Tony Abbott's recent book Battlelines articulates his vision for Australia (including a radical rethink of federalism) while expanding on the nature of conservatism. Abbott, the Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, has previously characterised Battlelines as both 'a personal book' and an exploration of 'some of the policy positions that a properly liberal conservative political position might produce'.
The book has been greeted with waves of warm approval by columnists at The Australian, in contrast to the outright hostility with which the newspaper greeted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's essays in The Monthly. A recent editorial in The Australian regretted that 'Australian conservatives have conceded the intellectual high ground to Labor, which from Gough Whitlam on has presented itself as the party of ideas'.
This viewpoint was also aired by international affairs columnist Greg Sheridan shortly after the 2007 election, when he wrote: 'It is the great strength of Labor that it has so often studied and celebrated its own history, and indeed imposed its interpretation on the nation as the generally accepted version of history itself.'
The statements cited above reveal two common assumptions: that Australian history is shaped according to the dictates of the Labor Party, and that public debate around ideas of substance is similarly dominated by the left. These assumptions need to be examined.
The concept that those on the right in Australian politics are excluded from the national conversation is profoundly at odds with reality. That the myth of left-wing hegemony is so commonly accepted illustrates the effectiveness of the 'culture wars' in which the former Howard Government was an enthusiastic participant.
The attacks by Howard and his Ministers on 'political correctness' and on 'the chattering classes' echoed the strategy adopted by the Republicans in America over the last two decades. In What's The Matter with America?, the American journalist and historian Thomas Frank demonstrated the effectiveness of the Republican war on the 'elites' of the 'liberal media' in cementing the perception that conservatives were the true underdogs.
In fact, the Liberal Party and its supporters have arguably been far more astute than the ALP in nurturing academics and research fellows sympathetic to the 'liberal conservative' cause. As a result, conservatives can draw on a plethora of high-profile think-tanks, including the Centre for Independent Studies and The Sydney Institute, to research and enunciate their ideas.
The apparent desire of Australian conservatives to assume the mantle of the underdog also belies the past successes of the Liberal Party. Many of the books by Labor politicians — from Gough Whitlam's The Truth of the Matter to Mark Latham's From the Suburbs and Lindsay Tanner's Crowded Lives — were written during long periods in Opposition.
Conservative political parties governed Australia at a federal level for the majority of the 20th century. During this time, successive prime ministers — including Menzies, Holt, Gorton, McMahon, Fraser and Howard — were able not merely to put forward ideas or write narratives, but to implement policy. To make a fairly obvious point, it is self-indulgent to complain about not writing history when one is able instead to make it.
Given the Howard Government's denigration of Australian universities and its crippling cuts to their funding, too, it is surprising to learn that the modern Liberal Party concerns itself with history. As a humanities subject, history is not directly vocational. Nor is it marketable. Funding the study of history at a university level was not a priority of the former Liberal government.
Finally, history is by its nature contested. Although political parties will always proclaim the wisdom of its leaders and programs, good history is not written to advance the fortunes of a political party or to grind an ideological axe. John Howard's failure to appreciate this fact contributed to the destructive and farcical 'culture wars' which The Australian, unfortunately, seems keen to sustain.
Sarah Burnside is a solicitor with an interest in history, politics, native title and nationalism. She works at the Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation (YMAC), which represents native title claim groups in the Murchison, Gascoyne and Pilbara regions of Western Australia. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of YMAC.