Deep down, you know Tony Abbott is harbouring a desire to become Prime Minister again. To some it would be welcome, but these are mostly people disappointed with the annoying Turnbull, and who would wish to have some of the Abbott hilarity back in politics. It would be an entertaining way to enjoy the demise of the Liberal Party.
Let’s be honest, Tony Abbott’s biggest fan is Tony Abbott. He thinks he is the best thing since sliced bread. He seems to forget the monumental blunders he made while PM, many of which are due to his inarticulate nature. These include:
When in Afghanistan discussing the death of Lance Corporal Jared MacKinney with senior officers stated that ‘sometimes shit happens’. On top of that when back in Canberra and asked about it by Mark Riley, he stated that he had been taken out of context. However when pressed to describe how it had been taken out of context, Abbott, obviously livid, but without any inkling of what to say, just glared at his interlocutor for 24 seconds, before stating that ‘I have given you the response you deserve’. That was followed by another 43 seconds of silence. Abbott just stood there with his head weakly nodding, with his eyes flicking between the reporter’s face and the ground.
When asked about sex before marriage, he said he would tell his daughters that their virginity “is the greatest gift you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving…”.
In the middle of the 2007 election campaign, Bernie Banton, the dying victim of the asbestos-caused cancer, mesothelioma, had arranged a meeting in the office of then Health Minister, Abbott, to present a petition. Abbott missed the meeting, and Banton called him a gutless creep. Abbott dismissed the petition as a stunt and suggested that Banton was not ‘pure of heart’. Banton died in November of the same year.
In 2014 he maintained that abolishing the carbon tax was the best thing his government had done for women, because “women are particularly focused on the household budget”. This followed his assertion that an emissions trading scheme would hurt housewives “as they do the ironing” as their power bill will go up.
One of the most bizarre stuffups is the granting of a knighthood (a rank which Abbott had reinstated) to Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. Even right wing nut jobs considered it a stupid move.
Stating, at a Liberal Party dinner in 2009 that he thought the science of human-induced climate change was “absolute crap”. However, he subsequently stated that he accepts the science of climate change. This is not believable because, when he was Prime Minister, he scrapped the carbon tax, attempted to slash the renewable energy target, closed the Climate Council, attempted to close the Climate Change Authority, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, initially refused to invest in the Green Climate Fund, largely removed the words ‘climate change’ from the Intergenerational Report, and cut back on climate research.
Saying he felt ‘threatened’ by gays and lesbians, and that he found homosexuality ‘confronting’. Someone should have told him it is not compulsory.
Refusing to get his daughters vaccinated against the human papilloma virus (HPV) which has been shown to be a cause of cervical cancer.
Whining about his domestic political problems when welcoming the G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane, in 2014.
He used Jesus to defend his views on immigration, saying “Jesus didn’t say yes to everyone. Jesus knew that there was a place for everything, and it is not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia.”
He stated that “I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons”.
After the airliner MH17 was shot down, Abbott stated that he would shirtfront Vladimir Putin at the G20 meeting in Brisbane in 2014. Either he did not understand what ‘shirtfront’ means or, yet again, misspoke and meant to say ‘buttonhole’. His lack of ability with English is legendary, leading some to suspect that he has incipient dementia, in part caused by his career as an amateur boxer while at Oxford University.
In a speech delivered to a room full of Liberals during the 2013 election campaign stated “No one, however smart, however well educated, however well experienced, is the suppository of all wisdom”.
Pauline Hanson has often been likened to Donald Trump because she seems to be symptomatic of the supposed shift to the right in Australia. However, I don’t believe this. I think it is a shift away from politics as usual, as both major parties have had decreases in primary votes. In fact I think Australia is ahead of the US in this regard. We have had our Donald Trump already and it is Tony Abbott. Like Trump, he is inarticulate. Like Trump he is in the pocket of the corporate class (if not the Russians). Like Trump he is a narcissist, insofar as despite all the stuffups he personally made while Prime Minister, he would never take the blame personally, always blaming it on ‘the government’, intimating that it was others who were at fault. Like Trump, who is seemingly controlled by Bannon, when Abbott was PM, he was under the control of his chief of staff, Peta Credlin. Like Trump, Abbott is an inveterate liar and has by far the worst record of any Australian Prime Minister in lying to the public.
Abbott’s main problem is that his narcissism will only be satisfied by his becoming PM again. Perhaps, deep down, he realises that politics is all he can do. He is a failed priest, a failed journalist, a second class student and now a failed PM. He is also a laughing stock. Only being a PM again would bring redemption. And hilarity.
Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ9y1c73-IM
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/03/17/tony-abbott-gaffes_n_6884382.html
http://www.blotreport.com/uncategorized/abbott-lies-again/
http://www.blotreport.com/uncategorized/abbott-the-liar/
