My crossing with Tony Abbott rankled, but the Libs need his special talents

Seeing two people approaching a pedestrian crossing, I slowed my car. They were still about five metres from the kerb but I stopped anyway. As they crossed in front of me, I waited for an acknowledgement – just a nod or a raised hand – but nope, nothing. They were men of late middle age. One was absorbed in talking, the other in listening.

It’s a bugbear of mine when pedestrians do this, and I was in a bad mood and almost opened my window to offer some righteous words about manners. Then I noticed that the talker was Tony Abbott, and I realised how futile it would be to shout, because here was a man used to being shouted at by random members of the public. If he heard me at all, he would think I was only abusing him for his politics, not his lack of common courtesy.

That micro-episode has been in my mind this week, as the Farrer by-election looms, almost certainly to shrink the residual Liberal Party in Canberra by another number. The favoured candidates, One Nation’s David Farley and the independent Michelle Milthorpe, will share from the same dominant Australian well of exasperated anger with the major parties, leaving the incumbent Liberals hoping forlornly for some luck in the lottery of preferences, a last refuge for parties who have lost the ability to project coherence or clarity. Labor won’t even be there, watching from a distance, eating popcorn as the tories eat each other.

“Authenticity” is gold in today’s politics. Being in permanent opposition, as Pauline Hanson has found during 30 years of repeating the same handful of blunt words, is fuel for authenticity. Even for voters who don’t like where she stands, she holds an appeal because they know where she is.

If opposition, shouting from the sidelines, nurtures authenticity, being in government dilutes it. Where does the Farrer mishmash leave the Labor Party (other than in power)? Currently, a kind of default vote for ambivalent voters, Anthony Albanese’s administration is struggling against the inevitable erosion of identity that comes with the business of governing, covering bases, reconciling opposites, satisfying contradictory interests, a position of temporary strength but long-term weakness unless they can use their power to entrench clear values.

Winning government is a far-away dream for the federal Liberals; their challenge is to win opposition. Frankly, they suffer from still posing as an alternative government. Angus Taylor’s typical utterances reach a point where the eyes begin to dart about and the mouth keeps flapping while the mind second-guesses whether he’s getting something wrong or talking his way into a trap. The actual words sound like phrases overheard at lunch in an all-male private club. It’s the opposite of so-called “retail politics”, the language of inauthenticity inherited from years of being on the inside, in a direct genealogical line from Scott Morrison’s slipperiness through Sussan Ley’s anxious contortionism.

Enter Abbott, reportedly ready to become the Liberals’ next federal president. Contacted by this masthead’s Paul Sakkal during the week, Abbott did not comment, but it is understood he is positioned to replace the former South Australian premier John Olsen as chief of the party’s organisational wing, although Alexander Downer will attempt to give him a run for his money.

Abbott’s brand was always as the insider who looked like an outsider. After some years as a ghost at the Liberal table, he had been undergoing a process of reanimation. He became a director of Fox Corporation in 2023, and the Murdoch-owned HarperCollins published his History of Australia, a breakout bestseller in which heroic white men emerge from decades of being undeservedly undervalued. The best thing that happened to his reputation was Morrison, who eclipsed him in discussions, even among conservatives, about the worst prime minister since Billy McMahon.

Abbott played a role in the elevation of his protege Taylor, in whom those patrons of the private clubs see glimpses of the thrusting young man that Abbott once was. And when they are yearning for an opposition leader (forget about a prime minister), who should the Liberals look to but their last leader to win power from opposition?

This is a positive development for the Liberal Party. It drops the futile pursuit of being all things to all people in favour of being one thing to a few people. It shows a commitment to clarity, and if it’s the clarity of a bygone era, at least that’s something. It’s working for Hanson.

Blessed with a talent for being against things, Abbott was a natural as an opposition leader. Before that, in the late 1990s, he was one of the first Liberals to understand how serious a threat One Nation was to the party. White man nostalgia is meant to be Liberal territory, and Abbott spent much of his early career in Canberra barking at Hanson like a jealous guard dog.

As the Farrer by-election dramatises, the Liberals stand between being an alternative government and, following Britain’s Conservative Party, a white elephant of the right. Abbott is edging back towards the centre of that drama. He might only represent a segment of the population whose ranks are diminishing, what with old age and death and everything, but at least he stands for – or to be precise, against – something. He has said that he is often urged to re-enter politics (maybe that’s what he was talking about when he was crossing the road).

Such urgings, if they exist, can only be a cry for authenticity, for a known quantity like, well, Hanson herself.

Abbott’s ascension, alongside Taylor’s, signals that the Liberals are pinning their hopes on a cyclical idea of electoral politics. If they can just stay alive long enough, the wheel will eventually turn their way again. Their anthem is the one Tim Robbins sang in Bob Roberts, the 1992 political satire: The Times They Are A’ Changing … Back.

It’ll be a while before the times change back in Warringah, the electorate Abbott lost to Zali Steggall in 2019. The Liberals thought 2019 was a protest vote, but Steggall’s vote has grown to the degree that Abbott’s old seat is hers for as long as she wants it. Abbott’s natural electorate is now elsewhere, in Hansonland.

Conservatism could stand for values such as social cohesion and traditional courtesies in small daily encounters such as crossing a road when a car has stopped for you when it didn’t need to. I did think, while waiting for Abbott to cross, of that George Burns quote: “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Maybe I’ve got him wrong and he’s just another political phony. But he did seem, when he forgot his manners, as if he had something extremely important to say.

Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and regular columnist.

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