Tony Abbott was a boxer during his Oxford years. A metaphor from the art of pugilism might be apt for his single-volume general history of Australia: Abbott is leading with his chin.<\/p>\n
As it happens, the former prime minister has done a good job with Australia: A History. There are places where he has done a very good job.<\/p>\n
It might sometimes be a bit woke for more conservative readers. The author\u2019s note begins: \u201cThis is the book that should never have been needed.\u201d Academic orthodoxy, Abbott explains, has \u201cleft many Australians ambivalent about our past, even though it\u2019s far more good than bad\u201d. He then goes on to tell of his reading of Ladybird history books in the 1960s.<\/p>\n
At this point, one braces for the worst. Abbott certainly presents a benign view of the British empire. William Wilberforce and the anti-slavery movement get a good run; slavery does not. For Australia, British colonisation was a stroke of good fortune, although not initially for all, and Abbott does not obscure the injustice done to First Nations peoples. \u201cIt was not uncommon for a raiding party to kill the first Aboriginal person they spotted,\u201d he observes of the 1830s pastoral frontier. Still, he thinks it was better to be colonised by the British than just about anyone else.<\/p>\n
Abbott might present his book as an antidote to the gloom merchants of the academic left, but he still turns to their works in coming up with his own. When he cites an authority on the nature and extent of frontier violence, it is not the rightwing history warrior Keith Windschuttle but one of the latter\u2019s principal targets, Lyndall Ryan. In contrast, Abbott\u2019s account of the convict era is heavily indebted to the conservative historian John Hirst, who played down the coercive and violent features of transportation \u2013 the chains and lashes \u2013 in favour of freedom and opportunity. But Abbott\u2019s telling might unfortunately leave the unwary reader the impression that convict life had some of the qualities of a holiday camp.<\/p>\n
He then goes on to provide a mainly celebratory account of Australia\u2019s relentless progress towards an egalitarian democracy where there has been widespread opportunity, class distinction hardly exists and \u201conly the very unlucky have missed out on a decent life\u201d. He does a competent job of describing the institutions and policies \u2013 such as tariff protection, compulsory arbitration and the living wage \u2013 devised to give a \u201cfair go\u201d to those prepared to \u201chave a go\u201d.<\/p>\n
Economic and social policy of this kind had to go because it got in the way of individual effort and private enterprise. Not least for their efforts in consigning such interventionism to the dustbin of history, Bob Hawke and John Howard are the standout Australian prime ministers since Robert Menzies, in Abbott\u2019s view, with Howard having \u201ca strong claim to be regarded as our best-ever PM\u201d. He is less enamoured of Gough Whitlam, whose dismissal and subsequent election defeat he clearly believes a satisfactory democratic outcome; and Paul Keating, a formidable political warrior and economic reformer flawed by his taste for anti-British nationalism, culture wars and \u201cblack armband\u201d history.<\/p>\n
In such ways, Australia: A History becomes more opinionated, but also less derivative, as it reaches the period of Abbott\u2019s adult life. That makes for more lively reading and, at times, has generated some genuinely stimulating judgments, in nicely crafted prose. An example is the distinction drawn between the conservatism of Pauline Hanson, which \u201cmistrusts change and instinctively resists it\u201d, and Howard\u2019s \u201cthat respects what is and wants the future to reflect the best aspects of the past\u201d.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a pretty convincing way of putting it, and Abbott is obviously on Howard\u2019s side. But once he reaches the governments of Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and his own, his performance of even-handedness and non-partisanship quickly falls away. The country\u2019s 28th prime minister provides a brief, selective and spirited defence of his own government, followed by some hard judgments about Malcolm Turnbull\u2019s (accompanied by a bit of old-fashioned score-settling) and Scott Morrison\u2019s. He reminds us of Peta Credlin\u2019s \u201cMr Harbourside Mansion\u201d epithet for Turnbull, and accuses him of failing \u201cto stress any big differences with Labor\u201d. Morrison fares better in Abbott\u2019s hands, largely because of Aukus, but Abbott believes his handling of Covid via a national cabinet made him \u201clook more like the chairman of a committee than a national leader\u201d.<\/p>\n
This part of the book is a story of a nation going downhill, with its over-the-top Covid restrictions, excessive immigration and tolerance of unintegrated migrants. Abbott\u2019s conviction that Australia remains \u201cmaterially rich but spiritually poor\u201d expresses a modern conservatism that is preoccupied with civilisational decay and out of love with what Australia \u2013 and much of the west \u2013 has become.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Saved for Later<\/p>\n Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia’s culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Abbott can at least celebrate the defeat of what he regards as a separatist proposal for the Indigenous voice and when, in this more hopeful mode, he imagines that \u201cbetter times are usually only a few good decisions and the emergence of a couple of key leaders away\u201d. While that doesn\u2019t strike me as a sophisticated understanding of historical change, it does help account for why Abbott is hanging in there as one of the \u201cmad uncles\u201d which journalist and historian Chris Wallace has identified as integral to the Liberal party\u2019s present factional turmoil.<\/p>\n Still, it is a virtue of Australia: A History that it takes political life seriously, even with its almost complete omission of state government. Australians, we learn over almost 400 pages, have the best democracy, the best soldiers, the best social system, the best mining industry, the best refugee policy, and much else worthy of the world\u2019s attention and emulation. Abbott treats this country\u2019s history as driven by the distinctive, and overwhelmingly admirable, qualities of its ordinary people and their political leaders: \u201ca land built by heroes, both known and unknown\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet it is also a tale of decline, leavened by what Henry Lawson called \u201cthe hope of something better than the present or the past\u201d. Abbott\u2019s version of that \u201csomething better\u201d, however, will not be to everyone\u2019s taste: if only we take pride in our British foundations, abandon climate and identity politics, and worry less over past injustices and fossil fuels, \u201cour best days as a nation might still be ahead\u201d.<\/p>\n Frank Bongiorno is professor of history at the Australian National University.<\/p>\n