'Respect does not come with titles - respect is earned. That belief, as much as any, defines me as an Australian.'
'Respect does not come with titles - respect is earned. That belief, as much as any, defines me as an Australian.' Photo: Andrew Meares







Who is Tony Abbott? Do we know him? I would not ask these
questions, for example, of John Howard. His family was very much
fashioned by World War I – both his father and grandfather enlisting
(one incredible story has them meeting up, on the battlefield, a few
hours before the lethal hostilities resumed). John Winston Howard, born
in 1939, got his middle name from Winston Churchill. John Howard is what
was once known as an Australian Briton.



Born in England, Abbott is a Catholic monarchist – a curious
combination. One of his close friends, the late Christopher Pearson,
used to hear the Mass in Latin. For a time, I likened Abbott to Guy
Crouchback, a character from the pen of the English Catholic novelist
Evelyn Waugh, a man with a reactionary and religious bent – hence
Abbott's spell in the seminary as a young man.




But how do you square Catholic theology with wealthy
Australia offloading its asylum-seeker problem to impoverished countries
such as Papua New Guinea and Nauru? Cambodia? I'm sure one Catholic who
wouldn't buy it is Pope Francis.



I always thought Abbott shared, with Julia Gillard, an
awkwardness with Australian culture that was expressed, in Gillard's
case, through her exaggerated accent, and, in Abbott's case, through
the countless interviews he gave as opposition leader in his budgie
smugglers.




When Rupert Murdoch tweeted his endorsement of Abbott before
the last federal election, he described him as a conviction politician.
Is he? By his own account, Abbott nearly joined the Labor Party and,
prior to him becoming Prime Minister, I always understood him to be a
DLP type. Not any more.



The DLP has always been clear about what it deems to be moral
issues – for example, West Papua. Last year, Abbott described the
actions of three West Papuans who climbed the wall into the Australian
embassy in Bali to protest about the plight of their people as
grandstanding. He then declared that conditions in West Papua were
improving. DLP senator John Madigan flatly told him he was wrong.



In 2011, journalist John Van Tiggelen wrote an extended
profile on Andrew Bolt after the case in which Bolt was found guilty
under the Racial Discrimination Act. I saw that case up close through
the eyes of a friend, Anita Heiss. Irrespective of the argument about
that particular legislation, Bolt's treatment of Heiss was
journalistically indefensible and caused deep and repeated hurt. I saw
that as clearly as I've seen injuries on the football field.



In the aftermath of the case, Bolt was apparently thinking of
stepping away from the media when a "very influential person" (Bolt's
words) arrived at his house and urged him to keep going. Van Tiggelen
established the very influential visitor was Abbott.



Abbott's government is now seeking to alter the Racial
Discrimination Act. As has been observed elsewhere, the government's
original proposal would have meant that indigenous AFL star Adam Goodes
could be called an ape everywhere in Australia but on the football
field. Then, this week, Abbott reintroduced knights and dames and, like
Henry VIII, the decision was his alone.



The Anzac legend becomes more distorted and hyperbolic every
year, but there are elements of the story that are important to me. One
is that Australian soldiers wouldn't salute the English officers. Why
should they? Respect does not come with titles – respect is earned.
That belief, as much as any, defines me as an Australian.



Now Tony Abbott has reinstated a vain and empty honours
system from another time and place. The country, which is outsourcing
its asylum-seeker problem to its poorer neighbours, has just
reinstituted an order of knights and dames in its society. Where is our
self-respect?