Reflecting on Edmund Burke and Australia’s Liberal Party

The Hon Tony Abbott MP was prime minister of Australia from September 2013 to September 2015. In Damien Freeman’s Abbott’s Right he is seen as a conservative in the tradition of Edmund Burke and a leader within the Liberal Party of Australia who defined anew the conservative stream in its ranks.  As the Coalition government of Malcolm Turnbull faced challenges from right of centre smaller parties, Tony Abbott addressed The Sydney Institute on Wednesday 4 October 2017 to reflect on Damien Freeman’s analysis of Australia’s conservative forces. The paper which follows is an edited transcript of Tony Abbott’s remarks.

REFLECTING ON EDMUND BURKE AND AUSTRALIA’S LIBERAL PARTY

TONY ABBOTT

Thanks very much Gerard, it’s wonderful to be here. My task tonight, first and foremost, is to thank Damien for writing this splendid book. Because I think he has done us all a very valuable service. To give the first account of Australian conservatism from Menzies to Abbott.

For many years, conservatism, at least in this country, has been the political tendency which dare not speak its name. The first use that I have been able to come across of the term “conservative” in Australia, other than as a term of abuse, was in fact a 1981 speech my Malcolm Fraser to the South Australian Liberal Party which we think was largely drafted by the great professor David Kemp.

Fraser talks approvingly of a government which is in an important sense conservative. To maintain the framework of order and tradition, which is necessary for freedom to live, is a conservative position. So, this is the first time, 1981, that the term conservative has been used by anyone of great political standing in our country that I have been able to come across. It was of course, John Winston Howard, who frequently used the term “conservative”. He initially described himself as a Burkean conservative but he also described himself as a Burkean liberal because while Burke is the father of modern political conservatism, he was in fact a Whig or a Liberal in the context of those times.

So little has been written about conservatism in Australia. If there is one fact which demonstrates the anti-conservative cast of our universities, in particular our political science departments, it’s the fact that none of the hundreds if not thousands of academics writing about politics in this country, until Damien Freeman, has thought to write about conservatism. Indeed, prior to Damien’s book, the most elaborate description of conservatism that I have come across was in fact a chapter in my own book Battle Lines, which is worth referring to this evening.

As we are talking about Burke, let me mention that Burke was a devotee of what he called a “manly, moral and well regulated liberty”. He wrote:

The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may soon be turned into complaints.

So liberty, yes, but liberty in context. And he went on to say in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, 

I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with the solidity for property; with peace in order; with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things to; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit while it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. 

So freedom is incredibly important. But it’s not the only thing. And it has to exist in a context if it is to be real.

Damien’s is the first book dealing specifically with Australian conservatism and I would express my expectation that as such, it should be in every school and municipal library, and it must be in every university library, certainly it must be in every school of government library, in every faculty of political science library.

Tonight, I don’t just want to talk about Damien’s book. I also want to make two points about conservatism in Australian today. The first point to make is that while the Liberal Party is not just a conservative party, the Liberal Party is the custodian of both the liberal and the conservative traditions in this party. It is the party of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, as well as the party of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. We’re not just a conservative party, but we are the party for conservatives. If you look at the signature policies of the current government – border security, budget repair, much better infrastructure and trade on better terms for Australian exporters – there is much for conservatives to cheer.

I’ve often said this of our party, as liberals we support lower taxes, smaller government and greater freedom. As conservatives, we support the family, small business and values and institutions which have stood the test of time. But what I say, most of all about the Liberal Party, is that we are the patriotic party. We want a strong Australia. And we are, I believe, better placed than any other party to speak for the whole country because we don’t belong, like our principal rival, to any particular section of it.

I should also say that the Liberal Party is the only party on the conservative side of politics that is a party of government and not simply one of grievance. Which brings me to my second point. We do need a degree of unity on the conservative side of politics if we are to win the next election and to avoid what I believe would be the worst Labor government in Australia’s history. We know already what the next Labor government would look like. There will be a hundred billion dollars of extra taxes, the unions will run our economy and the Greens will run our society.

It might be hard to make friends with the leadership of the other parties on the conservative side because, inevitably, whether it be Cory Bernadi’s Australian Conservatives, or Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, they are our political competitors. They are competing for the same votes that we are seeking. But we do have to make friends with their voters. And if we can’t make friends with their voters it will be very hard to win. That is the challenge. Which the government is currently grappling with.

As Gerard pointed out, I’ve written quite a lengthy afterword, or postscript, to Damien’s book. I say in that afterword that conservatives are down to earth people that want to make the best of things. But wanting to make the best of things implies a set of values and beliefs against which everything can be judged. That’s the essence of conservatism. Practical action, driven by the right cast of mind. Or my own favourite tagline for conservatism, pragmatism based on values.

I conclude in my contribution to Damien’s book that there’s no doubt that freedom is at the heart of contemporary Australian conservatism. Still, for conservatives, it is a lived experience of freedom. And an awareness of the context and order in which freedom comes about, rather than an inviolable principle and starting point from which all else logically flows.

My instinct has always been for the personal over the collectivist or corporatist. For informal action over the processes of government. For the common sense of the plain man over officialdom’s rules. For freedom over regulation and for what’s tried and true over what might just seem like a good idea at one particular time. Still, context is nearly everything. And what matters is getting the best possible result. That, in any event, is how I have tried to approach the task of government.

Now, is that Burkean conservatism? Buy the book and be the judge.