2022 was a defining year in Australian politics and former UNE academic Frank Bongiorno has captured the zeitgeist as part of a sweeping, ambitious history. Our own Interim Vice-Chancellor, Professor Simon Evans, has described Dreamers and Schemers as “compelling” reading (see below) and the book launched in early November is already in its second print run.
Frank, now a Professor of History at the Australian National University in the College of Arts and Social Sciences, says the fact his manuscript was running late to the publishers proved a stroke of good fortune, enabling him to document both the COVID pandemic and the federal election result.
“It would have been a very different book otherwise,” he says. “The continuing COVID pandemic demonstrates that every aspect of our daily life is affected by the decision-making process of politics, at the federal, state or local level. Politicians, in the end, have decided whether we have been able to walk outside and buy a cup of coffee. The pandemic has reminded us that state politics matters; state governments still have power over our health and education, border crossings and much more.”
Frank lectured at UNE from 2000-2007 and some of the work that informs Dreamers and Schemers dates back to that time.
“A casual reader may wonder why there seem to be a disproportionate number of references to Armidale and the New England,” he says. “The answer is that I did a lot of political history of New England while I was at UNE and read a lot of the old Masters and PhD theses held in the cabinet of the then School of Classics, History and Religion.”
Beginning with pre-contact Indigenous society, Dreamers and Schemers is unique for its emphasis not only on federal politics, leadership and parties, but also the state and local politics that sit alongside it.
“I am trying to explain what politics means in an everyday sense; what ordinary people have demanded of their political systems, how politics has been practised and what the systems have delivered,”
“I am trying to explain what politics means in an everyday sense; what ordinary people have demanded of their political systems, how politics has been practised and what the systems have delivered,” Frank says. “It’s an attempt to provide a social and cultural history of political life in Australia.”
Even at 472 pages, this history is by nature selective. However, it reveals how the exercise of political power has favoured some, at the expense of others.
“Political systems are about power and resources and we see that, for example, between Indigenous Australians and settler Australians, between British Australians and Chinese migrants, and men and women,” Frank says. “As a historian, you need to be a good storyteller, to evoke the key personalities and events they were involved in and what they reveal, to help readers understand their world.”
Documenting the cycles of hope and disenchantment that accompany politics provides important context for the “historical hinterland”.
“If we take former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s decision to take control of five government ministries, we can only understand how this was a breach of established practice and convention if we look right back, to the 1850s and 1860s, when that democratic system was established,” Frank says.
Extensive archival research saw him trawl through letters that “ordinary constituents” wrote to Prime Ministers like Ben Chifley and Robert Menzies. Even the diary of a British politician visiting Australia in the 1930s helped to sketch out ordinary peoples’ politics.
Thankfully, many sources are now accessible online, which proved a boon during the global pandemic, when much of the book was written and institutions were either closed or locked down for months on end.
The more recent results of the 2022 federal election, according to Frank, signal a “massive transformation” of politics in our country.
“The election showed that the two-party system that has dominated Australian politics is coming under enormous pressure,” he says. “The rise of the minor parties and number of Independents elected is unprecedented and reflects the ways in which lifelong political allegiances around class and religion have broken down. We have a more diverse House of Representatives now, and a parliament that is a better reflection of the diversity of Australian society.
“A decline in political trust has been one of the drivers of this fragmentation, but that being said, most people still have a deep sense that the political system will look after them, in the end. Some people are clearly better looked after than others, namely white Anglo men, but … we saw striking levels of compliance during the pandemic. It has proven both a durable and an adaptable political system. Properly constituted authority might be resented, but it has essentially been heeded.”
And just as politics demands visionaries, it also demands conspirators. “Substantial political change almost invariably relies on dreamers – who are prepared to do more than just tinker with the system,” Frank says. “But you also need people capable of implementing ideas and sometimes of manipulating situations to bring about change. The best politicians have always had a bit of both the dreamer and the schemer in them, to bring out the full potential of our democratic political system.”
We asked Interim Vice-Chancellor, Professor Simon Evans, to give his review of Dreamers and Schemers.
“As a constitutional lawyer, I could not resist the chance to read Frank Bongiorno’s political history of Australia. It does not disappoint. Written with energy and clarity, it weaves together the triumphs and failures of Prime Ministers and their governments with the social forces that shape and are shaped by them; the national political stage with the states; and settler institutions with the Indigenous politics that preceded them and still seek a proper reconciliation with them. It is compelling, comprehensive (at nearly 500 pages) and yet concise (for the scale of the story it tells). Highly recommended.”
