Politicians Using History

The political potency of national history has been understood for generations. Yet there has been an unquestionable surge in history's political influence over the last twenty or thirty years, as the various history wars that have broken out around the world attest. Australia has been no exception: disputes over its national story continue to generate considerable controversy in the media, in politics and in public debate. But how has this politicisation of the past affected Australian political history in the present? This paper examines how history is practised in contemporary Australian politics — and notices an increasingly strategic use of the past by politicians in recent years.