Fitz: One thing I particularly disagree with you on is when you write in favour of keeping Australia Day on its current date, noting that “a poll found that 56 per cent of Australians under 25 wanted January 26 to be known as ‘Invasion Day’, even though it marked the planting of a colony, albeit a penal one”. My point to you is they’re not mutually exclusive. A colony actually almost always follows an invasion.
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TA: Well, it may have looked like an invasion to some, but that doesn’t mean that it was an invasion to all, and certainly not to the convicts. The idea that they were some kind of an invading force would have seemed somewhat ridiculous.
Fitz: But if you and I were at Bondi Beach and we saw a vessel 10,000 times bigger than we’d ever seen before, and it turned out that a foreign force was landing in Sydney, and you and I and our families were soon pushed out of our homes as the new arrivals established a colony here, what the hell else would we call it?
TA: Any real invader would not have been given instructions to “live in amity” with the native people. Any real invader wouldn’t have been told to conciliate, to open an intercourse with the native people and conciliate their affections. And any real invader wouldn’t have gone forward sort of with open palms as Governor Phillip did, to try to meet with the indigenous people.
Fitz: To which I’d say, whatever the instructions to the invading force that you and I saw off Bondi Beach, it would matter what they did, not what they were told to do. But anyway, going on, is this book an initiative of the Institute of Public Affairs?
TA: It came from a conversation that I had with the IPA’s then head, John Roskam. We were mulling over contemporary Australia. And he posed the question, “If there was one thing that could be done that would improve our country substantially, what might it be?” And I mulled over that for a moment or two, and I said, “Well, I’d really like us to be more appreciative of our history, more familiar with it.” And it was at that point that I thought, “Well, damn it, what about a history of the country?”
Fitz: So the advantage that you had over the rest of us in telling certain parts of Australian history is that you yourself have sat in the big chair as PM and so can see what other prime ministers faced, with a different perspective than the rest of us?
TA: Exactly right. I mean, the fact that I have sat in that chair does give you a level of understanding, insight and emotional sympathy with forebears. And I guess it’s much easier for me, having been a PM, to appreciate the excellence of the people who’ve held that position on both sides.
Fitz: And for the first time ever, you and I can agree in disagreeing with a Paul Keating assessment, in this case his line that “[John] Curtin was a plodder,” as he characterised our WWII leader in his “Placido Domingo” speech.
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TA: Yeah, look, Curtin was obviously a great man, and I would say he was a great prime minister. I’m not sure he was a great war leader because, for all sorts of understandable reasons, he hated war to the marrow of his bones.
Fitz: And yet, was it not truly great when Curtin slapped Winston Churchill down, after the British PM tried to divert Australian troops returning to Australia from North Africa to go to Burma instead, to defend India from a western Japanese thrust? Was it not – to use an historical term – f—ing outrageous, for Churchill to have given that order for the direction of Australian troops because he saw himself as the head of the British Empire, not just the head of Great Britain?
TA: Well, I have a lot of sympathy with the head of the British Empire, as you can imagine. But the interesting thing is that notwithstanding the orders that Churchill gave, he accepted that they could be countermanded by Curtin. In the end, Churchill understood that for all the bonds of affection and values and interest and history, it was the Australian prime minister who directed the Australian military forces.
Fitz: On Billy McMahon, you pretty much say that he was not up to it.
TA: He was a particular disappointment and Billy’s problem was he came at the end of a long time of Liberal government. There were four liberal prime ministers in that period, I think we can safely say that he was the least significant.
Fitz: You characterise Bob Hawke as our greatest Labor prime minister, but I was most fascinated by your characterisation of Paul Keating where you say that on budget day 1990, you were a junior staffer for new Liberal leader John Hewson, as treasurer Keating took a chainsaw to the Opposition benches.
Former prime ministers (clockwise) Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott. None of the transitions were peaceful. Credit: Fairfax Media
TA: I will never forget it. Keating unleashed a verbal assault of extraordinary ferocity, and when I looked from the adviser’s box across to the ranks of the Coalition backbench, they were visibly wilting. Peter Reith did his best, but it was really only John Howard who mounted a resistance and I thought, “Well, there’s fight in us, yet”.
Fitz: And yet, it must have been only five or six years later that Keating famously referred to you and yours as “the young fogies opposite”.
TA: Correct. He linked Peter Costello and myself that way.
One of the issues Fitzsimons and Abbott disagree on is Australia becoming a republic. Credit: John Shakespeare
Fitz: In your book, you say that in 2006 Peter Costello mounted a 24-hour challenge. And yet, there was no formal ballot taken …
TA: No. But, that is what happened. As you’ll remember Peter made public the note in his wallet whereby Howard had agreed to stand down that term and for about 24 hours, it was unclear whether Peter was going to resign from the government and launch a challenge or buckle down to work. And eventually, he buckled down to work.
Fitz: And yet you broadly say that, looking back, you should have supported Costello because he was “the greatest prime minister we never had”, and that you “underestimated the burnout” of the Howard government.
TA: Yes, with the wisdom of hindsight, it would have been better for the Liberal Party, if there had been a peaceful transition from John to Peter, perhaps at the end of 2006.
Fitz: You refer to the famous misogyny speech of Julia Gillard, where she specifically targeted you – “I will not be lectured by this man” – as “a rhetorical triumph”. I must ask: was it excruciating to be the subject of such a speech where she just publicly backed you into the corner of the ring … and absolutely smashed you?
Julia Gillard replies to a motion by then-opposition leader Tony Abbott on the day of her famous misogyny speech in 2012.Credit: Andrew Meares
TA: Well, the truth is, Gillard was a very effective parliamentary performer, but at the time, I wasn’t conscious of the speech being the tour de force that it was subsequently judged to be. It was really only afterwards, when I was told by my staff that her speech had really taken off, that I was aware of it. This is the thing about history, its participants aren’t always conscious of the fact that they’re making it.
Fitz: You are, not surprisingly, scathing about Malcolm Turnbull as PM, and accuse Scott Morrison of “dithering” on Indigenous treaties and so forth. It must have been difficult for you to write an assessment of your own prime ministership in that you say when you got the job you “wanted to stop the revolving door, of PMs, and clearly didn’t. Looking back, why didn’t you stop it?
TA: Look objectively, I was an extremely good opposition leader. The best I can say of myself as PM is that I got a lot done in two years, but a prime ministership that only lasts two years can hardly rank up there with those that lasted much longer.
Fitz: What mistakes did you make?
TA: Well, this is not about me, but, look, you ask me a fair question. I did not succeed in managing a cabinet comprised of some very difficult – and in one case, in particular – very ambitious individuals.
Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott in 2015. Credit: Andrew Meares
Fitz: [Laughing.] How is Malcolm? Do you two talk?
TA: I always make a point of saying g’day to him, if our paths cross, and we invariably have a civil conversation.
Fitz: You write about Bob Hawke that, when he fell to Keating, he “was publicly gracious, calling for unity. He asked to be remembered as ‘a bloke who loved his country still does and loves Australians’”. I accept this book’s not about you, but what would you write as your own political epitaph?
TA: I don’t want to pass final judgment on myself. I will leave that to others.
Fitz: Alright, can I tell you my own favourite personal Tony Abbott reminiscence, politically?
TA: Go on.
Fitz: Late in the 2019 election campaign, when Zali Steggall was coming at you like a steam train, you were outside the Avenue Cafe in Mosman, on your own, handing out leaflets. I waved at you, and you came in and had a cup of tea.
TA: I remember!
Fitz: And I said, “How’s it going, Abbo?” You said, and I quote: “It’s tough. Five years ago, I sat at the top table as host of the G20 flanked by the likes Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, David Cameron and Vladmir Putin. And I’ve just come from handing out leaflets at Spit Junction bus stop and people are winding down their windows and calling out ‘F–k off you dickhead!’” Then you paused and said, “But, I guess that’s good for the soul”. I mean, Jesus wept, you were still smiling!
TA: [Laughing uproariously, before pausing, and being reflective.] Mate, you’ve got to smile because the alternative is to cry.
Peter FitzSimons: “I ran into my old rugby coach”. Credit: Peter_Fitz on X
Fitz: OK, but here’s the other thing. My wife took a photo of us having tea, and I put it on X (Twitter), saying “I ran into my old rugby coach”. For me, Twitter and other forums melted down for a week, vilifying me for just sitting next to you. As a serious question, if that is what I get for sitting next to you, what is it like to be you? Are you never shaken yourself by the level of vilification you get?
TA: No. I’ve often said one of the features of public life is being blamed for faults you don’t have by people who don’t know you, and to a much lesser extent, being praised for virtues you don’t have by people you’ve never met. It just goes with the territory. And there’s no doubt, that the 2019 campaign in Warringah was pretty savage, and a couple of times people were almost spitting at me because I was supposedly destroying the planet or supposedly a friend of paedophiles, and possibly a paedophile myself because I hadn’t repudiated George Pell. It was a vicious, nasty, horrible campaign. But look, that’s democracy, and you just have to accept that when people are very, very passionate, they often won’t be very fair?
Fitz: On the subject of destroying the planet, you once described climate change as “crap” . . .
TA: [Jumping in to correct]. I think the words were “absolute crap” and this is the version that I prefer. The so-called settled science of climate change is absolute crap, right?
Fitz: You address that in the book because you say, “yet the Federation drought was more severe than any subsequent one. The 1851 Victorian bushfires were probably our worst ever. And 1974 Cyclone Tracy was certainly our most destructive storm.” Abbo, you’re surely not giving these examples as reasons that all the [climate] scientists around the globe, have got it wrong? You can’t, now, in 2025 deny that climate change is a serious issue.
TA: Climate change absolutely happens, and it is an issue. All I can do is repeat what I used to say as prime minister, which is, climate change is real. Mankind makes a contribution. We should take reasonable steps to reduce emissions, but not if it costs jobs, drives industries offshore, and damages families and standards of living.
Fitz: Ok, last thing. You also have a doco on the same subject [as the book], airing on Sky, starting Monday night, which I haven’t seen. I am interested. Do you go into the Eureka Stockade?
TA: I certainly do! That was an extraordinary episode of our history, and there is inspiration for everyone in it. On the one hand, it was a workers’ revolt, but also a small business revolt against an overbearing government. And it all made Victoria the pacesetter for progressive liberalism in the English-speaking world.
Fitz: I agree. Therefore, was it a mistake for John Howard in 2004 to have no cabinet ministers, including not yourself, in Ballarat, for the 150th anniversary of Eureka?
TA: I don’t recall that. We didn’t send a cabinet member?
Fitz: You didn’t. There was nobody there. But now you get it, wouldn’t it be great instead of having the flag of another nation in our national flag right now, wouldn’t the Eureka flag be absolutely magnificent?
TA: Well, I love the existing flag. And look, I don’t see that we should change the flag, but I take your point that the Eureka flag is an important element in our history.
Fitz: Ok, thanks Abbo. After the fall, I am going to ask the Revolutionary Guards to take it easy on you, just for that comment alone on the Eureka flag.
Peter FitzSimons is a journalist and columnist. Connect via X.
