The excuses tumbled over each other as our former prime minister, Tony Abbott, gave his analysis of the failures of conservative governments including, of course, his own. Saboteurs were out to get him, not least such forces as the “tyranny of officialdom”, as the headline on an Abbott blame-shedding article put it in Monday’s The Australian.
But democratically elected members of parliament also done him in, including fellow Liberals.
The pleading for political innocence and victimhood may amuse some who believe Abbott is deeply in debt to fellow Liberal Scott Morrison for relieving him of the title of worst Australian prime minister of the modern era.
From 2013 to 2015, many Australians carried the thought, “What’s Abbott going to do next?” It was a sense of apprehension about the actions of a PM who thought giving the late Prince Philip a knighthood would be a popular move, and who threatened to “shirt-front” Russian president Vladimir Putin – but didn’t.
Meanwhile, there was the running sideshow of Abbott-isms. Remember the “suppository of wisdom”? And it seemed – incorrectly – that he had dismissed a soldier’s death in Afghanistan with a crude “shit happens”.
Political misery sufferers can seek to join equally unhappy company to reinforce claims of being badly done by.
Abbott’s list of enemies was first outlined in a speech last week to conservatives in Canada – or “Canadia” as he once accidentally but memorably re-labeled the country.
It was an opportunity for Abbott to not only claim victimhood but give it international status. He could rank himself with other leaders whose quest for glory he considered had been violated by public servants and “the establishment”— Donald Trump and Britain’s Boris Johnson.
He wrote: “Boris Johnson had the potential to be a great prime minister but squandered working people’s support on the altar of climate change-driven policy gimmicks, such as mandatory electric cars and heat pumps replacing gas boilers.”
But Tories kicked out Johnson, who had riled voters with his incompetence, hypocrisy and lies – not his climate change policies.
(It’s handy to remember that in 2020 Johnson appointed Abbott as a trade adviser.)
As for the now US president-elect, Abbott had this to say: “In 2016, Donald Trump was first elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ but eventually ‘the swamp’ got him.”
But immediately after this passage he criticised Trump for his ignorance: “As someone who had never been in government and was unfamiliar with Washington, he had instincts rather than well-developed policies or even well-thought-through ideas for how to develop policy.”
Well, that’s OK then.
In another contestable historical outlook, Abbott said: “The Australian centre-right Liberal-National Coalition government that I led into office in 2013 started strongly enough by stopping a wave of illegal immigration by small boat and by repealing a carbon tax and a mining tax.”
Then democracy intervened.
“But Senate obstruction sabotaged its first economically reforming budget and internal policy differences then led to a revolving door prime ministership,” Abbott recalled.
“If the clock could be turned back, I would have insisted that all my frontbenchers provide a detailed blueprint of what needed to change in order to make a difference in their portfolio area, and explain how their proposed changes reflected our ‘smaller government, bigger citizen’ political instincts”.
So, like Trump, the basis of his government was instinct, but if he had his time again he would, again like Trump, produce concepts rather than detailed policy. And as Trump has done, Abbott would get right-wing thinktanks to fill his empty policy coffers.
Few prime ministers have been given the job with such enthusiasm, and then proceeded to dissipate that support so quickly.
After two messy years, Abbott’s colleagues wanted him out, and they replaced him with Malcolm Turnbull.
Then the voters in 2019 rejected Abbott in the seat of Warringah, picking independent and former Olympic skier Zali Steggall. It was the first time the Liberals had lost the seat.
Tony Abbott’s problem in office was not that his policies were frustrated by enemies. The problem was they were unpopular policies relying on severity of purpose. More kick and gouge than encourage and comfort.
Despite his claim that the big kids picked on him, Abbott got much of his priorities through: trade pacts with Japan, South Korea and China, for example.
But he rejected the “cult” of climate change and carbon pricing, and instead boosted mining; he launched tough budgets, and asked a royal commission to look at trade union corruption. He vigorously opposed same-sex-marriage, which a majority of Australians – and voters in his own electorate – supported.
It wasn’t a deep state or tyrannical public service that brought him down.
Voters had cheered him into office to become their voice. That support collapsed when voters realised he had stopped listening to anything but the cheers.
One consequence of politicians blaming other elements of government for their own failures is that it can encourage people who want to dismantle those elements, many of which help safeguard democracy. We should all take as a warning Trump’s dangerous threat to the US Justice Department – hostile because it has done its job – as one of those consequences.
Malcolm Farr is a political journalist
