Tony Abbott | The Foundations of Western Civilisation

[Music] [Music] [Music] to interviews being posted now are from highly intelligent men from different ends of the political spectrum in Australia Peter Baldwin served in the Labour government and Tony Abbott of course is extremely well known in more recent times as a former prime minister and think at large both men people that I respect greatly they have a different perspective on good policy but both have a deep commitment to improving Australia and the society we live in according to the way they see the world more importantly what emerges from these two talks I think is that they both respect and understand the need for debate perhaps robust but debate debate that is respectful that can be vigorous but which focuses on the issues not on the personalities I hope you'll find them both interesting I suggest that looking at one would necessitate looking at the other Tony good to see you good to be with you thanks John we've known one another for probably the best part of 40 years where University contemporaries we served together in government for a long time which sat around cabinet tables together we've been on poly pedals we both love the outdoors we both would see ourselves as students of history one of the things I know about you is that you have a very deep commitment indeed to liberal participatory democracy of a sort that we enjoy they say that that the West is built on ideas what do you think those key ideas were thanks John look um it's great to be with you and we do go back a long way and I wish you were still in the Parliament but but look there's the ethical foundation and the intellectual foundations the ethical foundation is essentially the Gospels the intellectual foundation is essentially the Greeks and if you look at the Gospels what were the two fundamental insights which Western civilization is built on they were first the uniqueness and the dignity of every human being second do unto others as you would have them do unto you or love your neighbor as you love yourself and then from the Greeks I guess we got this basic attitude where we question everything now it has to be a respectful questioning because if it's not it can easily be destructive but if you've got a respectful interrogation of what is you get closer towards what should be and that's been the wonder of our civilization in our culture for 2,000 years we have constantly improved in almost everything because we have questioned everything in a spirit of respect and we have treated other people decently that's the guts of it there are many of course who would say that it's nonsense to say that Christian underpinnings had anything to do this is all comes from the Enlightenment but the end the people John who who were responsible for the Enlightenment were people who were absolutely shaped and formed by Christianity they weren't necessarily devout believers some of them thought their way out of faith but nevertheless they were shaped and formed by it and they're thinking bares its imprint so the idea that you could have Western civilization with the Enlightenment without everything upon which that was originally built I just think is misconceived it's worth noting I think that you know nearly all the Enlightenment figures if not all the serious leaders actually regarded women as inferior to men they were racist and they believed that slavery was part of the natural order of things well like everyone they're on a journey and the point in the journey at which we have currently arrived is not necessarily the point where we will end up or indeed the point where we should alternately be and they were all products of their times there's a point I wanted to make of it oh about and we've seen quite a debate about this in recent times the impact of the Enlightenment and how it's responsible for our freedoms and so forth I think as you say it's part of a journey in fact if you go to something as horrendous as slavery the MOL impulse format actually clearly undeniably came from a band of very dedicated Christian believers who saw that followed properly Christianity did not allow for a distinction exactly between black and white or master and slave and actually they fought the orthodoxy of the day and it was trench warfare for a very very long time it was self interest versus ideals and thankfully in the end the ideals won another major figure of course it's not technically true that he said it but his views were summarized in that famous quote that I may disagree with you but I will defend to the death your right to say it seems to me that implies two things the first is no matter how much you and I might disagree if we accept that Christian creed that you have Worth and dignity and standing that is equal to mine then I have an obligation to recognize it you have every right to put your views on the table so there's respect the other aspect of it is there's a recognition you don't get good public policy out of a bad debate or a truncated or assignments debate if you really want to make progress you've got to have every idea on the table and it's the idea that you then pull apart all the ideas and not the denigration of the other person look it's the old story you've got to play the ball and not the man so to speak and and and the problem that we've got at the moment is that if you say something which is beyond a certain pile instead of being taken seriously as an advocate you are damned as some kind of a heretic now every age has probably had its own version of heresy and heresy hunters every age has probably had its own version of burning heretics to the stake we don't do it literally in the West at least thank God but certainly we we treat people as as pariahs if they transgress now I think there are some transgressions which probably do deserve judgment but there are many people today who are unfairly pilloried for saying things which at least until recently that would have been conventional wisdom but I guess social change has been Swift it's important we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater and it's important that we that we grow and learn and change but it's also important that we preserve the best in our heritage and I certainly want to ensure that we respect that which is best in our past and we honor that which has made us and we build on our strengths it said that the West in its great years if you like combined a sort of a culture a dignity culture with a respect culture and an integrity culture and so your esteemed if you're a personal character of courage of compassion and you were expected to be dignified in the way you carried yourself and behaved in public and a blend of those two things made you an esteemed member of the community and the better you were at those things perhaps the more esteemed you were but that this is now breaking down and what we're seeing is the emergence in the name of identity politics of a sort of victim culture where to be esteemed it seems that you have to be able to say woe is me I've been mistreated I and many people are at the point is how you handle the people who who feel victimized but we've almost reached the point now where we want to promote everyone's sense of entitlement do you see a danger in this in the end all of us are a combination of many things I mean in my case I'm a male Australian who's married who lives in a certain area who has a certain job and all of these things feed into my identity but but but the moral quality of an individual is not determined by identities the moral quality of an individual is determined by the decency the strength the character as you say and the cardinal virtues are the cardinal virtues today as always yeah one of the things that concerns me is that in perhaps not thinking through how we handle people who have had tough exertion stances who are able to paint themselves as victims we are encouraging this sense of entitlement and you see the problem to some extent is that if you feel you are entitled and that you're owed thing you don't appreciate it when others do things for you but again sometimes I wonder whether we're not taking this too far the English academic now a man has been around for a long time Frank furedi has written in a book about what's gone wrong in our universities he says that we've made a terrible mistake we've weaponized feelings so now you're seeing courses and their contents written to avoid raising issues that might be contentious that might offend people and we're backing it up in academia with a whole lot of things that are actually really very dangerous from anti microaggression policies through to the requirement for academics to provide trigger warnings if something might worrying might be said that might offend somebody even if it's true through to safe places where people can go and find cuddly toys and a counselor and maybe a friendly dog through the platform denying and and and we just need to face the fact that the truth sometimes hurts and we we can't run away from the truth just because the facts might be uncomfortable if I've committed a crime the facts will be paraded in court they should be paraded in court and if that hurts my feelings well that's just something that has to happen well these are interesting things to ponder because he would argue that in fact Australia's universities are particularly bad at this we picked up some of the easiest and laziest models out of the US where we're seeing some universities almost eat themselves out from within er where left-wing academics are being denied a platform because they haven't fallen in line with the latest fashion and what-have-you in fact the IPA having a look at Australian universities found that only one of our 42 universities has no restrictions on free speech over and above the laws of the land it is extraordinary I spent some wonderful former years at university in in Sydney as we both did and subsequently in England and I've got to say that I have nothing but affection and nostalgia even for my days at university and the debates in those days were very robust and nothing was off-limits and yes you got a very vigorous response often particularly if you're putting forward a conservative position but in those days at least there was no official attempt at censorship certainly your opponents would try to shout you down but I guess that's the nature of of student assemblies they're pretty rowdy but but the idea that the university authorities should say that some things are off-limits I think that's just just wrong the whole point of a university is to question everything to ask Andry ask the big questions over and over again constantly trying to get better answers through a dialectical process I mean that's the way it has to work if our universities had to do their job and to serve the purpose which has made them over the centuries such engines of progress yet now you have serious left-of-centre thinkers right around the world warning that that's precisely the opposite of what is now happening well that instead of expanding young people's horizons instead of giving them an opportunity almost encouraging them to stretch the boundaries and to try a new things they're actually being told what they can't think they're having Brown dairies put around what's right and what's wrong they're not allowed to test things and explore they're coming out unable to understand another perspective I think all of us John have grappled with this question of how do we produce better schools with better teaching so that we have stronger and more accomplished citizens I mean I think we've all wrestled with that and as federal politicians are part of the difficulty is that it's state governments that run state schools and historically it's been state governments that set the curricula and the curricula have been rather contaminated by these sorts of thoughts as well anyhow for instance do you have the you know feminists algebra for instance or indigenous science I mean yes there are women who have contributed to maths and there are indigenous people have contributed to our understanding of how to cope in a harsh environment but but how do you have these cultural concepts permeate the hard sciences is a mystery to me but anyway so how do we fix it well I think that what everyone should get is a grounding in the classics of the Western canon starting with the New Testament then going with the Shakespeare and Dickens and the best of the modern authors I think they need to have a grounding in history starting with the ancient civilizations going through the Greeks and the Romans the development of Britain the rise of the modern world that's what people need they need to know about the best that has been thought and said and done over the centuries and if they know about that then they will have a foundation upon which to try to be the best they can be today in into the future now for this to happen properly we need to have more of our best and brightest going into teaching and sadly for quite some time now teaching has often been seen as an also-rans profession you don't earn much money you don't get much recognition and under those circumstances it's hardly surprising that it's not something that the best and brightest often choose to do now there are many good teachers despite all that but if I could wave a magic wand and change things in our country it would be a stronger presence of the Western canon in our schools and it would be more of our best and brightest to teaching them well you you you would find a great friend in Winston Churchill who unquestionably was the greatest defender of freedom the world has seen in the last 150 years I don't need any doubt about that and he said freedom actually depends upon the next generation being taught what has gone before them he actually said that in 1934 and he said if you don't teach it you leave people open to Marxist dictum that are people unaware of their heritage are easily persuaded it seems to me that we're looking at a society that's very easily persuaded and young people naturally look for Heroes they look for role models now these days often enough they find them in sport or in in the movies in the entertainment industry and that's all fair enough but but there are marvelous stories real stories of real people who have done magnificent things for others and we should be familiar with that it encourages me that a lot of young people go to Anzac services every year and that has to do with recognizing character an old fashioned word the press we didn't use enough and this is a sense this is a an often inchoate sense that people have that there were ordinary people who did extraordinary things because they felt the call of duty and service my personal view is that the West is in a very very bad state but that Australia is one of the few Western countries that ought to be other sites best days are still in front of it we're in the happening part of the world we're in Asia we're not yet not yet and I want to stress that word yet crippled by by government debt and the sort of problems of unfunded liabilities going forward that the Europeans and the Americans have got we're a young and energetic people our best days ought to be in front of it I agree I agree but are they well look I'm optimistic John I think that in the end the better angels of our nature will prevail I am I guess just inherently optimistic because again if you look at the history bad times always pass and at the end of the bad times we usually have learned some important lessons which we put to good use and there are better times so so look I'm optimistic but there are obvious problems at a trivial level there's the kind of I suppose snake pit of Canberra at a more serious level there's the debt and deficit problem which we don't show any real appetite to fix there's the conflict between environmental and economic does it errata which i think is very serious there are some environmental costs too much that is economically desirable and yet if we do not sustain a strong economy we cannot go forward as a people ultimately we cannot even protect the environment if we don't have a strong economy as well so these are big challenges that we need to come better to grips with in the years ahead than we have in the recent pass now all of us would like to reduce emissions but reducing emissions at the cost of people's jobs reducing emissions if it means putting people's cost of living through the roof reducing emissions if it means the industrializing our country particularly given that we could have zero emissions here in Australia and just 1 years of emission one one year's worth of emissions increase in China will completely obliterate any emissions reduction here look there's a lack of logic there's a perversity about all of this and logic worries me so does what I think is the underlying problem that allows that Locke of logic which is selfishness let me put it this way or a misguided idealism because the people who who loudly protests against coal mines or gas drilling or whatever it might be they think they are doing it for the right reasons I don't for a second doubt their idealism I just think that it is going to end up doing vastly more harm than good and and people need to understand that all of the things that we take for granted in a country like Australia require energy affordable reliable energy you've got to have a mining industry if you're going to have a modern standard of living so all of these efforts to curtail them or even to close them are ultimately incredibly counterproductive you mentioned idealism there and that's important of course particularly for young people be very sad if I weren't idealistic but I do feel very strongly that one of the things we need to be honestly pointing out to young people is that we can have a great society now ideally we should pay for it as we go or if we don't pay for it as we go we accept lower living standards the only other option is frankly to ask our children to pay for the good society we want to enjoy now intergenerational theft exactly right I can remember that with the exact phrase you used to me as we were discussing the 2014 budget we have to end the intergenerational theft we have to stop ripping off our children and our grandchildren by spending today money that they will have to repay now I think this is as plain as the nose on your face but as we saw the 2014 budget was sabotaged in the Senate after having been effectively demonized in the public arena including by people who should have known better coalition state premiers as well as the labor labor opposition which had created all of this I daresay if Joe Hockey and I had been better salesmen it might have had a better outcome but it was certainly an honest and I think gutsy attempt to come to grips with the problem and the substantial destruction of the 2014 budget is a baleful legacy that will haunt government for a long time to come we'll come back to that in a moment if I could but before we do we're talking about young people and and we if any young people come to watch this I think the thing that you and I would want to say to them is we actually do very deeply care because we're deeply invested in your age group by definition can we just come to what sort of society we would want them to enjoy it's obvious I think we'd want them to be free from you know oppression of a military kind we want them to have the economic opportunities we want them to you know satisfying careers but we want them I think to live in what you and I have enjoyed a society that that is a good society it's a lot more than simply being one that's about money the great thing about Australian Australians is that we don't wait for other people to do what needs to be done if we see a problem we roll up our sleeves and we have a guard fixing it surf lifesaving clubs volunteer Busch Fire Brigades sports clubs are all wonderful manifestations of that self help if you've got an elderly neighbor those grass is getting very long you just pull out the mower and your mod for them if you haven't seen someone who lives down the street for a while and you know they're not well you knock on the door and say oh they're getting on I mean that's the spirit which we cherish and which needs to be fostered smiling at people in the street and saying g'day rather than just walking anonymously past I mean this characterizes Australia it's a feature of all the english-speaking societies but it's particularly strong here so what that instinctive looking out for the other person that I hope will remain at the heart of Australia and our way of life but yes we need to be safe we need to be prosperous we need to be decent and we also need to be strong because we can't let ourselves be pushed around or intimidated and as you said it at the start it's it's an insecure world and we need to acknowledge that and and be adequately prepared for it jumping into two final big-picture issues both of them I think very important we're used to actually taken for granted being part of the Western alliance and particularly since the collapse of a Berlin Wall there's been almost a sort of a you know a unipolar lead us lead global order but we've kind of taken for granted you could say that's breaking down now we're seeing the emergence of a multipolar world birds re-emergence of Russia China South China Seas the rogue states so on and so forth bit hard to know where Australia might fit into that's more dangerous world how do you think we should be positioning ourselves but I think we should work as closely as possible with our allies led by the United States I think we should cultivate the best possible relationships with other significant countries appreciating that with some of them it will be hard to have a values relationship or with although we may well have an interests relationship with them and I think we need to make ourselves as strong as we reasonably can be knowing that in the end no one will fight harder for Australia than Australians coming to politics today I've been out of it a decade you're still involved what's changed the the characteristic the characteristic of the Howard government was strong teamwork and yes there were tensions inside the government from time to time excuse me different people had occasionally frustrated ambitions notwithstanding all of that there was a wonderful teamwork that characterized the Howard government until the last few months and there hasn't been a lot of teamwork on either side of politics since then we saw the rudd-gillard-rudd disaster there's been a lot of disappointment obviously with what's happened on our side of politics over the last four years I don't say that I'm perfect where these things are concerned but nevertheless all of us should be ambitious for the higher things not just for the higher job in the end all of us have got to be in it for the country and for the party not for ourselves and I don't believe that the current era is as selfless as earlier eras have been it's an interesting point that you make there to focus for a moment on the Senate I personally have become truly afraid that the Senate is now endangering the nation's future we often had difficulties negotiating things through the Senate I think of the GST but I think actually of the raw courage of a meg Lee's and in my own case even John Woodley who was a Democrat I had to deal with him directly on all the transport related issues which were very big because of the fuel excise and reforms and so forth we were planning I won't say they were easy but you felt you were dealing with vulnerable people who according to their view of the country wanted to take it for it I'll be blunt and say that my impression is that we now have quite a few senators who have no long-term view for the nation at all and some who I suspect essentially loathe our way of life that don't really support it that but really have ulterior motives in in in well to put it bluntly that they're not really a favor of liberal participatory capitalistic democracies in the way that you and I would advocate am I going too far I am very reluctant to question the good faith of anyone although I think that it's easy to become a kind of a political exhibitionist in the Senate and I think some people succumb to that temptation but but look at what's happened over the last couple of decades we've had the disintegration of the Australian Democrats who tried to be a center party we've had the rise of the greens who are a very left-wing party we've had I guess a lot of intransigence by the Official Opposition and and some would say I had a role in that but most of all we've had a change in the in the indie I suppose some culture of the Senate it's gone from being a house of review to a house of rejection and that's become very problematic because under the formal labor government a whole lot of things that were once part of appropriations bills are now part of separate legislation 85% of Commonwealth spending is enshrined in legislation which means that if you want to make savings you've got to argue it line by line Clause by clause through the Senate you can't just say oh well we've made these say these in the appropriations bill a by convention the Senate must pass it so so it is now almost impossible to get savings through the Senate unless they are sponsored by the Labor Party because the Coalition is disposed to support savings labor is disposed to reject savings unless of course they make them themselves so so so I think that the changing culture of the Senate the changes in 1984 which mean that to get four out of six senators at a half Senate election any one state you were to get 58% of the vote so the changing size of the Senate has made good government from the center-right almost impossible because we won't have a majority in our own right the Labour Party will for political reasons oppose us if they're in opposition the only deals you can do with the Greens are bad deals and corralling a majority of the crossbench or corralling nearly all of the crossbench given they are such an eclectic to put it at it's kind of scrub is is all but impossible I think this is a very serious challenge for all of us in Australia my own view of it as I look from outside now is that the Australian people don't really like any of the major parties anymore they're disillusioned with politics not sure it's entirely fair because in some ways I think if they're divided in Canberra that reflects a divided community there's a lack of core consensus on common values ideals commitment to the next generation included in that to be critical because I'm an elector now and I can see it from both sides on the other hand it does seem to be a reality that people are saying we no longer what the Senate controlled by the parties we don't want it to be so much a lot of Australians and we don't want it to be a creature of the parties what do we do because we don't want the country ground into gridlock again I think people want contradictory things they want the Senate to be a check on the arrogance of the executive government but they don't want government to become gridlock either and and so every time they vote for a celebrity candidate rather than for either the Liberal Party or the Labour Party either the coalition or the ALP you contribute to the very problem that we now lament namely ineffectual government politicians who say one thing but or the election but don't do it after the election because the Senate won't let them because the Senate won't let them now I think it's I think it's a huge problem and everyone says it's impossible to change the Constitution but if it were me I'd be gained in the next election with a simultaneous referendum on section 57 to amend the Constitution to say that if the Senate rejects legislation twice three months apart you can then proceed directly to a joint sitting of both houses without the need for double dissolution elections so I think this would have the effect if it were passed and turning the Senate back into a house of review which it should be I mean governments don't always get it right sometimes the executive government does have a rush of blood to the head and it should rethink so the Senate serves a useful purpose particularly if the government doesn't have a majority but if having thought it all through heard the debates had had the public inspect all this if the government still believes it's the right thing to do it ought to be able to get the legislation through and the public can have their say at the next election which let's face it can be no more than three years away well I think this is a major issue for the nation let's say in the build-up to the next election one of the things we really need to focus on as Australians is what do we want the Senate to do Tony's been great talking to you thanks John lovely to catch up and you [Music]

Channel: John Anderson

Views: 12,346

Rating: 4.8219585 out of 5

Keywords: Civil Society, Energy, Freedoms, Geo-Politics, The Senate, Universities, Western Civilisation, Tony Abbott, Tony Abbott and John Anderson, Identity Politics, The Economy, Prime Minister, Western Canon, History, Liberal democracy, Social improvement, Enlightenment, Christianity, Freedom of speech, Policy

Id: 8qU2vMM33yY

Length: 39min 17sec (2357 seconds)

Published: Wed May 23 2018