What’s Right? – Tony Abbott

Issue 3 | 12 August 2009

The Hon Tony Abbott is the Federal Member for Warringah and Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. He served in Cabinet during the Howard government as Minister for Employment and Minister for Health and Ageing. He is a staunch supporter of constitutional monarchy and has written two books on the subject and was Executive Director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy prior to his entry into Parliament. When Tony Abbott addressed The Sydney Institute on 12 August 2009, Newspoll had just announced that the Opposition trailed the Government 57-43, with Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull’s satisfaction down to 26%. At a time when the Liberal Party is being forced to re-evaluate their platform, Tony Abbott spoke to the Institute about the vitality of modern, adaptive conservatism and his latest book, Battelines.

What’s Right?

Tony Abbott

For a long time in Australia, conservatism was the political orientation that dared not speak its name. Conservatism was thought to mean living in the past, which is hardly calculated to appeal in a country whose very coat of arms is said to feature animals incapable of going backwards. In fact, almost everyone has some conservative instincts. Respect for parents, concern for the community, interest in history and protecting the environment, to give just a few examples, are manifestations of the conservative instinct. To the extent that people respect that which has shaped them and wish to discern what’s best in the world and to preserve it, they are being conservative.

Prime Minister Rudd’s eagerness to describe himself as a “conservative”, even if only an economic one, suggests that there might be more political mileage in the term than genuine conservatives sometimes think. There is a difference, of course, between approaching something in a conservative way and voting conservative. The former is a disposition that can be brought to almost anything. The latter is support for a particular political programme. Still, the fact that the conservative instinct is almost universal, at least on some matters, gives a conservative political party at least as much potential appeal as parties dedicated to upholding values that are also widely held but often contentious in their application, such as freedom or fairness.

Unlike liberalism or socialism, conservatism does not start with a particular principle and construct an ideology based on that one insight or preference. Conservatism starts with an appreciation of what is and what has been and tries to discern the good from patterns of conduct. Conservatism prefers facts to theory; practical demonstration to metaphysical abstraction; what works to what’s in the mind’s eye. To a conservative, intuition is as important as reasoning; instinct as important as intellect. A way of life has far more demonstrative power to a conservative than a brilliant argument. Conservatives are not optimists or pessimists but realists. They have a proper appreciation of the strengths of society as well as its individual and collective capacity for folly. They have an understanding of the need to get things right but also an appreciation of how easily this can go wrong. Conservatism, at least as successfully practised, is a genial, pragmatic creed based on respect for that which has stood the test of time. As John Howard once quipped, a conservative is someone who does not think he’s morally superior to his grandfather.

The conservative appreciates that judgment is essentially provisional, wisdom relative, and success transient. That’s why conservatives are often reluctant to pick fights although doughty warriors once battle has been joined. They are better suited to defending barricades than to storming them. In this sense, conservatism may be less immediately exhilarating than other political positions but it’s not less deeply felt. It should be less self-righteous but it’s no less concerned with ethical values and no less determined to do the right as conservatives are given to understand it.

In Australia, as Howard frequently pointed out, the Liberal Party is the guardian of both the liberal and the conservative traditions. Far from being an electoral impediment, the Liberal Party’s conservatism should enable it to appeal to people who might instinctively mistrust a party whose commitment to freedom was less tempered by respect for the social fabric. My book, Battlelines, argues that there has always been a strong conservative tendency within the Liberal Party and that liberalism and conservatism have much in common, at least in English-speaking societies. Two further points should be stressed: first, that conservatism is central to the Liberal Party’s electoral success; and second, that political conservatism is more a set of values than a systematic ideology. To a conservative, the context of a policy is as relevant as its content. A politically successful conservative is one who can demonstrate that particular existing policies fail the common sense test and then propose alternatives that pass it.

Sir Robert Menzies is often quoted as authority for the proposition that the Liberal Party is not, never has been and should not become conservative. In an oft-quoted passage from Afternoon Light, Menzies says that “we took the name ‘Liberal’ because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary, but believing in the individual, his rights and his enterprise”. In the very next sentence, though, he went on to differentiate his sense of what “liberal” means from that in America where, he says, “the word ‘liberal’ is used in contra-distinction to ‘conservative'”. Even though Menzies himself never seems to have used the term “conservative” to describe the party he formed, he clearly did not intend it to be anti-conservative in the sense that an American “liberal” typically is.

There is little doubt about the presence of a strong conservative streak in Menzies’ own political character. He stressed the “creative genius of the individual” but also the need for the individual to be “assisted and sometimes controlled by the government in the general social interest”. It was the responsible, not the irresponsible individual, said Menzies, who is the “real basis of a truly free society”. Likewise, he believed in a “free and encouraged private enterprise” but not “irresponsible enterprise”. In his famous Forgotten People radio broadcasts, Menzies spoke of “homes spiritual” as well as “homes material”. In his 1949 election launch, he asked: “Are we for the socialist state… or are we for the ancient British faith that governments are the servants of the people, a faith that has given fire and quality and direction to the whole of our history for 600 years.” On such evidence, the former journalist, Hewson biographer, and Liberal staffer, Norman Abjorensen, recently characterised Menzies as a “consensual conservative”, at least as a means of distinguishing him from John Howard.

The original Australian Liberal Party was the 1909 fusion of Alfred Deakin’s “liberal” protectionists with George Reid’s “conservative” free traders. Deakin approvingly described an Australian liberal as “one who favours state interference with liberty and industry at the pleasure and in the interest of the majority”; a sentiment that might still characterise American “liberals” but in this country is more likely to be described as populist, traditionalist, or perhaps even reactionary. By contrast, Reid approvingly described an Australian conservative as one who supports “allowing the genius for competition, for excelling, for acquiring to reach its utmost altitude consistent with the due rights of others”; similarly, a sentiment that would now seem more liberal than conservative. Even then, it seems, the Australian Liberal Party was, in Howard’s stock phrase, a “broad church”.

In a fine speech delivered to the South Australian Liberal Party in 1980, Malcolm Fraser explored the necessary relationship that liberalism had with conservatism as well as the differences between them. “Once liberal institutions are installed in a society, a government which wishes to preserve them must be in some sense conservative” he said. Liberalism, he went on, “always emphasises the freedom of the individual and the absence of restraint… Conservatism, on the other hand, stresses the need for a framework of stability, continuity and order not only as something desirable in itself but as a necessary condition for a free society”. Fraser concluded that “the art of… finding that creative balance between… freedom and… continuity, which alone allows a society to advance, is the true art of government in a country like ours”. In acknowledging the debt that liberalism owes to conservatism, as well as the tension that sometimes exists between them, Fraser grasped a truth which has eluded many distinguished thinkers.

Liberals, Australian ones at least, are inclined to stress freedom as an end in itself. Conservatives, English-speaking ones at least, are inclined to regard freedom as an important element in a decent and humane society. Liberals tend to be impatient with rules. Conservatives think that a framework of rules is necessary if freedom is to be realised. Liberals tend to be social improvers. Conservatives normally think that change for the better is possible and sometimes necessary but that radical change mostly ends in tears. Although particular liberals may have very little in common with particular conservatives, there is much overlap between their broad positions. Liberals’ instinctive preference for freedom generally complements conservatives’ deep-seated instinct for what works. “Social conscience” liberals have as many reservations about deregulated markets as “social fabric” conservatives. On the other hand, after discussing with him his concept of political economy, Adam Smith, the wellspring of liberal economics, declared of Edmund Burke, the founder of modern political conservatism, that he “was the only man who….thought on these topics exactly as (I) did”.

A “statement of conservatism” posted on the “Centreright” website on December 30 last year, includes these key propositions: “No insignificant person has ever been born”, “Economic liberalism needs social conservatism and vice versa”, “Government should be as small as possible but as large as necessary”, “Politics is less important than ideas, culture and religion”, “Free enterprise and big business are not the same”, “There is such a thing as society, it’s just not the state”, “Decision-making powers should be as close as possible to those affected by those decisions”, “Private ownership is nearly always preferable to common ownership”, “Love of country is fundamental to all conservatism”, “Private choices have public consequences” and “Policy makers have an interest in private choices at least so long as they have consequences for taxpayers”. It’s worth stressing that few, if any, of these sentiments would be objectionable to most people who regard themselves as on the “liberal” wing of the Australian Liberal Party.

John Howard has often described himself as a “Burkean conservative” (for instance, at the National Press Club, in 2002). Revealingly, he has also referred to himself as a “Burkean liberal” (in a 1997 address to the Tasmanian state council of the Liberal Party). This was quite appropriate as the Whig statesman would have perfectly understood Tennyson’s paradox of “freedom broadening slowly down from precedent to precedent”. On at least two occasions, Howard invoked Burke’s lovely metaphor of society as a “partnership between the living, the dead and the yet unborn”. He also referred to Burke’s notion of the “little platoons” which make up the social fabric of functioning civil societies.

In the wake of an election defeat, political parties invariably argue over what it is that they should really stand for. This is no bad thing. Internal debate is more a sign of life than division. To the extent, however, that it boils down to an argument about labels, about the party becoming more “conservative” versus more “liberal”, it tends to be the politicians’ version of debating how many angels can sit on the head of a pin. Voters aren’t really interested in a party’s ideology. They are interested in its policies; in particular, whether its policies are plausible solutions to real problems. They care much less about a party’s values (important though these are) than they do about their own and whether a party’s policies reflect them.

Having an internal fight over a party’s philosophical direction just alienates voters. Winning such a fight alienates even more: namely all those who identify with the losing side. As Labor’s pragmatists are said to advise their more ideologically committed comrades: “only the impotent are pure”. Any political party aspiring to be ideologically pure is not likely to win government. To form a government, parties need to assemble coalitions of voters. This is why the Liberal Party does best when it appeals to voters’ conservative instincts as well as to their liberal ones. It maximises the pool of potential supporters.

The Liberals won the 1996 election because they weren’t the Keating government. After that, the difference between winning and losing was the support of the Howard battlers. These might be characterised as conservative workers who liked the former prime minister’s stance on issues such as work for the dole, border protection and family values and who also thought that he would protect them from the excesses of free-market capitalism. They were the people who wouldn’t vote for John Hewson despite the “it’s time” factor that had already been working against the Keating government even in 1993. With longevity a big problem, these voters largely deserted the Howard government in 2007 when the ACTU’s advertising campaign persuaded them that Work Choices wasn’t fair. Prior to Work Choices, Howard had tempered his “liberal” concern to deregulate the labour market with his “conservative” concern to preserve the social fabric. Looked at in this way, the electorally disastrous removal of the “no disadvantage” test suggests that the Liberal Party’s conservative instincts are just as important to its success as its liberal, free market ones.

Conservatives’ instinctive reaction to change is to say “no” but it can’t always be their considered position. As Burke said, a state without the means of change is without the means of its own preservation. “In a progressive country”, said Benjamin Disraeli, the most iconic 19^th century British conservative, “change is constant and the question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people”. The challenge for modern Australian conservatives is not to identify the changes they oppose but to formulate the changes they support. The heart of Battlelines is the conservative case for changes which might otherwise be thought of as going against the conservative grain.

Australian conservatives have typically made a virtue of our federal system of government. The states, it’s thought, can act as a break on the arrogance of the national government. As well, they can deliver services that are “closer to the people” than those delivered by a more “remote” government in Canberra. As anyone studying, to take just one example, the history of water management in the Murray-Darling basin would have to concede, the states are far more often a handbrake on good government than they are a bulwark against potential dictatorship. Search as one might, it’s very hard to find the examples of bad Commonwealth policy blocked by the states that would make the “states protect our freedom” argument more plausible. Similarly, at least since Queensland abolished death duties in the 1970s, there are no readily discernible examples of good policy adopted by one state and then copied by the others that would render plausible the argument that “states are a laboratory for policy change”.

Anyone comparing Commonwealth health programmes (such as Medicare and the PBS delivered by private doctors and pharmacists) with state ones (such as public hospitals run by giant bureaucracies) would have to conclude that Canberra understands the subsidiarity principle far better than the states. The states might be closer to the people in federalist theory but that’s rarely evidenced by responsive service delivery. In theologising about the states, conservatives lapse into the error more often found in other doctrines of preferring theory over practice. Addressing requests that the Commonwealth take over public hospitals, John Howard made the perfectly valid point that Canberra bureaucrats would be no better at running a hospital than state ones. Unfortunately, he neglected to observe that Canberra bureaucrats would no more try to run public hospitals than they do nursing homes which are Commonwealth funded and regulated but privately run.

Australian conservatives’ attachment to the states seems a distant echo of the arguments used by the South in pre-Civil War America rather than a reflection of any actual purpose that the states currently serve. It’s a sharp contrast with the attitude of conservatives at Westminster who have never feared for British democracy despite the absence of states and who almost universally opposed the creation of regional parliaments for Scotland and Wales on the grounds that it would turn government into a three-legged race. Our own federation fathers were quite unsentimental about the states. None of them had thought that a third level of government, pre-federation, needed to be imported into the governance of the individual colonies to prevent tyranny. Far from being a manifestation of the federation fathers’ philosophical commitment, the states exist as the unavoidable price of turning six colonies into one country. If the federation fathers had expected to set in concrete the then divisions of responsibilities between the states and the fledgling national government, they would hardly have provided for mechanisms to change them.

Perhaps the most universally applauded Howard government policy initiative was the emergency intervention into the remote townships of the Northern Territory. The Little Children are Sacred report was by no means the first detailing the breakdown of civil society in remote areas. It was, though, the first report dealing exclusively with a Territory. Under the Constitution, the Commonwealth government has authority over the Territories that it lacks over the states. The Territories are subordinate legislatures in a way that the states are not. This meant that the Commonwealth could launch and sustain an intervention in the Territory that would have been impossible in any of the states. It’s noteworthy that when the former minister, Mal Brough, offered to fund an intervention in the Kimberley, which had social problems of equal magnitude, the West Australian government refused.

My proposal in Battlelines, is not to abolish the states but a referendum to give the national parliament the same authority over them that it’s long had over the territories. It’s not a bid for more power to Canberra. Rather, it’s an attempt to establish clear lines of accountability and responsibility. If realised, the premiers would at last justly be able to blame the Prime Minister when things go badly wrong because the national government would finally be in charge. It would give the national government the legal authority needed to match the financial and political authority it has long possessed. Because it’s no more than the minimum needed to tackle the dog’s breakfast of divided responsibilities that’s made the federation dysfunctional, it could more properly be described as an exercise in conservative incrementalism than a radical change.

Similarly, conservatives have had reservations about paid maternity leave schemes because, they think, mothers’ primary responsibility is to their children. The further argument that paid maternity leave (but not sick leave, holiday pay or compulsory superannuation levies) would be an intolerable burden on small business has helped to cast, I suspect, a “blokey” pall over conservatism. Perhaps more than anything else, this suggestion that mothers in the paid workforce might be shirking their real responsibilities could explain why there are so few outspoken conservative women. Only a man could think that working might reduce a mother’s responsibilities rather than add to them. In any event, the absence of a national paid maternity leave scheme has certainly not ensured that the vast majority of women remain primarily homemakers. Instead, it’s meant that many have not had the children that they might have had but for the lack of better financial support. Far from conceding too much to feminism, a paid maternity leave scheme would make it easier for more women to choose the most traditional role of all.

The Commander-in-Chief of the British army over nearly half of the 19^th century, the Duke of Cambridge, a legendarily crusty Tory, once said that he was not against change. “I am in favour of change in the right circumstances. And those circumstances are when it can no longer be resisted”. Thinking in these terms, change has become irresistible once it’s clear that conservative values are better realised by changing things than by preserving them. For me, experience in office has gradually turned a “philosophical federalist” into a “pragmatic nationalist”. Likewise, my attitude to maternity leave has changed through familiarity with women juggling the overwhelming impulse to be effective mothers against the desire to make their mark in other ways too. It dawned on me that, as a means of encouraging traditional roles, denying adequate maternity provision was entirely counterproductive.

Conservatives change by working out what is a value and what is a mere prejudice. Not even the most reactionary conservative would today defend, for instance, the right to own slaves yet, in some circles and in some places that was once thought to be a conservative position. Today, of course, conservatives are glad to claim Wilberforce and Lincoln as part of their heritage. It’s not so long since conservatives were defending legal discrimination against homosexuals yet that, too, has rightly disappeared from the conservative canon. It’s only by working out what should change that we are able to keep that which matters more. In response to serious problems, conservatives need to argue a case for change. Alternatively, they have to mount an argument that the problem is more apparent than real. Perhaps confused lines of accountability and responsibility between different levels of government and haphazard arrangements to support mothers in the workforce are the best that can be hoped for in this vale of tears. I suspect, though, that the case for masterly inactivity on these issues would not be very convincing even to conservatives of the most incorrigible type.