Donald Horne
The Avenue of Fair Go:
A Group Tour of Australian Political Thought
HarperCollins $29.95pb, 278pp
0 7322 5867 7

The words of the 'Commitment' are impeccable, embracing custodianship of the land, the rule of the law, a liberal democracy, a civil society, all part of the Australian ideal of a fair go. The tour group has worked hard to put it together. Generally they're well satisfied with what they have done. By chapter twelve they were also no doubt exhausted by their meandering in the Avenue.

You have to hand it to Donald Horne. He's persistent, seemingly tireless. For nearly half a century he's been an Australian public intellectual of a rare kind. He's left footprints in the field of journalism, writing, academia, the arts, advertising. His books such as The Education of Young Donald and God is an Englishman have been widely acclaimed. The Lucky Country was (certainly for my generation and hopefully others) an extraordinarily influential book. His writings have consistently been informed by a passionate concern for Australia, nicely coupled with a healthy scepticism. As a polemicist he's been a successful persuader. But the idea of Australian identity has remained an elusive Holy Grail. In its own way this book is an omnibus of the things that Horne has believed in, and the things which he dislikes. The commitments are the best he can squeeze from a lemon: an optimistic charter for contemporary Australia.

The Avenue of the Fair Go is a comprehensive and scholarly work. There's hardly a thinker of a note in the British and European liberal tradition who fails to get a mention. They are complemented by a consideration of some Australian ideas and some Australian myths: mateship, the bush legend,notions of equality; the influences which have contributed to the respect for a fair go. Things like globalisation, attitudes to Aboriginal land rights, and economic rationalism are judged against the best of the European democratic tradition. Mostly they're found wanting. Amidst alien ideas, in a multi-racial environment, there's a serious attempt to spell out what Australians have, or might have, in common; attitudes and values which might give us a stronger sense of identity. It boils down to a notion of the civil society, based on mutual respect for and adherence to democratic commitments.

Given the importance of what Horne set out to do, I can't work out why he didn't write it straight, as a well documented argument setting out the case for a new crack at the Australian identity. He's uniquely capable of this. Instead, he indulges himself with a bunch of weirdos wandering through a bizarre theme park of political ideas. The park is well laid out, replete with monuments to great thinkers, memorials to great failures, a garden of mateship, symbolic pathways and forests, a chamber of racist horrors. The tour group includes a sceptical older woman, an intelligent schoolgirl, a man with a ponytail, and a dark-eyed woman of Bulgarian origin. Presumably there is some symbolic significance about them. They're probably representatives of various strands in Australian society.

They are not, however, representative in one important respect: they are all highly articulate and eager participants in the discussion. Only once does their attention and enthusiasm falter. They glance at their watches when Beatrice, the loquacious tour guide, goes on a bit too long. Who are these voices in the park? They are, of course, the voices of Donald Horne who knows all the arguments. He's spent a life time mulling them over. His tour group has no problems writing them up on the whiteboards along the Avenue. And in case the whiteboard writings seem too abstract, too remote from the real world, Beatrice is there to remind them of the threats. She introduces them to the hostile whispering pillars in the forest of temptation, and the beach of apathy, a symbol of Australian mindlessness.