By Tom Switzer
TONY ABBOTT LIKES TO TELL THE STORY about his first visit to the United States as a newly elected member of the Australian Parliament. It was 1995, and he was widely seen as a rising star in the center-right Liberal Party, where the word “liberal” still means more or less what it meant in the nineteenth century. He had also distinguished himself as a leading opponent of the Labor government’s ill-fated proposal to replace Australia’s constitutional monarchy with a republic.
But something got lost in translation: Abbott’s Washington-based hosts, the U.S. Information Agency, had been told that he was “very liberal and strongly anti-Republican.” Which meant his itinerary during his two-week study trip consisted of meetings with only commentators and interest groups on the far left of the American ideological spectrum.
Trans-Pacific jokes aside, the conventional wisdom of just a few years ago held that Abbott was too right-wing to become prime minister down under, a throwback to a bygone era. After all, the devout Christian and former Oxford boxing blue is skeptical about abortion, same-sex marriage and alarmist claims of global warming. He is an Anglophile who is a great admirer of the United States and its leadership role in the world. (He once said, “Few Australians would regard America as a foreign country.”) He champions “smaller government, lower taxes, greater freedom, a fair go for families and respect for institutions that have stood the test of time.”
Source: nationalinterest.org
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