This is an excerpt from David Marr's recent Quarterly Essay on Tony Abbott, which was reproduced on Martin Whitely's website earlier this week after the WA ALP Branch pre-selected (yet another) extreme right wing SDAer, Joe Bullock, to help prevent the federal ALP caucus adopting a modern approach to issues like marriage equality:
…In those summer days in early 1976 the course of his (Abbott’s) political life was set. In the heady atmosphere of that secret forum young Tony was recruited for Bob Santamaria’s Movement. The men who did the work Peter Samuel, the Bulletin’s cranky political correspondent; Warren Hogan, the embattled professor of economics at Sydney University; and Joe de Bruyn, a hard-line Catholic union official about to assume lifetime (national) leadership of the shop assistants’ union (the SDA).
…Santamaria deplored the Pill, homosexuality, rampant materialism, married women in the workforce, environmentalists, drugs, abortion, anarchy on campuses, economic rationalism, dissident theologians, divorce without proof of guilt and their cult of moral autonomy of the individual. What he saw at stake here was the authority of family, church and state, indeed legitimate authority in every field of life.
…(Abbott) pledged his troth to Santamaria. It would be a year before he met the man face to face but he fell in love that weekend. “I have been under the Santamaria spell ever since.” He regarded him until his death in 1998 as “the greatest living Australian”.
…(Abbott) believed the path Santamaria was inviting him to take was essentially religious. In the old man’s obituary a couple of decades later he wrote: “His real role was to create a type of secular religious order, something like a band of political Jesuits, a group of men and women whose religious values translated into strong commitment, not necessarily to any political party, but to a set of social principles.”
The tactics were not so lofty. The Democratic Clubs (of which Abbott and Bullock were members) were small and their membership carefully controlled. The correct line was strictly enforced. They used tactics Santamaria developed to fight Reds in the unions: provocative campaigning, ceaseless leafleting and infiltrating rival organisations. They called themselves moderates but their position was extreme: as far to the right as the Maoists and Trotskyists on campus were to the left. They were accused of rough-house tactics and wrecking what they couldn’t control. The student newspaper Honi Soit reported: “This organisation has a long history of politically motivated violence – whether as vigilantes for vice-regals, smoke-bombers for Saigon, poster pullers for political reaction, or bullies for by-elections.”
…His (Abott’s) fellow warriors (in the Democratic Club) loved him in a slightly protective way. “Tony was a warm, sociable individual, a ton of fun,” recalls Joe Bullock, who is now state secretary in Western Australia of de Bruyn’s SDA union. “People warmed to Tony. He was very personable, very quick with the common touch he still has. But he was enthusiastically hated by those who hated him. He was seen as a very worthy opponent with a capacity to win. We all thought Tony would be a force to be reckoned with when he grew up and we’re still waiting.” Great things seemed to be at stake. Bullock says: “Everyone thought they were engaged in a bigger battle. I thought I was engaged in a battle between good and evil.” …His (Abbott’s) plan was to win presidency of the SRC (Sydney University Student Representative Council) and collapse it from above. He was well underway. In May, he had taken control of the campus Liberal Club. It was Joe Bullock’s idea: “I said we need a banner to fight under. We’ve got have something that can draw people to us. The Labor Club was extreme left. There was no chance of knocking it off. But the Liberal Club was a dreadful bunch of dilettantes and social climbers. And there were not many of them. So I said: “Let’s knock off the Liberal Club.’ But Tony was really reluctant. ‘Oh, no, I don’t want to join the Liberal Club.’ He made it clear his loyalties were to Labor. Eventually, I persuaded him against his better judgement to join.”
When will the ALP leave the 1950s behind it?
Recent Comments