Category: Abbott

Abbott March 1, 2015

Tony Abbott’s leadership enters the death zone

Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull.

Tony Abbott’s leadership enters the death zone.

Abbott March 1, 2015

Is this Abbott’s end?

Illustration: Andrew Dyson.

Is this Abbott’s end?.

Abbott February 28, 2015

A pre-budget spill is on the cards – The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Turnbull has in recent days pointedly contradicted his leader.

A pre-budget spill is on the cards – The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Abbott February 27, 2015

Tony Abbott clutching at straws in attempt to protect remaining support base

The PM has taken on the character of a punchdrunk right-wing pugilist.

Tony Abbott clutching at straws in attempt to protect remaining support base.

Abbott February 25, 2015

Loyalty of migrants to Australia no simple test: I’m 69 came here when I was 3. Abbott is was a migrant am I a ‘we’ or ‘them’ ? I loved Whitlam,Hawke,andKeating does that make me a them? Does loathing Abbott make me a them? Is Abbott a dual citizen still remains unanswered.

Comment

More than just spies, cops and terrorist threats, it would be a mistake to ignore the deeper philosophical debate that infuses Tony Abbott’s pronouncements on national security.

Abbott has done more than set out a contest between good and evil in the fight against Islamist violent extremism, he has also opened a debate over the Australian character – a question of multiculturalism versus citizenship.

Immigrants transformed into “them” in his Monday statement, that “we”, Australians, would help and support.

“But this is not a one-way street,” Abbott declared.

“Those who come here must be as open and accepting of their adopted country as we are of them.

“Those who live here must be as tolerant of others, as we are of them.”

Or join Team Australia, to borrow a phrase.

That tolerance was once captured by the boast about Australia’s multicultural character, the ethnic and cultural diversity to be found in a country where population growth depends on welcoming those brave enough to uproot and begin a new life overseas.

But some conservative thinkers are hostile towards the notion of multiculturalism.

John Howard stripped the word from the title of the immigration department, believing “citizenship” better reflected a commitment to Australia’s values.

Abbott went to the trouble on Monday of reciting a pledge made at citizenship ceremonies.

“This has to mean something,” Abbott said.

Yes, but what? How much cultural difference can “we” allow of “them”, and who decides?

Violence, whether at home in the community, can never be accepted. Democracy is fundamental. But what liberty is found under a burka? Where to draw the line?

The far bigger problem in emphasising citizenship is the lingering suspicion Abbott has cast on “them” and loyalty to Australia.

The Prime Minister called for more Muslim leaders to describe Islam as a religion of peace, “and mean it”.

The implication is clear – except for the path to finally accept “them” as “we”

Abbott February 22, 2015

Submarine program: Japan, France, Germany to compete for build process; Government promises hundreds of local jobs

Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews

Japan, France and Germany will compete to build Australia’s next submarines as the Federal Government continues its search for a potential partner, the Defence Minister says.

Kevin Andrews said the Defence Department would seek proposals from potential partners looking at options to either design and build overseas, in Australia or a hybrid approach through a “competitive evaluation process”.

But there were no guarantees the submarines would be built or designed in Australia.

Mr Andrews ruled out Swedish defence company Saab, which has a presence in Adelaide and had expressed an interest in building the vessels in South Australia.

But the Minister said he expected significant work would be undertaken in Australia, particularly during the build phase leading to the creation of at least 500 new, high-skilled jobs.

He said many of the 500 jobs would be in South Australia and would focus on significant works ranging from combat-system integration to land-based testing.

It is particularly good news for Australian jobs and can I say to anybody in South Australia who may be listening or watching, this is particularly good news for South Australia.

Defence Minister, Kevin Andrews

“The Government expects that significant work will be undertaken in Australia as part of the build phase of the future submarine including, but not necessarily limited to, combat-system integration, design assurance and land-based testing,” Mr Andrews said.

“This will result in the creation of at least 500 new, high-skilled jobs in Australia for the life of the program, the majority of which will be in South Australia.

“So this is good news for Australian industry, it is good news for the Australian economy, it is particularly good news for Australian jobs and can I say to anybody in South Australia who may be listening or watching, this is particularly good news for South Australia.”

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said he believed the Government wanted the submarines built in Japan.

He said he was disappointed Sweden had been ruled out of the “competitive evaluation process”.

“It tells you all you need to know about the process,” Mr Weatherill said.

“Sweden say they can build submarines for the right price, on time, here in South Australia, and they get ruled out of the process.”

The Future Submarine Program is the largest Defence procurement program in Australia’s history and represents an investment in the order of $50 billion, the Government said.

Mr Andrews said France, Germany and Japan had proven submarine design and build capabilities, and currently produce submarines.

Abbott February 21, 2015

Dumping Tony Abbott has fringe benefit of ending unpopular policies

Changing PM could benefit The Liberal Party: Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey.

Dumping Tony Abbott has fringe benefit of ending unpopular policies.

Abbott February 21, 2015

Abbott’s Jack Boot Diplomacy Threatens 11th Hour Clemency Efforts. – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Abbott’s Jack Boot Diplomacy Threatens 11th Hour Clemency Efforts. – » The Australian Independent Media Network.

Abbott February 20, 2015

Tony Abbott Village Idiot

Abbott February 19, 2015

The UN has defended Gillian Triggs against Tony abbott urging Abbott to “Respect the Rule of Law” in the protection of Human Rights

Abbott February 18, 2015

Tony Abbott’s dual citizenship: Stop asking questions — he’s the PM!

Tony Abbott’s dual citizenship: Stop asking questions — he’s the PM!.

Abbott February 18, 2015

The importance of being Abbott

View image on Twitter

The importance of being Abbott.

Abbott February 17, 2015

Netanyahu’s campaign video: Liberals to let ISIS into Israel — Bibi and Abbott are running the same line “WE ARE THE ONLY PARTY THAT CAN SAVE YOU” Start a war

Screenshot from youtube.com/user/Netanyahu

Netanyahu’s campaign video: Liberals to let ISIS into Israel — RT News.

Abbott February 17, 2015

We’ve been played for mugs – » The Australian Independent Media Network

We’ve been played for mugs – » The Australian Independent Media Network.

Abbott, Management February 17, 2015

Operation Save Tony’s Job: Same question he asked the union boss when he was a shit manager of a cement delivery company.. He couldn’t bat bowl or field then.

With yesterday’s “Message from the Prime Minister”, delivered to camera and without the presence of reporters, Tony Abbott signalled that he’s chosen populism as the way out of his self-inflicted leadership crisis. No longer will Australia give the “benefit of the doubt” (at the border, in their citizenship application, at Centrelink) to “those who might be a threat to our country”. He advanced no supporting evidence that such benefit is being given, but did promise a fuller statement next Monday. Posing a largely unspecified threat are vaguely identified others – “extremists” influenced by the “Islamic death cult” – for whom the only course of action available is to toughen security laws so as to prevent “evil people” from “exploit[ing] our freedom”.

In the world outside the bubble of prime ministerial rhetoric, there is a debate about how authorities should respond to the threat of “lone wolf” attacks. Experts in “radicalisation” – the process by which alienated individuals adopt increasingly extreme ideas – suggest that tough, us-versus-them talk may have the undesired effect of encouraging radicalisation, by confirming the world-view propagated by advocates. A more effective strategy, experts say, combines social inclusion and explicit de-radicalisation efforts.

But Abbott is desperately seeking a reversal in opinion polling to short-circuit the inevitable second challenge, and he knows that a population fearful of their security can potentially deliver it. Like all political leaders, Abbott mixes populism (he exploited fears of boat people, debt and power prices in opposition) with conviction (breaking electoral promises, cutting spending and awarding a knighthood to Prince Philip, which “wasn’t so much a question” of popularity, Abbott confirmed yesterday). If he’s got the balance wrong in recent months, it’s not that Joe Hockey is a dud treasurer or Peta Credlin is running too tight a ship – it’s that his Chief Whip, Phillip Ruddock, wasn’t communicating to him the mood of his backbench. So this is Operation Save Abbott: a new Whip to open up dialogue with the backbench, a renewed focus on national security and, despite the budget “crisis”, more money for pensioners and the mentally ill.

Russell Marks
Politicoz Editor
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Abbott February 16, 2015

Abbott thanks the DEATH CULT

Abbott February 15, 2015

More Collgiate. More Consultative: Con SAMP’s with subs promised to be built by Japan;Sack Ruddock; Maul Triggs independant HRC commissioner; and insult the Jews. Has anything changed?

Abbott, Abbott a Loner February 15, 2015

Tony Abbott: The Termination

Tony Abbott: The Termination.

Abbott February 15, 2015

Tony Abbott’s leadership is going backwards: Valentines day Kiss: Abbott’s 6 gears in reverse

<i>Illustration: Andrew Dyson</i>

Michael Gordon

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

The day after Tony Abbott’s “near-death experience”, federal Coalition MPs from South Australia were treated to a dose of the more consultative and collegial approach that was intended to define “good government” from that day forth.

Five MPs were invited to fly with Defence Minister Kevin Andrews on a VIP plane from Canberra to Adelaide to reassure constituents that the Adelaide-based defence shipbuilder, ASC, would be able to bid for a slice of one of the biggest defence contracts in history.

When they took their seats, they were careful to leave one vacant in the expectation that Andrews would want to join them and discuss how he intended to proceed.

Defence Minister Kevin Andrews almost matched Prime Minister Tony Abbott in the baffling behaviour stakes this week. Photo: Andrew Meares

Imagine, then, their surprise when the minister chose to spend the 90-minute flight with an adviser in a separate section of the plane.

One of the parliamentarians, Senator Sean Edwards, had gone public before Liberal Party MPs voted on Monday’s motion to spill the Liberal leadership, declaring his support for Abbott was conditional on ASC being able to compete “on merit” for the right to build Australia’s next fleet of submarines. Convinced that Abbott had given him this assurance, Edwards joined 60 other MPs in opposing the spill motion, and helped save Abbott’s prime ministership from a brutal and early end. Thirty-nine of their colleagues voted for the motion.

But reports that Abbott supported an “open tender” raised a host of questions about whether this was a new position, and whether the PM had already assured his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, that Australia would buy the submarines designed and built in Japan without the work being put to a tender.

Andrews’ mission was to provide clarity; to end the confusion, flanked by South Australian MPs concerned about jobs against the backdrop of the ASC (formerly the Australian Submarine Corporation) shipyard, northwest of Adelaide.

What followed was one of the more bizarre media conferences in recent memory. Andrews insisted those wanting a share of the submarine action would be subject to a “competitive evaluation process”, but could not explain what this term meant. As my colleague Tony Wright expressed it, he took 2000 words to say nothing that made any sense at all.

On the return flight, the minister again sat with his adviser, away from the MPs.

What was baffling was why Abbott and Andrews did not simply explain that the process that stalled under Labor would follow the template successfully used in other major defence contracts, such as the building of the Anzac frigates or the minehunters. Why didn’t they say it would begin with a “project definition study” where designer-builders in countries that are acceptable to Australia on security grounds (such as Japan) are funded to pitch for the first batch of submarines on the basis that they will be built in Australia with a fixed price? After all, such an approach would also be consistent with the Coalition’s pre-election promise that “work on the replacement of the current submarine fleet will centre around the South Australian shipyards”.

While this is the process that is likely to emerge (assuming Abe has not been given a nod and a wink), the failure to articulate it over four days is one of three reasons why Abbott’s survival prospects have dipped since the spill motion.

Abbott’s problem is that the number of MPs who have grave doubts about his capacity to recover is much bigger than the 39 who backed the spill motion. While there is a consensus that he will be given every opportunity to turn around his fortunes, there is an expectation that Malcolm Turnbull will take over if the polls do not improve.

This should mean Abbott can focus on the preparation of the two policies he expects to change perceptions – on families and small business – as well as the budget, without worrying about receiving a delegation, but it does not guarantee it. Some suggest the issue could be revisited on March 2.

The second failure this week concerns Abbott’s promise of a more consultative approach, a promise underpinned by a commitment to meet regularly with the 17 chairs of backbench committees, to give them direct access to the cabinet and to personally answer phone calls from all Coalition MPs. This was in large part a response to a backlash against the influence of Abbott’s chief of staff, Peta Credlin, in meddling in appointments, controlling access to information and the PM, and generally making life harder for ministers and backbenchers.

In December, Abbott described Credlin as “the fiercest political warrior I’ve ever worked with”, but the qualities that make for a fierce political warrior – and they include a capacity for vindictiveness – are not the ones that ensure a smoothly running office and a happy team.

To improve morale, Credlin has adopted a lower profile by not attending cabinet meetings, not sitting in the advisers’ box during Question Time inParliament and not, we are told, vetoing appointments in other offices.

So why, ask some MPs, did she slip in the back of the room and sit through Abbott’s first post-spill heart-to-heart meeting with the chairs of his backbench committees?

The final reason Abbott’s prospects have deteriorated is his performance in the Parliament on Thursday, where he clearly decided the best way of shoring up support in the Liberal party room (and especially the right) was to revert to the attack mode that has delivered him most success.

In a single question time, he launched a scathing (and mightily unfair) attack on the Human Rights Commission and its report on children in immigration detention; likened job losses under Labor to the Holocaust (before apologising); said much more than seemed prudent about the case against two terrorism suspects (prompting warnings he could prejudice a future trial); and added to the confusion on submarines by accusing Labor of putting “the defence of our country at risk by promising submarines built in Australia”.

Another element of the aggression-at-all-costs strategy involved putting bipartisan consensus on national security at risk, with Immigration Minister Peter Dutton suggesting that Labor’s failure on border protection was the reason the two terrorism suspects were able to come to Australia.

If all this buoyed the troops, the question is whether it will improve or damage Abbott’s standing in the electorate. After all, this is where the troops will look for guidance as they weigh up whether to stick with Tony in the weeks ahead.

Abbott February 13, 2015

US think tank asks ‘Is Tony Abbott the most incompetent leader of any industrialised democracy?’

According to the think tank, Tony Abbott has "one of the worst senses of public relations of any prime minister in recent Australian history."

US think tank asks ‘Is Tony Abbott the most incompetent leader of any industrialised democracy?’.

Abbott February 12, 2015

Tony Abbott: Begging For His Job. Round 1.

Something truly remarkable is happening in Australian Politics. Unprecedented in my memory. An Australian Prime Minister is being given the chance to transform from bastard to saint. Or somewhere in-between.

Even after 40% of his colleagues have declared him unfit (and there were probably many more including 6 ministers) to lead our nation. Even in the face of polls that overwhelming reflect the public’s opinion of our leader.

Even after the media and his closest right wing supporters have condemned him. Even though he leads a dysfunctional and chaotic government.

They still think he is the best person for the highest office in our nation. Even after all the lies, his trust deficit, his support for inequality, his arrogance, inflexibility and hypocrisy, his governance for those who have, his inability to understand technology and science and an incapacity to understand women’s needs and sexual equality.

The captain’s calls, back flips, and his monarchist allegiance. His negativity, thuggish demeanor and his contempt for the conventions of parliament. Add to that his inability to adapt to the demands of office which stem from the fact that he is fundamentally a creature of the past. Yes, they still think he has all the characteristics of leadership.

If he is to transform himself who are we likely to end up with?

Leigh Sales on the 7.30 Program put it this way:

“We’ve had the Tony Abbott in opposition, the guy who promised no more chaos, the adults back in charge, the ‘no excuses and no broken promises’,” Ms Sales said.

“Then there’s the Tony Abbott we’ve had so far in government with the surprise policies and broken promises and the captain’s picks.

“Now you’re offering us a third Tony Abbott – one who’s going to change. Who are you?”

As David Marr puts it:

“The prime minister’s problem is not the captain’s picks, not his failure to consult, nor the micromanagement of the cabinet by his office. He just failed to grow”.

In his 20 years of parliamentary service he has been a politician of the past believing his duty is to save us from the future.

No Opposition Leader in Australian Political history has made a greater contribution to the decline in public discourse, the lowering of parliamentary standards and the abuse of our democracy than Tony Abbott.

No Prime Minister in Australian Political history has made a greater contribution to the decline in public discourse, the lowering of parliamentary standards and the abuse of our democracy than Tony Abbott.

Yet his party believes he can convert a lifetime of thuggish negativity into motivational, inspirational leadership. A Prime Minister in whom the people can trust. He deserves the chance they say. We owe it to him.

The conundrum of course for the LNP is that they don’t want to be portrayed like Labor who had little hesitation in dumping leaders but at the same time know they cannot win the next election with Abbott.

When the spill motion was defeated, what followed was an avalanche of contrived support spewed from the mouths of ministers and hangers on that could only be described as nauseating in its insincerity.

Everyone knows that the Abbott brand is dead. In all my years of political ears dropping, never have I seen such a cavalcade of fallaciousness from politicians who could only be described as silly enough to believe their own bullshit. Watching this line up of Abbott apologists was not only excruciatingly painful but seriously saddening. Do these idiots, I asked myself, really believe that I accept as true, the crap they are emitting?

Showing an exterior of suitable chastisement Tony Abbott announced that “Good Government starts today”. One was apt to wonder why it didn’t start when he said that the adults were in charge.

Then in Parliament the same day, when a no confidence motion was moved he immediately went to negative mode in a speech that amounted to nothing more than repetitive old Tony. Transformed Tony was nowhere to be seen. His near death experience seemed not to have registered. Perhaps he was blinded by the white light.

Later on The 7.30 Report the old Tony was still fighting like an Opposition Leader.

I beat Gillard, I beat Rudd and I will beat Shorten he said, missing the point that Australian’s are after a leader, not a pugilist.

It was as Malcolm Farr said on the Insiders program on Sunday:

“He can’t understand why people aren’t grateful”.

He, his Treasurer and his Ministers have never been able to admit that the budget was unfair. On the same program Mathias Coremann said that:

“no Minister had complained that the budget was unfair”.

He must have been lying because Malcolm Turnbull, the alternative leader that 50% of the party want as leader said this:

“it is vitally important, both as a matter of social justice and political reality, that structural changes are seen as being fair across the board”.

“That means not only must tough decisions be justified, but that the burden of adjustment is not borne disproportionately by one part of the community.”

An alcoholic cannot address his problem until he admits he has one. The Government cannot possibly govern for the common good until there is some kind of ministerial acknowledgement that indeed the budget was unfair.

The pugilist might have won round one, just, but the fight for Liberal leadership is far from over. He might have dodged a left hook but the Liberals remain deeply divided. They are all over the place with policy and a treasurer who seems incapable in the job. Pressure has mounted on Abbott to appease the back bench. It is demanding that Hockey and Credlin go.

Brand Abbott is dead. This is why.

For most of my working life I worked in marketing and advertising so I know how people are influenced, persuaded or swayed by such things as branding and repetitive advertising or recurring bullshit.

Companies spend millions of dollars to subtly brainwash you. To align you with a certain brand or product. They will use all manner of persuasive techniques including sex and deceptive packaging to solicit your good will and loyalty. They even measure the eye blink rate of women from hidden cameras in supermarkets to test colour reaction. Yes it’s that sophisticated. And brand loyalty is what they want. There are more psychologists employed in advertising in America than in the health industry. It is all calculated to take power over your decision-making.

Likewise, political parties want your loyalty, or at least they want to convince you that they are working in your best interests. They use the same repetitive techniques.

If you tell a lie often enough people will believe you. The Abbott government stating that asylum seekers are “illegal” and “she told a lie”, or that families received $550 dollars as a result of the removal of the carbon tax are but three examples.

The Abbott Government has taken persuasion to another level employing 37 communication and social media specialists to monitor social media and offer strategic communications advice costing taxpayers almost $4.3 million a year. In addition Peter Dutton’s departments employ more than 95 communications staff and spin doctors, costing at least $8million a year. In Dutton’s case it is about protecting a slogan. Nothing else.

That’s a lot of people to sell the brand, spin lies, omissions, monitoring social media and telling deliberate falsities. It’s about creating or promoting perceptions (rather than realities) about your political brand as opposed to that of your competitor. There are a number of ingredients in “successful” political branding. The product needs a positive image, and a leader with character who is surrounded by positive motivated people.

A fair dose of charisma is helpful but not entirely essential. What is essential is a well thought out narrative that the electorate can relate too and policies that are explainable. Even if they involve some pain. It doesn’t require popularism so long as it has credibility. John Howard was never popular but he had the perception of creditability.

Unfortunately the Abbott government and its ministers are nothing more than a compliment to mediocrity and intellectual barrenness. The brand has its genesis in contemptuous negativity and has failed to apply a label to any policy.

Its front bench is full of colorless dour depressive uninspiring types who will be intent on implementing a second budget of political expediency rather that economic necessity whilst the current one will remain an unfinished work in progress.

The collective personalities of Abbott (a self-confessed and proven liar and a PM for undoing), Pyne (arguably the most hated politician in Australia). Brandis (an Attorney General who believes bigotry is fine), Abetz (needs a personality transplant) Hockey (a serial blamer of everyone else), Joyce (potentially our next deputy PM, OMG). Dutton (cannot shake off his copper image), Hunt (no credibility on Climate Change after writing a thesis supporting a tax), Morrison (the un-Christian Christian. Don’t say I said that. It’s a secret.), Robb (still wanting Joe’s job), Truss (soon to retire) and Cormann (can’t throw off the accent), all of which reads like a list of appointments from a psychiatrist who specialises in personality disorders.

In terms of image the Abbott government comes across as, indignant angry men with chips on their shoulders. Make that logs. Haters of science and progressive policies. And some like Bernardi downright extreme.

In Abbott’s case you have to wonder if Australia has ever elected a Prime Minister so ignorant of technology, the environment and science. So oblivious of the needs of women and so out of touch with a modern pluralist society.

In the latest polling the Labor Party leads the LNP by 14 percentage points.

More alarming though is the Prime Minister’s popularity. Or more accurately his lack of it. And 63% of people think he is doing a terrible job.

The best public relations company in Australia couldn’t do much with the individual images of that lot.

“Australian political history is filled with the incompetence of unexceptional conservative men with born to rule mentalities”.

It’s hard to promote a political brand that blames everyone else, lies continuously, won’t listen to advice, is secretive, won’t compromise and is full of its own self-importance. Never in Australian political history has a budget been so motivated by ideology.

The result has been a public backlash of monumental proportions which is reflected in the polls. So blind is Abbott to his own shortcomings as a leader that he cannot see how badly he and his cabinet are governing. Even the right wing media, Murdoch publications and the shock jocks have deserted him. Social Media is leading the criticism. With the young in particular seeming to hate the Abbott brand with a vengeance.

Former Conservative UK Environment Minister Lord Deben put it succinctly:

“I think the Australian Government must be one of the most ignorant governments I’ve ever seen in the sense, right across the board, on immigration or about anything else, they’re totality unwilling to listen to science or logic”.

Abbott, Abbott a Loner February 10, 2015

Defence Minister Kevin Andrews struggles to explain new submarine policy | The Australian. The promise that bought Abbott votes but nobody now is prepared to clarify. S.A MP’s and Abbott now seem to differ on what was proposed.

Kevin Andrews, centre with Steven Marshall, the South Australian Opposition leader, left,

Defence Minister Kevin Andrews struggles to explain new submarine policy | The Australian.

Abbott February 10, 2015

Defence Minister Kevin Andrews won’t commit to ‘open tender’ for Australia’s next submarine fleet – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) What was the promise Abbott made? It’s easily cleared up except Kevin Andrews seems to refuse to explain it. Will anyone clarify things?

HMAS Dechaineux participating in Exercise Kakadu 2010 off the coast of Darwin.

Defence Minister Kevin Andrews won’t commit to ‘open tender’ for Australia’s next submarine fleet – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Abbott February 10, 2015

Prime Minister Tony Abbott Keeps Hold of Job in Party Vote in Australia: He seems to have flipped his message and now ready to move from extreme right to center right.

SYDNEY, Australia — Tony Abbott will remain Australia’s prime minister, fighting off a challenge to his position on Monday by lawmakers from his conservative Liberal Party.

Lawmakers in the party voted 61 to 39 against a “spill motion,” which would have declared the party’s leader and deputy leadership positions vacant. Had the motion succeeded, party members would then have voted to fill the positions held by Mr. Abbott and his deputy, Julie Bishop, Australia’s foreign minister.

Emerging from the vote in Canberra, Mr. Abbott said, “The Liberal Party has dealt with the spill motion, and now this matter is behind us.”

“We are absolutely determined to work for you, the people who elected us,” he added. “We want to end the disunity and the uncertainty which destroyed two Labor governments, and give you the good government that you deserve.”

The previous Labor government lost an election in September 2013 after twice dumping its leaders.

The ballot was held in secret at a specially convened meeting of lawmakers from the Liberal Party.

A junior lawmaker, Luke Simpkins from Western Australia, had called Friday for the move, amid growing dissatisfaction with Mr. Abbott’s leadership.

Mr. Abbott has been forced in the past week to promise to run a more collegial team and has acknowledged that some of his own major policy platforms were politically unpalatable. He said the government would now focus on jobs and families and on strengthening the economy. He has described the challenge just 16 months into his leadership as a “chastening experience.”

Last week Australia’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate in response to a drop in resources prices, dampened forecasts for economic growth and expectations that unemployment will rise.

Before the leadership vote, Kate Carnell, head of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said business confidence had fallen, and industry leaders were not confident about the country’s direction.

“The future of Australia right now is pretty flat,” Ms. Carnell said Monday. “It is a real issue. The government doesn’t seem to be able to prosecute the direction that it said it wanted to go down. What business wants? It wants a vision.”

Ms. Carnell said that industry leaders wanted the government to cut expenditures but that stronger economic growth was more important.

Mr. Abbott and his governing conservatives have been unable to get many of their major measures from last year’s May budget passed through the Senate. But after retaining office on Monday, he said, “At heart, we are a highly successful country, justifiably proud of what we have achieved.”

He continued: “In essence, we are a strong economy with so much creativity and dynamism, and the challenge for government is to work with you, not against you. I love this country, and I will do my best to help our country to succeed.”

Mr. Abbott was due in Parliament, which was to resume Monday after a long summer recess.

Andrew Laming, a Liberal Party member from the state of Queensland, had been strongly critical of the prime minister before the vote, and especially Mr. Abbott’s decision on Jan. 26, the holiday known as Australia Day, to knight the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip.

“I believe strongly we can move ahead from here,” Mr. Laming said Monday. “Many of us were sending a signal to the prime minister for change, and he has promised that.”

He reiterated that Mr. Abbott’s job was now safe even though 40 percent of those party members voting had wanted a change, stating that many of them would be “satisfied with sending the signal.”

But John Wanna, a professor of politics at the Australian National University, warned that discontent remained high, even though the prime minister won a majority of the votes. “The numbers show widespread dissatisfaction,” he said.

“It is a strong warning shot,” he said. “He is going to have to remake himself quickly with this sort of dissent.”

Abbott February 9, 2015February 9, 2015

Abbott’s turn around about face. PM says we have Robust Strong Economy. Is he calling Corman and Hockey liars? We aren’t going to hell in a hand basket because of Labour? The cuts aren’t necessary?

http://youtu.be/YRT-AtFLCig

Abbott February 9, 2015

Whether he survives the leadership spill or not, Tony Abbott’s time is up: Lest you forget Qld,Vic, and NSW next month Baird is sweating all thanks to Abbott.

Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott

Lenore Taylor

Even if the prime minister manages to survive a spill motion, the whole country now knows a good section of his backbench doesn’t have confidence in him

If a prime minister has to resort to tricky tactical manoeuvres and look-over-there assertions to cling to power, then his time is probably up, sooner or later.

“The only question for our party is do we want to reduce ourselves to the level of the Labor party in dragging down a first-term prime minister?” Tony Abbott said early Sunday in a statement, which he subsequently read out before television cameras without taking any questions.

But quite evidently that is not the only question for the Liberal party. Repeating Labor’s disunity is certainly a factor, but the Liberals have already gone so far down that road they can’t possibly turn back and brush off all their old lines about “ending chaos and confusion”. Even if Abbott manages to survive a spill motion the whole country now knows a good section of his own backbench does not have confidence in him.

And if he doesn’t survive voters may not judge the Coalition as harshly as they judged Labor, because the problems with this government have been out in the open. As was the case under Kevin Rudd’s Labor, the Liberal party is railing against prime ministerial command and control, but unlike Labor the public is also railing against the Coalition’s policy decisions and might therefore be more understanding about a change.

And there are other obvious questions too. Like “what will the prime minister do if he stays?” The budget is deteriorating and the deficit is getting bigger, but the prime minister says the “hard work” is done. “We seem to be saying the house is still burning, but it’s OK because it might be burning a bit slower in a while,” one despairing Coalition figure said Sunday.

Big parts of the last budget still languish, rejected by the public and the Senate, but he’s sticking with them. Finance minister Mathias Cormann insisted on Sunday that no minister had ever suggested to him that last year’s budget was unfair. If true, that puts the cabinet about a million miles out of step with views in the electorate.

Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens and new treasury secretary John Fraser told cabinet last week business confidence and growth would benefit from a successful and clear medium-term economic plan.

Another question for the Liberal party is: “What will be gained by waiting to put this question to the test?” Many are worried that could mean the NSW state election becomes a referendum of the federal Coalition’s performance and that the budget process falls hostage to a desperate prime minister second-guessing the politics and the polls.

And another question is what would an alternative candidate do differently or better – also impossible to answer in a climate where none has formally declared. Turnbull and Julie Bishop have been speaking in code – for example by insisting the leadership is the gift of the party – contradicting Abbott’s claim that only the electorate should be able to vote him down. Turnbull inched close to a declaration Sunday morning. Bishop left all her options open. While the leadership fight is conducted as a kabuki play, it is pretty hard for MPs and senators to properly assess their options.

But in the end many are distilling the situation down to very different questions from the one posed by Tony Abbott this morning.

If a prime minister retains power by bringing forward a vote on what is effectively a no-confidence motion against him, without a proper party room debate before that vote is taken, and with the clear threat that any ministers who are known to vote for the spill would have to lose their jobs, if he keeps his job after repeating his same old slogans when asked about the future, should anyone have confidence that anything has changed – whether in comparison to this government or the last one?

Abbott February 9, 2015

The Abbott image: renovation or replacement? Opinion

Tony Abbott.

Toby Ralph

Tony Abbott’s rating as a leader flounders somewhere between asbestos and Ebola, and history suggests he doesn’t have the time to turn this image around and stave off a backbencher attack, writes Toby Ralph.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a politician in possession of a bad public image is very probably charming in private.

This curiously counter-intuitive phenomenon tends to work equally successfully in reverse. It perplexed me for years until I realised that the gruesome business of cultivating mass acceptability invariably requires the sacrifice of authenticity, just as those that remain authentic customarily surrender popularity.

Political image matters, but is oft misunderstood. Many conflate likeability and leadership, but were congeniality the criteria by which we selected our politicians Kylie Minogue would be PM with Wil Anderson Treasurer, ably supported by a cabinet of the Wiggles and Bananas in Pyjamas.

Australians recognise the need for a bit of mongrel in our leaders – we hire them to do difficult and unpopular things – but it’s a fine line as Campbell Newman has just discovered.

Sacking 14,000 public servants to repurpose a billion bucks or more annually while simultaneously increasing public sector efficiency was no small achievement, while the decision to go to the election on the wobbly platform of leasing state assets was politically heroic.

If you get too tough too fast you’d better have a deep reservoir of goodwill to drain, or you’ll be publicly thanked for your decisive action with an unemployment slip.

Ms Minogue might have sold it: Can-Do Campbell couldn’t.

Which brings us to the comings and potential goings of Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

It is often said of our Prime Minister that if you want to hate him you’d best not meet him – but a fraction of one per cent of our 23,734,369 strong population has the luxury of forming this view – while the millions that do not increasingly line up to scoff at his actions.

Unwarranted or not, his rating as a leader flounders somewhere between asbestos and Ebola, causing some parliamentary colleagues to question if replacement might be more prudent than renovation.

The truth is that image, once damaged, is formidably difficult to repair.

In opposition Mr Abbott positioned himself as a fierce combatant, surrounding himself with a team that excelled at attack. That skill and team have been carried into Government, and his finest moments in office thus far have been those in which he could oppose something: Russians shooting down planes, turbaned terrorists and people smugglers.

However, he has yet to create a sturdy leadership narrative, so his image is being characterised by largely inconsequential but seemingly haphazard decisions like the perplexing knighting of a Duke.

Worse still his time may have run out, for the media smell blood and backbenchers are fretting in public.

How does a politician fix unpopularity fast? A well-trod path is to find a bigger menace and stand against it based on the notion that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

War works rather well.

In 1982 Margaret Thatcher was the least popular leader in recent British history. Then, apparently miffed by Argentinian involvement in an island of 1820 souls off their coast, she launched a naval task force.

A year and a thousand deaths later she was re-elected in a landslide.

Sadly an invasion of the Australian Antarctic Territory seems unlikely and were the Cocos to annex Christmas Island or New Zealand endeavour a hostile seizure of Tasmania I suspect few would care, so that seems to rule out a military adventure.

Without the drama of conflict, image repair requires the tedious slog of explaining what is envisaged, then why it will be of benefit and how it will happen.

Traditionally this is the domain of spin doctors, pollsters and other backroom ne’er-do-wells who conjure up uber-researched glib three word slogans in the patronising hope that punters will accept and echo them.

This hasn’t worked for Mr Abbott since he won the fancy office and the big car with the flag, and I would counsel against it, for repeating a strategy that has manifestly failed would be foolish.

Authenticity and a prudent well-communicated plan with seamless execution pave the road to redemption.

But is there time to create that path?

History suggests not, for once backbencher clamour for change moves from their back rooms to our lounge rooms a dreadful inevitability looms.

Shakespeare had a view:

There is no help.
The bitter disposition of the time
Will have it so.

Toby Ralph is a marketing, strategy and communications consultant who has worked on nearly 50 elections across three continents.

Abbott February 9, 2015

Leadership spill: Tony Abbott brings forward vote to Monday : Is he eligible? Is he still a British citizen surely that’s relevant under the circumstance.

Tony Abbott

PM moves vote forward shortly after Malcolm Turnbull emphasises the importance of keeping it on Tuesday, angering numerous MPs

Tony Abbott has brought forward the vote on the leadership spill motion by one day, shortly after Malcolm Turnbull emphasised the importance of keeping it on Tuesday.

The decision to rush the vote angered numerous MPs, including NSW senator Arthur Sinodinos, a former assistant treasurer and the chief of staff to John Howard.
Time is running out for Tony Abbott’s chaotic and dysfunctional government
Lenore Taylor political editor

The backbench MP for Brisbane, Teresa Gambaro, warned against an “internal climate of fear and intimidation” and said: “We cannot govern the country through belligerence and hubris.”

The prime minister announced he had asked the chief government whip, Philip Ruddock, to call a special party room meeting for 9am on Monday to consider the spill motion.

The spill motion brought by two West Australian backbenchers was originally expected to be considered at Tuesday’s regular party room meeting, the first of the year.

Abbott said it was “important to end the uncertainty at the very beginning of the parliamentary sitting week” and deal with the spill motion and “put it behind us”.

“The normal party room meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning will also go ahead in the usual way,” he said.

“The only question – the only question – for our party is do we want to reduce ourselves to the level of the Labor party in dragging down a first-term prime minister,” he told reporters in Sydney on Sunday.

“Obviously, I’ve been talking to many colleagues over the last few days and my very strong sense is that we are determined to do what we were elected to do, to clean up Labor’s mess and to give our people the economic security and the national security that they need and deserve.”

Abbott left the media conference without taking any questions from reporters.

Bringing the vote on early raised the possibility of some people not being able to make it to Canberra in time. Ruddock said 101 of the 102 Liberal party room members were confirmed to attend, while he was checking the status of the final person.

Earlier on Sunday, Turnbull said Abbott had “shown great respect for the party room by saying that the meeting will be on Tuesday” rather than rushing it forward to Monday.

“He knows members coming to Canberra who will have been getting lots of phone calls and talking to their constituents, many of which will be uncertain, will want to have the opportunity to sit down and talk to each other in the nation’s capital in the course of that Monday leading up to the Tuesday,” the communications minister and former Liberal leader said.

Turnbull’s supporters have indicated he is likely to run for the top job if the party room passes the initial spill motion declaring open the leadership positions.

Turnbull said on Sunday he would vote against the spill motion because that was what was expected of all cabinet members, but refused to rule out being a contender if the motion succeeded.

“It’s very important to remember that the leadership of the Liberal party is, as John Howard said, the unique gift of the party room,” he said. “Now, what that means is that members of the party room have got to have the time to talk to each other, backbenchers talking to each other, backbenchers talking to frontbenchers, frontbenchers talking to frontbenchers and so forth.”

In an apparent reference to Abbott supporters fronting the media to push their case, Turnbull said it was important to talk to colleagues directly “rather than, you know, giving them advice or lecturing them or trying to communicate with them through the media, through the megaphone of the media”.

Turnbull also praised Abbott for suggesting the spill motion would be voted on through a secret ballot, saying this would allow the party room “to make its own decisions without any pressure, without people feeling that if they go one way or another, they’ll be subject to some sort of recrimination or vindictiveness or something like that”.

Gambaro issued a strongly worded statement after Abbott’s announcement.

“We cannot govern ourselves in an internal climate of fear and intimidation,” the Brisbane MP said. “And that is the unacceptable situation we have endured for the past five years.

“Equally we cannot govern the country through belligerence and hubris. In our parliamentary democracy, MPs, as elected officials, have the individual honour to serve the people of their respective electorates and as such deserve to have their voices heard. This is the path to good government.”

The manoeuvring came as a new poll suggested a leadership change would boost the Coalition’s standing with voters, but not would not place the government in an election-winning position.

The Galaxy poll for News Corp showed Labor was leading the Coalition 57% to 43% after preferences. Labor’s lead would shrink to 51% to 49% under Turnbull, the poll suggested.

In another scenario put to respondents, with the Coalition led by Julie Bishop, Labor’s lead would be 53% to 47%.

The Galaxy poll also asked whether Abbott should stand down, with 55% of respondents saying that he should and 35% disagreeing.

Senior ministers moved on Sunday to quash speculation Abbott could strike a peace deal by dumping Joe Hockey as treasurer and placing Turnbull in the key economic role.

News Corp reported that several cabinet ministers had urged Abbott to replace Hockey in the role. But the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, told the ABC’s Insiders program: “Joe Hockey has the full and complete support of the prime minister. That story is wrong.”

The Coalition’s Senate leader, Eric Abetz, emphatically rejected claims he had suggested the treasurer should be replaced. “I continue to support the leadership team and I continue to support all of my ministerial colleagues, including the treasurer,” he said.

The News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch called on the Liberal party not to change leaders. Murdoch tweeted on Sunday: “Abbott, good guy, not perfect but no case for rebellion. Remember last one gave us Gillard disaster. Country still paying for it.”

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) February 7, 2015

Abbott, good guy, not perfect but no case for rebellion. Remember last one gave us Gillard disaster. Country still paying for it.

Abbott has brought forward the spill motion to Monday but said the normal party room meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning would also go ahead in the usual way.

Abbott February 8, 2015

Run no stop and do us all a favour

Abbott, Humour February 8, 2015

Just Some Classic Entertainment To Take Your Mind Off Tony’s Woes! – » The Australian Independent Media Network Videos

Just Some Classic Entertainment To Take Your Mind Off Tony’s Woes! – » The Australian Independent Media Network.

Abbott February 8, 2015

PM – Abbott unlikely to be rolled: Hewson 06/02/2015

PM – Abbott unlikely to be rolled: Hewson 06/02/2015.

Abbott February 7, 2015

Tony Abbott is in trouble because he never let the junkyard dog go : This week has proved that unlike his political hero, Churchill, the Australian prime minister did not grow once he had the power he scrapped and fought for

Tony Abbott

David Marr

Tony Abbott has a memorable way of talking about himself as a dog.

Years ago when he entered parliament he told the world he was keen to be a “junkyard dog savaging the other side”.

He was, magnificently.

He talked dogs again while in exile on the backbench after the downfall of the Howard government. He warned ambitious politicians of finding themselves, “like the dog who catches the car. What do you do when you finally get that great office for which you have striven all these years?”

This week is proof positive that he never really found an answer to that question. True, there are things he wants to do, backers he has to satisfy and promises he has to keep. But when his survival depended on convincing Australians he was the leader for them, he delivered stump speeches about little more than averting economic catastrophe and dealing with terrorists.

Yes, of course. But what about the rest?

The failure which may carry Abbott out of public life on Tuesday is his failure to grow. In thoughtful interviews over many years he claimed to be so much more than the savage dog of his party. There were values, deep values waiting to be expressed once he had the chance to lead.

Twenty years of political brawling in Canberra didn’t touch Abbott’s romantic notion that he would grow once he had power. From childhood his heroes had been men like Churchill who transformed themselves when they came to office.

In the belief this would happen, a chunk of the electorate was willing to vote for this startlingly limited man in 2013. They took him at his word: that he would be able to dig down to his better self and be the leader the nation needed.
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But it didn’t happen.

The junkyard dog united a shattered Coalition and proved himself the most resourceful leader of an opposition in 50 years. But no transformation followed. The prime minister’s problem is not the captain’s picks, not his failure to consult, nor the micromanagement of the cabinet by his office. He failed to grow.

That’s what made his quixotic knighting of the Duke of Edinburgh so devastating. It was not just the act of a leader more alert to the romance of the crown than the feelings of his country. It was so un-grown up.

Abbott is not the brawling kid he was at university. Life and politics have taught him a great deal since then. But to an uncomfortable degree he remains the man recruited in his teens by the conservative fanatic BA Santamaria to save the nation from the future.

Stopping things became his forte: stopping student radicals, stopping the republic, stopping Pauline Hanson, stopping Rudd and Gillard, stopping the boats. He is very good at it. His greatest boast at the Press Club was the list of all he had stopped.

And what’s it all for?

Pundits reckon he needs to find a narrative for his government. He has that. As he has said so often since the night he was elected, Australia is open for business again. That’s the story. But that isn’t winning Abbott the nation’s regard.

Deeper than policy is the problem of him. What he needs to survive now – if the numbers haven’t already moved against him – are the bigger sympathies of a leader able to speak, an adult to adults, about the country he leads.

And if he can’t, the dog metaphors are too grim to contemplate.

Abbott February 6, 2015February 6, 2015

Liberal MP Luke Simpkins announces spill motion against Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott

The federal Liberal backbencher Luke Simpkins has submitted a motion to spill the party’s leadership positions, beginning the process to force a vote on Tony Abbott’s prime ministership next week.

Abbott’s supporters had been calling for the prime minister to be given more time to turn around the government’s flagging fortunes, but Simpkins announced on Friday he had begun the formal process to declare the leadership positions open.

The WA-based backbencher told his colleagues he had submitted to the chief government whip a motion to spill the positions, and this should be considered in a secret ballot at the party room meeting next week. It was seconded by WA backbencher Don Randall.

Simpkins said he did not have frontbench ambitions but felt the need to bring the issue to a head “and test the support of the leadership in the party room”.

More details soon …

The Nationals are not happy. There they were, standing at the front of the church, and here comes a different bride waltzing down the aisle. (And we thought the Nats were against gay marriage.) Here he is in the Northern Daily Leader.

Member for New England Barnaby Joyce has warned the Nationals may walk away from the Coalition in the wake of an upcoming spill next Tuesday.

News of the spill broke this afternoon when Western Australian Liberal MP Luke Simpkins confirmed he will seek a leadership spill against Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

“What I say to my colleagues in the Liberal party is this: we didn’t want this. We gave you fair warning,” Mr Joyce told the Leader.

“Do not consider that the National party support is without question.”

“If all of a sudden a different person is walking down the aisle towards us, don’t necessarily think the wedding is still on.”

Abbott, LNP February 6, 2015

Are we guilty of Schadenfreude?

Reading the mainstream newspapers this week and listening to talkback radio has been like going back in time to 2013 when the Labor government was in disarray, the economy was supposedly haemorrhaging and the national debt was skyrocketing.

We remember how the Murdoch press were in hyper drive spilling out story after story about a dysfunctional government, incompetent ministers, backbench members speaking out of turn, leadership rumblings which turned out to be true and so on, and so on. Talkback Radio was doing much the same.

Today, that same Murdoch press are still at it, as are Fairfax and yes, talkback radio too. And it is still the government they are lambasting, except that it is the new government, the one we elected just 17 months ago. How the wheel has turned.

Yesterday, February 4th 2015 was perhaps the most telling when Paul Kelly, editor at large with The Australian wrote such a scathing article about the present government, I thought we had just emerged from some form of time travel.

A link to Paul’s article is blocked behind a paywall. But this is what he wrote, “The Abbott government is being destroyed before our eyes. The Liberal Party’s frustrations and divisions have cracked wide open. It has taken only 17 months for a sizeable section of the party to announce that Tony Abbott has failed as PM and needs to be liquidated.”

I would go further than that, Paul. The whole government needs to be liquidated. But in saying that I hope neither of us have violated some obscure national security law that might interpret the word ‘liquidated’ as meaning something more than a harmless metaphor.

As Paul’s article points out though, this whole, hilarious circus, has come to this point, i.e. the possibility of a leadership spill next week, without a leadership contender playing any part. It’s all about the failings of the present leader.

Frankly, anybody who could see through the facade Tony Abbott has been hiding behind for the last five years, could see this coming a mile away. When looking at his contradictory nature, things he said way back when, compared with his comments on a variety of issues today, it should have been obvious to anyone in the media a long time ago.

It was obvious for a large part of the electorate. That is evidenced by the election result itself; hardly a landslide. But such was the hatred for Julia Gillard, who by any measure looks positively presidential today, those contradictory failings were allowed to go through to the keeper by a supportive media who just wanted her, Kevin Rudd and Labor out.

And now the chickens have come home to roost. For those of us who saw what was happening, who could see the fallacy of Abbott’s promises, the lies about the state of the economy, the opportunism over the boat people, the regressive climate change policy and perhaps a dozen or so other contradictions, we are all now struggling to hide our enjoyment at the way things have turned out.

Are we guilty of Schadenfreude? Yes we are. Schadenfreude is such a delightful way of expressing our present feelings. I think Blair Donaldson, a responder on Facebook captured the feeling best when he wrote, “If members of Abbott’s own party are more interested in removing him than finding a viable alternative, it says a lot about the poisonous atmospherics in the party. There must be a fair bit of schadenfreude among the PM’s critics in the party and on the opposition benches as they watch Abbott get undone by his own ego and incompetence.”

Abbott’s time as PM is nearly over. It just needs to be pronounced. But I can’t help thinking how much I would enjoy letting it bleed on for a little while longer.

Schadenfreude does that to you.

Abbott, Murdoch February 5, 2015

Abbott, Murdoch, Credlin and the point of no return

Abbott, Murdoch, Credlin and the point of no return.

Abbott February 5, 2015

A One Term Wonder Begging For His Job

Abbott’s address to the Press Club was a “please don’t sack me speech”. He was begging for his job. It was not about popularity, but competency he said. The problem is just that. He has proven to be incompetent.

“I promise to be more consultative, more collegiate”. Mark Reilly pointed out that he had made that promise 15 times in the last five years.

Joe Hockey suggests he should retain his job because the country needs stability. By that reckoning we should retain an incompetent leader because stability is more important. Get your head around that.

In Australia, over the past few years we have had a revolving door attitude towards leadership. The Labor party was thrown out, not because of its policies, or its governance but simply because of instability of leadership. The Gillard-Rudd farce became too much for the Australian public.

It has to be said that John Howard was unpopular but respected. His longevity of tenure proves it.

Tony Abbott, said to be the best opposition leader ever (something I have never been able to fathom) sought in his time of office to belittle the office of Prime Minister on a day-to-day basis.

The current undermining of Abbott’s leadership, which will continue even if he retains his job, was eminently predictable. Words written to describe his character, or lack of it, reach Biblical proportion.

His history is that of an incompetent lying bastard, a gutter pugilist politician with no redeeming features. One who openly displays his disdain for others with vile hate filled utterances. A person of a bygone era who retains a love for the country in which he was born, over and above, the one he now leads. He is a Luddite without any comprehension of technology and science and the benefits to mankind they will bring. He governs for those who have and not for those who have not. His attitude to equality in terms of social values is legendary.

The fact that his party elected him in the first place, given that all this was known, reflects as much on the party as it does on him.

What sort of a leader whose leadership has been so abysmal-so condemned in the court of public approval, would then suggest that the good performance of colleagues is as a result of his splendid captaincy? That’s arrogance of the highest order.

“It takes a good captain to help all the players of a team to excel”, he said.

What sort of a leader in the face of all this would openly suggest that he is good at his job and needed to skite about it more?

What sort of a leader would insult voters by suggesting that the electorate only elected Labor Governments in “a fit of absentmindedness”?

What sort of a leader would say this and then do the opposite?

“It is an absolute principle of democracy that governments should not and must not say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards. Nothing could be more calculated to bring our democracy into disrepute and alienate the citizenry of Australia from their government than if governments were to establish by precedent that they could say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards.”

What sort of leader would with spellbinding, cringe worthy ignorance call social media “graffiti on a wall” while his government spends 4.3 mil on finding out the extent of its influence.

Seriously, bullshitting is bad enough but when someone believes their own, that is intellectual dishonesty.

Leadership is a combination of traits that etch the outlines of a life and grow over time. They govern moral choices and demonstrate empathy toward others. In the recipe of good leadership there are many ingredients. Few leaders have all of them due to our human fallibility. However there are some ingredients that are of necessity.

So if I were electing a leader I would have a check list of the following. Dogged determination, credibility, respect, truthfulness, vision, a positive attitude, trust, delegation skills, confidence, creativeness and ideas, honesty, the ability to inspire, intuition, good communication skills, morality and ethics.

The question then arises which, if any of these attributes did the Liberal Parliamentary Party did they believe Tony Abbott had.

Australian voters might like to also reflect on that.

A just released Essential Poll asked the following question:

Q. Which of the following describe your opinion of the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott?

Out of touch with ordinary people 72% +6
Arrogant 65% +4
Narrow-minded 63% +2
Erratic 60% +8
Hard working 58% -4
Superficial 55% +1
Intolerant 54% +1
Intelligent 50% -1
Aggressive 45% -4
Good in a crisis 36% -6
Understands the problems facing Australia 35% -5
A capable leader 34% -9
More honest than most politicians 30% –
Trustworthy 27% -3
Visionary 22% -5

On the evidence it is hard to believe that there are those who actually support him.

Julia Gillard may have been unpopular but competent she was. On the other hand Tony Abbott is neither.

Now the Liberal Party is caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand it retains an unpopular characterless Prime Minister with no redeeming features because they need an image of stability. On the other, his lack of competence for the job will create instability and mean one term only.

All because they didn’t question his qualifications for leadership.

They and we might like to do the same in the future. The catalyst for all this has been Abbotts love of all things English. His knighthood obsession has become his own personal Knightmare.

Given the choice between stability and competency I would settle on the latter because competency brings about stability.

Abbott February 5, 2015

The thoroughly humiliating and extremely satisfying demise of Tony Abbott

Firstdog Abbottdemise FINAL

This political obituary is tastefully embargoed until Tony Abbott’s prime ministerial scone plops into the basket

Abbott February 5, 2015

National Liberal backbencher Dennis Jensen says he no longer supports Tony Abbott

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been told he no longer has the support of backbencher Denn

MPs yesterday continued to leak against the Prime Minister despite a staunch defence of his leadership to the National Press Club in Canberra on Monday.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull are believed to be the front runners in the leadership race.

“Cabinet ministers have been ringing me and telling me things are just untenable,” one MP told News Corp.

“Julie Bishop and Tony Abbott now have a Gillard-Rudd like relationship. It can’t go on like this,” another said.

Leigh Sales asks Tony Abbott about leadership speculation

But Mr Abbott remains firm, telling ABC 7.30 host Leigh Sales, “we’ve done a lot. If you look at the last 16 months, the carbon tax is gone, the boats have stopped, the roads are building … a lot’s been done, but we’re not resting on our laurels.

“We were elected because people were sick of chaos and what I’m determined to do is give Australia back the certainty and stability people crave.

“We’re not here to talk about the past, I’m here to talk about the future.”

The first MP to break ranks, Liberal backbencher Dennis Jensen, told the Prime Minister he wanted him removed from the nation’s top job on January 23 via text message.

Dr Jensen was the first MP to display such brazen dismay in Mr Abbott’s leadership.

Dr Jensen texted Mr Abbott and the pair had a “lengthy” exchange about why he should be removed.

Speaking out … Liberal backbencher Dr Dennis Jensen has publicly broken ranks to say he no longer supports Tony Abbott as Prime Minister. Source: News Corp Australia

Mr Abbott asked Dr Jensen: “Well who would be better to lead the party?”, to which he replied it was not about the “who” but the “what”.

Dr Jensen told News Corp Australia: “I told him that he no longer has my support.”

The disgruntled MP also said Mr Abbott didn’t have the right vision for the nation, particularly on politics.

“We can’t continue with Mr Abbott as leader,” he said.

Dr Jensen is from the WA electorate of Tangney. He was involved in calling the first of the Liberal spills in 2009 with Wilson Tuckey that ultimately saw Mr Abbott installed as the party’s leader.

Speaking on 7.30 tonight, Dr Jensen said he informed Mr Abbott on January 23 — three days before the disastrous Australia Day knighting of Prince Phillip — that he no longer supported the Prime Minister.

Deposed … Dr Jensen was instrumental in the 2009 Liberal Party leadership spill, which saw Malcolm Turnbull replaced with Tony Abbott. Picture: Adam Taylor Source: News Corp Australia

“I always believe in being upfront and honest,” he said.

Dr Jensen said that while Mr Abbott was an “absolutely fantastic” Opposition leader, he was still “operating on that wartime footing.”

“He was a great wartime leader, [but] now we need a great peacetime leader.”

Despite being instrumental in installing Mr Abbott as Opposition leader in 2009- and now being the first backbencher to publicly speak out against him — Dr Jensen said he did not want to be seen as “just a hitman”.

“I don’t want to be seen as the person who in effect is just pulling the trigger … I think I’m certainly expediting the discussion that we need to have.”

When asked if Mr Abbott could still save himself, Mr Jensen replied: “I don’t believe so”.

“I don’t think fundamentally he understands what the problem is, and therein lies the problem,” he said.

Not just a hitman … Federal Liberal MP Dennis Jensen said he wants to be known for more than just “pulling the trigger” in leadership spills. Picture: News Limited Source: News Limited

But Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton quickly came to the Prime Minister’s defence, saying Mr Abbott needed to be given an “opportunity to exercise what he said”.

“He’s made mistakes, we’ve all made mistakes, and we’re listening to colleagues, and, most importantly, to Australians,” Mr Dutton said in an interview following Dr Jensen’s, also on ABC’s 7.30.

“He’s made it very clear he’s not going to stand down … I want the prime minister elected only 16 months ago to have a fair go.”

Mr Dutton said the Cabinet was unanimously in support of Mr Abbott, and that without a challenger, there was no point.

“He’s made it very clear he’s not going to stand down — why would he, if he’s 16 months into his first term?”

“When there is no challenger, to me that [a leadership spill] makes no sense,” he said.

According to ABC reports, Warren Entsch will be looking to get the leadership issue resolved at their partyroom meeting next Tuesday, and he’s a strong supporter of Mal Brough.

Resolution ... Federal MP Warren Entsch, a supporter of Malcolm Turnbull, reportedly said

Resolution … Federal MP Warren Entsch, a supporter of Mal Brough, reportedly said he wants to resolve the leadership issue at the next partyroom meeting. Picture: Wesley Monts Source: Supplied

The news comes after cabinet ministers have privately been lamenting that the relationship between Tony Abbott and his deputy Julie Bishop is now “untenable” as leadership speculation continues in Canberra.

But Ms Bishop has remained firm that she would not challenge the Prime Minister, telling Sky News that she was not counting her numbers.

“I’m not ringing the backbench for support, I’m not counting numbers,” she said.

“I will not challenge the leader.”

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister responded to Bishop speculation, describing the leadership team as “friends” and “colleagues” who “support each other”.

Social Services Minister Scott Morrison also publicly denied mounting a challenge against the Prime Minister, despite being touted as a possible leadership candidate.

Speaking on 7.30 yesterday, Mr Morrison said Tony Abbott could count on his support.

“The prime minister has my support and I’ve outlined that in any number of ways,” Mr Morrison said.

Not challenging … Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop, has ruled out challenging Mr Abbott for the prime ministership. Picture: Getty Images Source: Getty Images

Meanwhile, disgruntled Queensland MP Mal Brough has not ruled out potentially bringing forward a motion of no confidence in Tony Abbott in the party room if he is still Prime Minister when Parliament resumes next week.

Loyal MP … Scott Morrison has also pledged his commitment to the Prime Minister. Source: News Corp Australia

Mr Brough told Sky News he had no intention to challenge Mr Abbott for the leadership, but had concerns about issues affecting the government, including the GP co-payment and the cuts to the wages of the defence force.

He said he would be having more discussions with Mr Abbott about these issues, but did not say a leadership spill was the way the party should go.

One of the possible options being discussed by MPs unhappy with Mr Abbott’s leadership is that Mr Brough will act as a suicide bomber to bring the leadership issue to a head.

Abbott February 4, 2015

Liberal MP calls for spill to resolve Tony Abbott’s leadership – live

Not happy, Tony Abbott. ]\

Not happy, Tony Abbott. A Liberal MP has called for the leadership issue to be resolved in a spill as soon as possible

Tony Abbott leadership is under intense pressure as MPs start speaking out against his capacity and Warren Entsch calls for a spill at the first opportunity. Follow it live…

ABC presenter Julie Baird has just sent out the tweet below. Malcolm Turnbull is still in cabinet with all the other ministers. His office says as a result, there is no immediate response to this obviously big claim.

The political assault on Tony Abbott from his Queensland colleagues continues with Brisbane Liberal member Teresa Gambaro writing an opinion piece this morning that offers frank advice to her leader.

It is not enough for leaders to listen: they must also hear. A leader must create a team and champion the good performances of team members, not be fearful of them. And finally, a leader should not lie – to their colleagues or the Australian people.

The truth is often difficult, but any political figure who looks the public in the eye and betrays their trust is not worthy of office.

I want to be part of a government that can look the Australian people in the eye and honestly say – we have listened to you, we have heard you and we will work with you in the best interests of our nation.

We must be part of an ongoing conversation with the Australian people that is longer than 140 characters and does not peddle mindless political ideology.

Updated at 10.58am AEST

52m ago10:46

Liberal MP, Craig Kelly, has come to Abbott’s rescue. Kelly holds the marginal Sydney seat of Hughes but he is not for turning. Tony could give a “knighthood” to Camilla for all he cares. (Now that would be news.) He would still #stickwithtony.

He has taken to Facebook to declare: I’M STICKING WITH TONY.

He’s scrapped the Carbon Tax

He’s stopped the boats – and the deaths at sea.

He’s gotten rid of the Mining Tax – so Australia is once more seen as a safe place to invest.

He has over $1 trillion worth of new projects approved, projects that had been held up by Labor.

He has new road projects now underway to overcome commuter gridlock in our cities.

After 50 years of buck passing, he’s made a decision on a new Western Sydney Airport.

He’s delivered a trifecta of free trade agreements covering more than 50 per cent of our exports – with China, Japan and South Korea.

He has the live cattle trade – closed down in panic over a TV programme – booming again.

At last, he has the NBN is rolling out, reliably and affordably.

He has Jobs growth running at 4,000 new jobs a week – triple that of 2013

He has new housing approvals at record levels – creating a boom for tradies.

He has the registration of new companies at the highest on record.

He has Economic growth now running at 2.7 per cent, up from 1.9 per cent a year ago.

He’s cracking down on the likes of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and others who nurture Islamic extremism in our suburbs.

For small business, he’s cutting company tax by 1.5% on the 1st July to encourage further employment growth.

And right now; Petrol prices are nearing 15 year lows, home loan interest rates are the lowest on record, and the September quarter had the biggest fall in power prices on record.

Therefore, even if he’d given a knighthood to Camilla – I’m sticking with Tony !!

Liberal MP Craig Kelly is standing up for Tony Abbott. Photograph: Craig Kelly/Craig Kelly

Updated at 11.00am AEST

1h ago10:31

Trade minister Andrew Robb has been on the ABC acknowledging that the government’s solid achievements have been overshadowed by a few policies – higher education deregulation and Medicare copayment – which in Robb’s eyes, were surprises.

Solid achievements were overshadowed by policies that were a surprise to people.

The word “surprise” is particularly devastating. Remember that Tony Abbott promised to be a “government of no surprises”.

Updated at 10.40am AEST

1h ago10:13

Daniel Hurst has wrapped up the morning’s leadership coverage in a concise wrap for your edification which you may find here.

Cabinet ministers have rallied around Tony Abbott despite backbenchers’ determination to force a leadership showdown and amid reports that Julie Bishop was “offended” at having to prove her loyalty.

Senior ministers Joe Hockey, Mathias Cormann and Christopher Pyne came to the prime minister’s aid on Wednesday, saying Abbott had the cabinet’s unanimous support and the overwhelming backing of the 102-strong Liberal party room.

But efforts to shore up the prime minister’s standing took a blow on Wednesday when the former Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett suggested the party’s leadership was terminal and the public’s “universal and unanimous” view was that the government was getting nowhere.

Updated at 10.19am AEST

1h ago10:10

Joe Hockey challenges dissenters to come out

Joe Hockey was doorstopped after the AM interview, where it has to be said he was looking pretty upbeat in spite of the pressure. He reminded reporters that no prime minister has had 100% support.

When John Howard sacked his seventh minister, says Hockey, a number of MPs went to the crossbenches. He did not have 100% support at that time.

Let’s have a little historical perspective.

He acknowledges that things move quicker today than they did then but his essential message is – get a grip. He challenges people to come out and show their colours.

If there’s dozens, come out dozens.

Updated at 10.19am AEST

2h ago10:02

Back to Joe.

Some enterprising reporter tracked down party elder John Howard who was on his regular morning walk in Sydney somewhere. Breaking news: Howard fully supports Abbott’s leadership.

But it was Joe Hockey who took our minds back to the heady first years of the Howard administration, when seven ministers fell on their swords as the Coalition adjusted to government. And had a few issues. With travel. And Howard’s own ministerial code of conduct.

I remember in 1997 John Howard had sacked seven ministers – seven ministers – before his 18 months in office. He had a number of backbenchers going to the crossbenchers, we won the subsequent election. I’d say to you, we’re not even at that point of time in the Howard government. We hadn’t even got to the 18-month point but obviously there are going to be pressures when you make difficult decisions.

So the Abbott government is way ahead, says Hockey.

Which brings me the tweet of George Megalogenis who helpfully reminded us of another comparison from Liberal history.

Updated at 10.21am AEST

2h ago09:40

Now Ray Hadley is moving the debt, allowing Abbott to find his feet on “Labor’s debt and deficit”.

The prime minister is asking Labor, the Greens and the crossbenchers to be constructive when negotiating legislation. (Which would require them to erase the opposition leaders’ behaviour in the last term.)

“We’re more than capable,” says Abbott.

He thinks there are grounds for growing confidence in the weeks ahead.

Hadley says he knows Abbott is “a fighter” and knows he will “dig in”. He suggests Abbott ring Jensen and Entsch. Abbott resists commenting.

Updated at 9.57am AEST

2h ago09:34

Tony Abbott says he can’t rule out never doing another “captain’s call” and claims to have listened to his colleagues and reversed those decision.

Except one, says Hadley. He can’t remove the gong from Phil.

Abbott says he is the same man in government as he was in opposition. This goes to the point Liberal MP Dennis Jensen made yesterday that he was a wartime leader for opposition but not a peacetime leader for government.

Abbott February 4, 2015

Abbott is losing the competence contest – The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Tony Abbott

Abbott is losing the competence contest – The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Abbott February 4, 2015

Press Gallery stars in Abbott’s National Press Club match

Press Gallery stars in Abbott’s National Press Club match.

Abbott February 4, 2015

Reform is really hard

Beleaguered and embattled prime minister Tony Abbott attempts to make a not completely terrible career-saving speech

Abbott February 3, 2015

Tony Abbott Kinda Crashed And Burned During His National Press Club Speech In Canberra Today Read more at http://junkee.com/tony-abbott-kinda-crashed-and-burned-during-his-national-press-club-speech.

Tony Abbott addressed the National Press Club for the first time of his Prime Ministership in Canberra earlier today, hoping to quash rumours that his leadership is toast and he’s on the verge of being the shortest-lived non-caretaker Prime Minister since 1914. It did not go so well.

Before the speech began, the office of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten — who must be running around Parliament House giggling like a little Christmas elf these days — sneakily distributed copies of ‘Tony Abbott National Press Club bingo’ to assembled journalists to tick off the cliches Abbott was sure to deliver. Considering the first fifteen minutes of the twenty-three minute address was literally the same “carbon-tax-stop-the-boats-Labor-bad” speech he’s been giving for the last three years, it looked like it was going to be a pretty friggin’ quick game of bingo, but going by the strictest bingo rules no row or column was filled, and the meat tray went sadly unclaimed.
Read more at http://junkee.com/tony-abbott-kinda-crashed-and-burned-during-his-national-press-club-speech-in-canberra-today/50201#R8puttlr08IA5f6H.99

The second half of Abbott’s speech, where he started talking about slightly different stuff, went from zero to completely bananas in about half a second when he got onto the topic of Islamist extremism and suddenly started sounding like a cross between Dick Cheney and Dolores Umbridge.
Read more at http://junkee.com/tony-abbott-kinda-crashed-and-burned-during-his-national-press-club-speech-in-canberra-today/50201#R8puttlr08IA5f6H.99

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=85114404&x-yt-ts=1422579428&feature=player_embedded&v=FsuU0yCIc54

People are sick of Australian citizens, including people born and bred in this country, making excuses for Islamist fanatics in the Middle East and their imitators here in Australia,” Abbott said, seemingly under the assumption that someone is making the case for ISIS on morning television somewhere (here’s looking at you, Kochie).

He also spruiked the government’s planned data retention scheme as the solution to the homegrown terrorist threat we so desperately need, apparently. “If cracking down on Hizb-ut-Tahrir and others who nurture extremism in our suburbs means further legislation, we will bring it on. The police and the security agencies have told me that they need access to telecommunications data to deal with a range of crime from child abuse to terrorism and as far as I am concerned they should always have the laws, the money and the support to keep our country and our people safe,” he continued.

Incidentally, the Senate Committee inquiry into said data retention scheme also happened in Parliament today, with everyone from the journalist’s union to civil liberties associations to the Law Council of Australia lining up to list the reasons why it’s a terrible idea, but the nation’s most prominent journalists were listening to Abbott’s “surveillance-equals-freedom” shtick instead, so there you go.
Read more at http://junkee.com/tony-abbott-kinda-crashed-and-burned-during-his-national-press-club-speech-in-canberra-today/50201#R8puttlr08IA5f6H.99

“I never came into politics to be popular,” Abbott says. KPI smashed #npc

Abbott also dismissed the Liberal Party’s defeats in Queensland and Victoria as “a fit of absentmindedness” that means sometimes “people elect a Labor government,” thus winning the charm offensive for the nation’s swing voters once and for all, and deflected journo questions about his leadership. “It’s the people that hire, and frankly, it’s the people that should fire,” he said, before reiterating that he “trusts” his party room colleagues in a steadily rising tone of voice reminiscent of a Seymour Skinner Vietnam flashback.https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422579428&x-yt-cl=85114404&feature=player_embedded&v=qeCSZz7nqGg

He called Australia’s debt level an “intergenerational theft,” which prompted approximately one billion people pointing out the existence of climate change on Twitter, and claimed that we “lacked the intestinal fortitude” to address debt back in 2007. The nation had been “self-indulgent” during the Labor years, Abbott said, which will come as a surprise to the tens of thousands of single mums who had their benefits cut by the Gillard government.

Other highlights included Abbott discovering the word “journey” for the first time in his life, and cramming it into his replies so often he sounded like a HSC English question circa 2008. “We’re on a journey. We are on a journey, the journey to build a better Australia. It’s the only journey worth coming on! And we have to succeed, we just have to succeed for our country’s sake,” Abbott said, sounding less like a sitting Prime Minister and more like a guy who ate some mushrooms he found in the dirt at Woodford. “Every one of us are on a journey.” Right on, Tone.

But the highlight of the day was this Lincolnian rhetorical flourish: “As I said so many times before the last election, we will end the waste, stop the boats, scrap the unnecessary new taxes and build the roads of the 21st Century. And the results? Waste down. Boats stopped. Carbon tax gone. And roads well and truly underway.” We did it. We broke him. He’s actually broken now.

Either that, or he’s risen to new heights of oratory. Never has so much been conveyed in so few words, save perhaps by one other.

image: http://junkee.com/wp-content/themes/junkee2/images/spacer.png

You can watch the speech in full here if you want to (you don’t want to), and follow the #npc hashtag if you enjoy watching animals feasting on helpless weak creatures and you don’t get the Discovery Channel.

Abbott February 3, 2015

PMT is a compulsive liar. I don’t think he knows the difference between the truth and lies. Just watching him at The Press Club. More lies. More finger pointing at Labors “mess”. He is delusional. He just does not get it. He never will. Notable absences Bishop, Turnbull and Credlin.

Abbott February 3, 2015

Abbott’s problems are all Rudd’s and Gillard’s fault: All around the world they are wondering who this buffoon is that is Australia’s Prime Minister

Abbott’s problems are all Rudd’s and Gillard’s fault.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/25/asia/australia-day-prince-philip-knighthood/index.html …

Abbott February 2, 2015

DOMESTIC CRISIS and ABBOTT’S HYPOCRISY A DEFLECTION OF HIS CAPTAINS CHOICE OF PRINCE PHILIP

In an effort to switch the nation’s focus from what Andrew Bolt called his “pathetically stupid” decision to knight Prince Philip, Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday delivered a press conference to announce his government’s policy on family violence. Family violence – violence committed against women and children and sometimes men by partners, ex-partners and parents – has at last become a political priority, following extended media coverage of horrific murders, including the filicide of 11-year-old Luke Batty by his father in February last year. Luke’s mother, Rosie, was instrumental in having the Victorian government set up a royal commission into family violence.

Unfortunately, Abbott’s press conference became yet another example of what is being increasingly seen as his political mismanagement and hypocrisy. As Dan Harrison observes, the initiatives Abbott announced – a national scheme for domestic violence orders, national standards for intervening against violent perpetrators and improving online safety – were initiatives he’d already announced last June. The conference was a re-announcement. And by emphasising family violence, Abbott gave critics an opportunity to highlight a number of cuts Abbott’s government has made to programs that help victims and prevent violence.

At Daily Life, Jenna Price lists some of the programs that have fallen foul of Abbott’s austerity cuts. A five-year research project in Britain recently found that most violent men who participate in reform programs completely stop physically harming their partners, but the Abbott government has defunded men’s behaviour change programs in Victoria entirely, and has cut $3.5 million from front-line domestic violence support services for Indigenous women on top of millions from community legal centres. As Abbott said during yesterday’s press conference, one woman every week is killed in Australia by her current or former partner. Why, then, has his government de-funded preventive programs?

Russell Marks
Politicoz Editor
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Abbott, Captain February 2, 2015

We need to remind ourselves…daily

http://youtu.be/uI9MsI1yHnM

Abbott February 1, 2015

Tony Abbott says he will not resign in wake of LNP’s Queensland rout; result described as ‘catastrophic’ by federal MPs

Tony Abbott says he remains determined to continue as Prime Minister, in spite of reports the Queensland election result has doomed his leadership.

Some federal Coalition MPs have described the LNP’s loss in Queensland as “catastrophic” for the party and potentially terminal for Mr Abbott’s leadership.

Queensland MPs Jane Prentice and Warren Entsch have both said there now need to be “discussions” about the issue, but Tony Abbott says he will not resign.

“The people of Australia elected me as Prime Minister and they elected my government to get on with the job of governing our country,” he told reporters in Sydney today.

“The important thing is not to navel-gaze, it’s not to look at ourselves, it’s to get on with the job of being a better Government.”

Mr Abbott attributed the LNP’s Queensland defeat to state issues, but did acknowledge that his decision to knight Prince Philip had hurt Campbell Newman’s campaign.

“It was a distraction for a couple of days, I accept that and I very much regret that,” Mr Abbott said.

Earlier Federal Attorney-General and Queensland senator George Brandis moved to quash speculation of a challenge to Mr Abbott’s leadership.

“The Cabinet is determinedly, unitedly and strongly behind the Prime Minister,” Senator Brandis said on Sky News this morning.

“There is absolutely no appetite among the vast majority of my colleagues for this issue to arise or even to be visited.”

Abbott’s approval rating just 27 per cent: poll

A Galaxy poll published today in News Limited newspapers has Labor leading the Liberal-National Coalition 57 points to 43 on a two-party preferred basis.

Mr Abbott’s personal approval rating is just 27 per cent.

While also backing the Prime Minister, another Queensland Liberal, Warren Entsch, this morning said the leadership needed to be addressed.

“I think there’s some more discussions that need to be had,” Mr Entsch said.

“I’ll certainly be part of those discussions.”

Mr Entsch also conceded that the Prime Minister’s decision to award a knighthood to Prince Philip had played a part in the LNP’s loss in Queensland.

“People certainly suggest knighting the Duke of Edinburgh did not go over well in Queensland and it may have influenced some people’s vote,” he said.

Senator Brandis was more forthright, describing the knighthood issue as a “dangerous distraction” in the final week of campaigning.

“That one issue created a distraction that caused the Newman Government to lose momentum,” he said.

Senator Brandis acknowledged that the result would have “federal implications”, but firmly rejected suggestions it would bring the leadership issue to a head.

“The Prime Minister has the overwhelming support of the party room.

“There is no widespread appetite in the Liberal Party for a leadership change.

“We would be crazy to repeat the experience of the last Labor government, which failed because it tore down an elected leader.”

Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss this morning conceded the federal Coalition had to learn from the election result.

“That agenda has been frustrated in the Senate because many of the good things we wanted to do we haven’t been able to,” he said.

“On the other hand we need to do more to explain to people at the federal level that we have delivered.”

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has told the ABC’s Insiders program that there were “federal issues at stake” in Queensland.

Mr Shorten said the leadership was “up to the Liberal Party”, but said the result should be seen as a rejection of the Federal Government’s policies.

“If they think it’s the salesman, not what they’re selling, then they will have learnt nothing.”

Abbott February 1, 2015

Every football team needs a head-kicker but you don’t make him captain

The Liberal Party has no-one else to blame but themselves for their current woes. When they allowed the climate change deniers to stage a coup and install their puppet as leader they set themselves up for this fall.

Tony is a populist ideologue which is a contradiction within itself. He is a self-described weathervane, changing his views with the prevailing wind of the polls, intermingled with bizarre captain’s calls, a confused allegiance to a Church he lambasted when one of its own, an anachronistic devotion to the monarchy, and a sycophantic need to please.

As Laurie Oakes said, Tony has had more positions on climate change and an ETS than the Karma Sutra.

He has also done a complete turnaround on federal/state relationships. In his book Battlelines he said

“…the only way to sort out responsibilities in areas where the two levels of government are both involved is to put one level of government in overall charge.”

By “one level of government”, Abbott was explicit that he meant the Commonwealth.

Only a few years on and Tony changed his mind saying there should be “much more local control of schools and hospitals” and much less “federal interference with the way state bureaucracies run schools and hospitals”.

And then there is Tony’s signature Paid Parental Leave policy. In 2002, he told a Liberal Party function in Victoria:

“Compulsory paid maternity leave? Over this Government’s dead body, frankly.”

When it became apparent that Tony was very unpopular with women, he, with no consultation or modelling or costing, went in the total opposite direction by announcing the most generous PPL in the world.

Workchoices is supposedly “dead, buried and cremated” but the Productivity Commission has been instructed to review minimum wage, penalty rates, unfair dismissal laws, enterprise bargaining and individual contracts. Reg will now be known as Loretta.

How is anyone to understand what Tony Abbott stands for when it appears his words mean nothing?

For example, on the ABC’s Insiders on September 1, 2013, Tony Abbott stated:

“I want to give people this absolute assurance, no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no changes to pensions and no changes to the GST.”

And on September 6, 2013, the day before the 2013 Federal Election, Tony Abbott again ruled out any changes to the GST while speaking to Neil Mitchell on 3AW:

NEIL MITCHELL: So what are the no-go zones?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, if you can be more efficient, obviously you should be more efficient. There’s no point preserving inefficiency if efficiency is possible. What we aren’t going to do is we’re not going to cut health spending, we’re not going to cut education spending. We’re not going to reduce pensions, we’re not going to change the GST – all of the scares that Kevin Rudd has been hyperventilating over, over the last few weeks is simple nonsense.

It is apparent that Tony has no problem lying to get what he wants. Perhaps this stems from his parents shielding him from the consequences of his actions by employing senior legal teams to get Tony off several youthful misdemeanors whilst encouraging his dreams of grandeur.

When asked today about the vastly higher popularity of Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop as preferred leader, Tony said “One of the reasons why so many members of the team are able to perform so well is because they have got a very good captain.”

You may be a good head-kicker Tony but you haven’t got a clue what it takes to be a captain.

Abbott February 1, 2015

“I can’t bat, I can’t bowl, I cant field, all I can do is sledge. That’s why I should be captain”…for at least a term

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Leigh Sales asks Tony Abbott about leadership speculation

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Joe Hockey challenges dissenters to come out

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