Despite being part-owned by a French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, they're the footwear of choice for Australian politicians on both sides of the political divide. So what's the appeal?

It’s no surprise that Tony Abbott is a fan of RM Williams boots, putting them front and centre while taking Japanese PM Shinzo Abe around our wide brown mines in a picture that caused some Twitter mirth on Wednesday.

After all, as a fan of the American conservative movement, it’s only natural that he’d gravitate to a company calling themselves "the bush outfitters”.

It’s the perfect metaphor for him too. RM Williams is a company built by a man with a singular vision, which grew by dint of by good honest Australian toil, got sold, went into receivership, and is now owned by an multinational conglomerate. It’s the Abbott economic dream writ large.

The very history of the brand is pure Aussie mythmaking at its finest too.

Reginald Murray Williams was born in country South Australia in 1908, and the legend goes that he quit school at 13 to wander this wide brown land before finding work as a camel driver in the mid-north at age 18.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Senator Barnaby Joyce autographs a bottle of port in the shape of his own RM Williams boot in Brisbane. Photograph: Steve Gray/AAP

Somewhere along the way he met one Michael George Smith, known more colloquially as Dollar Mick, who taught him the art of leatherwork. In 1932 he started selling handmade saddles and boots. Both were robust and hard-wearing (RM Williams’ boots, then and now, are made from one single piece of leather, stitched at the back).

The company grew and the name became synonymous with men living and working on the land, and then – rather more profitably – with people living and working in offices but who still wanted to give the impression that they could break a wild bush brumby if the need arose.

Williams sold the business in 1988, it went into receivership in 1993, was bought out by family friend and former News Ltd boss Ken Cowley (which might explain why they’re reportedly the boot of choice for News editors and executives to this day), and then last year sold 49.9% of the company to the French luxury goods consortium LVMH.

Williams died in 2003, but the company has gone from strength to strength since. Aside from their expanded international reach, they’ve also got the current contract to supply the Australian military, giving our men and women in uniform that fierce martial edge that comes when one enjoys corporate synergy with high fashion couture and bafflingly expensive champagne.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kevin Rudd presenting the president of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono with a pair of RM Williams boots. Photograph: David Foote/AAP

They’re de rigueur in Australian politics too. As well as Abbott and Abe, the latter of whom was given a pair especially for his journey around our mines, Kevin Rudd was showing his off during his meetings with Barack Obama.

In fact, RM Williams is the boot of choice for politicians, especially those on the right side of the divide.

The Nationals are presumably issued with a pair the second they get preselection. But the boot also takes away – as rising Nationals star Ben Riley learned when he (ahem) booted out of the party for six months after nicking a pair in 2013.

John Howard-era treasurer Peter Costello was an enthusiastic believer, as was foreign minister Alexander Downer, Malcolm Turnbull, and much of the Liberal frontbench. ''If you looked down the front bench at question time it illustrated Coalition unity to see Liberals and Nats decked out in the same attire,'' Costello told the SMH in 2009.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kevin Rudd's feet in RM Williams boots. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP

So what’s the appeal? Well, that’s easy to break down.

1. It’s an Australian icon

Sure, technically it’s only a 50.1% Australian name these days, and a fair whack of the company’s work is done in China. However, the actual boots are still made by hand in their Adelaide factory and therefore tick all the boxes: Aussie boots made with Aussie leather by Aussie workers being Aussie. If you’re an politician clomping around Canberra in a shiny pair of Julius Marlows, you’re essentially a traitor.

2. You’re basically Tom Burlinson in The Man From Snowy River

Sure, that suit might say “I’ve just spent four hours discussing how to manage the PR spin on cuts to rural and remote services”, but those boots tells a different, more elegant story about man at one with nature, galloping through the sorts of untamed Australian wilderness that’s just begging to be taken off heritage registers before being logged and fracked. You think I have no respect for Australia’s natural splendour? Allow me to direct your attention to my shoes, sir. Now, who do I speak to about getting the air conditioning turned up?

3. It’s a working man’s shoe at a fancy man’s price

Now, RM Williams boots are, let’s be clear, high quality pieces of work. Their reputation is well deserved: they’re long lasting and robust pieces of footwear, as befits a shoe developed for the man of the land. That being said, they’re also well over $400 a pair meaning that they’re not besmirched from use by the chattering classes. “Yes,” an RM Williams boot says, “I have the sort of shoe-budget that means I can squander this object created for a lifetime of wear on trotting from Qantas Lounge to departure gate.”

And there’s no sign of the popularity waning either. As long as Australia is an urban population raised on poems by Banjo Patterson, we will succumb to the talismanic lure of a hardy working man’s boot that’s still attractively shiny.

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