Australian conservatism is having an identity crisis. The Liberal Party is in the electoral doldrums. The Coalition have lost two elections in a row, former leader Peter Dutton registering the lowest approval for a major party leader in four decades according to the Australian Electoral Study. Among people under 35, the Greens now out-poll the Liberals.
On university campuses, the situation is even worse. Last year, an article in the Age detailed the unpopularity of the Melbourne University Liberal Club, which included prominent club members admitting that joining the Liberal Club is “social suicide”.
The failure of the right to win the “history wars” is typical of its problems. The wars were launched by historian Geoffrey Blainey, who railed against the supposed dominance of a “black armband” view of history. He denounced the “multicultural lobby” and “elite groups” for spreading the idea that violence, dispossession and racism were at the heart of Australia’s national identity. Liberal party ideologue and former Prime Minister John Howard eagerly took up the cause, backed by a cottage industry of conservative historians like Keith Windschuttle who set out to deny or minimise the brutality of colonisation.
But for all their efforts, the “white blindfold” right has failed to establish a consensus around their views, in particular among young people. A majority of younger people, for example, support changing the date of Australia Day—a sentiment animated by an understanding of the long history of Indigenous oppression. For this significant layer, conservatism is uncool.
In an attempt to solve this problem for the far right, a fresh new thinker has stepped forward—former Prime Minister Tony Abbott. His new book, Australia: A history, is an attempt to intellectually shirtfront left-wing opinion. It launched with a three-part companion Sky News documentary for everyone missing Abbott’s face on TV. For the truly masochistic, there is an audio book read by Abbott himself.
The book’s argument is that Australia has lost its sense of pride in its Anglo-Celtic (white) culture and Judeo-Christian ethic. The idea that Australia is something to be proud of has been destroyed and as a result, modern Australia, like the rest of the West, is “spiritually poor”. Everything has gone downhill since his valiant efforts in office—the rise of woke, lockdowns in the name of public health, Palestine protests and mass migration. We live in a time, Abbott argues, in which a governmental and media class are obsessed with “luxury ideas” such as climate change and oppression.
To turn this around, Abbott implores us to learn the “right lessons of history”. Thankfully, those lessons are quite simple: love Australia and allow great men to put us back on track. Men like Arthur Phillip, Robert Menzies, B.A. Santamaria, Bob Hawke and the best of all men, John Howard. Any and all problems are temporary speed bumps that can be solved by a good Liberal government.
The point of Australia: A history is simple. Abbott wants to spin a narrative of national pride that makes white blindfold history palpable again. Abbott’s research efforts were backed by a small team of historians and hard-right think tanks—for no man is a suppository of all wisdom—including the Institute of Public Affairs and the Menzies Institute. The book is less a work of history than a sermon of the Trumpian right with footnotes, oozing distaste for Indigenous people, migrants and the left.
In Abbott’s telling, Australia since its creation has been run on liberal principles in which everyone enjoys a fair go. Indigenous people may have had it bad sometimes, but everything would have been much worse if the French had settled Australia. The book spins every crime committed against Indigenous people as a story of progress. The word genocide does not appear until the footnotes. Colonisation was a civilising mission. The Frontier Wars were misunderstandings, and the death totals of tens of thousands of Aboriginal people are just “guesstimates”. Assimilation was actually humane and the child removals that created the Stolen Generations were done with the best of intentions. Any disadvantage Indigenous people face today is because of “welfare dependency” and culture. More horror is reserved for the voice to parliament proposal than any crimes against Indigenous people.
Class in Australia, “if it ever really existed”, is nothing more than a temporary inconvenience in the land of the fair go. Convicts transported across the world in shackles were actually given a great entrepreneurial opportunity. The trade union movement is implicitly painted as a hindrance to the polite liberalism of the Australian character. Labor is not to be trusted as it is supposedly too close to the socialist left—Abbott seems to think its 2023 national platform derives some inspiration from the Communist movement of the 1920s.
Abbott’s obsession with immigration is on full display. Barely below the surface of the book’s call for a “team Australia” civic nationalism is the anti-migrant racism of the right. The White Australia policy was perhaps a tad regrettable, but helped maintain “social cohesion”. Besides, we shouldn’t judge too harshly because everyone was racist back then. Postwar migration is the supposed success story held up against Middle Eastern migrants of the 21st century. The brutal anti-migrant racism of the 20th century is whitewashed.
Australia: A history presents a “god-and-country” reading of the past in the hope that Abbott and the far right can impose this vision on the present. It is an attempt to modernise the worldview of the far right and make nationalism popular and palatable again. The book is a thinly veiled propaganda piece. Thankfully, it is unlikely to win many hearts and minds. Soon enough, it will end up where it belongs—in bargain bins and North Shore nursing homes.
