente was the consensus—the idea that you managed the Soviet threat rather than defeated it. Reagan challenged that. He said the goal wasn’t coexistence but victory. That’s thermostat leadership: not just reading the temperature, but changing what people thought was possible.

Menzies did something similar in post-war Australia. He helped form middle-class aspiration. He articulated a vision of suburban prosperity, institutional stability, and anti-communism that defined Australian politics for a generation.

The common thread: they engaged in formation. They didn’t cede the task of shaping public understanding to hostile institutions. They made arguments. They persuaded. Current leaders lack that clarity. They don’t have an explicit vision. They manage rather than lead.”

My Father (Prof. Matthew Ogilvie) speculates that there may be a dark side to the thermostat/thermometer. Hitler was able to accurately read the temperature of post WW1 Germany, and then gradually adjusted the temperature until he turned it into the Third Reich. What are your thoughts on this? “Your old man is right, and this is the most important question.

Hitler read the temperature of post-WWI Germany with devastating accuracy: humiliation, economic desperation, institutional collapse, a deep need for meaning and restoration. He was a thermometer. And then he set a new temperature—gradually, through institutional capture, through manipulation of democratic processes, through steady normalisation of the unthinkable.

So yes, the thermostat function can be wielded for evil. The question is: what constrains it? My answer is theological.

Secular political philosophy has no stable ground for limiting what a thermostat leader can do. If there’s no transcendent moral order—if man is the measure of all things—then there’s no principled reason why a sufficiently persuasive leader can’t reset the temperature to whatever he/she likes. Without that grounding, you’re just appealing to one set of preferences over another. You might find Nazism distasteful, but on what basis do you say it’s wrong? Social consensus? That’s what Hitler changed. Human flourishing? He had a vision for that too.

The Judeo-Christian tradition provides the constraint. If human beings bear the image of God—if there’s a moral order that precedes and supersedes political authority—then the thermostat has limits. There are temperatures that cannot be set because they violate human dignity in ways no political program can justify.

The 20th century showed us where unconstrained politics leads. The death camp and the gulag are logical conclusions when the thermostat has no external limit.

This is a stumbling block for secular humanists. But I’d rather they wrestle with the Judeo-Christian inheritance than default to paganism or Nietzsche. At least the former gives you grounds to say “no” to a charismatic monster. The latter gives you no grounds at all.”

Thank you for reading.