Men of Letters

The last time I bumped into Tony Abbott was at one of those Spectator lunches put on by Rowan Dean in the Southern Highlands.  As usual, it was an event with wall-to-wall, right-of-centre celebrities, but also (thankfully) open to minor scribblers who had contributed to the magazine and to the endless debates.

It was a memorable occasion, only reduced in the memory by the copious fizz and other beverages on offer to those in attendance.

One thing I do remember is Abbott bumping into me on the floor of the main dining room and greeting me with “I love you”.  I hasten to add, not in a romantic way.  “You always write nice things about me”.

Well, not always, but mostly.  Abbott is an easy man to like, and it was always surprising to me that he was often reviled, certainly during his time in the Parliament.  I won’t go into the insults and almost unending efforts to bring him down, or mention by name those engaged in those efforts.

Abbott was also a man of great political skills.  How often have I written that he is in the top three opposition leaders Australia has had?

Obviously, as a muscular conservative, he was and is much admired by those with similar affection for tradition.  And, of course, hated in equal measure.  I know this is an old story, but the left only ever gets truly fired up against opponents it knows mean what they say and are committed to doing something on the right side of politics.  Catholic.  Traditionalist.  Climate sceptic.  God help us, a faithful friend of George Pell’s, in and out of season.  The ultimate anti-ABC Squad girls.  What isn’t to hate?

It is good to treasure those hated by the progressives.

That Abbott was cut down before he got going (as Prime Minister) in an act of unforgettable bastardry by his own Party has already had much ink spilled in its telling, so there is no need to rehash that here. 

Equally, fitting Abbott into the old debates over best and worst prime ministers is a waste of time.  It is obvious, though, when you look even briefly at the cavalcade of leaders we have had since 2007, that he was the pick of them by a fair stretch.  On character alone.  Just go through the names.  Rudd.  Gillard.  Rudd again.  Turnbull.  Morrison.  Albanese.  Nothing much more need be added.  Each of these has been differently and memorably awful.

But Abbott doesn’t just stand out from this particular pack in a negative way.  (Being less bad than the others).

An old social media mate of mine, Thomas C Reeves, is a prominent American political historian.  Possibly his most famous book was about JFK, a figure, incidentally, for whom I have much admiration.  Along with many others, of course.  Reeves called his book A Question of Character.  It was billed as the work that “finally exploded the Kennedy myth”.  As you might gather, Reeves wasn’t too complimentary to the Camelot man.  He didn’t think much of the President’s character.

Well, no one will ever write such a book about Tony Abbott. 

As a man of principle, a man of education, a man of policy smarts, a man of moral compass, a family man (without creepy skeletons in the cupboard like most of those engaged in Democrat politics in the USA, for example), a generous man of ideas, and an indefatigable contributor to public life, Abbott exudes character.

Having just watched the outstanding Joe Rogan interview with J D Vance, the comparisons with Abbott are obvious, at least to me. 

Not just the Catholicism.  Not just the free-market beliefs tempered by a dose of Compact magazine-like social democracy.  (J D Vance has probably never heard of B A Santamaria or the DLP, but if he had, he might well have found the ideas of each quite familiar and congenial).  But what comes through is authenticity and clear thinking.  Club Sensible, as the late, great Christopher Pearson, a great friend of Abbott’s, used to call it.

Libertarians and supporters of the private sector used to say, contrary to the old argument that if only we had better men and women in politics rather than in business, we would be much better off, that actually it is better to have our best people in business.  Being pro-market, they were longing for the best people to be over there.  A fair enough call.

Well, one might tweak that argument and adapt it to the field of culture and ideas.  Taking as a starting point the well-known adage of the late Andrew Breitbart that “culture is upstream from politics”, it is arguable that in these times of bad yet winning ideas being embedded in the public square, driven by poor education, distraction politics (Vance’s term) and the triumph of hard power, now is the very time to have our A team on the case.  In the realm of ideas.

Maybe men of the moral and intellectual calibre of Tony Abbott are best placed right where he now is.  And with the clout (and global networks) that goes with being an ex-Prime Minister, he has the resources to (God help me, cliché alert) make a difference.  With competitors like Blair, Gordon Brown, Ardern and the Clintons in the post-politics ideas sector, God knows we need good people out there fighting on.

Which brings us, neatly, to Tony Abbott’s post-politics career. 

In office and post-politics, Abbott has always been measured.  He hasn’t indulged in self-aggrandisement.  He has, largely, left the egregious Turnbull alone.  He hasn’t sought public profile.  It has come to him.  He hasn’t cashed in and sold out to the Chinese Communist Party, as Hawke, Andrews, Keating, Carr, Andrew Robb (sadly) and Dastyari all have.  A truly sickening trend in modern Western politics.  Abbott’s bank balance will never match those of these people.  Very good.

And he has resisted the occasional pleas to seek a return to politics.  The admirable John Anderson (inexplicably) tried, briefly, and is now prospering in (again) the world of ideas and of intellectual influence.  No doubt, there is psychic income (an old John Stone phrase) to be had in participating in this world of ideas.  But I am convinced this is not the main motivation, with Abbott.  There is little Davos-style, collective wankerism here.

Abbott has joined the board of the excellent, London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation, he is Chair of the board of Quadrant magazine (with whom I have had a long and fruitful association) and he did some trade related work for the Tories in Britain when in government, through a friendship with Liz Truss, the least awful of the recent Tory PMs and also, like Abbott, a victim of political bastardry inspired, no doubt, by the globalist elites which ended her leadership abruptly and prematurely.

As a gifted writer – and a former journalist – Abbott has the skill set to initiate and publicly propose alternate ideas and courses of action to the seedy and destructive direction of policy travel we are now encountering.

He is busy, then.  Are his efforts fruitful?  We are not well placed to judge, just now.

Abbott, as a Christian thinker, may well be aware of the contributions of two of the greatest Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, Joseph Pieper and Joseph Ratzinger, on the virtue of hope.  Yes, they were talking of hope in its eschatological sense.  But there is also a strain of thinking in the Church (and beyond) that suggests that we should not give up hope in improvement in the earthly realm, either.  That we are not quite yet in the end times.  That might seem a stretch, given imminent nuclear conflict, the almost total obliteration of normalcy, the reign of post-modernist terror, the Muslim global project, seemingly unstoppable Chinese imperialism, globalism run amok, and the rest.

If we give up hope, we are lost.  Is there any alternative then to embrace hope?  And to turn up for work each day.  To firmly believe that truth will out.  Abbott’s continuing career attests to this.  He probably subscribes to the old adage.  That the world is run by those who turn up.  Abbott keeps turning up.

The obvious counter-argument here is, well, in an era of dumb electorates, corrupt governance systems and hard-power politics driven by ideology, not ideas or virtue, what is the net benefit of the efforts of honest toilers (like Abbott) engaged in the battle of ideas?  Pretending that rational argument counts for something.  The risks of endless conservative conferencing, echo chambers and intellectual ghettoes are real.  Why bother?

There is always Ian Plimer’s reply.  It is critical to write the history of our times in OUR words, not those of our opponents, just in case the culture somehow returns to sanity and normality in the future.  It is a record of our times.

There is also the perennial debate.  Is the battle of ideas lost?  Can rational, Enlightenment thinking ever work against the sheer weirdness and darkness of our “debates” these days?  One powerful answer is – now is not the time to vacate the field.  Despite the extremely pessimistic conclusions that we are right to draw about our present predicament.

This also brings into play the role of the populist, alt-right front led by (of course, Trump) and including Vicktor Orban, in politics, and a whole range of players in the politically-adjacent realm.  Think Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson stateside, the likes of Katie Hopkins and Calvin Robinson and Laurence Fox in the Mother Country, Craig Kelly and Gerard Rennick down under, and Mark Steyn globally. 

Abbott has always been a man if the centre and of the mainstream path.  The relationship of alt-figures to mainstream actors like TA is something to be considered, and worked on.

One wonders whether Tony Abbott, in his post-political activities, has engaged with the insurgent, dissident voices on the alt-right, and what role he might see them playing in any cultural/political revival.  The relationship between mainstream, right-of-centre politics and thinking (represented by Abbott and others) and the rebellious, angry, outsider class is possibly the most important practical political issue of our time.  I trust that Tony Abbott thinks about this.  A lot.

We know, in our heart of hearts, that we need both these voices.  Working separately and in tandem.  We can only hope that they keep in contact, build bridges and recognise points of accord and even plot joint strategies.  Tony Abbott is critical resource in the battles in which both streams are engaged.

One more point.

One of the great losses from our now degraded, corporatist universities is the loss of old school “men of letters”.  Scholars who ex-students of a certain age will fondly remember, who shaped their minds and sparked their intellectual curiosity.  Anyone who was an undergraduate before, say 1980, will have his or her personal scholar in mind.  Often, they were and are polymaths.  They still exist; they pop up in odd places.  Not much in academia, alas.  Journalist-scholars like Henry Ergas are rare and hence very welcome contributors to public debates.  They provide intellectual heft.  Gravitas.  Next-level thinking.  An oasis in the intellectual deserts of our times.

Are there scholar-politicians?  And does it make a difference?

Deep and broad thinkers?  With wisdom?  With the independence of mind to question accepted “truths” and narratives?  I cannot think of too many, certainly not in the legacy parties.  We need more, now more than ever.  If any, not merely factional proteges, do emerge, then they do have a role model in Abbott.  The task might be beyond us.  The state of the Liberal Party, with its endless internecine wars and factional tribes, seems not to be not a sign of hope in our times.  Abbott sceptics will see this as a lost battle.  And yet … we hope.

Abbott still sees it as a fight still worth fighting, clearly.  I have no idea whether he is right.  Whether his endless optimism is warranted.

Tony Abbott was and is a man of letters trapped in the body of an ex-politician.  An thinker who happened also to be a political operator.  This is an increasingly rare beast.  A beast to be cherished.  Let us hope that he just keeps turning up for work, still.  And that others see in him hope for the side, and that they follow suit.

I don’t know this, but I suspect that the alt-right, the Covid dissidents, for example, see people like Tony Abbott as captives of mainstream, legacy, BAU politics, and therefore, even, as part of the problem.  That participants in attempted civilised debate with the enemy are doomed to failure.  This is very sad.  I hope they (we) are wrong.

Paul Collits

1 November 2024