<i>Illustration: Rocco Fazzari</i>

Illustration: Rocco Fazzari

There's no one source of our national character. It comes from our indigenous heritage, the struggles of the early settlers, the Federation period, and, of course, our nation's experiences at war.

And perhaps for Australians more than any other, it comes from sport.

This summer marks the 80th anniversary of arguably the most significant and defining event in Australia's sporting history: the Bodyline cricket series. Countless books have been devoted to retelling the torrid saga, but it is worth recounting because of the role it played in our national story.

At its core, Bodyline amounted to a calculated attempt by the English cricketing establishment to attack the Australians - specifically the wunderkind Don Bradman - with brutal, intimidatory, even life-threatening tactics.

Hostilities reached their zenith during the Adelaide Test match, when Australian captain Bill Woodfull was struck with a barrage of balls to the torso, including one blow just below his heart. Such was the level of animosity that a pitch invasion by the crowd was feared, with police standing guard along the boundary ready to repel the furious onlookers. At the end of this distasteful day, Woodfull uttered words that are quoted and mythologised to this very day: that while there were two teams on the field, only one was playing cricket.

This accusation of English unsportsmanlike conduct propelled a bitter stoush, elevated to forceful diplomatic cables from the respective cabinet rooms. The Australian Board of Control for Cricket's cable went as far to say that: "Unless stopped at once it [Bodyline] is likely to upset the friendly relations existing between Australia and England." In the world of diplomacy, words rarely come stronger.

The enduring impact of Bodyline is deeply rooted in Australian sporting folklore, but it was about a lot more than cricket. As esteemed historians Ric Sissons and Brian Stoddart concluded in their chronicle Cricket and Empire, from a British perspective, Bodyline was principally about teaching Australia ''a lesson in imperial superiority''.

An obvious question is how Bodyline defined the way Australians of the time viewed our place in the world, and our relationship with Britain. I think the answer throws up some surprising insights into the national character - surprising because it contradicts some of the cliched myths that surround Australian sporting and national behaviour.

The most interesting fact about this episode is we Australians found ourselves the defenders of the supposedly English ideal of ''fair play''. Interesting because the accepted wisdom is that when it comes to cricket especially, we are the ruthless, the English the polite. Yes, we unleashed Lillee and Thomson. And, yes, Mitch Johnson is still breaking hands today. We play hard, but we play within both the letter and the spirit of the rules.

What the Bodyline series showed was that while we refuse to put on airs and graces, Aussies are not a ruthless, ''whatever it takes'' people. Rather, we are a plain-speaking lot, who play hard but fair, and expect no less. Ours is not a gentleman's code; it is a democratic code.

Douglas Jardine had no interest in honouring any such code. By directing his bowlers consistently to target the body, and placing fielders to prevent strokes to defend themselves, not only were life and limb threatened, the spirit of the game was deeply contravened. Obviously what was at stake was a sporting trophy; this was not war.

But Bodyline left a mark on our national consciousness because it symbolised wider issues of the period that actually did in the long run involve our sovereignty.

To understand that we have to put ourselves back in that summer. Australians were in the middle of the Great Depression, with the mass unemployment, homelessness and betrayal of hope that it brought. Australians did not cause that Depression and to a great extent we were powerless to tackle it because we lacked full economic sovereignty.

At home, our adherence to the gold standard and low foreign exchange reserves made it impossible to increase public spending to raise demand. Even worse, austerity was strongly recommended to us from on-high overseas - largely by English gentlemen whose gentlemanly rules had little interest in the welfare of ordinary Australians. Honouring deals between bankers was more important to them than equal sacrifice from all and fair play for working people.

The result? Catastrophic unemployment and hardship. Australians were mad as hell. So when Jardine bent the moral code to win at all costs, people joined the dots. It was only cricket, but it was typical. It symbolised the need for a new assertion of national sovereignty underpinned by the democratic rather than the gentlemanly values - to play hard, within the rules, to look after each other.

I believe Bodyline caused many Australians to wake up to the urgent need of making Australia's interests our No.1 priority and to do so in a typically Australian egalitarian manner. Bodyline played a big role in embedding a sense of independence and a desire for true sovereignty in Australia's international outlook. It did not invent these ideas that had surfaced at various points in Australia's past - but it amplified them and took them in new directions. Wartime Labor prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley were heavily influenced by the awakening of egalitarian national sentiment that followed the Depression, and it informed their determination to stand up for the country's defence interests.

Today Australia stands almost alone in having stayed out of recession during the most significant global downturn since that Great Depression. This in part speaks to an enduring determination for our country never again to be at the whim of anyone who claims an inherent right to make and break the rules at our expense.

The democratic and egalitarian assertion of our national sovereignty provoked during Bodyline and the Great Depression continues to serve us well on Australia Day 2013. I believe that reflecting on those events will eventually hasten the approach of an Australian republic, even if it has fallen from the national agenda over the past decade. While England will always be our most respected cricketing foe, and among our very closest allies, I think our national conversation is sold short when it does not include a debate about our relationship with the Crown.

So let's use today to reflect on, and recommit to, the great things Australia stands for: playing hard, playing by the rules, looking after every citizen, and always defending our national interest with courage and with conviction.

Wayne Swan is federal Treasurer.

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