Tony Abbott lays out poll strategy for Scott Morrison

Tony Abbott is calling on the Morrison government to take on the ‘black armband brigade’ and veto a controversial national curriculum.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott. Picture: AAP

Tony Abbott is calling on the Morrison government to take on the “black-armband brigade” and veto a controversial national curriculum which proposes devoting more school time to Indigenous history and the environment.

In an opinion piece for The Australian outlining his vision for a post-coronavirus conservative agenda, the former prime minister also calls on conservatives to do more to rein in the power of the Senate, build coal-fired power stations, and cut immigration.

His comments come as Scott Morrison faces growing challenges at the next election from One Nation and the Liberal Democrats, who are tapping into the anti-lockdown sentiment to take votes off the Coalition.

Mr Abbott, who was prime minister from 2013 to 2015, says the government should immediately veto the proposed national curriculum, and says challenging the left on cultural issues should be as important to conservatives as “bread-and-butter” issues.

“Australia’s biggest long-term challenge is this notion of national illegitimacy based on dispossession of Aboriginal people and supposedly ongoing racism, sexism and environmental despolia­tion,” he writes in The Australian.

“Wittingly or not, this is being fed by schools required to teach every subject, from Latin to physical education, from an Indigenous, Asian and sustainability perspective. It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of challenging the black-armband brigade at every turn, even while continuing to focus on bread-and-butter issues.”

Education Minister Alan Tudge in August said the board of the country’s schooling authority must substantially rewrite its draft national curriculum, saying he would not endorse the document amid concern student outcomes would be harmed.

Mr Abbott, writing in The Australian, has also called for significant curbs to the power of the upper house, which helped to stymie most of his conservative agenda in the 2014 budget.

“A constitutional amendment to turn the Senate from a house of rejection to the house of review it was always supposed to be should be considered,” he writes.

The former prime minister has welcomed the new AUKUS deal with the US and UK, but warns the Prime Minister not to wait for nuclear submarines planned for 2040 to bolster the nation’s defence forces. “We can’t be content with a naval build-up that might be our biggest in history but is undoubtedly our slowest,” he writes.

“Good on the Morrison government for its decision to buy a nuclear-powered sub, but we can’t afford to wait decades for the first one to be operational and should lease retiring British or American subs much sooner.”

While he has been less outspoken than former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd since leaving office, Mr Abbott has courted controversy as early as this week over his views on Covid-19 restrictions.

On an Institute of Public Affairs podcast, Mr Abbott defended the widely condemned anti-lockdown protesters who stormed Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance – and instead ­attacked Victoria Police for their “heavy-handed” response.