​​​If Australia today is a successful, peaceful, prosperous, diverse and democratic country that millions of people desire to migrate to, then it follows that our history cannot be an overwhelmingly negative story of which we should be ashamed. We must have done some things right to have produced a society and way of life envied by the rest of the world.

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This is the underlying argument of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s latest book, Australia: A History, published by Harper Collins in October last year.

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Abbott believes it’s time to shake off the shackles of negativity and shame. He believes it’s time for Australians to learn the whole story of their history. It seems many Australians agree, as over 65,000 copies of his book have been sold to date, generating more than $2 million in sales.

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“Even if you look at the Indigenous side of modern Australian history, it's not anything like the story of persecution, conflict, semi-genocide that it's often portrayed,” Abbott said in a recent interview for the Christopher Dawson Centre.

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“Yes, there was injustice, no doubt about it. There were massacres, no doubt about that. But they were different times. They were harsher times. There was also cooperation and partnership. I just think that we need to tell the whole story, not a partial story.”

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Abbott argues that the “underpinning of modern Australia”, which has proved a highly successful project, is “an Indigenous heritage, a British foundation and an immigrant character”.

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“I think we've got a proud history,” Abbott said

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“Certainly we've got far more to be proud of than ashamed of. I think too much modern historiography has focused on the downsides of our history, frontier conflict, Indigenous disadvantage, et cetera.

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“There was frontier conflict, no doubt about that. There was and is Indigenous disadvantage, no doubt about that. But it's not the whole story by any means.

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“Even if you go back to the early days of frontier conflict, the attitudes of settlerdom towards the Aboriginal people were not all cruel. The early colonial governors were constantly telling the settlers that the Aboriginal people of Australia had all the rights of British subjects.”

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Well-researched and immensely readable, the 438-page history is divided into 18 chapters covering the major epochs of Australia’s history from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, to the early colonies and frontier life, the Gold Rush, Federation, two World Wars, the Great Depression, mass migration from around the world, to more recent political history and cultural shifts.

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“We should be proud to be Australian,” Abbott said.

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“Because we have been shaped by our country, and if we are proud of ourselves, we should take some pride in everything which has shaped us, whether that's our neighbourhood, our family, our faith, or indeed our country and our culture,” he said.

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“But I also think that our national story is as good as anyone's. I mean, quite apart from the fact that for most of the convicts this was a redemptive experience, within 100 years of the beginning of modern Australia, we had the world's highest standard of living.”

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Despite his overwhelmingly positive view of the Australian story, Abbott does sound a warning towards the end of his book. In the final chapter, ominously titled ‘Drifting Backwards’, he expresses fear that Australia is “drifting backwards, influenced by the politics of climate and identity”.

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“We've suffered from the so-called ‘long march of the Left through the institutions’,” Abbott said.

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“The cultural Marxists have been much better at persuading the middle class to revolt over the environment or over patriarchy or over alleged racism than they ever were at persuading the workers to revolt over capitalism and for equality, but it's no less destructive.

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“This idea that you are programmed by your race or your gender to be either an oppressor or the oppressed, I think it's really, really corrosive. And I think there's been too much of that. The whole black armband view of history, I think, has been harmful.”

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He also, however, hints that the solution to this alarming decline may be a return to faith in the transcendent. In his final chapter he writes “we’re materially rich but spiritually poor” and that the “explosion of mental ill-health is one symptom of people’s widespread loss of a sense of life’s deeper meaning and purpose”.

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“I certainly think that if you are going to have a meaningful life, you've got to have a sense of purpose,” said Abbott, a life-long Catholic who once studied for the priesthood.

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“And given that the things that normally sustain us on a day-to-day basis, like family, like work, like neighbourhood can sometimes let us down, I do think that it really helps to have some more transcendent faith as well.

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“Most of us need a higher purpose to sustain life. And that which until very recently has given most of us a higher purpose, namely Christian faith, is, not withstanding some green shoots amongst the young, particularly amongst young males, I think it's still fair to say, that it's in deep eclipse.”

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Treasurer of the Tasmanian Government, The Honorable Eric Abetz spoke at the Hobart launch of Australia: A History, held in December at Parliament House in Hobart, hosted by the Christopher Dawson Centre and the Institute of Public Affairs.

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“The fact that Tony had to even bother to write a book such as this is exceptionally telling as to what has happened with the public discourse in this country,” Abetz said.

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He urged people to buy the book saying anyone who reads it would “be better informed” and would be able to inform the wider community of “the very real benefits that we enjoy in this country as a result of our history”.

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President of the Chrisopher Dawson Centre, Archbishop Emeritus of Hobart, Julian Porteous, said that “to know the flow of history in your own country, helps you know who you are”.

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“And I think that is one of the great contributions this book makes,” Archbishop Porteous said.

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Abbott said the bestseller status of his book suggests not only that Australians want to better understand their own history, but also that they are tired of the ‘black armband’ view constantly pushed on them by the media and academia.

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“I'm thrilled at the largely positive reception that it's had,” Abbott said.

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“And I think what that indicates is that Australians are hungry to know more about themselves and they are looking for something which is not just the relentlessly negative story, which all too often they're told today.”