Battlelines Quotes

“In the narrative of the left, Australia was a boring outpost of the British Empire until Gough Whitlam became prime minister, formally ended the White Australia policy, instituted multiculturalism and gave Aborigines land rights. Whitlam’s brief government was certainly a cultural watershed, but not everything that happened before 1972 is irrelevant and not all that happened afterwards is admirable. Australia was never quite the antipodean England of left-wing mythology. People from Africa, Asia and many of the countries of Europe were aboard the early convict fleets, as would be expected in a representative sample of London’s jails. In the 1830s, after the Myall Creek massacre, white men were hanged for the murder of Aborigines. Among the Gold Rush influx were thousands of Chinese, quite a few of whom stayed after the gold they’d chased ran out. The first decade of Australia’s national existence, which brought the passage of the ‘White Australia’ legislation, also saw our first Chinese-speaking MP, Senator Thomas Bakhap.”
― Tony Abbott, Battlelines

“Quite soon, the Rudd Government’s attempts to stave off a recession by fiscal sugar hits and propping up uncompetitive businesses will come to seem like putting off the inevitable at unsustainable cost. The public, if not the government, will come to appreciate, in former British Prime Minister Jim Callaghan’s words, that ‘you can’t spend your way out of a recession’. It”
― Tony Abbott, Battlelines

“Our fascination with change won’t, of itself, make it more likely or more rapid. Come 2020, I’m confident that Australia will still have one of the world’s strongest economies because the current yearning for magic-pudding economics will turn out to be short-lived. The United States will remain the world’s strongest country by far, and our partnership with America will still be the foundation of our security. We will still be a ‘crowned republic’ because we will have concluded (perhaps reluctantly) that it’s actually the least imperfect system of government. We will be more cosmopolitan than ever but perhaps less multicultural because there will be more stress on unity than on diversity. Some progress will have been made towards ‘closing the gap’ between Aboriginal and other Australians’ standards of living (largely because fewer Aboriginal people will live in welfare villages and more of them will have received a good general education). Families won’t break up any more often, because old-fashioned notions about making the most of imperfect situations will have made something of a comeback. Finally, there will have been bigger fires, more extensive floods and more ferocious storms because records are always being broken. But sea levels will be much the same, desert boundaries will not have changed much, and technology, rather than economic self-denial, will be starting to cut down atmospheric pollution.”
― Tony Abbott, Battlelines

“Teachers who are accountable to principals who are, in turn, accountable to school communities are likely to be more professionally ‘grounded’ and less susceptible to avant garde fashions in curriculum and pedagogy. School”
― Tony Abbott, Battlelines

“As with public hospitals, better public schools are likely to emerge when local teachers and parents have more say over how their schools are run. It’s especially important to give parents a direct say in the running of schools rather than just an advisory role. Even”
― Tony Abbott, Battlelines

“The basic problem is that most Western countries have privatised the next generation. Having children tends to be regarded as a personal choice rather than a social good.”
― Tony Abbott, Battlelines

“It’s not surprising that the Rudd Government is slowly turning Work for the Dole into a training program. The idea that ‘the world owes people a living’ is strong inside the Labor Party. This is why even a normally sensible frontbencher like Martin Ferguson once called Work for the Dole ‘almost evil’.”
― Tony Abbott, Battlelines

“Deep down, the boringly pragmatic Liberal Party has a sunnier view of human nature than the passionately idealistic Labor Party because we are prepared to put more trust in the common sense and decency of our fellow Australians.”
― Tony Abbott, Battlelines

“If Australia had large and growing gaps between rich and poor, if minorities were persecuted, if we were struggling to meet an existential challenge, there’d be every reason to want fundamental change.”
― Tony Abbott, Battlelines