Memo to The Liberal Party:
Pick a cliché. You can prevaricate, kick the can down the road, whistle past the cemetery or rearrange the deck chairs as much as you like but without Abbott at the helm the Liberal ship is going to hit the sand – And everyone knows it.
Everyone else is either a ditherer of the left, like Turnbull, a plodder like Dutton (who stands to lose his own seat anyway) or lacking the political street smarts and junkyard dog mongrel of Abbott. With Turnbull you’ll be fighting for the spoils of opposition. With Abbott, its not guaranteed but you may still have a chance.
A couple of letter writers in the Australian seem to have not been paying attention with their observations that “..Tony Abbott had his chance and failed to deliver..” (Angus Moody) and “..Tony Abbott’s policy and selling skills are zero..” (Don Spence)
This would be the same Tony Abbott who from opposition took Julia Gillard to a hung parliament in 2010 and then took the coalition to government in 2013 in a landslide. A record total of 25 seats in 3 years.
He said he’d abolish the carbon tax. He did.
He said he would do what Labor, Fairfax and the ABC said couldn’t be done and stop the boats.
He did that too.
All Turnbull seems capable of doing is stopping the votes, trashing Abbott’s landslide victory and delivering a Labor government. It’s all going according to plan.
Given the politics of preening, posturing, moral grandstanding and obstruction by the senate with respect to other policy initiatives, that’s a pretty good batting average in anyone’s language.
Abbott with his mongrel junkyard dog political street smarts, from a standing start can do it all again as he is the only thing standing between sunny uplands for Australia and political oblivion for the Liberal Party.
Mr Abbott while as opposition leader successfully prosecuted his case for stopping the boats, abolishing the carbon tax and the budget emergency caused by those $921 ‘cheques’, roof batts and building the “education revolution”.
There was a great expectation that we would be prescribed the necessary medicine or austerity measures in order to bring the budget to balance. The failure to pass budget measures may have been due to a feral senate in May 2014. I suggest that it was the government’s fault.
To use the analogy of “budget emergency” to a “medical emergency”, if a patient is haemorraging, the treatment to stop the bleeding must be immediate, not later. The government was elected in September 2013 with one of the narratives of a “budget emergency”. An emergency must be treated immediately, such as the day after the election. Mr Abbott and the treasurer Mr Hockey should have called an emergency budget with the Mr Abbott addressing the nation about the budget emergency. They should have engaged the Australian population into the necessity for the practice of fiscal restraint and cuts. They didn’t engage the population about the necessity for the budget emergency. Instead of talking to us, the treasurer was talking to business people in London about the leaners and lifters. That was December 2013 and the budget continues top bleed. There was nothing about a repayment schedule to pay off the debt.
The current government is much worse than when Mr Abbott was PM and the debt is greater. My fear is that if interest rates rise, we may have to pay a larger interest payment for this debt.
Perhaps Mr Abbott’s downfall may be due to some Quislings from within. Perhaps some of his Ministers may have failed to prosecute their case for their respective budget measures. For example in the 2014 budget, the Education Minister failed to prosecute University deregulation. He failed to sell the scholarships aspect of the policy.
Mr Abbott’s downfall and replacement was on the pretext that the poll figures were down. The poll figures for the current leader are worse than when Mr Abbott was in power.
If Mr Abbott is to return to power as Mr Menzies did in 1949 after his defeat in 1941, then as Mr Menzies address to the ‘forgotten Australians’, Mr Abbott ought to learn from the great leader and address and engage the Australians in the necessity for austere budget measures and the ludicrous energy price rises based on that stupid CO2 consciousness hampering and causing the current leaders to wimper and hesitatation to build a coal-fired power station. Mr Abbott engage with the public not only during a campaign but after the campaign.
Regards
Anthony from Belfield
Dear Jim, as a postscript to my speech, have a look at President Mr Trump’s speech to the Polish people at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/donald-trumps-speech-in-poland-full-transcript/news-story/c7f9b430379451434606dd823aef9908. Also available from The Whitehouse at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/07/06/remarks-president-trump-people-poland-july-6-2017
Chris Kenny from “The Australian” summarizes other aspects of the speech and compares Mr Trump’s presidency particularly to the previous administration: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/chris-kenny/donald-trumps-warsaw-speech-a-revelation/news-story/7c58df3885631870d327bdd59fd812e4
Here are my favourite quotes:
Note his remarks on the “nanny state”.
“…….on both sides of the Atlantic, our citizens are confronted by yet another danger — one firmly within our control. This danger is invisible to some but familiar to the Poles: the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people. The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies.”
Also note how he puts women and the family at the centre of society and not devotion to the state:
“We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the centre of our lives. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves.”
That’s guts. That’s the truth. Our leaders need to reclaim the values that have been watered down,eliminated and made us wimps.
Mr Abbott could learn from this.
Regards
Anthony of Belfield