One from our old site that deserves another run. Mark Buckley published this well-received article on September 25, 2023.
Reading Nikki Savva’s The Road to Ruin is a depressing read, because it validates what many of us believed before Tony Abbott became Prime Minister.
Tony Abbott and his road to irrelevance
Many believed he was unelectable. He lacked seriousness. He lacked grace. He, like so many other ‘Rhodes Scholars’, appeared to have gotten his degrees out of a Wheaties box. He believed that he understood the country and its people. He was dangerously over-confident, and heedless of consequences.
His greatest mistakes were that he did not listen, not to his parliamentary colleagues, and not to the public mood.
Never a policy specialist, he imported what he needed from the IPA’s shopping list, and then failed to understand that Australia had changed.
He excelled in saying “No”. Loudly. As Opposition Leader he was never a believer in climate change, and he capitalised on the Labor Party’s convoluted and tortured responses to it. He can be squarely blamed for the current existential catastrophe, by sowing doubt where there was no room for any.
He also undermined, and removed the Liberal Party’s only hope for a successful future, Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull is the acceptable face of liberalism, and the embodiment of the sensible centre.
Abbott played to the backward-looking members of the community, who put climate change, same sex marriage, Indigenous rights and multiculturalism into the too-hard basket. He thought he could rule without the cities, and frankly, without the young.
Peter Dutton has no idea of the damage he is unleashing
We are now watching a dreadful remake of the same movie. Peter Dutton is reprising the role of Abbott, down to the same faux seriousness, the same appeal to those who look backward, the same dog whistling to the chronically angry.
They want us to return to the golden days of fortress Australia, where we will choose the types who come to our shores, we will choose the low road, and we will bring the country to a position halfway between the cheerful nihilism of Boris Johnson’s Brexit, and Donald Trump’s failing state.
For a man of such limited intellectual resources, Dutton has managed to confect a formidable coalition of nay-sayers.
Of course, he didn’t have to work very hard getting the National Party on-side. They decided on a No vote before the ink was dry on the proposition.
Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine, who represent possibly the most potent symbols of the No side, are incomprehensibly voting against their own interests. Their power to split the vote, and hence the country, is immense. Lidia Thorpe, who seems to be sacrificing ‘the good’, for the sake of ‘the perfect’, is similarly powerful. And wrong.
Dutton’s reasons are purely self-serving
Dutton has continued with his paper-thin repudiation of the Voice referendum with a typically threadbare slogan worthy of Tony Abbott: “If you don’t know, Vote No.”
Anyone with a shred of intelligence would substitute the words “Find Out”, instead of “Vote No”. The No side is not interested in sharing enlightenment, they much prefer doubt and fear.
He has never bothered to calculate the cost, to his party’s standing into the future, or to the social cohesion of Australia.
His recent statement that he thinks the Coalition can win government in 2025 is pure fantasy. But therein lies his reason for going hard against the Voice.
He sees it as a one-on-one contest against Albanese, and in some ways he is correct. Albanese has allowed this to degenerate from a contest of ideas to a personal political battle.
As many have noted the Voice is an advisory body only and placing it within the Constitution merely stops it from being abolished, like ATSIC was, by John Howard.
The Voice, whether enshrined within the Constitution or not, can be ignored. That is the salient point of the whole issue. The fact of Constitutional recognition is nice, but it does not help ‘close the gap’.
That objective lies with us, as to whether we demand that governments listen, and having listened, act to redress wrongs, and build a reasonable future for our fellow citizens. It is the least we can do.
Further reading:
As the world turned to shit, the Coalition turned to religion
Let’s Ban Division This Australia Day!
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He is flying under the radar of Oz media, possibly helped by being a Fox Board member?
Further, he is still indirectly linked to the IPA via his place of employment in Budapest, the Danube Institute partnered with the fossil fuel, faux free market & social-Darwinist Atlas Koch Network.
The latter cooperate with anti-immigrant Tanton Network on Project2025 eg. locally SusPopAus in which informs our RW MSM, influencers and bipartisan bigotry, or migration policies for ‘environmental’ reasons; his Brit lead in Budapest was an old chum of dec. white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton…..
Finally, although (very conveniently) sanctioned by Russia, he inhabits an ecosystem of Hungarian PM ‘mini Putin’ and crew*, allied or friendly with Russia, China and Iran; like Downer they both inhabit a parallel ecosystem with Assange and Wikileaks (helped by much naive Oz hubris and arrogance).
*Orbán’ Propaganda Chief Rogan Antál has just been sanctioned by the US government for corruption, finally, to the delight of a majority of citizens vs squealing and claims of victimhood by a minority of Orbánites, including Abbott’s friends and ecosystem, presumably.
Does Oz media ever scrutinise these types offshore? No.
However, an English and an Irish journalist have raised questions about loyalties viz a viz Hungary:
‘“It’s very concerning that we have a former British government minister and an ex-Australian prime minister – who let’s not forget until recently was still on a British government body – effectively doing PR for Viktor Orbán and his state-funded think tanks,” said Peter Geoghegan, editor of Democracy for Sale.’ in DeSmog.
https://www.desmog.com/2024/10/11/donald-trump-viktor-orban-allies-gather-anti-green-event-hosted-heritage-foundation-danube-institute-project-2025/
I can think of NOTHING good about Tone the Botty or Pete the Potty Boy Dutton. The former, whenever he gave a speech, had the body language and facial expression of, “I am an idiot, what am I doing here?” When he farted that they were “ready to govern” he lied as he could not govern, he believed he was born to rule.
Pete the Potty Boy Dutton has the same facial expression of, “I am an idiot, what am I doing here?” without the grin that resembles someone constipated squeezing out a shit! All he knows how to do is say no and develop hair-brained schemes.
In perhaps one of the most cynical moves by the Liberal Party that I have ever seen, they are now trying to secure a seat for Warren Mundine, in the upcoming federal election. This evidently is to reward Mundine for the work he did for conservatives in helping to defeat the Voice referendum : something that Dutton looks on as his major and perhaps only achievement in the first term of the Albanese government.
The seat they are hoping to pre-select him for is the Sydney seat of Bradfield, one that the teal movement is hoping to win.
Tony Abbott and senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price are lobbying local branch members to back Mundine. Mundine, you may remember was a former federal Labor president who switched parties and ran unsuccessfully for the Liberals in 2019 on the NSW South Coast.
Apart from Clive Palmer I can’t think of another candidate less likely to want to trot down to Canberra in mid-winter to sit through interminable debates when he could be tending his various profitable business interests.
Why would the Liberals do that ?
Aren’t they a horrible sight, those malicious manglers of democratic attitudes and public policy positions; Tony A’Bottyplop and Peter Dungpile are two stinkers, one educated a bit with his somehow manipulated status and the other a notorious bumkicker and abductor police roughie, from Queensland, the state that seems to provide us with excremental political garbage types. Wishing for better than these, we remain sickened.
We do, indeed, Phil.
Terence, I agree, but just one point. Dutton has had a few successes during Albanese’s term, besides The Voice. Primarily, to reduce the NACC to a pollie protection racket.