Let’s restore faith, confidence in this nation’s successes

The Endeavour on the reef. Picture: Print Collector/Getty Images

Australia is one of the world’s truly great stories: a land long hidden from the outside world, then chosen as a dumping ground, where people, white and black, rejected and despised, within scarcely a century, had built the most free, the most fair, and the most prosperous society on Earth. One indissoluble federal commonwealth under the Crown: with an Indigenous heritage, a British foundation and an immigrant character.

Yet thanks to the “black armband” view of history, it’s a story rarely told, or whispered with a touch of embarrassment, or more often just forgotten. A recent survey found 47 per cent of Australians thought Captain Cook’s ship, Endeavour, had arrived here as part of the First Fleet. Another, that 56 per cent of young Australians wanted January 26 to be known as “invasion day”, even though the marines were here to guard the convicts, not attack the locals. When the First Fleet drew into Sydney Cove, it had not come from Mars. It had come from a Britain, then approaching its zenith of power and enlightenment. The Britain of Lord Justice Mansfield, who declared that the air of England is too pure for any slave to breathe; of Lord Justice Coke, who declared to the king himself “be you ever so high, the law is above you”. A Britain increasingly seized of the gospel truths that we are all God’s children and that we should love one another as we love ourselves. Marine or convict, they were freedom’s children that came ashore; in a version of what the Torres Strait Islanders still call the “coming of the light”.

As Phillip wrote, “there can be no slavery in a free land and therefore no slaves”. When he was speared at Manly Cove, trying to find Bennelong, he put it down to a misunderstanding. Successive governors insisted Aboriginal people had all the rights of British subjects; and after the Myall Creek massacre, as early as 1838, seven whites were hanged for the murder of blacks.

In preaching the first Christian sermon on this continent, the Reverend Richard Johnson took as his text, “what can I render unto the Lord for all his blessings to me”.

Sent down by the best judges in England they might have been; but given land, opportunity and freedom, the first modern Australians set no limits on what they could achieve. It was that spirit of faith and optimism that drove settlers over the Blue Mountains, created the wool industry that kept Britain warm and the colony rich, discovered gold, and within 100 years had the world’s highest standard of living, most developed democracy, and most egalitarian society.

Typically, the leader of the Eureka rebellion went on, not to jail, but to become speaker of the Victorian parliament. Victoria pioneered the secret ballot and the payment of MPs. In South Australia, by the 1890s, both women and Aboriginal people could vote and run for parliament.

Senator Thomas Bakhap, whose father was a Chinese immigrant, was an early member of our federal parliament. One of the first Anzacs to storm ashore at Gallipoli was Trooper Yin Gan. One of our finest soldiers was sniper Billy Sing. And it seems that one of the Aboriginal soldiers, who fought and died for his country in the Great War, William John Punch, was actually a massacre survivor who had been rescued and brought up by a settler family.

Our story is not without blemishes, but a tale of unremitting discrimination it most assuredly is not. In 1967, the referendum to count Aboriginal people in the census, and to give the commonwealth power to legislate for them, recorded the biggest majority ever – because it was about equality. Last year, the referendum to entrench an Aboriginal voice in the Constitution was trounced 60-40 – despite the backing of big business, big tech, big sport, big philanthropy and big government – because it was about inequality.

That wasn’t the government protecting us from harm, but democracy protecting us from our own government. But for democracy, we would have entrenched race in the Constitution, further gummed up government, and reinforced the separatism that’s at the heart of Aboriginal disadvantage. It was a smashing rebuff for identity politics founded on the good sense of Australian people.

That’s what we need now; more democracy, not less, if our families are to be stronger, our schools are to improve, our streets are to stay safe, our mental health is to be invigorated, our power bills are to fall, our infrastructure is to modernise, our taxes are to shrink, our defences are to strengthen as they must, and defeatism and declinism put behind us.

It’s no accident our best modern governments, those of Hawke and Howard, were also our most electorally successful, because they radiated faith in an Australian people with “no hierarchy of descent” and “no privilege of origin”, entitled to be “relaxed and comfortable” about who we are. One country, not many, that belonged to everyone equally; with one flag, not three; and with just one national language.

How can a country that’s the least racist and most colourblind on Earth really be a product of invasion, oppression and exploitation? My sense is that Australians are waking up to the travesty foisted upon us. That’s our mission: to rekindle the faith that we are the most creative civilisation, the most generous culture, the most welcoming country on Earth, and that our best days are still ahead. That’s my belief and it’s our task to make it so. We call this ARC. There was another Ark, a biblical one, that saved humanity. Maybe that’s our challenge too.

Tony Abbott is a former prime minister of Australia. This is an edited version of a speech he delivered at the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship conference in Sydney on Tuesday.