COMMENT BY GERARD HENDERSON FOR THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN, SATURDAY 1 NOVEMBER 2025

There are a few surprises in Tony Abbott’s recently released Australia: A History (HarperCollins, 2025) which, according to reports, is already undergoing a reprint. The written word is supplemented by a three-part Sky News documentary of the same name.

First, the publication received endorsements not only from John Howard, Geoffrey Blainey and the British historian Andrew Roberts. But also from Labor leaders Kim Beazley and Bill Shorten along with former Labor senator and Olympic gold medallist Nova Peris plus the Independent MP Dai Le.

Second, Abbott’s book of history received a favourable, but not uncritical, review by the left-wing historian Frank Bongiorno in the avowedly leftist Guardian Australia. Bongiorno drew attention to the fact that when discussing the extent of frontline violence in the early years of the European settlement, Abbott cites “not the rightwing history warrior Keith Windschuttle but one of the latter’s principal targets Lyndall Ryan”.

As Bongiorno points out, Abbott regards Bob Hawke and John Howard as “the standout Australian prime ministers since Robert Menzies”. In short, this is not political conservative hagiography.

And then there is the unintended consequence of Australia: A History’s publication. Namely, a discussion on the value or otherwise of oral – as distinct from documented – history. This revised a debate which was prevalent among historians some three decades ago.

The starter’s gun was fired when ABC Radio National Breakfast presenter Sally Sara interviewed Abbott on October 13. The author told his interviewer that he had focused on such incidents as the Myall Creek Massacre and the Appin Massacre because they were “very well documented at the time”. He made the point that Governor Lachlan Macquarie “sent a detachment of troops around the Cumberland Plain to try to ensure that there were fewer raids on settlements”.

Abbott’s point was that the above instances are “well documented encounters” and that there is “a lot of subsequent oral history which is not quite as reliable”. This was challenged by Sara.

To which Abbott responded: “You think back to something that happened in your own past, many years ago; it does tend to get a bit embellished.” He added: “Grandma’s stories can often become embellished with the telling and particularly with the telling and retelling over the generations.”

Abbott also declared that he is “very uncomfortable with any use of the term genocide because…Governor Phillip’s initial instructions were to live in amity with the native people”.

Abbott went on to comment that all the governors “went to great lengths to try to say to all of the settlers ‘treat the native people well because they are the subjects of the king…and they all have rights of British subjects’”. He added that “it didn’t work out that way particularly on the frontier of settlement – but even on the frontier settlement it was a story of cooperation as least as much as it was one of conflict”.

The discussion continued the next morning. Sara introduced Ian Hamm whom she described as a Yorta Yorta man and chair of the First Nations Foundation. He was asked to “reflect on Tony Abbott’s perspective of oral history in Australia” and responded that “oral history plays an important part in the Australian narrative and particularly for Aboriginal people”.

Hamm conceded that oral history might be unreliable “if you’re looking for a particular detail of particular things”. But he added that “overall oral history is a very, very solid way of progressing narratives…of events over time”.

An interesting exchange, to be sure. Spoilt, alas, by condescension. Sara asked for thoughts about Abbott’s “new book”. Hamm replied that it is “a worthy thing” for an “amateur historian”.

Abbott has degrees in economics and law from the University of Sydney plus an Oxford University MA. As the acknowledgements of Australia: A History attest, the writers and historians Andrew Kemp and Alex McDermott assisted with the book as did two unnamed researchers. In any event, Hamm did not cite any historical errors in the work.

Clearly there is a role for verbal accounts in any nation’s history. The question is – what strength should be given to them? In the Lexis Nexis Concise Australian Legal Dictionary, hearsay evidence is considered less valuable since the original statement was not given under oath and cannot be challenged by cross examination.

It is much the same outside the law courts. It’s impossible to prove or disprove stories transmitted over the generations. And then there is the problem of memory. Some people tell the truth, some others lie and others have clear “recollections” of events that never happened.

There is an important article in the June 2005 issue of the Southern Journal for Contemporary History titled “A critical evaluation of memory as a potential source of evidence for oral history”. Written by Marietjie Oelofse and Derek du Bruyn, it focuses on Africa. They write that what sets oral history apart from other branches of history is its reliance on memory and not the text.

The authors refer to the fallibility of memory. They quote the oral historian Allan Nevins as saying that “any man’s recollection of the past events is untrustworthy”. This they suggest also applies to the memory of an eyewitness. And yet they argue that the potential and usefulness of memory as a source of evidence cannot be ignored.

The position of Oelofse and du Bruyn is that “oral history should not stand alone as a single source, but should be used alongside written evidence”. They recognise the significance of oral evidence but maintain that it should be substantiated by cross-checking against all available written and oral evidence.

In January 1993, I wrote a cover story for The Bulletin magazine challenging what was then the pervading left-wing interpretation of Australian history. I opposed the falsification of Australian history – namely that the nation was born in genocide and oppression and remained in what Manning Clark once termed the “age of ruins”.

Oral history, just like text, can be challenged. It remains to be seen whether Tony Abbott’s relatively optimistic view of Australia’s past and present will survive considered empirical-based criticism. So far, this is the case.

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Gerard Henderson is Executive Director of The Sydney Institute.

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