Tony Abbott: How Australia went from a convict colony to a prosperous, democratic superpower

Well, it's a great pleasure to welcome Tony Abbott to our book club today to talk about his book called Australia Tony the first thing I wanted to ask you was why did you decide to write this book? Politicians often write memoirs But you've decided to write a political history of your country explaining its Constitutional setup and origins what what drove you to do that? Well Jacob, you're right Most former politicians write about their favorite subject, namely themselves I figured that the story of us would be more interesting than the story of me and I certainly think that just now it's important to tell an optimistic story about Australia because Modern historiography is very critical of Australia just as it's critical of Britain critical of the United States If you pick up a contemporary history of Australia It will typically lament the The dispossession of Aboriginal people. In fact, the most recent academic history of Australia opens with what it calls the foundational lie This idea that the settlement of Australia was largely peaceful. Well It was marked in some instances by conflict, but overwhelmingly even in the early days There was as much cooperation as there was conflict it was collegial as well as confrontational and So we suffer from the same contemporary angst over Aboriginal dispossession as Britain suffers over the Empire even though overwhelmingly it was an empire of justice and prosperity and Technological and political and judicial advance and the Americans suffer over slavery Even though they fought their bloodiest ever war to be rid of it. So Australia is a great country with a good story and it needed to be told One of the interesting things about the first settlement is that it's done as a civil rather than a military Encampment so talking of Imperial benefits Australia from day one is trying to get the benefits of the freedoms of the British Constitution and Actually, it takes them much further than the British ever have done completely correct Even though it was in one sense under the absolute authority of the naval governors In practice the naval governors allowed extraordinary freedoms. For instance the first civil action in The new colony was by a couple called the cables who had been transported for various high crimes Had they been in Britain, they would not have been able as as prisoners to bring an action in court but under the regime in Australia, they successfully sued the captain of their convict transport for Misappropriating 15 pounds worth of goods and that money was was given to them in in restitution now This is typical of of the way Early modern Australia evolved It was not long before convicts were riding back to their rallies in England to say we're actually Enjoying a better life here as convicts because nearly all of them were sent out on Assignment to settlers where they were effectively Work part of the workforce, but they were sort of the equivalent of free workers Even though they were actually still under sentence. And so they were riding back to their early saying this is a better life than we could have expected in Britain and eventually the British government sent out commission of big in governor Macquarie's time with the specific objective of Ending the relatively indulgent treatment of convicts because the government felt that Transportation had not become an object of terror, but it become almost an inducement to crime now The subsequent governors did tighten things up a bit But still for the vast majority of those transported to Australia in that 50 or 60 year period It was a redemption story Where they went from being the outcasts of Britain to being the pioneers of a wonderful new country But as with any government action you get good things and bad things So I was very struck on the convict sent out The first ship is well provided for well provisioned stops three times on route The second ship badly provided for as many as possible crammed on board Very high death rate and Lack of government support for the second ship likewise with the aboriginal population great efforts to begin with to try to be friendly some nervousness the governor being wounded in the shoulder by a spear and In a very sort of phlegmatic English way. So you don't worry about that But then you have at later points Massacres of aborigines and that nothing in human history is perfect or goes simply in one direction correct The early years of the settlement were marked by if you like a wary mutual acceptance It was really only after about 20 years when The settlement started to dramatically expand that there was serious conflict with the local people Fences were built as Herds started to monopolize water holes and so on the land was was cleared Inevitably there were going to be Misunderstandings as far as the aboriginal people were concerned the sheep were were there to be speared As far as the settles were concerned sheep were valuable property There was always as much Cooperation as there was conflict there was always as much partnership as there was confrontation none of the Squatters for instance could have worked their their runs without aboriginal stock. Who were the squatters? Well, the squatters were kind of the Australian version of ranchers They were the people who on the western side of the great dividing range Settled on vast expanses of country ran Hundreds if not eventually thousands of sheep on there on their runs But but they couldn't have operated but for the aboriginal stockman And the aboriginal women who maintained the households It was typical for families Out on the frontiers of settlement for the kids to be minded by the local aboriginal people Almost every explorer required aboriginal guides to I guess unfold for British eyes The country that was strange to them, but well known to the aboriginal people There were three Survived well there were three of the Burke and Wills party that made it back to the edge of civilization the one survivor Was only King he only survived because the local aboriginal people kept him alive And so there was cooperation, but there were also mistakes tragedies the Tasmanian clearance which you focus on obviously in the book Not that many people got killed by that but a huge number of people got wiped out by disease How much moral responsibility do white settlers take do you think for disease rather than active killings? Well, how much moral responsibility does the Chinese government take for the covered pandemic I mean there's a sense in which What is not intended and what is not? readily foreseeable is not your responsibility Although it may well be deeply regrettable the colonial authorities were always insistent that The aboriginal people were subjects of the crown with all the consequent rights Even in the worst of times in Tasmania, which was probably where the conflict was at its most intense and fierce Governors and officialdom were eager to conciliate the aboriginal people when the last of the aboriginal warriors Entered Hobart to as it were Negotiate a settlement They were greeted by almost the entire population of the town And given I guess the kind of welcome that a band of warriors who had fought successfully for much of the time deserved Some of the warriors were very well known to the settler population and indeed One of them was kept alive rather than being hanged for his various misdeeds Because of the intervention of one of the settler women the widow of one of the doctors in town Who who knew him? Well, so so look this was a very human story And and the human beings involved Had an appreciation of each other as well as I suppose a grievance about what was going on But inevitably when what was then the most sophisticated Culture on earth came into conflict. We're already into into interaction with what was an ancient timeless hunter-gatherer Society inevitably there was going to be a clash and I don't think we should Be too harsh in judging the people of those days by the standards of these days and interestingly Officialdom the further away it was from reality The more high-minded it was so subjects of the king or later Queen Victoria from the English perspective protected by governors and officials But then sometimes juries clear people who've killed our race and if you're there and you're facing The risk of a warrior tribe being near you you probably react in a less high-minded way than if you're several thousand miles away completely correct Emblematic of the whole thing was the mile Creek Massacre and its aftermath now This is the atrocity of which we are best informed because There were two criminal trials a Party of Stockman wantonly murdered up to 30 Aboriginal men women and children when news of this filtered back to Sydney the then Attorney General the Irish Catholic John Plunkett appointed to that position in Australia at a time when Catholics were still under disabilities in Britain Plunkett was determined that justice would would be done He investigated Put the perpetrators on trial the first jury refused to convict a Plunkett rather than just letting it go he brought fresh charges against a slightly smaller group of the accused and The judge at the second trial said that this was an atrocity crying out to heaven for justice The jury indeed did convict and seven white men were hanged for the murder of black people. This is in 1838 now There were many instances where Justice was not done but The fact that on occasions justice was done I think is something that should be weighed in the scales when we are Attempting to judge those days Did those people? Operate in accordance with the best standards of their time Some didn't many did And then you get to the 1960s when the Constitution is changed to give full aboriginal Rights and to count them in the census for elections, and that's the biggest referendum success 91% I mean, it's almost North Korea. Yeah in the numbers who vote in favor and and Accompanying that was another proposal that was heavily defeated, but but let's let's go back almost a century earlier Australia was a convict colony that rapidly developed the most liberal Governance on the planet by the end of the 1850s Almost every male in the colonies could vote in the newly self-government governed colonies by the 1890s in South Australia People of all races and both sexes could not just vote but run for office Now at least as far as aboriginal people were concerned There was a bit of backsliding after the formation of the new Commonwealth. You're right but as long as Voting was possible in Australia at least some aboriginal people were voting and Certainly as you say the 1966 1967 referendum was an extraordinary an extraordinary Declaration by the Australian people that as far as they were concerned There was full absolute and total equality of everyone in this country Regardless of race. I was very interested in the message from this book that Like America, but actually perhaps rather better than America Australia took what was seen as British freedoms and extended them So you have from very early on this spread of democracy this belief in rights and Bligh as governor The Bligh of the bounty unable to be a very strict disciplinarian governor Indeed, there's a coup against him and this is very important to the Australian image of herself as a country Correct Jacob, but let's also give credit to the authorities in London They did not want a repeat in the antipodes of what had happened on the other side of the North of land at the Atlantic They were adamant from the beginning that the Australian colonies were not to be treated in ways which led to the kind of difficulty which produced the American War of Independence and so Almost as soon as the demand for self-government arose in New South Wales It was granted by London and in the 1820s, for instance, the colonial press was freer Than the press in London itself. I remember rightly you point out that in 1840 It was quite wrong to give a Dominion independence and by 1846. It was absolutely essential I think that was Canada rather than Australia, but completely right to Australia completely correct And this is a thoroughgoing democracy like Switzerland referendums are very important so in 1917 Conscriptions introduced in UK around then Australia has a referendum on conscription in the middle of a war and votes it down twice twice again, I suppose a sign of the egalitarian and democratic temper of of our country Australians were not shot for desertion in the First World War unlike Britain's in the prison camps of Southeast Asia in the Second World War Australian officers and men As far as was humanly possible would mess together rather than maintaining class distinctions in adversity, which Was sometimes true of of the British prisoners They're one of the drawbacks to very widespread democracy And it seems to quite like the big state So you get the big state during the First World War and you don't get rid of it in the 1920s Indeed, you have a very similar experience to what's going on in Britain You have lots of money being spent in the 1920s and a reckoning in the 1930s when you have huge cuts to benefits and pensions and so on You find unlike in the United States Proper economics works something you find again in the 1980s. The New Deal in America has been Romanticized by history. In fact America's recovery from the Great Depression Was much slower than the recovery of Australia and Britain both of which pursued orthodox economic remedies Reduce government spending Get the books in order get your house in order and let if you like the natural Exuberance of men and women making the most of things then work. It's work. It's magic Whereas in the United States there were vast programs of public works vast expenditures and vast Taxations throughout the 1930s I mean America really only recovered from the Great Depression after the start of the of the Second World War whereas by the mid to late 30s Britain and Australia They hadn't lost the memory as it were but they'd certainly substantially recovered economically and and look obviously, we're now moving from the realm of history into into politics and economics, but It is just an iron law of human existence that if you tax more you'll get less effort if you regulate more you'll get less activity and If you spend more on things which aren't if you like exclusively the the province of government you will kill initiative The Second World War Australia declares war independently this time first world war it's declared that's not actually is that not true No, sir. Robert Menzies in September of 1939 He he addressed the nation and he said is it is my melancholy duty to inform you that in consequence of Germany's persistence in aggression Great Britain has declared war upon her and as a result Australia is also at war Now we then made a formal declaration of war in 1942 under a different government, but nevertheless it was just taken for granted because of the end of it because of the indivisible crown as it was okay, but you've seen Because of the statute of Westminster The statute of Westminster was not ratified in Australia until 1942. Oh, okay. Oh, that's very Thanks. I've always thought that it was Voluntary for Australia in 19 Canada and South Africa made their own declarations of war But you did it as a concert as a consequence Um, but the war changed the relationship with Britain didn't it after the war? America becomes much more important the arrival of MacArthur to help Australia defend itself Britain fall of Singapore and so on begins to be less important and that's Essential to the post-war development of Australia to the sort of high point or low point of Keating who is very hostile to any thought of you having anything to do with the UK at all Yes, and no Jacob there is no doubt that in Understandable alarm at the advance of Japanese forces down the Malay Peninsula The then Prime Minister John Curtin published his famous look to America statement free of any pangs or inhibitions as to our traditional kinship with the United Kingdom, but Curtin came to Britain in 1944 he made a series of what can only be described as a Very Imperial speeches and observations He certainly had no desire to terminate the deep links between Australia and And Great Britain and indeed it was the Chifley government that appointed the Duke of Gloucester The King's brother to be governor-general Our only royal governor-general thus far So look Yes in the post-war world America bulked larger in our Strategic partnerships, but let's not forget Australia sent troops to Malaya and Borneo as part of the Malayan emergency And the difficulties with the then Indonesian regime Australia joined Britain did we both have joined the United States in the various Middle-eastern conflicts up until the most recent one The orcas agreement in which Australia will ultimately get a British designed Nuclear submarine is a sign of the ongoing Importance of the relationship between Australia and Britain and I Was pleased as a member of the British Board of Trade to help bring about the recent free trade deal between Post brexit Britain and Australia, which is one of the very best free trade deals in the world I certainly agree with that and orcas I know you wanted when you were Prime Minister and it took a few years longer, but I only put one bookmark in here It's not because I've any read half your book, but it's because talking of orcas and defense. You've got a Paragraph on the lack of preparedness in 1939 that Militia fell by from 50,000 to 30,000 defense spending halved and on it goes It sounds a bit like contemporary, but that's what I wanted to ask you about Yes that the world seems much less well prepared the dangers it now faces How well prepared do you think Australia is at the moment? And what do you think policy should be? Well in common with Britain and most of continental Europe We have been To use a phrase sleepwalking through Lotus land for a long time now most of the West America to a lesser extent but all of the West to some extent Europe to a great extent Decided that history really had ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall that liberal Capitalism had if you like triumphed the world over The truth is that the apocalyptic Islamists in Tehran never gave up their dreams of a global caliphate the militarists in Moscow never gave up their dreams of restoring the Russia of Peter the Great and of course the Communists in Beijing have never made a secret of their ambition to be the world's hegemonic power by mid-century, so I think we were entitled to be optimistic about the future Until maybe a decade back, but certainly for the last few years We have been living in a fool's paradise We are belatedly Strengthening our armed forces or at least talking about strengthening our armed forces But there's been a lot much a lot more talk than action in Australia as in Britain I think these are perilous times and if the best countries and the best societies that the world has yet seen to To survive let alone to flourish I think we have to look to our strength and augment it as rapidly as possible, and I hope orcas is part of that One thing I have to ask you about is of course immigration Australia country of immigration the numbers very large There was for a long time a white Australia Policy that began to come unstuck after the Second World War as you as you explain But you I think can take the credit for being the first leader of a western country not of course that Australia's Geographically in the West but nonetheless counts as a western country to stop mass illegal migration How important was that to? Australia's view of itself and to creating harmony within a population of immigrants Thank you Jacob. It's a very important issue Yes We are an immigrant country but the immigrants have got to come the right way not the wrong way and It's very important once the immigrants are here that they are Absolutely expected to join Team Australia as opposed simply to living in Hotel Australia Now the problem in Britain is that illegal migration is exploding Legal migration is far too high and in Britain as elsewhere, there's not enough emphasis on Unity and there's too much stress on Diversity now obviously migrants from different cultures bring their own heritage But the whole point of coming to a country like Britain or Australia Is to become British or to become Australian as quickly as possible now, there are many fragrant examples of people who Have done that. I mean Kemi Badenoch Rishi Sunak are obviously The products of recent immigration to bring on a move from the exact exactly exactly right and plainly These are deeply patriotic deeply committed Britain's and there are similar examples In Australia, but at the same time you've got For instance the perpetrators of the recent Bondi massacre one of whom came to Australia almost 30 years ago and Plainly never integrated let alone assimilated and then his Australian born son who plainly was not exactly immersed in the typically genial Australian Live and let live approach to life. So when you're playing cricket, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but Something has gone seriously wrong when people can live in a decent peaceful fair and free society and yet harbor The sort of hatreds that drive mass terrorism. I know but you say it about the Aboriginal population, but I assume the same applies To immigrant communities you've talked about integration not assimilation being a more favorable policy So people can maintain their own religions But instead we've had multiculturalism where there's been no sense of any hierarchy of civilization the problem with multiculturalism is that It officially encourages people to Keep at arm's length from the host culture now In that sense, there's been Quite a difference between the early post-war migration to Australia and the more recent migration The vast majority of migrants at both periods just wanted to become Australian as quickly as possible because let's face it they have Chosen Australia that went there. The only involuntary migrants were the convicts I mean everyone who has come to Australia in recent times has made a conscious choice to come to Australia in the post-war period official policy was To integrate from day one and to assimilate as fast as you could That's why we kept referring to the migrants as new Australians Because that's what we wanted them to be as Australian as possible as quickly as possible Then under this I think Very misguided at times even pernicious doctrine of multiculturalism. There's been this notion that our You know, our only unity is our diversity This vacuous concept that diversity is somehow Strength. Well, okay intellectual diversity is not a bad thing a Degree of cultural diversity is okay if we're learning from each other but If what it means is that we stay in our own enclaves Never really develop that sense of shared history of shared interests of shared values well, it's a huge problem and and and this is something which All of the Anglosphere countries which remain so attractive to migrants from all over the world all of the Anglosphere countries But particularly Britain and Australia have to come to grips with very well. Thank you that I want to ask you one last point Will you keep your beautiful flag as far as I'm concerned? We will keep our flag and we'll we will keep the crown forever because these are key elements in our history our present and We should build our future On what's best in our past and present Tony. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jacob