Australia: A History by Tony Abbott

Meeting at the usual place, upstairs at the The Shakespeare Hotel, 200 Devonshire Street, Surry Hills, on Thursday 26 February 2026 at 7.00pm, we will be discussing Australia: A History by Tony Abbott.

So-called 'Australia' consisted of 100s of sovereign Indigenous nations living in sophisticated harmony with the land. British colonisation was a brutal white imperialist project to make Aboriginals the 'Other' as an excuse for stealing their land. The genocidal project of oppression didn't stop with the First Nations, but branched out to include other minorities (such as the Irish) and continues today in the form of widespread Islamophobia. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Tony Abbott would disagree.

Australia: A History, is a book that Abbott says should never need to have been written. Once it was assumed that the basics of Australian history were known in a more or less balanced way, but that is no longer the case. Australia has made mistakes but, overall, it is a remarkable success story. Something of which to be proud.

The format of the meeting is that we talk about the book in a fairly focused way for an hour. The meeting formally ends and most people stay back to chat about the book or anything else. Dissenting opinions are given a lot of space. See Comments below for critical reviews of the book.