Creed and fear

Many Western democracies seem to lack conviction in their own foundational beliefs. Our polities are the poorer for it. By John Anderson.

The following is an edited transcript of the remarks given by Hon John Anderson AO at the launch of God & Menzies: The Faith that Shaped a Prime Minister and his Nation by David Furse-Roberts.

Well, Nick, thank you very much for your kind introduction and to you, the author of the book, that we're celebrating now, David Furse-Roberts, former prime minister John Howard, and friends, one and all. I'm coming to you tonight from South West Rocks. We've been allowed out of lockdown for a little while, which is great, so we're snatching a few days away. Now, I'm not quite in my home environment, but it's a great honour to launch this, and I think it's an important work. It's a rare thing. A detailed, well-sourced and well-argued, well-reasoned, fair and balanced, I would say, account of the things that our longest serving, and in many ways, most influential prime minister believed in.

I've long felt that beliefs are underestimated in terms of their role in society. Beliefs drive values, it seems to me. And values, in turn, influence people's behaviour, ethics, and in the case of politics, their policies.

Menzies, as an outward looking man, again, something that we forget - he was a true global statesman - would've understood the enormous influence of beliefs, I think, as he looked at the world around him. And indeed today, it's worth reflecting that there are something like 190 countries across the world. Only 40, are what you could really call democracies, and many of them are now dubious and seem to lack conviction in their own foundational beliefs and values anyway, perhaps even ours included. And all of those 40, with four exceptions, essentially were Christian countries. The four exceptions were deeply, or had been deeply, influenced by Christianity and by the West. I would include in those four India, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. So Menzies, at that helicopter level, if I can use that word, would've looked at the world and recognised beliefs play out, not just in our lives, but in the sort of societies that we come to live in.

Conversely, the lack of beliefs, the breakdown in our own country, I think, has led to a very real problem. So it's hard to find a conservative who knows what to conserve anymore. Liberals seem to believe in big government and a lot of interference, or a lot of them do. And the old democratic socialists or left wing, left of centre movements appear to have moved to a new sort of obsession with victimhood politics. And this is a problem because that lack of belief and vision gives way to adhockery and managerialism of a sort that's not very satisfying and robs us of the opportunity to test policies against their long term impact on the sort of country that we want to be in the public debate. Menzies was, I think it's fair to say, massively shaped, it emerges through this work, by the home he grew up in, his deep knowledge of the Christian Bible, as well as his astute powers of observation.

Greg Sheridan in his latest book talks about how the Apostle Paul changed the way we think. He introduced the concept of universalism. Consider that extraordinary statement of the Apostle Paul to the effect that, ‘We are no longer man nor woman, slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile, but all one in Jesus Christ.’ That concept of universalism was to show up in one of the most interesting things to my way of thinking that Menzies ever said. When he commented that democracy is not like a machine, it's more a spirit in which regardless of our abilities and station in life, all souls must be regarded as equal in the sight of heaven. That's a profound doctrine. It's the real answer to racism. It's an interesting point, I think, that Menzies would've understood from, somebody he would’ve seen probably from the other side of politics, Martin Luther King, when he talked about character being more important than the colour of skin. And he'd have had little time for the horrors of what we now call identity politics and particularly its high-water mark of intersectionality where the more identity features you can accumulate, the more of a victim you are and the more you must be somehow, or other celebrated as a victim. He wouldn't have understood that. He would've said, "No, universalism, love your neighbour, do as you ought to others, and be strong in it," was a much better answer to horrors such as racism than, if I may say so, Black Lives Matter and movements like that, are so easily captive and have been by activists and identity politics players.

He'd have, I think, too understood, and did at the time, the huge dangers of communism and the way it now threatens us. It's a form of religion, in my view. Atheistic? Yes, but it preaches a nirvana. The end state of history will be a Marxist utopia and brooks no opposition to the idea of domination by the party. And he would've, I think, been horrified at our lack of conviction in the West today when we're confronted by massive conviction on the part of those who dislike, even loathe our way of life and want us to live according to very different dictates. It all stems from that recognition of the dignity and the worth of the individual that is pronounced by a higher authority. He plainly accepted that and saw it as incredibly important, foundational to what he might have called, along with Churchill, civilisational Christianity.

So I think this is a very valuable book. David, I think you've done an incredible job in pulling together some really interesting material. In an age when, as Nick said, we want to push beliefs out of the public square, I have to say that I think this is very dangerous. I think it's a nonsense. We should be very careful of what we're wishing for because we are confronted by people who have very powerful belief systems and we need to know what we believe and we need to be really careful about, as I said, a moment ago, what it is that we're wishing for. You've put together a compelling case, I think, for us to consider, which is that the longest serving; the most, in many ways, nation shaping prime minister, really did have a core set of beliefs.

He may not have always talked about them publicly. He may not have fitted, perhaps, the mould of his own parents, with their very strong Methodism on one side, Presbyterian background on the other side. He always identified as a Presbyterian rather than as a Methodist, but all of those things played out very strongly. He was a huge admirer of John Wesley, for example, saw him as one of the great men, if not the greatest of the 18th century. So he understood so deeply, and you bring it to life, the importance of a Christian worldview to the sustaining of freedom and of democracy. And I do think that you're to be commended for what you've done. I think it's tremendous that so many people have turned up for tonight. I commend the book to you. I think it'll make a great thing to do, to go out and buy several copies of it and give them away as Christmas presents. Thank you very much, David, and I do hope it moves very well because it deserves to, it's an important work.

Hon John Anderson AO is former deputy prime minister. Click here to buy God & Menzies: The Faith that Shaped a Prime Minister and his Nation.