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A new armband for Australian history, with Tony Abbott
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Many Australians don't appreciate how extraordinary the Australian story is. A penal colony, that became a democracy, that became arguably the greatest Western liberal democracy in the world. On the contrary, the prevailing sentiment is a black armband view of the past. Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has sought to change that with his new book, 'Australia: A History'.
Will and Tony discuss themes that run through the Australian story, and reflect on whether the country is still living up to the ideals upon which it was built.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
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Transcript
Australia's Unique History
00:00:19
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will. I'm Will Kingston. At the outset, I have a confession to make. I haven't considered, as much as I should have, how extraordinary the Australian story is.
00:00:33
Speaker
Maybe the Roman Empire was just more sexy or World War II was more thrilling. But for Britain to set up a penal colony on the other side of the world,
00:00:45
Speaker
For that penal colony to become a democracy, for that democracy to become arguably the greatest Western liberal democracy that the world has ever seen, is unbelievable. It is a story that we should treasure, but unfortunately we don't, at least not to the degree that we should, which is why I am delighted to welcome the author of the new book, Australia, A History.
Tony Abbott on Australian History
00:01:07
Speaker
also think he was vaguely involved in politics in some capacity from my memory, Tony Abbott. Tony, welcome to Fire at Will. As before, it's an absolute pleasure to be with you, Will. Thank you so much for taking the time.
00:01:19
Speaker
ah The very first sentence of the book, actually, and let me get this right, is this is a book that should never have been needed. Why did you say that Well, Will, as you said so well in your introductory observations, we have an extraordinary history, almost incandescently, spectacularly high-achieving history.
00:01:44
Speaker
ah When you think that 1,500 bedragged souls were dumped ah half a world away from everything they knew and were basically told to make a life for yourselves. And within 100 years, ah the then colonies had the world's highest stand of living.
00:02:04
Speaker
Not only that, ah they had become an extraordinary ah laboratory for democratic liberalism. um people of all races, both sexes, ah had the vote at a time when this was unheard of. and ah Certainly, it it was not the case in Britain.
00:02:25
Speaker
It wasn't the case in the United States, ah but it was the case here.
Australia's Journey to Nationhood
00:02:31
Speaker
People of all races, both sexes, had ah vote, and our institutions were already extremely accommodating ah to the ordinary person. And I just think that we should celebrate that, ah the achievement of nationhood, almost the only country on earth that achieved nationhood without war, without insurrection, without revolution, without conquest.
00:03:01
Speaker
um And yes, our 20th century history, ah um perhaps not quite so spectacular, but certainly the fact that modern Australia ah is as free, as fair, as prosperous as anywhere, the fact that modern Australia has welcomed ah multiple millions of migrants, ah the fact that people from all over the world would risk their lives to get here if they thought they could.
00:03:32
Speaker
um it says something about us. um The world sees us as an almost unbelievably inviting prospect no to live. And I think we should spend more time seeing ourselves as the world sees us. And that's what my book is all about. it's about It's about providing a contemporary antidote to the black armband view of history.
00:04:03
Speaker
The black armband view of our history is even stronger today than it was 30 years ago when Geoffrey Blaney first coined the phrase And I thought it was very important ah to provide an alternative, an antidote, if you like, to provide a history which is at least glass half full because that's what this country so abundantly deserves. well look at the same time, and as Peter Fitzsimons, I think perhaps begrudgingly admitted, ah it is not also quite the white armband view of history that he was expecting.
00:04:37
Speaker
ah It is a very balanced view of Australia's history.
Egalitarianism and Social Integration
00:04:41
Speaker
ah You mentioned institutions there. There was a particular line, which I'm probably going to stuff up, but along the lines of Australians have always been very trusting of institutions, despite being distrustful of their politicians.
00:04:53
Speaker
And it sparked something in me, and it sparked kind of how I want to frame this conversation. And that is, there are themes that run through the Australian story, egalitarianism, the nature of the leaders that we have had, the idea of the fair go.
00:05:06
Speaker
And your book does a very good job of say of showing where they originate. So what I want to do is I want to look at the past and how those those sorts of themes originated, and then look at Australia today and say, well, in modern Australia, to what extent Are we still reflective of those early themes of all of early Australia?
00:05:27
Speaker
And perhaps where are we deviating? I'd like to start on the idea of egalitarianism and the idea of the the the fair go. Because one of the early astonishing things in the book for me was how quickly the convicts and the settlers ah effectively operated, if not in complete harmony, but in ah in a functioning community.
00:05:47
Speaker
You had convicts who were becoming teachers, cops, you know, very, very quickly. So we'll get to modern Australia, but tell me about that side of Australia's early history. Well, this is the extraordinary thing, Will.
00:06:00
Speaker
Uh, So many of the convicts ah were almost immediately effectively free, um sometimes on assignment to free settlers, sometimes formally given tickets of leave.
00:06:14
Speaker
ah They were almost immediately free because in the early days, until we started to get lots and lots of free immigrants from the eighteen twenty s onwards, um the convicts were necessary for the running of the place.
00:06:27
Speaker
I mean, the initial 1500, 700 or so convicts, one sort another. four or five hundred ah marines the rest were sailors of one sort or another So for the settlement to survive, the convicts couldn't be kept in a prison. In fact, we didn't have a prison in the penal colony.
00:06:52
Speaker
We didn't have a formal prison ah for ah at least a decade after our foundation. so So instead of being in a prison, ah the convicts were...
00:07:04
Speaker
ah bookkeepers, farmers, blacksmiths, farriers, ah all of the things that life at the end of the 18th century required basically had to be done by the convicts. The only thing that the Marines did was essentially keep order, ah protect the infant colony from any outside disturbance, and I suppose to maintain a certain amount of discipline amongst amongst the the people who were here. So all of the the work that was necessary, certainly the bulk of the work that was necessary to make the whole thing work, ah was done by the the convicts. And um largely because of the
00:07:52
Speaker
liberal humanitas of the early governors. We should never forget that the Royal Navy was an extraordinarily sophisticated organization, ah one of the most remarkable organizations of its day.
00:08:06
Speaker
You equate to NASA in today's day and age. but ah the the The then version of NASA, exactly right. the the The early governors, starting with Philip, they they wanted...
00:08:19
Speaker
this new p place, not to be ah kind of a dank prison, but essentially the world's greatest exercise in penal rehabilitation. They wanted it to be a place where the outcasts of England got a second chance. And that's exactly what so many of them had. And some succeeded mightily, people like Simeon Lord, our first big magnate, ah Mary Ryby, who likewise flourished mightily in business as ah as a as a former convict.
00:08:56
Speaker
Others went into ah ah Francis Greenway, out our foremost early architect. um Many of the ah police, magistrates, um administrators of early Australia, particularly in Macquarie's time, were former convicts. And yeah the great thing about this ah new a colony was that um Sure, you came because you'd stuffed up big time back in Britain, ah but it really was a wonderful second chance and so many people made the most of it.
00:09:35
Speaker
So that really made it very clear to me how Australians subsequently had prided themselves on a notion of egalitarianism. But we should, be foot before we finish on this point, though, Will, it does have to be said that ah it took some time for the convict stain, if you like, to disappear. um For instance, ah in Bly's time, we see yeah entering our history in a big way for the first time um ah John MacArthur and
00:10:12
Speaker
he was the leader of the exclusives, as they were dubbed, and the exclusives resented the currency lads and lasses, ah but most of whom were ah ex-convicts or the descendants of ex-convicts. i couldn't help him thick but think of the teals when I was i was reading that, but I won't well i won't ah i won't tell so won't won't get you drawn into So so the the early days...
00:10:40
Speaker
did but were marked by this sort of social antagonism, if you like, between the exclusives who were the, I guess, better off free settlers yeah and the currency lads and lasses who were the children of the emancipists and the ah not so well free settlers who were initially represented by W.C.
Contemporary Australian Challenges
00:11:06
Speaker
Wentworth.
00:11:07
Speaker
um Now, as time went by, ah Clan MacArthur and Clan Wentworth sort of reconciled. yeah And by the 1820s and the eighteen thirty s they were both united in demanding a much more liberal system of government.
00:11:23
Speaker
I mean, while the early governors were, in fact, by the standards of their time, incredibly humane. Nevertheless, at least in theory, it was a gubernatorial dictatorship. yeah um The governors, with blight a partial exception, largely chose ah to exercise their very extensive powers ah extremely benignly. We will get to to leadership more deeply in those early leaders, but I want to drag us to 2025 on the issue of egalitarianism.
00:11:55
Speaker
Essentially, I've come back from London ah for the last couple of weeks and anyone who has been to a Sydney private school will know that the first question that you get asked if you go out in the eastern side of Sydney is, what school did you go to?
00:12:08
Speaker
There is an argument to say that I would suggest that Australia has become solely but surely a more class-based society than the yeah UK is now. I think there are many problems now, particularly when we think about home ownership and the fact that it is almost impossible to enter the home market unless your parents have money.
00:12:24
Speaker
Do you think that the notion of egalitarianism still exists in this day and age in the way that it did during Australia's formation? I think it's fair to say that it's imperiled now, that it wasn't in a way that it it wasn't for the first probably 180, 190 years of our existence.
00:12:44
Speaker
ah yeah're You're right, Will. ah There has long been in Sydney and in Melbourne, and perhaps in Brisbane and Perth as well, a kind of a sort of private school set, ah which has, I guess, some of the accoutrements of class.
00:13:03
Speaker
But... I think much more dangerous than that is the fact that it is very hard for young Australians to get ah break into the housing market. And ah home of your own is so important if people are to have a strong sense of a stake in society.
00:13:24
Speaker
i think I give these figures at the very end of the of the book, um, A generation ago, ah it was four times average weekly earnings to buy a house in Hobart.
00:13:38
Speaker
ye Today, it's eight times average weekly earnings to buy a house in Hobart. And Hobart has by far the cheapest property prices ah in the country. It's much worse than that in in Sydney, Perth, ah Brisbane, and Melbourne. Yeah, I've heard, and don't quote me, but I've heard something along the lines of my grandparents' generation, it was two to three times average annual salary to get your house.
00:14:04
Speaker
My parents' generation, seven to eight times. My generation, 16 to 18 times. That's a staggering change in a short period of time. It is. and And okay, the house you get is often much better equipped. I mean, I grew up in a house that had one bathroom.
00:14:19
Speaker
I grew up in a house that had ah ah one carport. um I'm not crying poor, I hasten to add, ah whereas you know the average Sydney house today is is The land area might not be great, but at least the house itself is is is the sort of house that the average person would absolutely love to live in. But but I do absolutely take your point, Will.
00:14:46
Speaker
um The Australian dream has very much been that I can come here, make a great life for myself,
00:14:58
Speaker
and an even better life for my children. And I do think for the first time in our history, there is a realistic prospect that the next generation will live worse but than this generation.
00:15:09
Speaker
Well, that brings me on to the second theme, because the other thing that strikes me about the early part of Australia's history is the entrepreneurialism of so many people. You mentioned some early entrepreneurs just then. and we see less of that these days, in my opinion. And I think part of that is a psyche that the way that you make money in Australia is through property, and at a macro level, it is by digging stuff out of the ground and selling it to China, and that's give or take about it.
00:15:31
Speaker
Now, that's a ah slight oversimplification of the Australian economy, but nonetheless, it feels like when i read your book, we were initially a very entrepreneurial society, and I feel like today, we are less so.
00:15:45
Speaker
Do you agree? And if so, why or why not? ah Again, I think there's considerable truth in what you've just put to me, Will. I do worry that we think small today in a way that we didn't 50 or 100 years ago.
00:16:05
Speaker
ah It's almost impossible to imagine something about something like the Snowy Mountain Scheme yeah getting up and running today. Yeah. The motor industry in this country, in the end, didn't flourish as it should.
00:16:20
Speaker
ah Mostly, I think, because the foreign-owned car companies did not adequately incorporate Australia into their global operations. But nevertheless, we took it for granted ah in the 50s, 60s, 80s, and even the 90s that part of being a first world economy was having a reasonably vigorous ah motor manufacturing industry. Now, again, um I don't think that we can turn back the clock.
00:16:51
Speaker
um I'm not saying that we should manufacture motor cars again in this country. But the number of people who say ah with total conviction that we can't build nuclear submarines in this country, of course we can build nuclear submarines in this country.
Leadership in Australia
00:17:08
Speaker
We just have to have the self-belief, the determination, and the never-say-die attitude that our ancestors had. ah We must build nuclear submarines in this country. and Now that we've embarked upon this AUKUS course, um if we were ah to fail in this endeavor, that would be a very, very serious national setback, having ah resolved with our principal military partners that we would do it. Mm-hmm.
00:17:42
Speaker
Well, you mentioned there we there is a requirement for determination, self-belief, courage. I would add something that you didn't say, which is a requirement for leadership. why ladyship And something which I wasn't fully aware of was some of the extraordinarily impressive early leaders of of the early colony.
00:18:00
Speaker
Again, in many instances, flawed men, and they were all men. But someone like an Arthur Phillip, I had no idea and ah the the ah A, the difficulty of the job, and B, relatively how well he did it.
00:18:13
Speaker
um Macquarie similarly, I think you say Bly is the only one that was had to naturally despotic tendencies. But by and large, the early leaders of this country did a pretty bloody good job under pretty difficult circumstances.
00:18:28
Speaker
Completely correct, Will. ah They were remarkably... ah sophisticated, humane, forward-looking group of people.
00:18:39
Speaker
And the staggering success of the Australian colonies in their first hundred years is a tribute to their work. um It really is. um and And again, I think these are people who should be cherished and honored instead of forgotten. I mean, when you think of it, Philip was not so different from George Washington, yeah but George Washington is on the tips of the tongue of yeah every American, whereas not too many Australians...
00:19:13
Speaker
are familiar with Philip other than as a half forgotten name um of someone who was once significant. Yeah. And I was frankly embarrassed that I wasn't aware of that story because it's funny you say that. Washington came for might to mind for me when I was reading about Arthur Philip.
00:19:30
Speaker
Now, if I do try and continue with my theme of bringing it back to today, and I think you may have an instinct as to where I'm going with this. These were remarkably impressive figures. As the 20th century progressed, in my view,
00:19:43
Speaker
the quality of political leadership declined gradually as the 21st century has progressed with some notable exceptions. ah Notwithstanding, I think the quality of political leadership has diminished further to the extent that I don't even think them, and again, I'm not going to drag you in here, but the most ardent Labour supporter would put Albanese in the same category as Hawke or Keating.
00:20:05
Speaker
I don't think even the most ardent supporter of the Liberal Party would put ah Susan Lee in the same category as ah Howard ah or Costello or Menzies or whatever. A, do you agree that the quality of leadership has declined in this country? If so, why?
00:20:22
Speaker
Well, I really, ah i suppose, admit that in the last chapter of the book, which I have called Drifting Backwards, because I do think we've let ourselves down a bit, ah particularly in the last 15 years or so.
00:20:39
Speaker
i look at the Hawke front bench, remarkably accomplished, remarkably talented front bench. I look at the Howard front bench and uh present company excluded again a remarkably accomplished talented front bench and i i think of my own front bench um less accomplished and some of the most able members of my front bench were more busier plotting than they were administering the affairs of the nation um and i and i think it's just gone downhill i mean i mean the rud gillard front benches were a lot weaker than the hawk keating front benches um the abbott morrison turnbull front bench was a lot weaker than the howard front bench and and yeah
00:21:26
Speaker
Not enough of our best people are attracted to public life. Maybe part of that's just a cyclical thing. ah There are sort of seasons to everything, cricket, rugby, finance, business, and politics as well. But I i do worry ah that um
00:21:51
Speaker
maybe our character's changing. um In what way? an interesting conversation. Before we go on, oh that's quite an interesting comment. What do you mean by that?
00:22:00
Speaker
Well, again, ah um just to take one instance or one aspect, um I think we are societally more fragmented today then than we have been at most previous times in our history.
00:22:19
Speaker
The fact that for the best part of two years, we've had major problems demonstrations on our streets, ah not in favour of social justice in Australia, or not in favour of the downtrodden here, but against what's happening in Gaza.
00:22:42
Speaker
And there's been a very strong anti-Semitic Jew-hating flavour to a lot of these demonstrations. There's been ah the strong presence of recent migrants from the Middle East in many of these demonstrations. And I think that's deeply problematic.
00:22:59
Speaker
Now, I say in the book again and again that I guess Australia has these three constituent elements, an indigenous heritage, a British foundation, and an immigrant character.
00:23:10
Speaker
yeah But a difference between the post-war wave of migration and the more recent big wave of migration is that back in the 50s, 60s and 70s, migrants were expected to integrate immediately and to assimilate as quickly as they could, certainly by the second generation.
00:23:34
Speaker
Under what I think is a ah a retrograde doctrine of multiculturalism, yes and at least at an official level, there's often been this encouragement of a kind of ethnic separatism. Now, I don't think the migrants, the overwhelming majority of them, ah want to engage in ethnic separatism. I think regardless of their background, 99.9% migrants to this country are eager to become Australian as quickly as they can. i think they are eager to join Team Australia, but there has been this official ah line in more recent decades that, no, no, no, no. no I mean, don't be Australian, Australian.
00:24:22
Speaker
Chinese living in Australia or be Indians living in Australia or be Vietnamese or Irish or Greek or whatever yeah living in Australia. now Now, I think that badly lets down the migrants.
00:24:36
Speaker
And I think in the end, it it is not good for our country because as I keep saying, We want everyone in this country, regardless of background, ah to be part of Team Australia. We don't want people to simply be living in Hotel Australia. And and so that that worries me a little. Anyway, to get back to your point, Will, I do think that our political class has by and large been of lesser caliber and character over the last decade or so than it was in the preceding couple of decades.
00:25:12
Speaker
Maybe you could say that the, I guess, the politicians of the 20s and 30s weren't quite the same caliber of the politicians of the Federation era.
00:25:24
Speaker
So yes, maybe this is, as I said, a cyclical thing, ah but I do hope that um we have... ah stronger leadership ah in the years to come than we've had ah in the last decade or so. Yeah, and I think to be fair to Australia, I think it's a global trend as well if you look at the leadership changes across the US, the UK, Canada, across the Anglosphere. I think you're right. I think you're right. I mean,
00:25:52
Speaker
um Whatever you think of, uh, uh, President Trump, uh, Trump versus Harris was not a particularly uplifting choice. Uh, whatever you think of, uh, Keir Starmer, I mean, Sunak versus Starmer, again, probably wasn't a particularly no course inspirational choice. Now, you know, uh, I'm,
00:26:19
Speaker
I'm not unfamiliar with the leading figures in the British Conservative Party, and I can understand the pressures on them ah because they're not dissimilar to the pressures on the centre-right leaders of Australia.
00:26:32
Speaker
um I'm reasonably familiar with ah many of the key individuals in the current Labour government, and Again, i i I understand the difficulties of trying to run ah government ah in in our rancorous modern democracies where ah the national conversation often seems debased, polarized, much shoutier than it's ever been in the past.
00:27:04
Speaker
And again, one of the reasons why I think ah books like mine are important is ah because if we look back into our past and see how our leaders um and our populations have mastered challenges which were really objectively far greater than the ones we face, maybe that will inspire us to do better now.
Islam and Western Democracy
00:27:31
Speaker
um Mm-hmm.
00:27:32
Speaker
I wasn't going to go to multiculturalism initially, but you did mention in your last answer and it has got me me thinking. And that version of multiculturalism in post-war Australia was largely effective.
00:27:44
Speaker
You had the overarching Australian values, Western liberal democracy, rule of law, all that sort of good stuff. And then you bring the breast best of you know your Greek culture or your Italian culture.
00:27:55
Speaker
Now, if I was to be a bit cheeky or provocative, there was a culture that you didn't mention explicitly. You didn't mention ah from memory ah countries that are fundamentalist Islamic countries.
00:28:05
Speaker
ah And the demographics of our more recent immigration intake have seen a large increase in people coming from Islamic countries. yeah Many people in this country are uncomfortable with that.
00:28:17
Speaker
How do you feel about that demographic shift? And do you think that it undermines that form of multiculturalism that you talk about in the book as being largely successful in the post-war era?
00:28:30
Speaker
Well, you raise, i think, a very very important question. um ah How compatible is Islam with ah modern Western liberal democracy?
00:28:44
Speaker
And I think the truthful answer is not very. um I don't think that means we stop taking ah ah immigrants who happen to be Muslim.
00:29:00
Speaker
What I think it means is that we should be very keen to ensure that all of our migrants are only too well aware of our expectation that they will be joining Team Australia and and also our expectation that for all the diversity of modern australia ah we have a core anglo-celtic culture and we have a fundamental judeo-christian ethos and and look uh official australia for all its faults does
00:29:36
Speaker
ah in a sense recognize this when it expects demands that all new citizens take the oath from this time forward under God, I pledge my allegiance to Australia and its people whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect and whose laws I will uphold and obey.
00:29:57
Speaker
So we are effectively saying ah to everyone who becomes an Australian citizen, um you've got to be fully on the team. um You've got to join Team Australia.
00:30:11
Speaker
But I do fear sometimes the people who administer the oath um don't mean it as passionate as passionately as they should. i think people...
00:30:23
Speaker
who take the oath are sometimes pretty superficial about these things. um We've got to mean it. We've got to live it as individuals and as a country.
00:30:36
Speaker
Now, one of the things that that I hope might happen over time in countries like Australia, because ah we are the sort of country where it can happen,
00:30:48
Speaker
is that perhaps if Islam is to have its own enlightenment, its own reformation, um its own, as it were, immersion in the best of the modern world, perhaps that might be led by Muslims here.
00:31:08
Speaker
ah Because if you're a Muslim in many other countries, in the Middle East and perhaps in the subcontinent, um and you start talking about a liberal Islam, um you're probably at serious risk of imprisonment or worse. Well, it's an interesting point because the argument that you will hear against this type of conversation is, well, I know you know my neighbor next door and she is a lovely Islamic lady or a wonderful Islamic man.
00:31:37
Speaker
And they're a wonderful, wonderful Muslim country. Absolutely right. Absolutely correct. um But what you get to is at scale is in Islamic countries, there is obviously the problems of women being treated as second-class citizens.
00:31:50
Speaker
There is obviously the problems of minority groups being treated poorly. There is obviously the problem of the separation or the lack thereof between church and mosque and state. But at the same time, if you look at the UK at the moment, you know, one of their leading figures, Zia Yutsef, is Islamic.
00:32:05
Speaker
And this is a party that's often been criticised for being anti-Islam. so So on an individual level, I think people have no problem having an Islamic neighbor, or the vast majority of people.
00:32:16
Speaker
I think the problem comes, you know, at scale. And I think that's why when people look at our immigration policy settings, that's where people get concerned, I would imagine. Yeah, look, human Islam is, ah I guess, as diverse as the individuals who happen to be Muslim. Yes.
00:32:34
Speaker
um Institutional Islam, though, is generally much more rigid then um and much more fundamentalist than, for argument's sake, institutional Christianity might be.
Religious Freedom and Social Cohesion
00:32:52
Speaker
And, yeah, I think that...
00:32:57
Speaker
ah One of the things that we should never do in this country is discriminate on the basis of race or religion, but I do think we can and should discriminate on the basis of values.
00:33:08
Speaker
um The citizenship pledge ah implies that we take values extremely seriously, and if you can't faithfully and truthfully subscribe to Australian values, well, maybe this is not the place for you. That raises another theme that wanted to get onto, and that is religious pluralism.
00:33:29
Speaker
And you mention in the book Burke's great experiment of religious pluralism, which was unprecedented anywhere in the but British Empire at the time. Talk me through why that was so special and then how that has ah influenced Australia's subsequent history.
00:33:47
Speaker
Well, again, ah because ah the the early settlers um just had to work so closely together in order to survive, distinctions of rank, religion, ah gender were much less important here than they were in the in the old country.
00:34:12
Speaker
And um if you've been... ah working for the last few decades, um cheek by jowl ah with people of different religions, um different, I guess, ethnicities within the British Isles, um it's very hard to sustain people artificial distinctions based on on religion. um So very early on, the governors were funding the different Christian denominations to run schools.
00:34:48
Speaker
um The oldest surviving Catholic church in the country, I'm pretty sure, is St. Patrick's on Churchill, just up the road from here. um That was built with help from the government. um So it was very different from from Britain. um And I guess, so you know, Burke was a sort of ah ah a liberal Irishman, um not a Catholic, but nevertheless, so a a liberal Irishman who had a genial disposition towards
00:35:23
Speaker
ah Catholicism. He was more than happy to have ah John Plunkett, an Irish Catholic, as the first Attorney General of New South Wales, um Gibbs, his successor, again, ah liberal and humane man.
00:35:40
Speaker
I guess we're also talking about a time when Britain itself was undergoing a kind of liberal religious sort of Christian humanism, if you like, under the influence of Wilberforce, Shaftesbury, the Wesleys, and so on um And yeah, that that spirit permeated Australia.
00:36:05
Speaker
brings forward to today. ah We've had previously spirited conversations on religion. I've called myself a cultural Christian. You haven't been able to quite get me to the next step yet, but ah there is no doubt, statistically, religion is on the decline, i organized religion, I should say, on the decline, not just in Australia, across the Western world, at a slightly slower rate, I believe, in the US, but still declining.
00:36:29
Speaker
Do you think, you mentioned Judeo-Christian values, and I am a strong, fervent advocate for Judeo-Christian values, despite not being able to, at this stage in my life, get to the point of believing in a higher power. We're all on a journey, Will.
00:36:45
Speaker
And we never know where it might lead us. You may get me there one day, Tony. um But what I would ask is, do you think you can maintain a society that is underpinned by Judeo-Christian values as less and less people actually believe in the God part of the equation?
00:37:03
Speaker
Well, it's a good question. um I certainly think it would help to maintain a Judeo-Christian ethos if we had lots of people who were Judeo-Christian believers.
00:37:16
Speaker
But um the ah Christian social teaching, ah um and I suppose the Ten Commandments are essentially the um fundamental ah bit of Christian social teaching.
00:37:32
Speaker
Christian social teaching is supposed to be based on reason, not revelation. And I think that you do not have to ah be a Christian ah to believe in the fundamental equality and rights and responsibilities of all human beings.
00:37:52
Speaker
I don't think you have to be a Christian to accept ah the golden rule of conduct to treat others as you would have them treat you. So I think that the the The ethos, the Judeo-Christian ah ethos is sustainable, ah even in the absence of the kind of general Christian faith that we that we once had.
Indigenous Relations
00:38:20
Speaker
And look, I don't think we should assume that the ah trends of the last a few decades are inevitably going to continue.
00:38:31
Speaker
I mean, the Wesleyan revival in Britain um was very significant. I guess the religious revivals of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation were very significant in earlier centuries.
00:38:46
Speaker
ah My own view, for what it's worth, Will, is that ah is is that you politics is downstream of culture and culture is downstream of faith. Now, um faith does not necessarily imply religious faith, but you've got to believe in things that are higher than yourself, ah that are bigger than you, ah if a culture is to be meaningful.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard the first part of that line. I've never heard the second part of that line before. That's really interesting. Mm-hmm. Let's turn to what, so I was thinking if I was ah one of your critics, and I am not one of your critics, ah but if I was one of your critics, I imagine if I was sifting through this book where I would have been looking to see your approach, first and foremost would have been on Indigenous affairs.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah. I think you've been treated unfairly for what it's worth and that you've spent a lot of time across your career from your very early days as an MP in remote Indigenous communities, far more than people who talk the talk on this sort of stuff but don't necessarily actually get their hands dirty.
00:39:54
Speaker
How did you approach looking at the history of the relationship between Indigenous Australians and and Anglo-Saxon or white Australians? Yeah. Well, I wanted to look at the downside and the upside, but I wanted to be fair to both.
00:40:14
Speaker
and And look, there is absolutely no doubt that by the standards of today, there was ah paternalism, there was even, in some instances, racism, racism,
00:40:27
Speaker
ah As the ah settlement expanded and indigenous people were displaced from their traditional hunting grounds, ah there was conflict.
00:40:38
Speaker
ah some The conflict was often extremely one-sided, yeah where ah the settlers with their guns um ah viciously ah massacred um indigenous people um for the crime in inverted commas of of of spearing cattle and sheep and so on.
00:41:02
Speaker
um we have to accept We have to accept that. ah I think we should also be realistic. There was inevitably going to be conflict.
00:41:15
Speaker
ah Yes. Given the different cultures and given the fact that to sustain um modern society, ah agriculture was going to displace agriculture.
00:41:31
Speaker
the hunter-gatherer existence, the nomadic existence that the first Australians had. so look, it was inevitable that there would be conflict.
00:41:43
Speaker
What is... ah underappreciated by and large today is just how sensitive the best of the settlers were to all of this.
00:41:55
Speaker
um i mean, the British government's instructions to Philip to live in Amity with the native people The fact that when Philip was speared at Manly Cove, ah he didn't order a punitive expedition. There was no punishment whatsoever. He didn't retaliate. He did not retaliate. i thought that was an extraordinary extraordinary anecdote. Extraordinary. Extraordinary. And he put it down to a misunderstanding. He was trying to find Bennelong, who had been living at Government House and who had left.
00:42:27
Speaker
ah Philip was looking for him. ah Bennelong's mates were not very happy. um Philip was speared. ah but Philip's response, magnanimous response, ah basically yeah meant that cordial relations resumed. Bennelong went back to government house a week or so later.
00:42:50
Speaker
And when Philip went to England after his death, term was over, Long went with him and ah for a couple of years was ah the talk of the town in London, at least in some circles. so so So there was a very strong sense on the part of the best of the settlers that we had an obligation ah to to the first Australians And they had to be treated decently. i'm mean, governor after governor ah issued order and instruction after instruction that the Aboriginal people of Australia ah were subjects of the crown yeah with all the rights that that implied and were not to be were not to be mistreated. Now, we know that on the frontiers of settlement, that often was not the case, right?
00:43:43
Speaker
On the front is of settlement. There was a lot of violence. A bit of it was Aboriginal people against the settlers. ah More of it was the settlers against Aboriginal people.
00:43:54
Speaker
But again, we need to be very careful about being too judgmental. about and in terms of our own standards against people of earlier times.
00:44:06
Speaker
I mean, one of the, I guess, ah ah ah episodes that i talk about in the book is Jacinda Price's grandfather, Best Price's dad, ah who was, if you like, a tribal Aborigine from Central Australia,
00:44:25
Speaker
As a teenager, he was one of the hundreds of Central Australian Aboriginal people who fled ah the Coniston Massacre, the last known massacre, yeah regrettably in 1928.
00:44:41
Speaker
um Years later, as a young man, um he was one of a group of Aboriginals rounded up and taken in chains to Alice Springs yeahp ah ah to work to support the war effort um in the nineteen forty s ah Notwithstanding that,
00:45:02
Speaker
he regards himself as being well treated once he got to Alice Springs. He was ah then part of the Yundamu mission and and ah
00:45:19
Speaker
Bess writes beautifully about her father and the relationship her father had with the missionaries and early life ah in that settlement in the 1940s and And so the story was um not nearly as black and white in inverted commas as people like to present it today.
Indigenous Community Challenges
00:45:45
Speaker
And there's a lovely quote there, and this was from earlier than that. I can't recall exactly, but it was sometime the 1800s of settlers and Indigenous Australians sitting around a campfire. And allow me to read it or else i butcher it.
00:45:58
Speaker
These are the forgotten moments of early Sydney. Two totally different peoples gathered around the campfire, laughing laughing together over the absurd. There was obviously, as you said, violence. There was obviously criminality.
00:46:11
Speaker
There was obviously the atrocities that were committed. But there seems to be, in your instances as well, a shared humanity, despite the fact that for Indigenous as Australians, the settlers may as well may have well has been from Mars.
00:46:26
Speaker
Yeah. the so so For the Aboriginal people ah at first contact, this would have been utterly bewildering and bamboozling. um Absolutely.
00:46:40
Speaker
But um quickly enough, I guess ah both sides came to terms with with each other and in some cases more successfully than others. But quickly enough, there was this, I guess, ah coming to terms.
00:46:56
Speaker
I mean, take another figure from our from our early days, John Bateman, often considered one of the founders of Melbourne. I mean, Batman's father ah ran a mission in Sydney, it in what's now out of metropolitan Sydney, ah for Aboriginal kids.
00:47:14
Speaker
Batman grew up with Aboriginal kids. He then went to Tasmania as a sort of a squatter. He was involved in what we call the Black War in Tasmania.
00:47:27
Speaker
He admits in his own diaries, a shooting in cold blood wounded Aboriginal prisoners. But at the same time, um he took into his household um Aboriginal orphans and raised them in his own as part of his own family. So They were different times.
00:47:50
Speaker
um They were much harsher times generally. And we should be slow to condemn people because they don't their actions don't accord with what we think is appropriate today.
00:48:05
Speaker
Let me pull you forward once again. It's been about 240-odd years since 1788, since Arthur Philip arrived with the First Fleet. We still haven't been able to really come to grips with the severe problems in remote Indigenous communities.
00:48:21
Speaker
You know better than anyone the inequalities when comes to sexual assault, when it comes to living standards. But we don't need to cover this. Everyone knows that there are atrocious conditions in there. yeah poll Every single Prime Minister, at least in the modern era, has said that this is a top priority.
00:48:39
Speaker
No one has truly been able to fix it. I've got to ask something which is a very cynical question, but it's an honest question. Is this an intractable intractable, impossible problem to solve?
00:48:51
Speaker
it It is possible to solve it, ah but it can't be solved if we continue to keep large numbers of Aboriginal people living in remote places with no economic base.
00:49:03
Speaker
um Ask yourself this, Will. Is any population going to thrive ah in what are effectively welfare-dependent villages?
00:49:19
Speaker
You go to a largely welfare-dependent suburb of Sydney and you will find much higher levels of social dysfunction ah than in other parts of and of urban Australia.
00:49:36
Speaker
ah Interestingly, for Aboriginal people who ah living in the Australian mainstream, there The indicators are pretty much the same as for the average Australian.
00:49:52
Speaker
All of the bad indicators of employment, of life expectancy, of educational attainment, etc., They all come from remote Australia.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah. But if you're living in a place ah where no one is expected to go to school, ah where almost no one has a normal job, of course you're going to get on the Terps or the dope. Yeah.
00:50:22
Speaker
Of course, bad things will happen then. ye and and that's got nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It's just got to do with the fact that the devil finds work for idle hands. that's been That is true in all circumstances. So what I've always what i've long argued for is that What we've got to do ah in these remote places is we've got to empower people to make real choices and hope that more and more of them will exercise their power of choice sensibly.
00:51:04
Speaker
um So what we've got to ensure is that the that the kids go to school, the adults at least go to work or some kind of work program and that the communities are adequately policed.
00:51:19
Speaker
um Noel Pearson used to talk about orbits and what he meant by that was ah if you're an Aboriginal person from let's say Arrakoon in Cape York, Arrakoon will always be if you like um the spiritual center of your orbit.
00:51:38
Speaker
But just because you might have a deep spiritual connection with the country around Arrakun doesn't mean you've got to live there all your life. yeah You can go to Cairns, you can go to Brisbane, you can go to London, you can go to New York.
00:51:53
Speaker
Um, and that should be just as common for Aboriginal people yeah as for, as for anyone else. I mean, I used to say, Hey, if I grew up in Grafton, uh, just to take a name of a regional town, nice town, Grafton, I've been there many times.
00:52:15
Speaker
But hey, if I grew up in Grafton, I wouldn't be expected to live all my life in Grafton. ah um I'd quite possibly go to school in Sydney. I'd almost certainly go to university somewhere else.
00:52:29
Speaker
um I would almost certainly start my working life somewhere else. Yep. And Grafton would always be special. Maybe I might go and retire in Grafton one day.
00:52:40
Speaker
But if we don't think that the people of Grafton should be glued to Grafton forever, why do we think that the people of Arrakun have got to be glued to Arrakun forever?
00:52:52
Speaker
And- and yeah One of the real problems with the, as it were, Aboriginal activist class is is, I think, often enough, with the best will in the world, they are condemning their fellow Aboriginal people to a rotten life by saying that somehow, if they aren't kept in remote Australia, ah somehow there's a cultural, ah there's some kind of cultural dispossession, even genocide going on. Well, I just think that's wrong. I mean, Aboriginal culture has got to evolve just as every other culture evolves. Mm-hmm.
00:53:35
Speaker
I can feel your team breathing down my neck with your diary. So I want to finish with a broader lens on how we tell the story better. You've done your bit and it is a wonderful book. And it's not just me saying that as someone who is broadly in ideological agreement with you, I chuckled, even The Guardian gave it a good review, which was... Well, the first review in The Guardian was good. They had a scathing second review. I haven't seen the second one.
00:53:59
Speaker
I would still take one good review in The Guardian. Me too. Me too. i'm I'm very happy. Yeah. Yeah. So it is a very important contribution. It's a mindset sold out. Number one in the non-fiction charts.
00:54:09
Speaker
It's done incredibly well. But at the same time, not everyone's going to read this book. for and Unfortunately, but not everyone's going to read this book. There's a Sky doco, which was inspired by the book.
00:54:20
Speaker
And my understanding is that the Sky documentary is now available on YouTube. And most of your listeners will would be ah sufficiently competent with the technology to go onto YouTube and find it, I'm sure. Well, watch that as well. But the question is...
00:54:37
Speaker
we still have an education system that will largely promote the black armband view of his history. I think we still have an education system from primary to secondary to university, which I think does paint a largely negative picture of Australia's history.
00:54:50
Speaker
How do we change that? We've just got to do our best, Will. I've always thought, ah maybe naively, maybe this is my weak view of history, but I've always thought that in the end, truth trumps fiction.
00:55:04
Speaker
In the end, facts beat lies. And if you think, as the vast majority of Australians do, ah that whatever we're told by ah supposed it elders and betters, this is a pretty good place.
00:55:18
Speaker
The history that's created us has got to be something to savour. That's very well said. And as Margaret Thatcher said, the truth is always, truths are always conservative. But perhaps that's for the next conversation, Tony.
00:55:30
Speaker
Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for writing the book. It is a very important contribution to the national debate. Good to be with you, Will.