A Lucky History
Tony Abbott argues that Australia’s history provides a lot to be proud of.

This is the book that should never have been needed. Until quite recently it was taken for granted that Australia was a country that all its citizens could take pride in, even the Aboriginal people, for whom the 1967 referendum marked full, if belated, acceptance into the Australian community. But a generation of anxiety over Indigenous dispossession, and the academic triumph of what Geoffrey Blainey has called the “black armband view” of Australian history, has left many Australians ambivalent about our past, even though it is far more good than bad.

Abbott rejects the “Invasion Day” narrative that sees dispossession of the indigenous population as a massive failure for which contemporary Australia must atone through the agenda of “Voice, Truth, and Treaty” proposed in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Tellingly, he ends his history with the rejection of the Voice in the 2023 referendum. He says Australia did right to reject an exclusive “indigenous only” race-based addition to our constitution.

Abbott does not omit key facts about Aboriginal dispossession. He simply makes the argument that is should be a source of pride and wonder that a society established as a penal settlement turned out to be one of the most successful and stable liberal democracies in the world.

https://quillette.com/2026/01/25/an-enlightened-beginning-australia-history-tony-abbott/

The Saxons took Wales in 1284. Legislation was specific to Wales, such as the Sunday Closing (Wales) Act 1881 and the Welsh Intermediate Education Act 1889. In  1965 administration of Welsh affairs, which had previously been divided between a number of government departments, was united in a newly created Welsh Office.

Following the Jacobite rising of 1745, Scottish affairs were managed by the lord advocate until 1827 backed by the 60th Regiment of Foot (Royal Americans) the largest in England, maintaining multiple battalions (up to 8 during the Napoleonic Wars) to manage colonial garrison duties and destroy Scottish highland charges. The Scots culture always was, always will be and Charles likes his gay laddies in kilts. Is toigh le Teàrlach a ghillean gèidh ann an ciltichean.

The English are closing the gap before the natives break through.