After the defeat of the Howard government and before he’d turn Australian politics on its head as Liberal leader, Tony Abbott wrote a memoir-manifesto entitled Battlelines.
Just like his latest book, Australia: a history, the 2009 title traverses a huge span of the political landscape and Abbott’s career.
Abbott wrote that his attacks on multiculturalism as a journalist in the 1980s were wrong, conceding he had fallen into the same trap as other critics by “underestimating the gravitational pull of the Australian way of life”.
Abbott said he’d been too defensive of western values, and stated plainly that non-European migrants had taken to Australia just as enthusiastically as those who had come from Britain.
But the former prime minister – and the sections of the Liberal party who still look to him for leadership and vision – are falling into the same trap again today.
By seeking to turn migration into a political bludgeon against Labor ahead of the next election, Liberal rightwingers will not only pick away at the fabric of modern Australia, but further alienate the party from the voters they need to win back.
Fuelling the instability which risks swamping the opposition under Sussan Ley, attacking immigration and multiculturalism is a bad bet on politics and a bad bet on principle.
Abbott, or any other former political leader, should not be criticised for writing books. Launched by the governor general, Sam Mostyn, this week, Abbott’s new history is interesting and thought-provoking for a country that does not spend enough time understanding its origins.
But in the book, Abbott reveals some significant shifts in his views on multicultural Australia.
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He points out the pandemic border closures put in place by the Morrison government led to a surge in overseas arrivals from 2022 onwards.
Net overseas migration – the difference between the number of people staying in Australia for longer than 12 months and the number of long-term and permanent departures – reached record levels.
Politically it appeared to catch the newly elected federal Labor government unaware, with new arrivals blamed for infrastructure pressures, the housing crisis and downward pressure on wages.
It is worth noting that Australia isn’t alone here. The Australian National University researchers Alan Gamlen and Peter McDonald say the Covid-19 shock created “a whipsaw effect” in migration across rich countries around the world, and policies of both parties here have contributed to the surge in arrivals.
In a recent paper, Gamlen and McDonald find no foundation for claims from the Coalition that Labor has implemented a “Big Australia” policy since the 2022 election.
Abbott dispatches with his assessment of cause and effect swiftly, writing that “recent migrants” from the Middle East had taken part in demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne after the 7 October terror attacks against Israel.
Here he sees problems with the integration of new arrivals, and says too many people are living in “Hotel Australia” and not joining “Team Australia”.
Speaking to Radio National Breakfast this week, Abbott said we should all sign up to Bob Hawke’s prescription for citizenship: “To be absolutely, completely, totally and utterly committed to this country.”
Similar politics were at the heart of the flare-up between Ley and the now former Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie earlier this month. Entering politics to run in a key byelection when Abbott was prime minister in 2015, the former soldier is a close ally of Abbott and is reportedly working on his own policy manifesto for the struggling Liberal party.
Like his colleague Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Hastie is close to the rightwing political campaign group Advance. Like Abbott, Advance has campaigned against “mass migration”, a loaded term some Liberals, including Paul Scarr, the shadow minister for immigration, citizenship and multicultural affairs, won’t use.
Hastie was angry that Ley had tasked Scarr with leading the formulation of Coalition immigration policy. As the shadow home affairs minister and the senior figure in the policy portfolio, Hastie had expected to have a role in the task.
He argues immigration levels are now “unsustainable” and are making Australians “strangers” in their own country.
Pollsters, including the former Liberal strategist Tony Barry, make the case plainly that on the politics, moving to the right on issues like immigration is the wrong approach.
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They warn the party will be able to appeal only to a narrow minority of voters, likely keeping Labor safe on parliament’s treasury benches for another term.
In his 2022 defeat, Scott Morrison lost support among multicultural electorates, including Chinese Australians, in part for escalating rhetoric against the Chinese government.
The party’s postmortem review warned against political rhetoric that could be misinterpreted or misunderstood by multicultural voters. The Coalition went even further back in some seats in 2025, losing people such as Keith Wolahan in Menzies.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson this week said the Liberals would struggle to steal her policies. Photograph: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images
If Abbott and Hastie want to fight the politics of immigration today, they will have to outflank Pauline Hanson. The One Nation leader said this week the Liberals would struggle to steal her policies and then called for the about 1,900 refugees from Gaza who have come to Australia to be returned.
On Sky News, she claimed, without evidence, that the group had not been subject to security checks before coming to Australia.
Hanson said a balancing out of migrant numbers was needed, calling for arrivals to be capped at about 130,000 people per year. Coalition politicians struggle to say what their number would be, in part because of skills shortages across the economy.
One Nation might win on the politics of immigration because anti-migrant sentiment is concentrated on the political right. As Macquarie University’s Shaun Wilson noted this week, about 77% of Coalition voters say immigration has gone “too far”, but Greens and Labor voters think managed levels are “about right”.
Labor is continuing efforts to bring down migrant numbers, including limiting places for international students at universities and higher education colleges. The Coalition could find the politics of post-Covid immigration has less salience ahead of the next election, likely to be fought more than five years after the border reopened.
Scarr himself has a better approach than Hastie and Abbott. He is critical of Labor’s management of migration and says an appropriate debate must be had. He has called for it to be measured and considered, and to be based on facts, not emotion or rhetoric.
In his speech to the Migration Institute of Australia last week, Scarr said transparency is critical to this debate. He took heart from survey data showing the overwhelming number of Australians concerned with migration rates remain strongly positive about multiculturalism.
“Providing an explanation to the Australian people is vital,” he said. Otherwise, “the vacuum is left to be filled by the extreme fringe elements”.
Abbott’s new history of Australia includes accounts of when overseas migration has made the country a better place, including the arrival of diaspora communities who are now part of the rich national tapestry.
Like other Liberal leaders, he has done well recognising the value of multicultural Australia in the past.
But for today’s Liberals, demanding communities sign up to “Team Australia” or suggesting migrants make Australians feel like strangers in their own country won’t cut it with voters.