What ennobling ideals will help us through this crisis?

Men look for work in the Great Depression, circa 1930. Picture: National Museum of Australia

The greatest adversities endured by the Australian people since Federation have centred on war, pandemic and economic depression. Each has been global in scale, and the effects have echoed down future generations.

While I didn’t realise it at the time, my 1960s childhood was shaped by the experiences of my parents, who had lived through the Great Depression as kids and World War II as young adults. Events of this scale do not come and go without altering “normal life” after the storm has passed. Those touched by the Depression, for example, were frugal for the rest of their lives. Apparently my grandfather thought that a man who smoked filtered cigarettes was a bit of a waster – he should smoke roll-your-owns. I now know where that thinking came from.

More profoundly, returned soldiers from both wars suffered from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. Sadly, many were never fully supported or understood. Trials such as these change the nation and the values of its people. But what was it that enabled those generations to endure, over 31 years, two world wars, the Spanish flu pandemic and an economic depression?

When those calamities occurred, between 1914 and 1945, Australia was an independent nation but still part of the British Empire. Indeed, for part of the wars our troops were directed by the British military, often with disastrous outcomes. But while it might rankle with us today, I am sure our soldiers saw themselves as defending something bigger, something noble and worth fighting for. This “ennobling” idea of empire motivated Japanese soldiers as well. As the war moved to the Pacific, our troops surely switched their thinking: their role was also to defend their homeland.

At home, I think the same attitude gave Australians a strength of purpose in hard times. They had a belief that they were part of something bigger – nationhood, if not empire – and they saw it as their duty to respond to a call for its defence.

But what sustained people between the wars? During the Great Depression, with little by way of government support, how did they cope? Perhaps it was, for many, the thought that daily sacrifice in this life would deliver salvation in the next. Religion was a powerfully binding force for those facing hardship, let alone for those contemplating violent and certain death.

In the seven decades or so since World War II, Australia has enjoyed peace and generally buoyant economic times. We have loosened our ties to empire and now proudly stand as an independent nation. We have retreated from religious dogma and are more likely to demand prosperity in this life rather than sacrifice now and hope for repayment via salvation in the next. Religious belief has lost its authority to unite the Australian people. In the absence of empire and religion, what ennobling ideals will help us through the pandemic? I am not sure we have the galvanising forces required to withstand a focused adversary determined to put us in our place. Especially when that adversary is united by the desire to right perceived past wrongs.

Sure, we need vaccines, alliances and maybe even missiles but I think we need something extra. And that is a unifying belief in our right to exist as a nation, in the integrity of our institutions and in our way of life, and in our connection to community starting with the family, however defined. With these convictions, we can endure whatever the 2020s may have in store.