Tony Abbott's recent book Battlelines articulates his vision for Australia (including a radical rethink of federalism) while expanding on the nature of conservatism. Abbott, the Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, has previously characterised Battlelines as both 'a personal book' and an exploration of 'some of the policy positions that a properly liberal conservative political position might produce'.
The book has been greeted with waves of warm approval by columnists at The Australian, in contrast to the outright hostility with which the newspaper greeted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's essays in The Monthly. A recent editorial in The Australian regretted that 'Australian conservatives have conceded the intellectual high ground to Labor, which from Gough Whitlam on has presented itself as the party of ideas'.
This viewpoint was also aired by international affairs columnist Greg Sheridan shortly after the 2007 election, when he wrote: 'It is the great strength of Labor that it has so often studied and celebrated its own history, and indeed imposed its interpretation on the nation as the generally accepted version of history itself.'
The statements cited above reveal two common assumptions: that Australian history is shaped according to the dictates of the Labor Party, and that public debate around ideas of substance is similarly dominated by the left. These assumptions need to be examined.
The concept that those on the right in Australian politics are excluded from the national conversation is profoundly at odds with reality. That the myth of left-wing hegemony is so commonly accepted illustrates the effectiveness of the 'culture wars' in which the former Howard Government was an enthusiastic participant.
The attacks by Howard and his Ministers on 'political correctness' and on 'the chattering classes' echoed the strategy adopted by the Republicans in America over the last two decades. In What's The Matter with America?, the American journalist and historian Thomas Frank demonstrated the effectiveness of the Republican war on the 'elites' of the 'liberal media' in cementing the perception that conservatives were the true underdogs.
In fact, the Liberal Party and its supporters have arguably been far more astute than the ALP in nurturing academics and research fellows sympathetic to the 'liberal conservative' cause. As a result, conservatives can draw on a plethora of high-profile think-tanks, including the Centre for Independent Studies and The Sydney Institute, to research and enunciate their ideas.
The apparent desire of Australian conservatives to assume the mantle of the underdog