Bring back knights and dames, says Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott stands by his decision to appoint knights and dames and wants them reintroduced.

Then prime minister Tony Abbott meets Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in 2014 at the Service of Remembrance at Bayeux cathedral, France, during D-Day 70 Commemorations.

Tony Abbott has stood by his decision to appoint knights and dames into the Australian honours system and suggests they be reintroduced.

In his first long post-election interview to mark the Liberal Party’s 75th anniversary, Mr ­Abbott recognised there were things that caused him “a lot of grief” when he was PM between 2013-15, including his captain’s pick of appointing Prince Philip a Knight.

But Mr Abbott stood by his decision for knights and dames in the Australian honours system, and suggested they be back on the agenda and reinstated.

“If we are going to have an honours system (then) I think that at the apex of the system we should have knights and dames,” Mr Abbott said.

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“If you are a tradition-minded leader of a centre-right party, that’s exactly the kind of thing that you should do. At the heart of our centre-right tradition, it is not so much reform but restoration.

“I should have found a way of doing in this country what they did in New Zealand when John Key brought it back (by) up­grading the ACs to AKs. And I shouldn’t have made it the prime minister’s personal pick, it should have been the Council of the Order of Australia which did it.”

In 2014, Mr Abbott announced that up to four knights or dames would be appointed in any year, saying the honour would be extended to Australians of “extraordinary and pre-eminent achievement and merit”. Mr Abbott then appointed Prince Philip a Knight on Australia Day, recognising him for his “contribution to Australia throughout the Queen’s reign.”

Queen Elizabeth II (L) presents Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (C) with the Insignia of a Knight of the Order of Australia as Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downer (R) looks on.

However, in 2015 Malcolm Turnbull dumped his predecessor’s system saying his “Cabinet recently considered the Order of Australia, in this its 40th anniversary year, and agreed that Knights and Dames are not appropriate in our modern honours system”.

Mr Turnbull said while knights and dames was “a long way from being the most important issue in Australia”, the decision reflected a modern Australia. “Knights and Dames are titles that are really anachronistic, out of date, [and] not appropriate in 2015 in Australia,” Mr Turnbull said.

In his exclusive interview, Mr Abbott conceded he made mistakes as prime minister but overwhelmingly blamed Mr Turnbull’s overweening ambition for his government’s demise four years ago.

Mr ­Abbott said he wished he had longer than two years as prime minister and did not rule out a ­return to parliament.

“It wasn’t that we had a divided government, it was more that there was one person who was ­determined to get to the top by hook or by crook,” Mr Abbott said. “Malcolm always thought it was his destiny to be prime minister and I happened to be the ­obstacle to that and so he dealt with me as best he could.”

Malcolm Turnbull officially launches the Liberal 2016 federal campaign and greets ex-PMs Tony Abbott and John Howard and their wives Margie and Janette. Picture: Jason Edwards

While Mr Abbott said he had “mostly” forgiven those who had turned against him and had no “lasting enmities”, he would consider returning to parliament.

“If the Liberal Party ever wanted me to do that, I would be more than happy to consider it, but I find it difficult to imagine the circumstances that they would want me,” he said.

“I’m not ruling it out but I’m not expecting it to happen.”

With the Liberal Party having governed nationally for 48 of its 75 years, Mr Abbott said it could reasonably claim to be Australia’s natural party of government.

“No party can represent the country as wholeheartedly as we can,” he said. “First, because no particular section owns us the way the unions own the Labor Party. And, second, because we have not succumbed to the siren song of globalism to anything like the ­extent that the political left has.”

Mr Abbott said the Liberal Party was the custodian of three principal political traditions — liberalism, conservatism and patriotism — but the key to Scott Morrison’s election victory was being more pragmatic than ­ideological.

“There’s the liberal strand, there’s the conservative strand and, above all else, there’s the patriotic strand,” he said about the Liberal Party’s philosophy. “Yes, we are the freedom party, yes we are the tradition party but above all else we are the patriotic party.

Queen Elizabeth II with Tony Abbott at the presentation of the Queens Colours at Royal Military College Duntroon in Canberra in 2011.

“What we always need to do is to ask ourselves what are the ­issues that are troubling people at this time and come up with ­feasible, understandable ways ­forward. We certainly looked the more practical and the less ideological of the two parties at the last election, and that’s why we won.”

The former prime minister, who was a guest at the British Conservative Party conference in Manchester last week, praised US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for putting their nations first.

“There has been a much greater sense of the nation state and of good old-fashioned patriotism in the approach of Trump and Trump’s Republicans and in the approach of Johnson and Johnson’s Conservatives,” Mr Abbott said. “I also think that one of the reasons why we succeeded in 2013 was because we had a no-­nonsense approach to border protection which put Australia first.”

Tomorrow, Part 3: Malcolm Turnbull on leadership, achievements and regrets