Edmund Burke’s Conservatism and Tony Abbott’s Policy Making

In spite of being a Rhodes Scholar, some commentators believed Tony Abbott offered nothing more than three-word slogans. Damien Freeman, writer, lawyer and philosopher, has now published Abbott’s Right. In it, Freeman challenges this perception and presents Abbott as someone who rejoices in the political battle of ideas. To reflect on how his book looks at the contemporary conservative voice championed by Abbott, and fashioned by Sir Robert Menzies, Malcolm Fraser and John Howard, Damien Freeman addressed The Sydney Institute on Wednesday 4 October.

EDMUND BURKE’S CONSERVATISM AND TONY ABBOTT’S POLICY MAKING

DAMIEN FREEMAN

Lots of people seem to have a lot to say at the moment about the problems of politics and why things can’t go on as they currently are.  Every man and his dog have something to say, but one man offers us genuine hope for political life – even though he lived 300 years ago. That man is not Tony Abbott, but Edmund Burke. I am not the first to suggest that he offers us a way forward.  But, in Abbott’s Right, I offer an account of the Burkean approach to public policymaking, its enduring relevance, and Tony Abbott’s credentials as a Burkean policymaker today.

The Liberal Party has governed in coalition at the national level for about four years.  During that time, there has been sustained interest in the party’s approach to public policymaking.  There has been disagreement within the party about how the party should approach public policymaking, and this has continued to attract the interest of commentators, who are fascinated by disagreements within the party about the values and philosophy that it ought to espouse when it comes to public policymaking.

Central to this commentary is the proper place of conservatism within the Liberal Party.  Is it a conservative party or not?  This evening, I should like to reflect on what it means to adopt a conservative approach to public policy.  In Abbott’s Right, I offer one account of what it means to be a conservative public policymaker in Australia today.

For 70 years, the Liberal Party has dominated politics on what has been called the centre-right of the political spectrum. 

As such, it cannot but engage with conservatism.  To be conservative is not necessarily the same as being right-wing, at least insofar as not everyone on the right or centre-right of the political spectrum in Australia would identify as conservative.  This part of the political spectrum is populated by liberals, libertarians, nationalists, perhaps populists, and a range of others as well as conservatives.

Conservatives have a commitment to the values of their tradition.  To understand how they make public policy, you need to situate them within their particular tradition.  In Abbott’s Right, I look to three historians who provide us with a picture of the Australian tradition in the twentieth century: Sir Keith Hancock, Donald Horne, and Paul Kelly.

Hancock provides an extremely important account in his 1930 book, Australia.  It is important for many reasons, one of which is that it provides the basis for both The Lucky Country by Horne and The End of Certainty by Kelly.  The point I should like to focus on is Hancock’s formulation of the settled policy of Australia – what Kelly calls the Australian Settlement.  This is a set of policies introduced by Alfred Deakin, and which received support across the political spectrum of the day.  These were the policies that everyone could agree upon, and which formed the basis for governing Australia for about 80 years. 

They included the White Australia Policy, protection of local industry from foreign competition, centralised wage arbitration, state paternalism, and imperial benevolence (defence guaranteed initially by the Royal Navy and subsequently by a patron United States).  Hancock writes of the Australian values that underpinned this settlement – the fair go and the have-a-go mentality.  He also warned that these settled policies would not work for much longer, as they were out of touch with international reality.

Horne largely takes up Hancock’s analysis, except that he puts a new gloss on it.  Whereas Hancock saw it as an achievement that a young country could achieve so much, (however mindful he remained of the deficiencies of what had been achieved), Horne expresses his disdain both for the Australian Settlement, and for the political class who are unable to develop new and better policy solutions because they lack imagination.  The criticism that is cautiously expressed by Hancock becomes more severe and urgent in Horne’s writing.

By the time Kelly writes, the Australian Settlement has had its day.  The policies that Hancock said would not be able to endure, and which Horne had argued needed urgent revision, were dismantled in the 1980s (and 1990s), and Kelly explains the 1980s as the story of how the Australian Settlement was dismantled and, with it, the certainty that the Settlement policies had provided.  The policies that Australians had – wisely or unwisely – agreed about, they no longer agreed about.

This gives us the context for considering how a commitment to the values of the Australian tradition, and more broadly the Western tradition in which it is anchored, informs the Liberal Party’s approach to public policymaking.  Sir Robert Menzies was the first man to lead the Liberal Party which he founded.  He is one of four men to have led the party for five or more years, and to have led the party out of opposition and into government, the other three being Malcolm Fraser, John Howard, and Tony Abbott.  Abbott’s Right sets up the discussion about conservatism in the Liberal Party today by setting it in the context of the approach taken by each of Menzies, Fraser, and Howard.

There are really two aspects to an account of conservatism within the Liberal Party.  The first aspect is to understand what we mean by being conservative when it comes to public policymaking.  The second aspect is to understand how a commitment to conservatism has been reconciled with a commitment to liberalism within the Liberal Party.  For, make no mistake about it, anyone who knows anything about the Liberal Party knows that its membership has both liberal and conservative intuitions.  It would be silly to pretend otherwise.  So, I shall say something about how the leaders of the party have tried to reconcile these intuitions.

We are familiar with the idea that the Liberal Party of Australia was established by Sir Robert Menzies.  Menzies was a man of both liberal and conservative intuitions, and he called likeminded souls to join him in his new party. 

We do not find him debating the liberal or conservative credentials of the party.  For Menzies, what mattered was that potential supporters understood two things about the new party.  First, it was not a reactionary party.  It acknowledged that things needed to change in Australia, and it supported the right changes.  Secondly, it was anti-socialist.  This was the era in which communism was on the ascent internationally, and it was seen as a serious threat that needed to be tackled both at home and abroad.  Those of either a liberal or a conservative bent shared their opposition to reactionary policies and socialist policies.  Their rationale for opposing reactionary and socialist policymaking might have differed, but they found common cause in their opposition to it.  So, Menzies was able to reconcile the liberal and conservative impulses within the new party by emphasising their shared antagonism to reactionaries and socialists.

Malcolm Fraser was the second man to lead the Liberal Party from opposition to government.  The circumstances in Australia by the beginning of the 1980s were quite different from those in which the party had been conceived in the dying days of the Second World War.  Fraser found himself under pressure to articulate the values and philosophy that underpinned the government’s policymaking, and he did so in a speech to the South Australian Liberal Party.  

The speech demonstrates a shift from the approach of Menzies.  In the new circumstances, it is no longer enough to say that the party is opposed to reactionary and socialist policymaking.  It is now necessary to make the positive case for liberal and conservative policymaking.  So, Fraser presents himself as a liberal; as one committed first and foremost to freedom, and to policies that promote the freedom of the individual.  Having established himself as a liberal, he then presents his conservative credentials.  If one lives in a society that has established liberal institutions, then one ought to be committed to conserving those liberal institutions.  So, he is a conservative, he claims, insofar as he is committed to traditional institutions that espouse and protect liberal values.  He is liberal in principle and conservative as a consequence of his liberal convictions.

The next leader to return the party to government was John Howard.  Howard, too, was keen to assert his credentials as both a liberal and a conservative.  But he conceived of the relationship between liberalism and conservatism within the party in quite a different way.  Rather than claiming that a commitment to conservatism was consequential to a commitment to liberalism, he conceived of the party as a broad church that was the custodian of both the liberal tradition and the conservative tradition in Australia.  He believed that the party drew on both traditions.  In his own case, he asserted that he was an economic liberal and a social conservative.  He does not prioritise either liberalism or conservatism within the party, but confidently asserts that the party’s approach to policymaking draws on insights from both traditions in equal measure.

What this shows, I believe, is that Menzies, Fraser and Howard were all equally aware of the significance of the liberal approach to policymaking and the conservative approach to policymaking for the party, but they articulate their commitment to it in different ways. 

For Menzies, what matters is that liberal and conservative policymakers are equally opposed to reactionary and socialist policymaking.  For Fraser, what matters is that once liberal institutions have been established within a society, a liberal policymaker will adopt a conservative approach in defence of those liberal institutions.  And, for Howard, what matters is that the Liberal Party is the custodian of both the liberal and the conservative traditions in Australia, and is free to draw on both traditions when making policy.

Whichever approach one takes, the assumption is that we know what liberalism and conservatism mean.  So, let me now turn to my account of conservatism, and say something about how I understand it.  My starting point is change.  Change, I believe, is a constant feature of the society that we live in.  I agree with Disraeli that a society that continues to change is a progressive society.  The question for the public policymaker then becomes one of how to manage change.  I should like to identify two approaches to managing change: a managerial approach and an ideological approach.  I shall then suggest that conservatism offers a middle way between these two approaches.

By managerialism, I mean a pragmatic approach to managing change.  Given that circumstances are changing, a manager asks which is the best approach to managing such change.  Here “best” means most sensible or most pragmatic.  The manager is looking for an approach that will get the outcome he desires.  In commerce, this approach can be highly effective.  So, there is a tendency to assume that it can be applied to public policymaking.  The assumption is that a good businessman can be a good statesman.  The problem is, however, that values come into play in public policy in a way that they do not necessarily in commercial activities.  Public policymakers need to have recourse to values, and to prioritise some values over others, in order to manage change within society.  In other words, you can’t just be pragmatic in public life.  You have to have recourse to values.

Two groups of people who understand the importance of values for public policymaking are libertarians and socialists.  Each identifies one cardinal value, which trumps all other values, and each asserts that this value ought to be the value that determines public policy. Libertarians believe that freedom is the cardinal value, and that the state should leave individuals alone to exercise their freedom without interference from the state or anyone else.  Socialists believe that equality is the cardinal value, and that the state should ensure that individuals are all equal.  What libertarians and socialists have in common is a commitment to ideology.  By ideology, I mean the belief that there is some idea or value that is central to being human.  When a political party has an ideology, it believes that this value should be the value that determines public policy.  So, libertarians will say that the government should adopt policies that ensure freedom prevails, whereas socialists will say that the government should adopt policies that ensure that equality prevails.

Now, the difficulty is that sometimes two values will come into conflict.  Sometimes promoting freedom will reduce equality, and sometimes promoting equality will reduce freedom.  If you adopt an ideological approach to policymaking, you have no choice but to grin and bear it.  Your ideological commitments require this of you.  In these circumstances, it might seem that what is required is a more pragmatic approach.  But ideology limits the wriggle room.  There’s less scope for compromise when you are driven by ideological commitments.

Conservatism appreciates the importance of values and the importance of pragmatism.  Conservative policymaking can reconcile a commitment to values with the need to be pragmatic in a way that ideological approaches to policymaking cannot.  The reason for this is that, although conservatives have a commitment to values, they have a non-ideological commitment to values.  Conservatives are committed to the values of their tradition, and to the institutions through which the values of the tradition are manifested.

A tradition may, over the span of centuries, come to embrace a range of values.  It can value freedom and it can value equality.  And if it values freedom, it can value a particular sense of freedom; one that makes sense within the tradition’s specific circumstances.  Likewise, it can value a particular sense of equality.  Tradition is not about abstract ideas.  It is about how those ideas have played out in history.  Edmund Burke points out, for instance, that when the American colonists claimed that their liberty was being infringed before the War of Independence, it was a specifically English liberty that they traced to the Magna Carta.  It wasn’t an abstract idea developed by a philosopher.

And when a tradition, such as ours, comes to embrace notions of liberty and equality, it also has to find ways of reconciling conflicts between these values.  So, it is that institutions emerge through which these values become manifest, and through which conflicts between values are played out and resolved.

If we all belong to a shared tradition, then the values of that tradition are our shared values.  These values, both in their particularity and their breadth belong to all of us, and we can draw on them to shape public policy.  Of course, there will be tensions between them, but the tradition gives us a way of mediating these tensions.  Tradition gives us a way of introducing pragmatism into the mix of policymaking.  It is pragmatism based on values, because it draws on the range of values embraced by the institutions of the tradition.  So, it can overcome the problem of managerialism, which cannot accommodate values in its commitment to pragmatism, and at the same time it can overcome the problem of ideology, because it does not say that there is one fundamental value in terms of which policy must be made.

The greatest exponent of the conservative cast of mind was Edmund Burke, and he provides his most thorough treatment of it in his Reflections on the Revolution in France.  In one sense, this work is a critique of the French Revolution and why Burke was opposed to it.  In another sense, however, it is a statement of the conservative cast of mind which Burke thinks offers the best approach to managing change within a society.

There are several central themes in Burke’s approach to the conservative cast of mind.  First, he rejects abstract thinking in politics.  He believes that it is the concrete reality of history, rather than the abstract ideas of philosophy, that are to guide us when it comes to managing political change.  This is because he believes that societies have an organic structure.  He does not think it is possible to impose an artificial structure on a society.  Each society is the product of its history, and the structure of that society should reflect that history.

That is not to say that he is a reactionary who is opposed to change.  He is emphatic that a society must have the means for change, that law must continue to change to keep pace with society.  He has something to say about the kind of change that is desirable.  It is gradual change.  It is change that is in conformity with the tradition of the society.  But it is also change that anticipates problems, and finds solutions before they reach crisis point.  These changes should have regard to the values of the society’s tradition and should be consistent with it.

The fourth man to lead the Liberal Party from opposition to government was Tony Abbott.  As an opposition leader, he was celebrated for his “three-word slogans”.  When he met with electoral success, his detractors chose to portray his strength as a weakness.  They claimed that Tony Abbott is just three-word slogans, and that there was no real depth to his policymaking.

In Abbott’s Right, I challenge this picture of Abbott.  I suggest that when we understand what it means to be a Burkean policymaker, we find that Abbott exemplifies Burke’s conservative cast of mind.

 So, the last part of the book provides a survey of a range of different policy areas in which Abbott has been active, and it analyses the way that he has explained his policies in these areas.  What becomes apparent is that, when he provides an explanation of policy positions, he offers a Burkean analysis.  I am the first to admit that you will not find any ideological commitments at the core of Abbott’s policies.  But that is not because his policymaking is unprincipled.  It is because his policies are an embodiment of the conservative cast of mind.  He defers not to ideological commitments, but to the values of our tradition, and seeks a pragmatic approach that is in keeping with the values of the tradition.

You may not think that Tony Abbott was a good policymaker, and my book might not change your mind about that.  But I hope that if you are minded to read my book, you will take two things away from it.  First, you will understand the kind of Burkean policymaker that Abbott aspired to be.  Secondly, you will understand why the Burkean approach to policymaking, with its commitment to the conservative cast of mind that offers pragmatism based on values as a middle-way between managerialism and ideology, has a deep and profound appeal, and why it can serve us well.  If you can see the appeal of Burke and the conservative approach, then I believe you can see why Abbott’s policymaking was about more than three-work slogans. 

You can then form your own conclusions about his track record as a Burkean.