Mega Thread All things Tony Abbott

[Gus Poyet]

You don't vote for a leader in this country you vote for a local member and hence a party to govern. This idea that Australia is a US Presidential style government really needs to be knocked on the head.

Mark Latham says you're wrong.

 

[Gus Poyet]

Bored?

Waiting for the Mrs and kids to get ready for the beach.

 

[little graham]

He was, just not to the primeministership

He says the people elected him prime minister.

 

[Demonic Ascent]

I didn't think it was possible for there to be a worse public speaker - a worse public speaker - than Julia Gillard. Tony Abbott is not Labor -he is not Labor, but his mannerisms - his mannerisms - and particularly his maddening habit of repeating each sentence -ah- repeating absolutely each and every sentence - makes me want to kill myself.

How hard is it for a politician just to speak clearly, conversationally and normally to the Australian public.

When you're talking shit you have to be very careful about each and every word that dribbles out of your mouth lest you put your foot in it.

 

[little graham]

Where's Morrisons ugly mug lately? he's very inconspicuous? I liken him to Goebbels for his commitment to the cause. Strange he's so quiet after doing the dirtiest of dirty work for Abbott.

 

[Demonic Ascent]

It's free money.

When did the sense of entitlement kick in that people think they deserve not just free money, but lots more of it?

It's a safety net for the unemployed. I have no doubt some people elect to "bludge" off the dole but it's not really a lucrative lifestyle receiving less than minimum wage and it's better to have a safety net that may be abused by a few people rather than not have the safety net at all and let people who genuinely need it fall through the cracks and see crime and homeless rates rise.

When you compare it to the free hits and corporate welfare handed out to the leaners who absolutely do not need any more it is extremely small potatoes in the scheme of things. But it's always good for a Herald Sun headline or A Current Affair feature to rile up the middle classes to focus their anger and frustration on the unemployed (or immigrants or whichever underprivileged minority group they care to demonise) to keep their eyes off the people who are really screwing them every day. Great diversionary tactic.

 

[Demonic Ascent]

Mark Latham says you're wrong.

Who?

 

[Schraderbrau]

You do realise Abbott is a Rhodes Scholar and economics graduate from Oxford don't you? Makes your statement (and a number of other flogs in this thread) look a little silly

 

[little graham]

 

[Gough]

I think that it will be the method of voting for the spill that will probably determine the PM's future. Show of hands and he might survive, secret ballot, I would imagine he's gone.

 

[Schraderbrau]

Any indication or word on whether or not Malcolm Turnbull will challenge Tony Abbott for the Liberal leadership/Prime Ministership yet?

According to one of the papers (can't remember which), his supporters say he will challenge if the spill gets up.

 

[little graham]

I wonder about people with credibility, do they lie as much as you notice someone without credibility lying?

 

[Schraderbrau]

 

[little graham]

http://www.smh.com.au/business/g20/...to-pass-tax-on-gp-visits-20141115-11nccp.html

n his televised speech, Mr Abbott also "thanked God" he had stopped the "illegal boats", noted that the former Labor government's carbon tax is "gone" and underlined his plan to build more roads.
The gathering included the presidents of the United States and China who have recently struck a landmark deal to reduce their carbon emissions beyond 2020. Indonesia's President Joko Widodo, who has previously warned he would not tolerate incursions into Indonesia's waters by Australian navy vessels turning back boats, is also attending.

Mr Shorten said Mr Abbott had had "months to prepare for this moment" but failed dismally.

"He boasted of taking Australia backwards on climate change action, making it harder for Australians to go to university and pricing sick people out of getting the healthcare they need," Mr Shorten said.

 

[Forward Press]

It's a safety net for the unemployed. I have no doubt some people elect to "bludge" off the dole but it's not really a lucrative lifestyle receiving less than minimum wage and it's better to have a safety net that may be abused by a few people rather than not have the safety net at all and let people who genuinely need it fall through the cracks and see crime and homeless rates rise.

When you compare it to the free hits and corporate welfare handed out to the leaners who absolutely do not need any more it is extremely small potatoes in the scheme of things. But it's always good for a Herald Sun headline or A Current Affair feature to rile up the middle classes to focus their anger and frustration on the unemployed (or immigrants or whichever underprivileged minority group they care to demonise) to keep their eyes off the people who are really screwing them every day. Great diversionary tactic.

I just don't understand the demonisation of people on the dole. It's as if some think all of them like receiving much less than minimum wage and having to apply for dozens of jobs every month and being knocked back almost every time.

I'd wager the government could cut down spending on social security by cracking down on the Family Tax Benefits, the pension and DSP which pay far more than the dole, than by saving a couple of hundred dollars a week in pursuing a dole bludger. But I suppose unemployed people are easier targets than pensioners...

 

[geelong_boy]

Turnbull would be stupid to risk assuming the leadership like this. His first **** up, and it will happen, and the chorus of Gillard comparisons begin.

I'd let them lose, then take on Shorten at the next election. Shorten is hardly a terrifying opponent.

I have to say that from Turnbull's point of view I agree with this.

He has to let the vast majority of the party come to him, as Howard did in 1995 (that is assuming that he doesn't have that right now).

If he's to be leader then he has to have a big say in which policies are implemented and he can't allow himself to be kneecapped.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Depends on the degree, if you get a job in your chosen field then it doesn't matter where the education comes from

Exactly. Never in my life have I seen a hiring decison made on the basis of where the degree came from.

 

[Lebbo73]

I know that this has been mentioned before but I had not seen this list from the IPA.
https://ipa.org.au/publications/2080/be-like-gough-75-radical-ideas-to-transform-australia
Did the Libs have any policies of their own or did they just copy?
Really is a must read.

I read this ages ago. I agree with everything on that list except for numbers 23, 26 and 42.

 

[Jascave]

How many votes are needed in the Liberals party room to ensure the leadership challenge goes ahead?

 

[Gough]

Phil Coorey nails it.
http://www.afr.com/p/national/politics/tony_abbott_hires_malcolm_turnbull_GIGYwbJta38agGitLXxSSK

Tony Abbott was warned years ago to be wary of Mal Brough. Like most good advice, he ignored it.

Brough, the former Howard government minister who lost his Queensland seat of Longman in 2007, was angling for preselection in the adjacent seat of Fisher ahead of the 2013 election.

It was a no-lose option for whoever in the Coalition won preselection, as the seat was held by Peter Slipper.

Brough was never that popular among colleagues under Howard, if only because he was ambitious, did not lack self-confidence and was being rapidly promoted.

Abbott, as Opposition leader, was counselled by some of his shadow ministers to try to veto Brough's preselection.

"The only job he wants is yours," Abbott was told.

Brough has no chance or intention –yet – of becoming leader, but should Abbott fall next week or soon after, Brough would have played a significant role and will have his hand out for a return to the ministry.

Leadership spills always begin with those Paul Keating once dubbed the "low-altitude flyers". Those with either no talent or those like Brough, with nothing to lose under the current leader, are almost always the first to throw the bombs.

Malcolm Turnbull's first stint as Liberal leader was brought undone to a large degree by his inability to think like a politician rather than a businessman. In business, pernorkles don't count. In politics, everyone has one vote each. To his peril, Turnbull ignored and disparaged the likes of Wilson Tuckey and Dennis Jensen, who would bag him daily, on behalf of a great many others, over his determination to have the party accept a price on carbon.

Ironically, Jensen, a scientist who was outraged when Abbott initially refused to appoint a science minister, joined Brough as one of the first bomb-throwers against Abbott.

Brough's sudden interest in health policy this week, followed by a press conference in which he pulled his unconditional support for Abbott, helped set the ball rolling.

Ultimately, however, if, or when, Abbott is deposed, he will have no one or no thing to blame but himself.

Since winning the election, he has operated under the assumption that the unholy mess that befell Labor after Kevin Rudd was dumped as prime minister would shield him from any challenge. It was a fair assumption and one the political establishment, this column included, supported.

But, as one MP said before Christmas when the first serious whisperings began, "politics has changed".

If Abbott is dumped this week or soon after, it will mean that at a federal level, there has been a change of leader or attempted change in either the Labor or Liberal Party every year since 2003 except for 2004, 2011 and 2014. That's nine changes and two attempts in 13 years.

Colleagues of Abbott say he is shattered at how quickly things have deteriorated. It took him some days to comprehend the enormity of the damage caused by his Prince Philip brain fart.

What will really gall him is that if he is tossed after just 16 months in the job, he would have held office for a shorter time than either Rudd or Julia Gillard, both of whom he cannot abide.

Gillard had her flaws as leader but she also had it a lot harder than Abbott. Gillard and her colleagues were savaged daily by the News Corp tabloids and the shock jocks, they were opposed by the powerful lobbies representing business, mining, energy and gambling, and she was being actively undermined by Rudd and his supporters. Abbott was undermined by nobody and News Corp and the lobby groups were on his side. This is his work.

His demise has little to do with not promoting the malcontents. Had the polls stayed healthy, they would be silent or ignored. His fortunes plunged in May last year when he broke his compact with the voters with a budget full of broken promises. After winning an election on trust, honesty and no surprises, he not only betrayed all that, but he treated the voters like dunderheads by telling them he had not broken promises.

"Many people woke up on the Wednesday morning after the budget and found two very big packages looking to provide a solution to problems that they weren't aware that we had," said Andrew Robb on Thursday.

"We didn't carry out the process; it's hung around our neck ever since and it's overwhelmed and shadowed all of the major achievements that we had throughout the year."

Any chance he had of rebounding was hampered by Abbott's stubborn refusal to listen. He refused to dump his paid parental leave scheme – a policy that angered the base and destroyed the budget narrative – until it was way too late. He refused to dilute the enormous power wielded by his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, and even when it was apparent he was in deep trouble, he chose to amend and persist with controversial budget policies on Medicare and higher education, rather than dump them.

In the end, a stupid but innocuous decision to make a prince a knight brought him unstuck. It was his Karl Rove moment.

If, as is increasingly likely, Abbott is supplanted by Turnbull, the new leader, too, will be on notice. Already, the Nationals and unnamed MPs have expressed that they will only accept Turnbull should he not lurch too far to the left. No emissions trading scheme, no gay marriage, no republic.

Already, old enmities are starting to surface from the turbulent year of his leadership.

"Who for deputy? Godwin Grech," texted one Liberal who clearly harbours misgivings abut a change.

Turnbull, one assumes, has learned from his earlier errors and he can visit his moderate policy agenda much later should he be able to consolidate his leadership and win an election in his own right. His immediate priority will be the economy.

Abbott and Hockey are deemed by the Liberal Party base unable to fix the budget because they are unable to bring the people with them.

It was the base – business, the big donors and so forth – that led the push for a leadership change, not the media or the left. This has not been a push to install the alternative government but to install a a leader who will stop Labor regaining government.

 

[Maggie5]

I read this ages ago. I agree with everything on that list except for numbers 23, 26 and 42.

Of course your do.

 

[Dixie Flatline]

How many votes are needed in the Liberals party room to ensure the leadership challenge goes ahead?

Majority plus one, so with 102 people eligible to vote (MPs and Senators), the spill motion needs 52 votes in favour to succeed.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/02/06/explainer-how-does-liberal-leadership-spill-work-0

 

[Dixie Flatline]

According to one of the papers (can't remember which), his supporters say he will challenge if the spill gets up.

Sydney Morning Herald reports that Turnbull will be a candidate for the parliamentary leader (and then PM) should the spill motion succeed.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...if-spill-motion-succeeds-20150207-138ipa.html

 

[Dixie Flatline]

I think that it will be the method of voting for the spill that will probably determine the PM's future. Show of hands and he might survive, secret ballot, I would imagine he's gone.

Apparently it will be a secret vote.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-07/tony-abbott-expects-spill-motion-to-fail/6077362

I recall on ABC News 24 yesterday either Ulhmann or Cassidy (can't remember which) recounting that when Turnbull spilled the leadership back in 2009, he sought John Howard's counsel on how to run it; Howard urged him to have an open vote (ie., on the hands) and Turnbull instead elected to have the whip run a secret ballot.

 

[raghav]

Regardless of how events pan out after Tuesday, but particularly if Abbott hangs on, one thing is for certain and that is that Messrs Simpkins, Randall and Jensen will not get endorsement as Liberal Party canditates ever again. The good news for the Libs is that none of them will be missed.