It makes sense that Liberal Party leaders – or, at least the ones cut from a certain cloth – all ultimately drink the same bathwater. So it absolutely tracks that former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has now come out and asserted that Australia as a colonised nation has no history of slavery, much in the same way that current Prime Minister Scott Morrison did just last month.
In a column that was printed in today’s edition of Murdoch cum rag The Daily Telegraph – one emblazoned with the very reply guy-like headline “Actually, All Lives Matter” – comments Abbott made in a recent podcast produced by the IPA (aka the group that whinged black & blue about the economy being more important that public health during the onset of the pandemic) were reprinted verbatim.
The column begins with Abbott asserting “I think there is a gathering assault on our culture,” which should automatically ring alarm bells for what’s to come.
What follows is a wildly off-kilter diatribe that begins with the on-going Black Lives Matter unrest in the US, and ends with Abbott taking aim at compulsory superannuation in Australia.
The chief point of contention, though, is Abbott’s assertion that “we’ve never had slavery in this country,” which he immediately follows up by stating “Sure, we’ve had things that we wouldn’t be too proud of, like the blackbirding and so on.” Which is more or less the same thing as saying “we never had slavery in Australia, apart from the times that we did.”
Abbott showed his work on that particular sentiment by stating “Governor Phillip was absolutely crystal clear in his agreement with the British Government, before the First Fleet set sail, that there can be no slavery in a free land and therefore no slaves. He was absolutely crystal clear. The Federation Fathers were absolutely crystal clear that there could never be slavery or anything remotely approaching it in this country.” It’s probably worth reiterating at this point that the First Fleet created a penal colony in New South Wales, so that argument about it being a “free land” is on thin ice at best.
In amongst all that, we got barnburning pearls of Toney wisdom on a wide variety of topics.
He mused on the current push to end police brutality of Indigenous people in custody by drawing on his time at Uni in the 1970s:
“Go back to the 1970s when I was at University and the plea for a fair go for women, blacks, and gays was based on the absolutely fundamental understanding that everyone had to be treated equally. What’s happened now is that they do want to treat people differently based on precisely those things.”
He waxed poetic on the concept of Black Lives Matter:
“The very concept that black lives matter is essentially exclusionary. Now of course black lives do matter, but all lives matter. And yet to say “all lives matter” means that you now get sacked as the editor of the newspaper, scrapped as the presenter of a radio program.”
He delved into whether or not Australia is a fundamentally racist country…:
“Obviously there are particular instances in Australia’s recent history where the best standards were not upheld.”
…and the people who say that it is:
“I say to anyone who’s unhappy with Australia, what country would you rather live in? Anyone who thinks that we are in some way racist, sexist, whatever, what country is better? And the truth is it’s almost impossible to identify one.”
He got misty-eyed musing about how so few Australians understand the “real facts” of Australian cultural history, which apparently includes the Christian Bible:
“The fact that so many people have very little understanding of the real facts of Australian history, the fact that so many people have almost zero knowledge of our cultural underpinnings, such as the New Testament for instance, is collectively a failing of Australia’s leadership class.”
And wound up taking pot-shots at superannuation for some godunknown reason:
“I would argue that compulsory superannuation has been a key element in the weakening of the business community’s commitment to economic reform.” “When you invite people into capitalism who don’t really believe in capitalism, is it any wonder that capitalism loses faith in itself?”
And while there’s an ocean of response that could be written to each point Abbott raises throughout, the more pragmatic – and just as valid and correct – response is to simply apply a broad-strokes response of: This is big bullshit.
All of it.
Big-ass, red-hot bullshit, the whole lot of it.
