Tony Abbott - a man of firm political ideas and principles

It should be clear to all by now that the Labor Party's principal strategy to defeat Liberal leader Tony Abbott and the Coalition in the coming Federal Election is to destroy the character and ideas of Tony Abbott - all by smear, lies and misrepresentation. It is as if a script has be sent around to all Labor MPs which they are to regurgitate Pavlov-like whenever the name of Tony Abbott is mentioned. Leading the character assassination and calumny are PM Gillard, Deputy leader Swann, appointed bovver boy Crean, Health Minister Roxson, and union heavy Paul Howes, National Secretary of the powerful AWU, who likely carried the longest knife in the assassination of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. To their continuing discredit most of the media in the past fell in with the campaign of character assassination.

The success of the campaign is such that most ordinary Australians have a grossly distorted idea of the man and his principles. On any objective measure Tony Abbott is an impressive Australian, a man of principle and well-thought out ideas and ideals. His strength of character and determination are evident in his academic achievements as well as in his physical prowess. Here is a man whose manliness and masculinity are unashamedly intact, which is waving a brilliant red flag to the bullish sisterhood. How many men of his age, let alone in politics, have been able to complete a triathlon? But in all this, Abbott displays characteristic humility. He is never reluctant to admit his faults, or where he has failed. He is not reluctant to admit policy failure and to make adjustments - which sometimes means sensible and practical reversal of particular policy. Tony Abbott is that rare creature: an honest politician. The shameless exploitation of that honesty by the Labor Party and some high profile media people should fill Australians with disgust.

In the coming days, I will reproduce excerpts from Abbott's book Battlelines which appeared last year. In this book, readers will meet the real Tony Abbott, putting them into a position to make a judgment based on true and reliable information. They will know the man and they will know what they are accepting or rejecting. They will be able to justly exercise their democratic right, and not waste their vote.

In the excerpt below Abbott is looking back on John Howard and his government. Although discussing Howard's conservatism, Abbott is really outlining his understanding of (philosophical) conservatism. This is a fine brief statement of the essentials of conservative thinking.

It’s no slight on Howard to observe that he was not a systematic philosopher, because conservatism is not a systematic philosophy. Unlike liberalism or socialism, conservatism does not start with an idea and construct a huge superstructure based on 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 is not so much inarticulate as conscious of the limitations of all philosophies. 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 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 its no less deeply felt. It should be less self-righteous, but it's no less concerned with moral values and no less determined to do the right thing as conservatives are given to understand it.

[Philosopher Michael] Oakeshott thinks that, paradoxically, it could be the profound streak of conservatism in English-speaking societies that has enabled them to change so much so peacefully and to have maintained for so long a creative edge over other cultures. Change is relatively easy when few principles are dogmatically held and one person’s opinion considered as likely as the next person’s to be right. It stands to reason that a society habituated to incremental change should find change less frightening and divisive. A political conservative normally only changes what has to be changed, makes the change conform as far as possible to established principles, and afterwards maintains that nothing much has really changed at all. By insisting that what’s constant far outweighs what’s changed and by constantly stressing unity over diversity, the conservative usually tries to make change as close to seamless and painless as it can be. It’s no accident that Australia’s most conservative recent prime minister has successfully presided over the biggest policy changes (workplace, welfare, and border protection reforms, for instance, and a much more assertive foreign policy), and the allegedly dullest and most conformist prime minister has best reconciled Australians to the diversity of their society.

John Howard frequently characterised his government as animated by ‘mainstream values’. This was a shorthand way of saying the government opposed change that was not in accordance with best values and most characteristic behaviour of the Australian people but supported change that was. As prime minister, contrary to Hayek’s contention, he demonstrated that conservatives could be vigorous reformers themselves rather than mere obstacles to obstruct the reforms of others.

An examination of the Howard Government’s ‘signature’ policies shows deep concern for personal responsibility, individual choice, reward for effort, the protection of families, and respect for traditional institutions and time-honoured values. The government didn’t self-consciously start with a set of values, though, and build a political plan around them. Rather, it looked at specific problems and devised policies to deal with them. These invariably turned out to reflect the values that the prime minister and his colleagues thought were the broadly based in Australian society. The Howard Government certainly had a ‘preference for freedom’ that made it a ‘liberal’ government. Freedom, though, was but ‘first among equals’, so to speak, in the ranks of the government’s principal political values, and often had to defer to one or more of the others.

It’s hard to imagine the Howard Government's leading figures even entering parliament merely to exercise power. Strong conceptions of right and wrong underpinned all its policies. Still, this is quite different from being ‘ideological’. In the marrow of his bones, Howard understood the distinction between, on the one hand, finding and appreciating the values in which human society is steeped, on the other, trying to apply a priori intellectual concepts to the real world. For Howard context was critical. Good government wasn’t bringing abstract ideals to bear on the organization of society. Rather it was trying to encourage people and institutions to operate at their best .

Tony Abbott, Battlelines, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2009, pp. 72/74

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com