Frank Bongiorno's Dreamers and Schemers reveals some of the lessons Australia can learn from its political history

But Frank Bongiorno, professor of history at the Australian National University, is more upbeat about his task and says history actually has a prominent role in Australia's public culture.

"I mean, every issue in the present will have some kind of historical hinterland, what journalists would call backstory, I imagine," Bongiorno says.

"And that's kind of what we do, in a way. It's why history is useful, because it provides the possibility of understanding contemporary phenomena in a broader context. That it gives you a sense of how the past can illuminate the present."

Bongiorno has turned his attention to a political history of Australia, from First Nations to the result of the most recent federal election in May: a broad sweep of the forces and characters which have shaped and used the country's political systems.

The story of Australia's political history often begins with Federation, the moment in 1901 when the colonies unite in a system of national government. Bongiorno's peers wanted to know if that was where his history would start.

"And the answer is definitely not because so much of the political system had been fixed by then," he says.

"I mean, yes, Federation creates a national polity, a Commonwealth, but I'd say three-quarters ... maybe more of the broad patterns had already been established long before then. So I was always really keen to take this back to as early as I possibly could."

The development of responsible government in the colonies, as power shifted away from dictatorial governors into a population with a slowly broadening franchise, revealed political forces that still haunt the country's national conversation.

To take just one example, the issue of boat arrivals has been a "recurring nightmare for settler Australia going back to the 1850s", Bongiorno says.

"There are some really deep patterns like that, that I think they do reflect something of the internal culture and dynamics of a settler society that still feels in many ways quite vulnerable in the world," he says.

"I mean, I think that the current debates around relations with China are incomprehensible - absolutely incomprehensible - without a much more long-term appreciation of the really ambivalent ways, I guess, in which Australia has related to Asia and China in particular, over 170, 180 years.

"And I mean really what this kind of book is trying to do is provide that kind of long-term perspective."

The book, Dreamers and Schemers, gives its title to the two broadly defined types of character in Australian political life. Those visionaries who always imagined the political system could do more, and the schemers who sought a way to make the system work for them and their interests.

What good is a long-term perspective for the savvy politician? Is the politician with a better grasp of history going to be able to better respond to the circumstances of their present? "I think they are going to be less surprised when certain things happen," Bongiorno says.

"I mean, perhaps a generation of politicians who had a better appreciation of just how important state government had been would have been less surprised by what happened during the pandemic."

The COVID-19 pandemic served as a reminder of the importance of state and territory government, which retains considerable power and responsibility for delivering services Australians expect, Bongiorno says.

"Soft borders can suddenly turn hard, that things like health and education are basically still in the purview of the states have a genuine sovereignty still," he says.

"And I think that a lot of the history that's been written at the moment - national history, if you like - is returning to that insight, that the colonies and states matter. And if we want to understand how Australia has worked in political terms, we need to make sure we look at stable colonial government first, and then state government."

A lot of the action in reform and ambitious policy happens at the state level, too.

"A lot of the really interesting innovation in Australian politics in recent times has come from state and territory governments, including our own here [in the ACT] under both sides of politics," Bongiorno says.

"I'm thinking of the Liberal Party, the Liberal government's efforts in the mid '90s for an injecting room for instance, which failed basically because of vetoes up on Capital Hill. You think of things like civil partnerships, human rights charters, treaties with Indigenous people, a whole range of things like this that have bubbled up from the state level."

Political history also shows significant ways Australia differs from the United States, Bongiorno says. Far from being the 51st state, Australians have a sense of difference, right down to the Medicare card in their wallet.

While Australia's history is indeed marked with violence, the development of a robust democratic system has not been the result of revolution.There are relatively few moments in the country's political development where people rushed to the barricades.

"This is the idea that we don't have a strong sense of abstract rights in Australia. We see rights as really arising from politics and the law," Bongiorno says.

"So, in other words, you design an electoral system in order to have practical outcomes so that you can adopt something like compulsory voting.

"And yes, sure, if you want to get into abstract rights, you could treat it as some sort of offence to one's individual liberties. But in reality, if the practical effect of that is that it produces what is considered fairer, or more reasonable outcomes, it's legitimate to do. And I think that ethic has been really strong in Australia.

"I used to be a bit sceptical about its strength, I thought that people had overplayed it. But I have to say that the pandemic convinced me otherwise.

"I mean, I think that the Australian public and political response to that pandemic has been the very epitome of that culture. Because I think most Australians over the last three years have not stood on their individual rights."

The book ends with an upbeat assessment of Australia's political future, with change in the air after a decade-long period of Coalition government. But the party system isn't what it used to be.

The period of early responsible government in the Australian colonies, between the 1850s and the mid-1880s, is a reminder, Bongiorno says, that democracy can work without a system of highly formalised parties to deliver a coherent government delivering what its constituents expect. Indeed, there was a time when it was considered to be inappropriate to be voting as a bloc in parliament, as it diminished the role of the individual representative.

"I think that the party system is clearly - if it's not decaying, it's certainly in a period of a really massive transformation," Bongiorno says.

"And yes, the teal phenomenon is a part of that. But you know, it's been noticed for some time that the capacity of the major parties to corral votes has been in quite drastic decline."

The frequent lesson of political history is that the systems of democracy are more adaptable, and more flexible, than its current users would often have the public believe.

"What I think it shows us is that there are possibilities of operating within our systems that aren't necessarily tied to that kind of old two-party system, both highly disciplined, that really dominated from 1910, really through to about 1990," Bongiorno says.

All this is worth bearing in mind as Australia navigates its possible political futures.

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"You sort of have this fantasy as a historian and as somebody who teaches history that there'll be people doing a lot of different kinds of things that aren't really strictly history but will be able to bring historical perspectives to bear," he says.

"And really, in a lot of ways that's the most important thing that I think we should do or at least try to do."

Bongiorno's book takes its history right up until the night of May 21, 2022 - the most recent federal election. It ends there on an upbeat note, following the election of more independents to parliament and the further voter drift from major parties.

The election, Bongiorno wrote, "disclosed the resilience and adaptability of the country's distinctive democracy" and "for a moment it seemed possible that the nation's imaginative energies might not yet be completely exhausted".

"My sense at the moment is that the changes have been reinvigorating," Bongiorno says.

"I think that the political parties have been, as I say in the conclusion of the book, in some difficulty for some time.

"And so at the moment, I think the signs are quite optimistic and hopeful. How this will all work? Well, we just don't know yet."

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