Launch of Santamaria – A Most Unusual Man

The Hon Tony Abbott MP, Prime Minister of Australia, launched Gerard Henderson’s Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man (MUP) on Thursday 30 July 2015 at the Melbourne offices of Arnold Bloch Leibler. The Prime Minister was introduced by the event’s host, Mark Leibler AC and MUP CEO and Publisher-in-Chief Louise Adler spoke on behalf of MUP. In launching the book, Tony Abbott described B A Santamaria’s life as “a magnificent failure that changed and improved our country and hundreds, if not thousands, of its leading citizens”.

LAUNCH OF SANTAMARIA – A MOST UNUSUAL MAN

TONY ABBOTT

Mark, thank you so much. It is lovely to be here and it’s great to see so many friends of B A Santamaria, and so many people who appreciate the role he played in our public life over so many years. It’s also good to have here today Brian Loughnane, the federal director of the Liberal Party, and Tony Staley, the former federal president of the Liberal Party, another one of my political mentors – so much a political mentor that, in fact, it was Tony who launched the first edition of Battlelines here in Melbourne, some years ago.

We’re here to celebrate a great book. We’re here to celebrate a great life. B A Santamaria has been dead 17 years. He held no public office and claimed to have failed in all his principal endeavours; yet he has spawned a more extensive literature than most prime ministers.

Gerard Henderson’s “life” is the first full biography but Santamaria was the main subject of four earlier books including Gerard’s own Mr Santamaria and the Bishops, on his pivotal role inside the Australian Catholic Church.

Why is this long dead “failure” still fascinating? Why has one of our country’s foremost public intellectuals devoted years to this study? Why, indeed, did the likes of Greg Sheridan and I drive to Melbourne several times in the late 1970s to attend Bob’s conferences? Why did our nation’s leaders regularly seek his counsel, and why was his last visitor the then prime minister himself?

B A Santamaria was, of course, a spellbinding speaker who often held audiences rapt for an hour without a note. It’s hard now to know why the fact that 1976 was the 1500th anniversary of the fall of Rome was so fascinating — but listening to Bob, it was. I can see you heard that speech, Gerard.

In print, he was a powerful and usually consistent polemicist, with a widely read (and even more widely denounced) news magazine that continues to this day; and a column in The Australian that ran for almost 30 years. Perhaps his legendary modesty, as our author suggests, was a little affected. Still, he wasn’t too proud to spend many hours individually mentoring teenagers with promise, and would always take a call from any friend of the Movement.

He may have lost the fight for the soul of the Labor Party in the 1950s. He might have despaired of the direction of the church, despite admiring Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Pell, among many other prelates. He might have privately despised many of Australia’s public figures, including some who had helped him.

Yet if his life was the failure he often protested it was, it was a magnificent failure that changed and improved our country and hundreds, if not thousands, of its leading citizens.

And, of course, he was profoundly right on the big struggle that shaped our times.

When the bullets of the communists hit the statue of Jesus outside the Cathedral of Valladolid, for some it was just lead striking brass – as he famously told the great Melbourne University Spanish Civil War debate – “but for me they were piercing the heart of Christ the King”.

Santamaria and the Movement he helped to inspire and lead, working with Labor’s Industrial Groups, did defeat communism inside Australia’s trade unions. Arguably, this saved Australia from long-term industrial anarchy. Certainly, it saved the Labor Party as a middle-of-the-road, social-democratic party that could sometimes be trusted with government.

After Doc Evatt’s paranoid denunciation, like Moses, Santamaria led his followers out of the Labor Party; and, like Moses, he failed to find the Promised Land. Nevertheless, thanks to Bob Hawke, some eventually went back to Labor and helped to make that government the best Labor government ever.

Thanks to John Howard, some found their way into the Coalition and helped to make that government the best conservative government at least since Robert Menzies.

Santamaria became the extra-parliamentary conservative conscience of both parties, upbraiding Labor for its socialism and the Coalition for its alleged heartlessness — and why not? Political parties, no less than individuals, are often improved when someone they respect calls them to account.

In the first edition of his memoir, contemplating the likely defeat of all his causes, Santamaria observed: in all this, we were but minnows swimming in great and stormy seas; yet even the minnow must do what he can.

Santamaria was a pessimist who never gave up. His life exemplifies the difference you can make, even when you don’t succeed. It demonstrates that a good cause is worth failing for.

Will there be a revival of support for the traditional family? Will there be a restoration of authority and self-confidence within the Christian churches? It’s hard to imagine; but much that’s ridiculed today seemed self-evident a generation ago and what the zeitgeist now condemns it may one day again endorse.

If that day comes, Santamaria will seem more like a prophet than a failure – the Edmund Burke, perhaps, of Australian conservatism. It is impossible to grasp Australian politics over the last 70 years without some appreciation of B A Santamaria.

Gerard Henderson has done signal service in producing this comprehensive and judicious life; and like so many of the best authors, he hasn’t just studied the struggles he’s written about; he’s actually lived them.

That’s what makes this account riveting, as well as interesting.

For me, launching this book is an act of piety towards my tribe. It’s an act of piety towards someone who was for some years almost a father to me. He helped to shape me, he helped to shape us. He was indeed a most unusual man. He had to be, to do what he did.

So, ladies and gentleman, it is a real honour, as well as a pleasure, for me to help launch this fine book.