Tory Shepherd: Cory Bernardi wants to make Australia great again. Oh, boy
SENATOR Cory Bernardi promises a return to better times, writes Tory Shepherd. But just when was Australia so great? And what exactly is wrong with it now?
When was Australia great?
I had a cracker of a time through the early 90s, thanks to 12-hole Doc Martens and mosh pits, but I reckon it’s still pretty great now.
Senator Cory “The DefecTory” Bernardi wants to “make Australia great again”.
It’s an appealing line, with the lure of halcyon days. It’s a rip-off from US President Donald Trump, who has promised to Make America Great Again.
An eagle-eyed Senator Bernardi watched the rise and rise of Mr Trump before he spectacularly split from the Liberal Party. He spent three months in the US — and it energised him.
While he’s no Aussie Donald, he is hoping to be a different answer to the same question. People worldwide are asking: “What about me?”. Mr Trump’s answer is: “Hey, it’s all about you”, a phrase that comes along with a dog’s breakfast of scarcely thought through policies.
Senator Bernardi’s answer is: “It isn’t fair”. And his plan to fix it is a much more ideological approach: free markets, small government, and conservative morals.
But they both use this nostalgic approach, a promise of a return to better times.
When were these great days?
There are plenty of Aussies who would label Senator Bernardi prehistoric, but that’s just churlish. He rocks a standing desk and is good with computers.
He certainly wouldn’t describe the 50,000-odd years that Aboriginal people were the sole inhabitants of Australia as “great”, even though he may be part-Aboriginal himself (his grandmother was described as “native” on her birth certificate).
The late 1700s brought white settlement to Australia, which Senator Bernardi might see as a great historical moment; but life then was nasty, brutish and short, and Australia certainly wasn’t “great” just yet.
For a start, the shiraz was not up to scratch. And there was no Adelaide.
The gold rush wouldn’t suit his style. He’d be chuffed at the lack of regulation as rogue boozehounds abounded, I imagine, and the fightback against government’s attempts to tax the miners... although a bunch of tax-dodging immigrants might mean this was merely a transformational moment, not “great”.
The World Wars saw great feats, but deaths and deprivations were the norm. Overall, not so great.
The post-war boom would have been great-ish, the Great Depression definitely not great.
Conservatives like Senator Bernardi are often put in the context of the 1950s; when men were men and women spent too much time hovering over clunky Hoovers.
So it wasn’t great for everyone.
The White Australia policy was starting to be dismantled. Great for immigrants, not great for racists.
Things started getting better through the 70s. Apart from the fashion, the 80s were smashing. The 90s all Blur.
But still none of these are what Senator Bernardi — who is reflecting the rose-tinted view of many Australians — considers the last time we were great.
In fact plenty of small “l” liberals, some Laborites, and a bunch of fringe dwellers, now look upon the Howard Government era with fondness.
Yesterday Senator Bernardi said the slogan “Make Australia Great Again” was just something on a hat someone gave him on his birthday.
He went on, though, to paint his halcyon days.
“People feel disconnected from the political class and there is good reason for it because the political class continues to betray the ethos and values when choosing elected representatives,” he said.
“The number of people who say: ‘Do you remember the good old days, when you had a Prime Minister for more than two or three years?’.
“I think there is a yearning for the stability and sense of predictability that was around during the Coalition government.”
He’s right; there is a yearning.
The turnover of Australia’s Prime Ministers since John Howard led the Liberals has been astounding. Many observers thought the Labor bloodbath (Rudd/Gillard/Rudd) was frightening enough to put anyone else off a coup.
Not so. While Labor still bears the scars, the Liberal Party went ahead and inflicted some of their own.
It was almost unthinkable, and yet there were people this week in Parliament who thought Senator Bernardi’s defection on top of an abominable Newspoll could see Mr Turnbull himself shafted. There is a thirst for that stability of leadership.
But John Howard didn’t wield some magic stability sabre. The currents of good fortune steadied him. He surfed a good economic wave; people earned more, houses were more affordable.
His mantra was that he wanted Australians to feel “comfortable and relaxed”, and memory lets us all imagine that we were.
But just as the same man can never step in the same river twice, the same people can never have the same government.
Even if there was a time when Australia was “great” for everyone (which there wasn’t), there’s no way to guarantee we can go back there.
Senator Bernardi yesterday said he wanted to forge “a better way”.
Conservatives tend to see a “better way” as being the old ways. Australians should be wary of great mirages seen through the fog of nostalgia.
Tory Shepherd is Political Editor of The Advertiser
Twitter @ToryShepherd