The Samuel Griffith Society and the Business Leadership Network was pleased to have Damien Freeman, an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Catholic University, Research Fellow of the Kathleen Burrow Research Institute and Fellow of the Robert Menzies Institute at the University of Melbourne  speak at its September Sydney dinner on the his new book ”The End of Settlement, Why the 2023 Referendum failed” A copy of his speech is set out below.

Damien Freeman – 11 September 2024

“Ladies and Gentlemen:

Whilst I am pleased to address the Business Leadership Network, I am especially delighted to have the opportunity to address the Samuel Griffith Society again. The last time I did so was in 2013—over a decade ago—on the topic of “Meagher, Mabo and Patrick White’s Teacosy”. That speech was my first public contribution to the discussion about constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, a debate that culminated in a referendum

held last year, which is the subject of my latest book, The End of Settlement.

I wrote that speech in the early days of the premiership of Tony Abbott. I sent the speech to him and waited for a response. And I waited. Eventually, I received the favour of a reply. The typed text had been drafted by a public servant and said that the prime minister looked forward to finding the time to read what I had sent. Beneath the typed text was a note in hand from the prime minister. It explained that he had now found the time to read what I sent, and that he found it credible and encouraged me to continue working on this with Noel Pearson and others. And so I devoted the better part of a decade to this work. Alas, the glory days of the Abbott premiership did not last, and he was soon a backbencher. It was at that time that I wrote Abbott’s Right: the conservative tradition from Menzies to Abbott. When we met in London, I asked him what he thought I should read in preparation for this project, he suggested one book: Sir Keith Hancock’s Australia.

Hancock published his book in 1930 and a second edition was published in 1961. It had a profound influence on Paul Kelly’s book, The End of Certainty about the history of the 1980s. Recently, I took out the 1961 edition, which is a reprint of the original with only a new preface added. In the preface, Hancock reflects on the mistakes that he made thirty years earlier. He acknowledges that he made a few mistakes when it came to his discussion of literature and strategic defence.

There is one topic, however, that comes in for particular scrutiny in this five-paragraph preface:

The historian falls into his worst mistakes when he uses words carelessly. In the fourth chapter of my book I declared economic and ‘racial’ necessity to be the two foundations of the White Australia policy. Today, no writer with any scientific or political sophistication would use the word ‘racial.’ By 1961, this defender of the White Australia policy had come to realise that it was a mistake to speak of race. In 2023, was it perhaps a mistake for the most prominent opponent of the referendum proposal to invoke this very category and warn that “it will divide us by race”?

Chapter I of Hancock’s book is titled, ‘The Invasion of Australia’. It begins, “Many nations adventured for the discovery of Australia, but the British peoples have alone possessed her.” The first eighteen pages are given over to explaining how agricultural development drove colonial expansion in Australia until he gets to point at which he explains, “The invaders of Australia have found their economic frontiers.” On page 20, after tracing the history of the first six generations of British enterprise, he turns to the earlier inhabitants of the land and their fate after 1788:

The Australian aborigines, shut off for centuries from the co-operative intelligence by which nations who are neighbours have created their common civilisation, never imagined that first decisive step from the economy of the chase which would have made them masters of the soil. Instead, they fitted themselves to the soil, modelling a complex civilisation of intelligent artificiality, which yet was pathetically helpless when assailed by the acquisitive society of Europe. The advance of British civilisation made inevitable ‘the natural progress of the aboriginal race towards extinction’—it is the soothing phrase of an Australian Governor. In truth, a hunting and a pastoral economy cannot co-exist within the same bounds. Yet sometimes the invading British did their wreckers’ work with the unnecessary brutality of stupid children. The aboriginal race has always possessed enthusiastic friends, but the friends have never agreed upon a consistent and practical policy for the black man’s preservation. It might still be possible to save a remnant of the race upon well-policed local reserves in Central and Northern Australia. This would cost hard thought and hard cash. Australian democracy is genuinely benevolent, but is preoccupied with its own affairs. From time to time it remembers the

primitive people whom it has dispossessed, and sheds over their predestined passing an economical tear. (pp. 20-21) Hancock concludes his opening chapter on the invasion of Australia by lamenting that “Australia has suffered too much from the greed or ignorance of her invaders.” (p. 23)

When he turns his attention to the public policy of the Commonwealth in its first thirty years, he explains that “The policy of White Australia is the indispensable condition of every other Australian policy.” (p. 59) He cites approvingly Alfred Deakin’s remark that the unity of Australia means nothing if it does not imply a united race. A united race means not only that its members can intermarry and associate without degeneration on either side, but implies … a people possessing the same general cast of character, tone of thought, the same constitutional

training and traditions” before writing that “Every honest exposition of the White Australia policy must start from this double argument of economic and racial necessity.” (p. 61)

Hancock rehearses the troubles of Natal, North America and the pre-federation colonies in Australia before declaring: Reasonable Australians are determined that their country shall not know these evils. It is not a matter of pride, for they remember Australia’s aborigines, and confess that they cannot trust themselves to be merciful and just in their dealings with a weaker people on their own soil. It is not merely a question of primitive fear, for they understand that racial war within a State is none the less hateful if one race does all the lynching. What they fear is not physical conquest by another race, but rather the internal decomposition and degradation of their own civilisation. They have gloried in their inheritance of free institutions, in their right to govern themselves and freely make their own destiny. But self-government, they know, becomes impossible when the inhabitants of a country do not agree upon essentials. (pp. 61-62)

It is as well to begin with Hancock’s discussion of race and Indigenous people, because the proposal for constitutional recognition was intended as a contribution to the process of reconciliation that was a response to this history.

Last year brought to an end the debate over constitutional recognition of Australia’s Indigenous peoples, which began in 2007, when John Howard committed to holding a referendum on the subject if his government was returned at the election to be held later that year.

My book, The End of Settlement, charts attempts to make good this promise from about 2014 until 2023. In it, I develop the concept of settlement politics. This is taken from Paul Kelly’s idea of the Australian Settlement that enjoyed support across the political divides in Australia for eighty years. His account of the 1980s is the story of how this settlement was replaced by a new settlement. To my mind, what is striking about his thesis is no less that the free-market reforms took place than how they were implemented—the fact that they enjoyed bipartisan support. Although the government and opposition disagreed about the country’s future, they could both accept that it involved embracing the free market.

My book argues that the role of settlement in Australian politics has an antecedent in English politics, in particular, I draw on Sir Roger Scruton’s analysis of the Church of England as a settlement in his book, Our Church. The Church of England was a settlement in the sense that it found a way of accommodating disagreement about doctrine and ritual. Within certain parameters, people could disagree about important issues and still be faithful members of the same church. This paved the way for a form of politics—settlement politics—which deploys ambiguity in a way that allows room for people with different political values to find different reasons for supporting a similar policy.

When I reflect on my involvement with the debate about constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples, what I see is an attempt at settlement politics. We were attempting to find a settlement that could be justified by people with competing political values. I believe that the discussions led by Noel Pearson and Greg Craven were a highly successful example of this approach. I believe that we demonstrated that it was possible to arrive at a settlement that could accommodate the aspirations of Indigenous people alongside the concerns of constitutional conservatives.

These were private conversations that were intended to pave the way for a public debate. Alas, settlement politics did not prevail in the next phase. It did not prove possible to get a wider range of stakeholders to engage in the spirit of settlement politics. In 2022, there was a change of government. It is now a matter of history that the new prime minister and his government did not establish a bipartisan process for moving towards a referendum. So it was no surprise that the bill that the government introduced into the parliament for an amendment to the constitution did not enjoy bipartisan support. And it was no surprise that an amendment that did not enjoy bipartisan support failed to command a majority at the referendum.

How is it that in 2007 there was bipartisan support for a referendum on constitutional recognition, and yet in 2023 the referendum failed to ratify the proposed law? The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer reported that trust in institutions was at an all-time low and polarisation was at an all-time high. This insight is central to understanding what happened last year. With increased polarisation, we have seen settlement politics give way to polarised politics. Polarised politics takes different forms. On the left of the political spectrum, we find identity politics; on the right, the rise of populism. These make it increasingly difficult to find common ground.

Identity politics takes as its starting point the idea that there are groups in society that have suffered oppression based on some aspect of their shared identity as a result of political actions. In order to address this oppression, it is necessary to provide for the interest of these oppressed groups. When it comes to identifying the interests and how they may be addressed, only people with firsthand experience of the oppression are thought to be in a position to determine the

interests. Thus, only those who share the identity are able to determine what political action is necessary in order to address the oppression.

Populist politics takes its starting point from the division between those who exercise power and those over whom power is exercised. Those exercising power are called ‘the elites’ and those over whom power is exercised are ‘the people’. Populists maintain that the problem with contemporary politics is that the elites are out of touch with the people; that they neither understand nor share the interests of the ordinary people. The challenge is then to remove power from the elites and replace them with people who understand or share the people’s

interests, and who will then exercise power in the interest of the ordinary people.

Despite their very real differences, identity politics and populism are examples of what I call polarised politics, and which I contrast with settlement politics. Neither form of polarised politics seeks to find common ground. Each thrives on sewing the seeds of division.

The basic idea that, given the Indigenous experience of dispossession and discrimination, the Constitution should guarantee that before the parliament makes laws with respect to Indigenous people, it should be required to hear the voices of those people, is a sound proposition. It should have been possible to find common ground about a way of achieving this.

For the better part of a decade, I worked with Shireen Morris on this project. She has recently published a book that purports to be a ‘true history.’ On her analysis, the referendum failed to get up largely because Indigenous advocates were betrayed by conservatives. This interpretation cannot stand.

It was John Howard who, as prime minister, committed to hold a referendum. It was Tony Abbott who started the process for a Referendum Council. It was Malcolm Turnbull who established a parliamentary committee that recommended a co-design process for giving greater clarity to the central idea in the Uluru Statement that emanated out of the Referendum Council’s dialogues with Indigenous people. It was Scott Morrison who committed to implementing the first stage of the co-design report’s recommendations for local and regional voices if his government was returned. And it was Peter Dutton who appointed Julian Leeser as shadow attorney-general and shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, knowing full well his public commitment to the idea that the Constitution should require the Parliament to make provision for Indigenous voices to be heard in Indigenous affairs. Each of these moves was an instance of slow progress on the issue. Detractors chose to focus on the slowness rather than to emphasise the progress. But the journey towards constitutional reform requires slow progress.

The fact of the matter is, however, that a Labor government won the election in 2022 and then had stewardship of the process of moving towards a referendum. The Labor government chose not to embrace a bipartisan process. The result was that the polarisation ramped up. There was no good will left and no attempt to find common ground. If it was previously the slowness of the progress that was perceived to be the impediment to reform, it was now the hastiness of the progress.

It was perfectly well known before the referendum; long before the bill for the constitution alteration was introduced into the parliament; indeed, well before the prime minister offered his ‘suggestion’ for starting the discussion in his speech at the Garma Festival in 2022, that a referendum cannot succeed in Australia without the support of the dominant conservative party. Indigenous advocates and the Labor government chose to act in defiance of this well-established fact, and the result was entirely predictable.

Shireen Morris writes in Broken Heart that my conservative colleagues and I betrayed her and the Indigenous people whose interests she served. I take exception to this. When we worked together, it was to find a way of reconciling Indigenous aspirations and conservative concerns. I believe that we showed that, in principle, this was possible. Anne Twomey released drafting that we worked on together. I well remember that she kept reiterating that this was the first word

rather than the last word on what an amendment might look like.

Unfortunately, this didn’t give rise to the kind of conversation that arrived at an amendment that addressed the full range of concerns. In an increasingly polarised climate, it was necessary to think about broader political considerations, rather than the narrower legal ones that we had originally focused on. Alas, the new government was committed to identity politics and this shaped its approach to the referendum. In response, its opponents embraced populism with devasting—yet predictable—effect.

I am sorry that so many mistakes were made. It was a mistake to think that settlement politics was still possible in an increasingly polarised society. It was a mistake for the government not to initiate an impartial process that could develop a common-ground proposal and then to proceed to a referendum without bipartisan support.

I’m also sorry that a lack of sophistication in today’s politicians prompted some of them to make the mistakes that sixty years ago Sir Keith Hancock realised he had made thirty years earlier in talking about race.

Ninety years ago, Sir Keith wrote that “the invading British did their wreckers’ work with the unnecessary brutality of stupid children.” Today, I am sorry that the identity politics of the reformers and the populism that underpinned the wrecking work of their opponents was all conducted with the unnecessary brutality of stupid children. A return to political sophistication may yet be possible if we can effect a return to settlement politics.”