Seven years since losing his seat in ignominious circumstances, Tony Abbott has returned from his long penance in the wilderness of Sky News and CPAC to become the latest president of what remains of the federal Liberal Party. He was elected unopposed after Alexander Downer withdrew.
Abbott was nominated by Angus Taylor’s brother Charlie for what has traditionally been a largely behind the scenes, administrative role, but in the hands of the endlessly ambitious former prime minister, the man who made budgie smugglers infamous seems likely to pull his party even further right on all the issues which have made it unelectable to many traditional Liberal voters.
Extraordinarily successful in opposition, thanks to his tactic of opposing everything, the legislative achievements of the Abbott Government were miniscule, except from the perspective of big mining and fossil fuel interests, who were very happy with the abandonment of any serious action on carbon pollution, or moves to appropriately tax those who profit from digging up and selling large chunks of Australia.
There was also Operation Sovereign Borders, inherited from John Howard, which survives in a different incarnation in the current government. This policy, with its heavy focus on the poorest and most desperate of refugees (those arriving by boat, rather than those who could afford a plane ticket), was later picked up by the UK Conservatives, who have always been receptive to the ‘ideas’ of British-born Abbott.
Tony’s greatest hits
Who can forget his misogynist attacks on Julia Gillard, his defence of the indefensible Cardinal George Pell (who Tony Abbott eulogised as a ‘great hero’), unpeeled onion eating, ‘climate change is crap’, the mysterious elevation of Peta Credlin, or Abbott’s 24 second stare into space when being interviewed by Mark Riley?
Abbott’s is the most vandalised statue on the Prime Ministers Avenue in Ballarat Botanical Gardens, though the new statue of the Smirker-in-Chief, Scott Morrison, may yet give him a run for his money, with round the clock security having been installed to protect it, at council expense.
Tony Abbott’s greatest achievement remains his inadvertent creation of the teal movement, with his remarkable personal and political shortcomings leading to his ousting and the election of former champion skier Zali Steggall in what had once been the bluest of blue ribbon Liberal seats, Warringah, on Sydney’s lovely Northern Beaches, and despite an extensive smear campaign against her.
The man who has been looking over his spectacles and styling himself as a historian in recent years (Abbott’s book has been described as ‘a masterclass in colonial nostalgia’) continues to have a strange blind spot about his own role in the destruction of his beloved Liberal Party.
Abbott was instrumental in the Liberals’ great slide into empty negativity and irrelevance, embracing the kind of identity politics which the party’s founder Robert Menzies despised, forgetting middle Australia and its practical concerns along the way.
Forgotten people
Can you imagine Tony Abbott saying something like this? ‘Of course women are at least the equals of men. Of course there is no reason why a qualified woman should not sit in parliament or on the bench or in professional chair, or preach from the pulpit, or, if you like, command an army in the field.’
That was Menzies speaking in 1943. It’s a very long way from Abbott’s call to ‘ditch the witch’.
The Liberals have slid even further since, of course, but it should be remembered that Tony Abbott was never much more than a shallow imitation of his mentor John Howard, himself a shallow imitation of Robert Menzies, the last Liberal leader who had anything approaching a vision for Australia.
Abbott’s return to the political fold signals the continuing degradation of the Liberals. It will aid only the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, a party led, ironically, by the woman Tony Abbott once pursued until she was imprisoned.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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