One is a reigning premier, the other a former prime minister. Both are Catholics whose religion has generated fierce, sometimes deranged, commentary among the Leftist media.

Both are Sydneysiders. They come from the same Liberal Party faction. Yet the differences between them could not be starker.

TRADITION

For NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, it might have been described as the fortnight from Pell. I mean hell. He wears his Catholicism and his conservatism heavily, which is ironic since he seems to spend much of his time governing as if religion and tradition didn’t exist for him.

First, there was the Louise Milligan hit-job on the Pared (Opus Dei linked) school system in which Perrottet was (partially) educated.

Then there was his conspicuous non-attendance at Cardinal George Pell’s magnificent funeral that took place a mere 500m or so from the Premier’s office. Finally, there was the suggestion that Perrottet’s proposed reforms to NSW’s poker machine laws were linked to his Catholicism.

The issue of Catholics in politics goes back (at least) to JFK. One of the core issues of the 1960 US Presidential election was whether the Democrat candidate would “take his orders from Rome”.

In a famous speech, Kennedy stated: “I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”

The issue raised its head again in Britain in recent times, when a BBC television presenter, Jo Coburn, tried gamely but unsuccessfully to portray Jacob Rees-Mogg as a Catholic bigot, something her feminist anti-Catholic Australian peers do reflexively and often to our own religiously-inclined pollies.

Rees-Mogg put her in her place, rather crisply. But Coburn did (unintentionally) raise a legitimate question – is it possible for a believing, orthodox Catholic to attain high political office? After all, “this is 2023”, as they say with emphasis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poLKhQQgtBk

Unlike John F Kennedy, the wishy-washy NSW Premier doesn’t seem to be remotely clear about from where he takes his orders.

Sometimes it seems that the answer is … Daniel Andrews, ironically a Catholic of sorts, who definitely did not attend any of the Pell funeral Masses.

Often it seems to be Matt Kean’s so-called Moderate faction. Or perhaps it is the Leftist Pope Francis, not especially known for his “ultra-conservatism”.

Or maybe it is the renewable energy sector. Or his bureaucrats, behind whom he often hides.

The contrast this past fortnight with that other “Captain Catholic” and former prime minister Tony Abbott has been stark. Perhaps surprising, on its face, for two conservative Liberals from the Premier State.

CAREER

Not only did Abbott attend Pell’s funeral. He gave a eulogy, described by the venerable Paul Kelly as the best speech of Abbott’s career. (Kelly also called Perrottet’s non-attendance as act of “cowardice”).

Abbott, of course, has been excoriated for visiting the palpably innocent Pell in prison, by (of course) Daniel Andrews, whose political police in Victoria had led the Get Pell campaign for decades. How could Dominic face Daniel if he caved?

And the differences don’t just relate to virtue signalling over dead cardinals.

Abbott, not unusually for him, has been in the headlines of late. He has placed stakes in the ground on two core issues for the Liberal Party. He opposes the Indigenous voice. “Wrong in principle, bad in practice”.

He has just joined the Board of a United Kingdom based, scientifically sound, sceptical climate foundation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

But there is more … Abbott has also become an adviser to (the inevitably titled “controversial”) Advance Australia group.

In contrast … Perrottet hangs Aboriginal flags from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He happily supports the Voice, without arguing the case for his position beyond an asinine appeal to “unity”.

He leads a Government that is to the Left of most Australian governments on climate change and energy supply.

He stands by, indeed, he lauds, his Treasurer, probably the most radically green politician in Australia, and described by David Flint as our most “dangerous” politician. A target-rich asset class, that one, yet Matt Kean wins!

Vaccine mandates persist in NSW, on his watch. He champions quotas for women in politics. He is fiscally incontinent.

What would Perrottet say to Tony Abbott in a private conversation on climate change? The science is in?

What would he say about the Voice? Go with the vibe?

What would he say about his non-appearance at the Pell funeral? I was just too busy, mate?

What would he say about what Abbott called the NSW “infanticide on demand” laws about which Perrottet hardly bothered turning up to challenge on the floor of the House? Not my hill on which to die?

What would he say on any number of issues over which the two Catholic, conservative stalwarts so clearly disagree.

PARK

Perrottet seems to belong to that increasing number of Liberals who identify as conservative but, once their buttocks are comfortably ensconced in parliamentary leather – especially on the Treasury benches – they simply park their ideology out in the carpark somewhere and get on with what they deem to be “governing”.

It is almost as if, just as some people wish Christians would keep their religion a private affair, Dominic Perrottet regards his own conservatism as a strictly private matter. Never to be displayed when in Macquarie Street making policy.

Abbott was never in that category of Liberal. For him, there were hills on which to die, notwithstanding the kerfuffle over 18C.

Yet he, too, largely parked his Catholicism while in government, just as Rees-Mogg has. He was a pragmatist in office, like his mentor, John Howard.

Abbott modified his Beaufort (Victoria) stance (made to a Party branch meeting) that “climate change is crap”.

He accepted the outcome of the same sex marriage debates. He didn’t fight the Liberal progressives’ insistence on conscience votes for radical social changes. But he has certainly come out swinging in retirement, nailing his colours to many masts in quick succession.

Perhaps we will have to wait for The Dom to retire from politics – which, I expect, will come at a far earlier age than Abbott’s – in order for us again to spot his conservatism.

Which gives rise to a question.

How could two Sydney-based, conservative, Catholic politicians be so different?

This goes to the deeper sources of the conservatism abandonment syndrome that afflicts an increasing number of politicians.

Three suggest themselves – one, these people aren’t really conservatives after all; two, they are careerists or chancers for whom their stated ideology just isn’t that important; three, they are playing a long game, giving ground on some issues and waiting for the real hill on which to die. Nah.

These purported explanations are part of the story, not the whole story. Perhaps it is simply a matter of spine. And Abbott has this in spades.

On this view, the main difference between these two contrasting men is political courage.

As the recently sacked (from GB News) Mark Steyn often used to say about Islamic terrorists, the voters of NSW can probably spot a weak horse and they will not approve.

WEAK

The actor Richard Dreyfus, no friend of Steyn’s, wrote in 2016: “But he quotes bin Laden: ‘When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse’. And he quotes Donald Rumsfeld: ‘If we know anything it is that weakness is provocative’.”

John Howard, too, used often to say that people respect (if not always like) politicians who make their positions crystal clear. And so it will, no doubt, go in NSW.

If you’re not persuaded that the difference is largely about spine, perhaps it is about honesty. As Shakespeare’s Polonius famously said to his son Laertes in Hamlet: “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Certainly, it would appear that the NSW Premier is largely not true to his professed and assumed world view.

He is certainly not true to his supporters. Even if Perrottet thinks he can seamlessly compartmentalise his stated views and his political actions and walk tall, it is still a question of honesty at bottom.

Not prioritising issues valued above all else by one’s voters is one thing, but implementing the very opposite of your professed and (one might assume) cherished core values is entirely another.

I don’t think anyone has ever accused Tony Abbott of either secret agendas or obfuscation. What you see is what you get.

Abbott might have political regrets, things not pursued hard enough, but I doubt that he would be thinking, “I wish I had not done that”.

And saying this wouldn’t be an act of stubbornness, as, say, John Howard defending the Iraq War might be so considered. Abbott need not fear a lecture from Polonius.

Setting aside questions of spine and honesty, Perrottet might defend himself as a “manager” in the Nick Greiner mould, and not an ideologue in what many consider to be the Abbott mould.