Third, they would think “statesman” was a sexist term, and that would end their interest.

If they looked it up, what would they find? Here is one typical, online definition: “One versed in the principles or art of government. Especially: one actively engaged in conducting the business of a government or in shaping its policies. A wise, skillful and respected political leader.”

FUNCTIONARY

The first definition describes a mere functionary, and so is plainly inadequate. The second definition gets closer, but still leaves us with more than a whiff of Machiavelli. Even these are few on the ground. Most of us think, intuitively, of statesmen as follows:

• Displaying certain personal characteristics (like probity);
• Rising above retail politics and day-to-day concerns;
• Promoting the public good;
• Seeing the big picture;
• Playing a long game;
• Seeing the big problems for what they are;
• Placing the interests of the polity above their own (electoral interests);
• Understanding the true meaning of leadership;
• Speaking truth, in season and out;
• Displaying courageous, sometimes heroic, civic virtue in defence of their people.

Statesmanship is a bit hard to define, but you normally recognise it when you see it. Borderline statesmen like John Howard used often to say, “it is better to be right than to be popular”. He understood what statesmanship entailed.

Often, these days, we define statesmanship by its (almost inevitable) absence.

One opposite of “statesman” is “politician”. Another is “ideologue”. And we have plenty of each of those.

Politicians place their own political (career) interests above those of their people. They are careerists.

They are persuaded by focus groups and opinion polls. They defer to unelected officials rather than standing at the podium themselves. They hang on every word uttered by their millennial political advisers. They see life as nothing much more than an endless PR challenge.

Ideologues place the requirements of pursuing an abstract world view above the needs of those they are supposed to represent.

They chase utopian pipe dreams rather than, and often at the expense of, those in need. Religious adherence to theory enables them not to see elephants in the room. They divide families, communities and nations. While statesmen unify.

Churchill was a statesman, as were FD Roosevelt and De Gaulle. Yes, flawed, but a statesmen nonetheless.

Stalin and Hitler were ideologues. As were Franco, Peron and Mussolini.

More recently, Thatcher was a stateswoman. Blair was an ideologue (more dangerous than most, despite the popular mythology). David (“Dave”) Cameron was a politician. You get the picture.

One of the mere-politicians is the current NSW Premier. One of the ideologues is the current Australian Prime Minister.

This week, we have seen the NSW Premier caught up in two existential threats (as he seems to see it) to his longevity as a politician.

PUNY

There is no evidence that Dominic Perrottet has any sense of statesmanship, outside of his (to date) puny attempts at reform in Commonwealth-State relations, mostly co-created with the semi-fascist Premier of Victoria, his reformist soulmate and an ideologue.

Yes, he did lead the other premiers in moves away from what Andrews has called “COVID exceptionalism”, and for this we should be grateful.

But he was there at the Cabinet table when his immediate predecessor called in the army to supervise curfews, threw tens of thousands of public servants out of work, discriminated against the unvaccinated, crushed freedom of movement and association.

He may have objected. A statesman would have resigned over lockdowns and mandates.

His first threat this past week was the attack by the ABC on his old school and on the Pared school system.

He ran screaming from the building on this one. At the first whiff of grapeshot, he referred the “complaints” aired against his alma mater to a NSW educational investigation process.

If only he had followed his Victorian hero Daniel Andrews’ normal approach to these things. “Next question”. Nothing to see here. Go away.

It seems always to work south of the Murray. It can even help you win elections, when people know what you stand for.

Perrottet’s next threat was the Pell funeral. Should he attend? Some have been shocked at his non-attendance.

Me? Not surprised in the least. I would have been astonished if he had attended. Everything we know about Dominic Perrottet suggests that he is politically ashamed of his faith, wants to secrete it in a box in the corner, seeks only political office and accolades.

He said that “Catholicism is not a crime”. Yet his every action suggests that he truly believes that it is a crime. A crime for which he does not wish to be convicted.

The same goes for his alleged conservatism. His record is in plain sight:

• Support for the Voice, personal and now official;
• Aboriginal flags on the Harbour Bridge;
• Support for Matt Kean’s radical green agenda;
• Silence in the face of fascist lockdowns of the State;
• Kowtowing to the Liberal Party factions that allow him to remain Premier;
• Support for vaccine mandates enforced by his own Government agencies;
• Silence in the face of factional deals to exclude principled candidates from pre-selection;
• Radical feminist rigging of Liberal pre-selections to enforce quotas;
• Fiscal incontinence as NSW Treasurer.

Yes, all of these policy positions show the NSW Premier not to be a conservative. More importantly here, they show him to be a politician-only.

The hilarious irony is that none of Perottet’s non-statesmanslike actions are remotely likely to save him, come the March 25 NSW general election. And he will go down as a politician – not a very good one – and not a statesman. Will he even notice, or care?

The other non-statesman in our midst is Anthony Albanese.

IDEOLOGUE

He is an ideologue parading as an emerging statesman. He is only there because his predecessor as PM was a clueless charlatan masquerading as a conservative politician, without even the pretence of aspirational statesmanship.

The current Prime Minister got about 30 per cent of the primary vote at the election. He is the Steve Bradbury of Australian politics.

He has no mandate for the revolutionary attack on the Australian Constitution that he is engineering. He makes empty gestures. He mis-recognises the issues he trumpets for real problems. He talks in cliches, just like his economically illiterate Treasurer.

As if that weren’t enough, Albanese also ignores the real problems of his people (especially the two-thirds of the electorate who voted against him), and, worse, probably doesn’t even understand what these problems are.

Think a cost of living crisis, ruptured supply chains and shortages, under-employment, rising interest rates, discrimination against people of faith, reliance on migration for economic growth, a crisis in education, a crushed tourism sector, collapsing energy sources, social capital in ruins.

Instead, he tilts at ideological windmills like the Voice and the republic. He bellows about the lack of women in politics. He tugs his forelock to feminazis and greenies. Instead of “the people”, he sees only identity groups who vote.

There was a statesman on display this week. Three, actually. One was a former Prime Minister cut down for his beliefs, his constitutionalism, his human decency, his pragmatic, people-facing conservatism.

His name is Tony Abbott. A centrist portrayed as a Right-winger. A compassionate man portrayed as an attack-dog.

Statesmen don’t only practice their craft in secular politics. There can be statesmen in business, in academia, in the media, in the Church. And there can be politicians and ideologues in each of these.

The second statesman on display this week was a recently deceased Church leader. He, too, was a centrist (orthodox Christian) portrayed as a Right-winger.

A Christian visionary portrayed as an attack-dog. Like John Howard (who attended his funeral), he thought it better to be right than popular.

He annoyed ideologues and politicians in equal measure. His name was George Pell.

He was a Church statesman, never a Church politician. Therein lay his achievement and his downfall. It is often the fate of statesmen that they are generally hated by both politicians and ideologues.

Many things connected these two statesmen, and it was appropriate that Tony Abbott provided a eulogy for the late Cardinal, his friend. [see video below]

It was a powerful endorsement of a powerful life, well-lived and lived with massive consequence.

CHARACTER

Abbott said: “If character means ‘to trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too’; if it means ‘bearing to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools’, George Pell was the greatest man I’ve ever known.

“And if faith means the ability to endure crushing adversity, no one could be a better advertisement for it – especially with those of us for whom it often remains tantalisingly out of reach. As a centurion in the Gospel said, ‘Lord, I believe, help my unbelief’.

“So I will hold onto him in my heart from love of a friend and mentor; and as a gentle chide for virtues sought but not yet attained. And in these times, when it’s more needful than ever, to fight the good fight, to stay the course and to keep the faith. It’s surely now for the Australian church to trumpet the cause of its greatest champion.”

The estimable Lyle Shelton noted in The Spectator Australia: “By the time former Prime Minister Tony Abbott took to the lectern and began a robust defence of his friend, a floodgate had burst and applause flowed freely during his address, echoing through the cavernous sandstone structure in a show of defiance to the woke, some of whom were sitting behind the altar in bishop’s robes.

Indeed. All of Abbott’s eulogy bears reading and contemplation, as do the powerful funeral words of Pell’s brother, David. Perhaps the NSW Premier, disgracefully absent from St Mary’s Cathedral (approximately 500 metres from Perrottet’s office), might contemplate Tony Abbott’s words, and ponder George Pell’s legacy as well as his own.

The third statesman on display this week, as he has been for well over a year now, is Craig Kelly, leader of the United Australia Party and a constant thorn in the side of both his former Liberal Party colleagues and of the Leftist media that (pathetically) still seeks to demean him.

One of Kelly’s greatest achievements has been, almost alone, to have aggressively pursued the truth over COVID tyranny, regrettably now seen by many who either caved in to its power or, worse, thoroughly endorsed it and so betrayed their countrymen, as a thing in the past and not to be pondered further.

HERO

Craig Kelly is a hero (and an anti-woke hero, and a climate hero, to boot).

This week Kelly has been attacked in the legacy media for bringing to Australia one of the greats of the COVID resistance, the globally esteemed American cardiologist, Peter McCullough, and an equally admirable colleague, Pierre Kory.

They have a number of speaking engagements, about which I will report later. McCullough was maligned this week by two gnomes in short pants parading as real journalists at the Fairfax branch of the Peter Costello-led Channel Nine media conglomerate.

Their names are Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman, the first of whom learned his trade at The Canberra Times and the latter at the disreputable amateur rag, Honi Soit (enough said).

Like Kelly, Peter McCullough has been a warrior for truth and real science. A medical statesman. McCullough’s CV speaks for itself.